Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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.“

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Memo that Justice Department suppressed places Bill Barr at center of Trump’s shakedown

Now I had a chance to review in detail the notes of the call between the President of the United States and the President of Ukraine, as well as the legal opinion drafted by the Department of Justice in an effort to prevent the whistleblower complaint from coming to our committee. And I have to say that I’m shocked by both.

The notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning than I or many others had imagined. It is shocking at another level that the White House would release these notes and felt that somehow this would help the President’s case or cause. Because what those notes reflect is a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader.

They reflect a Ukrainian president who was desperate for U.S. support – for military support to help that country in a hot war with Putin’s Russia. A country that is still occupied by irregular Russian forces and in which people face a very dangerous and continuing and destabilizing action by their aggressive neighbor. And at the same time a President of the United States who, immediately after Ukraine’s president expresses the need for further weapons, tells the Ukraine president that he has a favor to ask.

The President communicates to his Ukrainian counterpart that the United States has done a lot for Ukraine. We’ve done an awful lot for Ukraine. More than the Europeans or anyone else has done for Ukraine. But there’s not much reciprocity here.

This is how a mafia boss talks. ‘What have you done for us? We’ve done so much for you. But there’s not much reciprocity. I have a favor I want to ask you.’

And what is that favor? Of course the favor is to investigate his political rival, to investigate the Bidens.

And it’s clear that the Ukraine president understands exactly what is expected of him. And is making every effort to mollify the President.  

What adds another layer of depravity to this conversation is the fact the President of the United States then invokes the Attorney General of the United States as well as his personal lawyer as emissaries. In the case of the Attorney General , as an official head of a U.S. department, the Department of Justice, that he says will be part and parcel of this.

Now I know that the Attorney General is denying involvement in this. But nonetheless you can see why the Department of Justice would want this transcript never to see the light of day. You can see why they have worked so hard to deprive our committee of the whistleblower complaint. And in fact the opinion by the justice department is startling in its own regard because in that opinion the Department of Justice advances the absurd claim that the Director of National Intelligence has no responsibility over efforts to prevent foreign interference in our elections.

Well, that will come as news – at least it should – to the Director of National Intelligence, who is charged, among other things, with detecting foreign interference in our elections and with reporting to Congress about foreign interference in our elections. But it is apparently the view of this justice department that the Director has no jurisdiction in this area. — Congressman Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Two responses to the memorandum on President Trump’s call with President Zelensky

“Just so you understand, it’s the greatest witch hunt in American history, probably history, but in American history. It’s a disgraceful thing. The letter was a great letter, meaning the letter revealing the call. That was done at the insistence of myself and other people that read it. It was a friendly letter. There was no pressure. The way you had that built up, that call that was going to be the call from hell. It turned out to be a nothing call other than a lot of people said, ‘I never knew you could be so nice.’” — Donald Trump

“The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown:
–        We do a lot for Ukraine
–        There’s not much reciprocity
–        I have a favor to ask
–        Investigate my opponent
–        My people will be in touch
Nice country you got there.
It would be a shame if something happened to her.” — Adam Schiff

Judge for yourself.

2020 Democratic Primary, 2020 General Election, Democrats, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Democrats disagree about political strategy: Is Trump the problem or the GOP?

“I feel like the party went through this and the 2016 election showed that Trumpism isn’t just Donald Trump — it’s the entire Republican Congress, too. Until there is someone in the Republican Party who can stand up to Trump, then none of them are better than Trump.” — Rebecca Katz, Democratic strategist

(“Biden Thinks Trump is the Problem, Not All Republicans. Other Democrats Disagree,” Shane Goldmacher, New York Times, May 4, 2019)

Joe Biden is running on the conceit that Donald Trump is an aberration. And that he, Biden, can reach across the aisle to work with a cooperative Republican Party.

The former Vice President is either making a clever (if not quite factual) electoral pitch (which, while it may sound reassuring, is hardly something we can bank on), or he has a very short memory — because Joe Biden was there when Barack Obama was greeted with absolute, across-the-board opposition from the Republican Party.

Let’s recall:

Michael Grunwald, speaking of his book, “The New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era,” recounts a now familiar plot line for Time magazine (when the United States was poised to plunge into a depression):

It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.”

Grunwald goes on to relate that Biden was aware of this scorched earth strategy:

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.

