October 22, 2019--Jack Sputtering

Jack, alone, was slumped in a booth, seemingly talking to himself when we arrived at the Bristol Diner. 

Rona poked me and mouthed that maybe we should leave him alone. 

She whispered, "I think he's unraveling."

"If he is then maybe we should sit with him."  She nodded and led the way. 

"What's up Jack? You seem all out of joint?"

"I'm sick of those assholes."

"Who might they be?" Rona asked.

"Senators."

"Senators?" I said, "All of a sudden you care about them? I thought all that interested you was your president."

"That's my point."

"I'm not following you," I said. "Though I assume you're bent out of shape about the Republican senators."

"You assume correctly."

"I don't see why you're so down on them," Rona said, "They've rolled over for him. They'd be among those who wouldn't care if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. All they're interested in is covering for him so he doesn't sic his base on them. Primary them, for example. They'll do anything to get reelected and believe if they cover for him, if they look the other way he won't come after them."

"It may surprise you," Jack said, "that I agree with most of that. They're a bunch of slimy hypocrites."

"Of course they're hypocrites. But I'm not getting your problem with them. As Rona said they're protecting him. I assume that's what you'd want them to do. Protect him from the Democrats."

"My problem is that these senators don't care about him but only about themselves. They'd throw him under the bus if they thought they could get away with it. This means the protection they provide is very thin and that makes Trump vulnerable."

"From your mouth to God's ear," Rona said. "I am hoping, to be honest, that they do throw him under the bus. My fantasy is that Pence becomes president. As bad as I think he would be he'd be like a breath of fresh air."

"His own people hate Trump and that scares me."

"Hate him?"

"If you were a Republican senator . . ."

"What a nightmarish thought," Rona said.

"If you were a Republican senator wouldn't you hate him? I don't mean express that openly. No one in their right mind who wants to remain in the Senate or run for president in four years would openly criticize him. As I said, they depend upon him to get reelected. So they show support for him and he reciprocates. Talk about quid pro quo."

"But I don't get the hate part. Why do they hate him?"

"They, all senators from both parties think of themselves as being members of the world's most exclusive club. There are only 100 senators, and they pride themeless on their independence and like to pretend they're above the grimy fray. In their own minds they're statesmen and compare themselves favorably to members of the House where representatives are comfortable doing whatever their leaders tell them to do. For example, how to vote. Look at how powerful Nancy Pelosi is. If she says jump, they jump. These days she even has AOC under her thumb. She housebroke her. Pun intended."

"I'm with you so far," Rona said.

"So how do you think it makes senators feel when they find themselves jumping when Trump tells them to do so? Or when Trump's lackey Mitch McConnell tells them to jump? Not too good, right?"

"I imagine not," Rona said.

"If true, then, a whole lot of Republican senators are not feeling very good about themselves. They're not the independent-minded big shots they like to think they are. They're a bunch of lackeys too. And politically and psychologically that can be dangerous for Trump. It means support for Trump in the Senate is thin because it was coerced and therefore is ready to explode or collapse. If Romney or Lindsey Graham, both still wanting to be president like half the senators do, were to pull the plug on their support for Trump, his presidency could come crashing down. Again, because most of the Republican senators hate him for what he has turned them into. How he has diminished and humiliated them. They know he has contempt for them. He doesn't even make the effort to pretend to pay attention to them much less take them seriously."

"This is quite an indictment," I said, "Sorry, though, for the indictment reference."

For the first time that morning Jack smiled.

July 12, 2019--AOC & Company

It is no secret that Nancy Pelosi is having more than a spat with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

They are fighting for the very soul of the Democratic Party: Speaker Pelosi is concerned about two things: retaining the Democratic majority in the House and defeating Trump in 2020.

AOC and her colleagues believe it is time to pass the leadership torch to a new generation of the Democratic base, largely women and people of color; Pelosi, as she thinks about the big political picture, believes it is about the center holding so that the Democrats can be a party that is broadly inclusive and therefore they must be careful not to overreach in their policy agenda.

