October 8, 2018--Susan Collins: My Summer Senator

For half the year in Maine, Susan Collins is one of my senators.

A self-described "moderate Republican" I have yet to see much moderation in her voting record. 

On occasion she sounds moderate like when two years ago she struggled publicly about how to vote on a bill to repeal Obamacare (she eventually voted to eliminate it) and then last week when she seemed to agonize about how to vote when the roll was called to confirm Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Again, she voted the Republican Party line. In fact, she cast the decisive 50th vote. No one up here was surprised by her seeming to have an open mind but when it came to voting acted as one of the most loyal, most robotic of Republicans.

She is so craven that on Friday she took the lead role in dooming the opposition to Kavanaugh.

With a new outfit and dye-job (he hair no longer looking like roadkill), with three female Republican senators like props seated behind her (Deb Fischer [NE], Shelly Capito [WV], and Cindy-Hyde Smith [MS]), with Lisa Murkowski conspicuously absent (she was too busy writing her own profile in courage), Collins spoke for 45 minutes with seeming feeling about the testimony offered by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. She could feel her pain, she claimed without feeling, but since she said there was no corroboration she was going to vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

Not a word did she offer about the deranged conspiracy-laced statement and testimony Kavanaugh offered last Thursday. Not a word about his judicial temperament, mental stability, or his many contemporary under-oath lies. All that mattered for Collins was a lack of clear evidence about something he may or may not have done 36 years ago.

What a disgraceful show she participated in. Perhaps most disgraceful was her willingness, as a woman, with three female coconspirators backing her up, to ignore the testimony of an impressive, deeply wounded woman.

At least no one wore pink.

I am always loath to make comparisons between events in the United States and Nazi Germany, but I cannot shake the feeling that Collins and her colleague female senators acted like concentration camp kapos. Like prisoners who were assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor of fellow prisoners or carry out administrative tasks. For this they were given special privileges. Like blankets and food. 

Collins, who has been in the Senate for 21 too-long years comes cheap. For her staged peregrinations and eventual "capitulation" she chairs just one subcommittee--on aging. How appropriate. 

But for the bit of her soul she sold Saturday, perhaps the majority leader, the already soulless Mitch McConnell (who considers the Kavanaugh confirmation his "proudest moment"), will name her to a real committee, the foreign relations committee, for example which would allow her to junket around the world at our expense.

Mark it on your calendar--she's up for reelection in 2020.

October 4, 2018--A Subdued Trump

Until a day or two ago Trump had been on a roll and, incredibly, at times almost sounded like a normal person.

He spoke moderately about deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. After the ("failing") New York Times wrote about how Rosenstein contemplated wearing a wire to record Trump's irrational behavior, when all were expecting him to fire Rosenstein and perhaps even Robert Mueller, Trump said he really wants to "keep" Rosenstein, that he'll meet with him in a week or so, and "we'll see what happens." As if Trump had nothing to do with the what happens.

When Senator Jeff Flake got the Senate judiciary committee to delay a week before voting on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court, to allow the FBI time to reopen its background check, rather than returning to ranting about and mocking the Arizona senator ("Jeff Flakey"), he offered temperate comments about this being a good idea. "No rush," he again said, "We'll see what happens." He even offered to withdraw Kavanaugh from consideration if he is found to have lied during his testimony before the committee.

Then he bullied Mexico and Canada to agree to significant changes in NAFTA. Changes even Democrats such as Chuck Schumer praised. A new-seeming Trump barely took a victory lap.

I thought someone in the White House must have slipped some Thorazine into his Big Macs.

Most amazing, after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's wrenching statement to the judiciary committee, rather than attacking her credibility, Trump spoke softly about how it is important to listen to what she has to say and, again, if it proved to be true, he indicated he would withdraw Kavanaugh's nomination. 

But then, on Tuesday, unable to contain himself, Trump lashed out, mocking Dr. Ford.

At a rally in Southaven, Mississippi, imitating her voice, he spun out this viscous two-character Q&A--

"How did you get home? 'I don't remember.' How did you get there? 'I don't remember.' Where is the place? 'I don't remember.' How many years ago was it? 'I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.'"

That, I thought, is the Trump I know. Playing to his misogynist base.

Where had he been? What had he been up to?

I suspect, probing to find his best political way to respond to all the battering before launching new lines of attack.

And then he found his strategy--

He set his nasty little dialogue in a new context.