Robert Draper’s book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” describes the Republican strategizing at the January 20, 2009 meeting:

“The only way we’ll succeed is if we’re united,” Ryan told the others. “If we tear ourselves apart, we’re finished.” But, he added, he liked what he was hearing now. Everyone at the table sounded like a genuine conservative. It was a place to start.

“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” said Kevin McCarthy. “We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”

…

The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily. The Republicans had agreed on a way forward: Go after Geithner. (And indeed Kyl did, the next day: “Would you answer my question rather than dancing around it — please?”)

Show united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies. (Eight days later, Minority Whip Cantor would hold the House Republicans to a unanimous No against Obama’s economic stimulus plan.)

Begin attacking vulnerable Democrats on the airwaves. (The first National Republican Congressional Committee attack ads would run in less than two months.)

Win the spear point of the House in 2010. Jab Obama relentlessly in 2011. Win the White House and the Senate in 2012.

“You will remember this day,” Newt Gingrich proclaimed to the others as they said goodbye. “You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.”

Here is how Mitch McConnell summed up the strategy on everything Obama proposed:

“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell says. “Because we thought—correctly, I think—that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”

Why?

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Want another example? There was Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi: the Republican never-ending cycle of hearings to politicize the deaths in 2012 of Americans at the Libyan embassy. Why? For political advantage, of course, as Kevin McCarthy (then House Majority Leader; now House Minority Leader) explained in an interview with Sean Hannity:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy asked. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

“I give you credit for that,” said Hannity. “I’ll give you credit where credit is due.”

The obstructionist strategy played out in the bipartisan negotiations leading to passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act in 2010, Obama’s major legislative accomplishment, without a solitary Republican vote in favor. Democrats made numerous compromises with Republicans (this is why we don’t have a public option*) before Republicans revealed their unanimous, remorseless opposition to ACA:

… [W]ith Obama’s blessing, the Senate …became the fulcrum for a potential grand bargain on health reform. Chairman Max Baucus, in the spring of 2009, signaled his desire to find a bipartisan compromise, working especially closely with Grassley, his dear friend and Republican counterpart, who had been deeply involved in crafting the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Baucus and Grassley convened an informal group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee, which became known as the “Gang of Six.” They covered the parties’ ideological bases; the other GOPers were conservative Mike Enzi of Wyoming and moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, and the Democrats were liberal Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and moderate Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

Baucus very deliberately started the talks with a template that was the core of the 1993-4 Republican plan, built around an individual mandate and exchanges with private insurers—much to the chagrin of many Democrats and liberals who wanted, if not a single-payer system, at least one with a public insurance option. Through the summer, the Gang of Six engaged in detailed discussions and negotiations to turn a template into a plan. But as the summer wore along, it became clear that something had changed; both Grassley and Enzi began to signal that participation in the talks—and their demands for changes in the evolving plan—would not translate into a bipartisan agreement.

What became clear before September, when the talks fell apart, is that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had warned both Grassley and Enzi that their futures in the Senate would be much dimmer if they moved toward a deal with the Democrats that would produce legislation to be signed by Barack Obama. They both listened to their leader. An early embrace by both of the framework turned to shrill anti-reform rhetoric by Grassley—talking, for example, about death panels that would kill grandma—and statements by Enzi that he was not going to sign on to a deal.

And, let’s not forget the Senate’s refusal to hold hearings for Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell is especially pleased with himself for putting President Obama in his place: “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.'”

When I asked McConnell how he felt about his legacy and Trump’s being so closely linked, he rejected the premise. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the most consequential call I made was before President Trump came to office.” I asked what he meant. “The decision not to fill the Scalia vacancy,” he said. “I think that’s the most consequential thing I’ve ever done.”

Remember: not a single Republican Senator moved a finger to ensure hearings for Obama’s choice (though there were ineffectual murmurs of complaint — I recall Senator Susan Collins murmuring — just like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker’s mild criticism of Trump, while voting consistently in support of Trump and the Republican leadership).

This, the Garland blockade, McConnell believes, will be his lasting legacy as Senate Majority Leader:

When I asked McConnell how he felt about his legacy and Trump’s being so closely linked, he rejected the premise. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the most consequential call I made was before President Trump came to office.” I asked what he meant. “The decision not to fill the Scalia vacancy,” he said. “I think that’s the most consequential thing I’ve ever done.”