I confess, as I obsess about deposing Trump, to being closer to the Pelosi point of view, acknowledging this may be as much generational thinking as we are both old!

My friend Dan La Noue also thinks about these sweeping realities and again, in part for generational reasons (he is young), is also thinking big but in ways quite different than Pelosi.

Here is a sample of his thinking taken from his response to my recent White Male Privilege blog--

Dan wrote--

A lot of great insights in the WMP posting. But I disagree with the characterization of AOC and company. Nancy Pelosi wasn't pushing for a Green Deal, nor was she willing to speak so bluntly and truthfully about the horrors of the dentention camps on the border. AOC and her friends did that, and they've reframed the debate about these critical issues in way that captures much-needed attention. Conservatives are brilliant about pushing the Overton Window to get people to think about things differently, and these new Dems are taking a page out of their book and putting it to good use. Gutless politicking isn't going to defeat Trump and/or mobilize voters. That's how Hillary bricked a layup election.

I responded--

To me until after Election Day it's all about defeating Trump. In my view, though I am attracted to some of their policy positions, the AOC Four politically are only helping Trump. 

Dan responded--

Remember when the GOP claimed Obama, a mild-mannered center-left guy, was a blood-gargling Kenyan islamo-socialist? My point is that Trump and company will demonize Democrats no matter what. So if you're a Democrat, why not be bold and say/do things that actually give your side something to vote for? This is why I don't worry about AOC and Co. the way some others do. And frankly, I think deep down the Right's hatred of them has more to do with race than any one policy they propose. Call me crazy.

I then said--

Not so crazy! You make a good case. But I still fear that AOC's Squad (as they refer to themselves), if they become the face of the Democratic Party, no matter how that happens, will help Trump get reelected. If that occurs than all the inspiring policies in the world will go for nought.

July 10, 2019--White Male Privilege

Continuing to ponder the gender implications of the large vote Trump received in 2016 from white women, Guest Blogger Sharon wrote--

One of the questions I keep hearing is should Dems try to get Obama/Trump voters back or go full out Progressive to motivate more new voters.

As much as I hate many aspects of data mining and micro-targeting, it would probably help if the Dems knew more about these and other more reasonable Trump voters and those Dems that didn’t vote in 2016.

With that said, I suspect the real challenge isn’t what candidates say or how they say it but who they are. There just might not be anyone with a wide enough appeal. I cringed when Bill Maher said the only one who could beat Trump for sure is Oprah. But I fear he may be right.

It’s a tiny sample but when a friend from the Midwest had brunch with a friend from New York, he asked him why he and friends voted for Trump. His reaction was people knew him. For me that was a dis-qualifier. But with so many people not paying attention, this may be the key. 

As for more civilized discourse, an acquaintance assisting at the polls on Democratic primary day last month said a woman drove into the church parking lot screaming at her about representing “the party of death” and how she’d never vote for a Democrat. I thought this might just be a disturbed individual. Then I  googled our moderate businessman Senator and former Governor Mark Warner.  The first entry is an ad to defeat him in 2020 because he sides with the “party of death.” Interesting new branding. Not encouraging. 

I wrote--

The most recent ways the Dems are shooting themselves in the foot is to give so much attention to AOC and three (three!) of her colleagues. This gang of four is the gift that keeps on giving to the GOP now that they have someone even better than Nancy Pelosi to demonologize. How self-defeating can we be.

And then Jill Davenport wrote--

I was just this minute reading your blog about women and I believe you’re exactly right. And Bill Clinton was exactly right when he spoke about white men dying of broken hearts.  

There’s another reason as well, and this affects both genders . . . the white male privilege is on shaky ground, and so is the privilege thereby extended to their female counterparts.  They are terribly fearful of the most awful thing that they can imagine . . . being outnumbered by people of color who by nature they believe should be shining shoes in airports.  