At the Mississippi rally he told parents in the audience, in the era of #MeToo, boys are in more danger than girls. Daughters might be threatened by sexually assault but their sons might find themselves falsely accused of committing sexual abuse and thus have their lives ruined. 

He said, "It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of. This is a very difficult time."

This is red meat for his base. Especially for middle-age white men who have felt their prerogatives, their privileges threatened, initially by how they experienced the women's movement which, among other things, called for equal pay, sexual parity, control of their bodies, political and executive equivalence, and now by the MeToo movement.

Women with access to a microphone or blog or a corporate human resources office have the power, these disaffiliated men feel, not only to boss them around, but with a simple accusation potentially ruin their lives.

It doesn't help the progressive cause when cable news outlets such as CNN have guests drawing comparisons between Bill Cosby (a convicted sexual predator) and Brett Kavanaugh. No matter how despicable and slimy he feels, Kavanaugh has not been convicted of anything, much less being, like Cosby, a "serial rapist."

We may already be seeing the beginnings of the political consequences from the new Trump campaign to play on this anger, these fears. 

In a number of key Senate battleground red states where Democrats are seeking to retain seats, poll numbers are beginning to swing in their opponents' direction. In North Dakota, for example, Senator Heidi Heitkamp who was running neck-and-neck with Kevin Cramer is now trailing by about 10 points.

We need to get to work. There are just four weeks until Election Day. We know Trump will be campaigning full time. Assuming he doesn't get any more love letters from Kim Jong-un.

October 1, 2018--Brett Kavanaugh: Wasted

If allowed by Republicans to do their work what the FBI will discover about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in their now resumed background check will turn out to be quite simple--back when he was accused of sexually assaulting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and other young women he was a habitual drunk.

That would explain almost everything, including that he might in fact not remember the hideous incident. He may have been that blotto.

If they interview just a few people who knew him at the time would it surprise anyone who listened to Kavanaugh stumble through his testimony Thursday that he had a serious drinking problem? It even looked, as he rambled incoherently, that he still is a drunk.

The FBI should begin by interviewing his Yale College roommate, James Roche, who has written: 

"It is from this experience [as his roommate] that I concluded that although Brett was normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and that he became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk . . . I remember Brett frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk."

This is particularly condemning since anyone who has had a roommate knows that roommates know everything about each other.

And of course there is Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh's prep-school drinking buddies, who was a self-admitted black-out drunk and wrote revealing books about that, including one, Wasted, that included a semi-fictional character who was habitually inebriated, "Bart O'Kavanaugh." Sound familiar?

Next the FBI should look closely at the entry Georgetown Prep senior Kavanaugh wrote about himself for the school yearbook. According to the New York Times--

"There is lots about football, reports of plenty of drinking, and parties at the beach." Among the reminiscences about sports and booze is a mysterious entry: “Renate Alumnius.”

The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Kavanaugh, who were described as the “Renate Alumni.” It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school.

Two of Judge Kavanaugh’s classmates say that mentioning Renate was his coded way of boasting about his and other classmates' sexual conquests.

“They were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate,” said Sean Hagan, a Georgetown Prep student at the time, referring to Judge Kavanaugh and his teammates. “I can’t express how disgusted I am with them, then and now.”

And then there was last week's bizarre free-associative ramble of an answer to Senator Amy Klobuchar's questions about his apparent love for beer.

In his answer he mentioned "beer" and "brewskis" 29 times and at the end, seemingly drunk in the witness chair, bizarrely pressed Senator Klobuchar to talk about her own drinking habits--

"I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone . . . We drank beer."  

Asked if he had ever suffered memory loss during a time that he had been drinking, Kavanaugh said no, and returned to his beer soliloquy-- 

"We drank beer, and you know, so . . . so did, I think, the vast majority of . . . of people our age at the time. But in any event, we drank beer, and . . . and still do. So whatever, you know."

Within the window of the week the FBI has to do its investigation they should be able to come up with a pretty complete picture of Kavanaugh's drinking history. Many things he lied about in his sworn Senate confirmation hearing.

If he was such a serious drinker and drunk during those years, to disqualify him it will not even be necessary for the FBI to get to the bottom of what actually happened the evening Dr. Blasey was nearly raped.

If this truth about his alcoholism is exposed Kavanaugh will either be compelled to withdraw or be pulled by Trump. We can't have another Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. What Thomas got away with 27 years ago can't be allowed to happen again.