Count me in the Democratic camp that thinks that Trump is only a symptom of an off-the-rails Republican Party.

*After posting this, I recalled Joe Lieberman’s threat to kill the public option. I don’t wish to let him off the hook for his misdeeds, but if Republicans hadn’t played Max Baucus for months on end with meaningless negotiations and compromises, the ACA would have passed with Ted Kennedy’s vote.

(Image: McConnell, Ryan, Trump, and Pence celebrating the Republican tax bill.)

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or not.

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

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

Democrats, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

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

Quote of the day:

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

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

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

Democrats, Donald Trump, Income Inequality

The Howard Schultz campaign is already helping Donald Trump

“After this week’s CNN town hall, it’s more and more clear that any money Howard Schultz might spend on an independent presidential bid would function as an in-kind campaign contribution to Donald Trump.” – Ronald Brownstein

“To win a majority of electoral college votes, which Schultz says would be his goal, he would have to ultimately replace the Democratic nominee as the favored choice of voters who do not want Trump to win a second term.” – Michael Scherer

Schultz has praised the “thoughtful analysis” of a conservative commentator who fears the Democrats will nominate a “hard-left” candidate and – in the course of the column – demeans Kamala Harris (“shrill … quasi-socialist promising pie in the sky”), Elizabeth Warren (“Fauxcahontas … playing a game of socialist one-upmanship”), and “supposedly centrist” Joe Biden. The critic also name-checks Bernie Sanders and, of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Schultz, who claims to be a “lifelong Democrat” – but not a very attentive one (“Schultz voted in just 11 of 38 elections dating back to 2005”), took back the praise he had offered after folks actually read the “thoughtful analysis” he was promoting;  he deleted the tweet when he was asked about it by the Washington Post, and blamed someone else for posting the link on his personal Twitter account.

Nonetheless, he embraces the conservative views expressed in the deleted column. It’s the “hard-left,” “quasi-socialist” Democrats that Schultz fears and, most scary and objectionable of all, the proposal (broached by conservatives’ favorite new Democratic Member of Congress, Ocasio-Cortez) to raise the marginal tax rate for incomes over $10 million to 70% (the level in the United States in 1980).

When asked at his CNN Town Hall what he thinks his personal income tax rate – as a billionaire – should be, Schutz concedes that he “should pay more taxes,” but tap dances for more than a minute (with platitudes about corporate taxes, the Republican tax bill, comprehensive tax reform, as well as personal income tax rates for millionaires) without giving an answer, at which point the moderator Poppy Harlow reminds him of the question and asks, “Give me a sense. Are you talking about you should pay 2% higher? Ten percent higher, twenty percent higher federal income tax?”

He stammers and says, “I don’t – Poppy, I don’t know what the number is….”

“Ballpark it for people,” she asks.

He won’t. He finally gets to the heart of his concern, “I think that what’s being proposed at 70% is a punitive number. And I think there are better ways to do this.”

Better ways. In other words, instead of significant increases in the personal tax rates of billionaires, we should seek revenue increases somewhere else.

Brownstein notes that on issue after issue, Schultz’s positions align with Democrats, while alienating Trump’s Republican base.

“To obscure his tilt toward the Democrats on almost all issues, Schultz has quickly settled on a strategy of loudly criticizing ideas popular on the party’s far-left flank.”

Brownstein perceives in Schultz’s strategy echoes of the (now defunct) centrist group, the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton embraced in his trek to the White House.  But there’s a huge difference in the two strategies. The DLC and Clinton worked for years “inside the Democratic Party.” Regardless of what you think of Clinton or his policies, he sought to “rebuild a political majority that would allow Democrats to regain control of the national agenda from the increasingly militant conservatism within the GOP.”

Schultz seeks to do the opposite: to split the Democrats and peel off Democratic voters to his independent campaign.

‘Exaggerating the power of the left in the Democratic coalition, he’s portraying the party as beyond redemption for anyone holding centrist views. To make that case, Schultz is echoing claims from Trump and other Republicans that Democrats have become radical. At times, Schultz has even called some of the Democratic ideas he opposes “un-American” or “not American,” not to mention “punitive” and “ridiculous.”

By validating the Republican efforts to portray Democrats as outside the mainstream, Schultz is helping Trump already.’