Having a black man for president was an unspeakable affront to the proper order as they see it and they thus feel it needs to be restored.  

Obama brought out the latent and carefully hidden racism which came forth like a toxic flood when T-name took over "my" White House.  All of it is, of course, the result of just fear. 

I thought--

Jill's new idea about how for many conservative women male privilege is extended to them is something important to ponder. For me it helps explain why so many white women voted for Trump and how important it is for progressives to understand this in order to find ways to prevail.

June 17, 2019--Impeachment

Speaker Pelosi understandably, from a political perspective, has been reluctant to unleash her Democratic colleagues who are pressing to begin the process required to impeach Donald Trump.

She knows her history and saw Bill Clinton's favorability numbers skyrocket when Republicans in the House of Representatives, which they controlled at the time as the Dems do now, moved to impeach him on two counts--lying under oath and obstruction of justice.

Pelosi is worried that she and her fellow Democrats will experience deja vu all over again--in the House Trump will be impeached minimally for abuse of power but will not even come close to receiving the two-thirds vote that is required to remove him from office. As a result, she fears, like Clinton he will emerge more popular, more emboldened than ever, and sprint in 2020 to reelection.

Thus she has held AOC, Jerry Nadler, and others in check, citing these political concerns.

Putting aside for the moment whether political considerations should determine what to do, there may be an historical flaw in Pelosi's reasoning.

She is right about the Clinton example and it should worry anyone who feels that ridding ourselves of Trump in 17 months is even more important than holding him to his constitutional responsibilities.

But that is just one example. 

In our history there is only one other instance when Congress impeached a president--Andrew Johnson who had been Lincoln's vice president and assumed the presidency after Lincoln was assassinated. He subsequently abandoned Lincoln's Reconstruction agenda and as a result alienated virtually all Republicans who promptly passed the 14th and 15th Amendments and resisted Johnson's efforts to fire his inherited secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. He was impeached in 1868 by a wide margin but was not tossed out of office, though Republicans had the required votes in the Senate, because enough of them did not want to put Congress's powers to a constitutional test. He was retained in office by just one vote.

Being impeached did not in any way enhance his political or electoral viability. He is still considered one of our worst presidents.

Many think that Nixon was impeached. He was not. He certainly would have been if he had not resigned, but in fact he was only charged by the House judiciary committee. Their recommendation to impeach was never voted on by the full House. And we know Nixon as a result did not receive an impeachment bump in the polls. His numbers plummeted and for that reason alone he chose to leave office.

And now there might be Trump. 

Let us stipulate that he is not as unpopular as either Johnson or half-impeached Nixon. But, for the sake of seeking historical parallels it is important to point out that he is not as popular as Clinton was even after he was exposed as having had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. 

In other words to compare Trump to Clinton (the one example we have of a president whose approval ratings rose while he was being impeached) we have to factor in their relative political power. I is my view that Clinton, by comparison, in spite of all his misdeeds began the impeachment process in much better political shape than Trump. More jobs were created than at any other comparable time in our history, the budget was throwing off surpluses not as now mountains of new debt, and we were not at war. Also, and important, Clinton was an eminently likable rogue.

In addition, the facts about Clinton's malfeasance were well known before impeachment hearings began. After all, his story was full of sex and violence (remember Vince Foster?). Subjects the public turned to for their daily fix. 

With Trump, as the Mueller Report reveals, we have been dealing with relatively complex legal hairsplitting so it is no wonder that the majority of American's to this point couldn't care less. 

In other words, Speaker Pelosi, there may not be that many political consequences to fear if there were impeachment hearings. They would be on television and one might be able to make the case that when the public finally tunes in they may be furious to learn the sordid details of what Trump and his party of grifters have wrought. 

In addition, to move to impeach may be the right thing. Sometimes it's important to do that too.

Andrew Johnson