November 25, 2019--Move The Goalposts

It's time for Democrats to move on from impeachment. 

Considering Trump's many crimes and misdemeanors, impeachment is the constitutional right thing to do--impeach Trump in the House of Representatives and initiate a trial in the Senate.

But there's the rub. With Republicans in charge of the Senate there is no chance, I repeat, no chance, zero likelihood, that Trump will be voted out of office.

Rather than witnessing an impartial trial, we will experience an attempt to portray Trump as an innocent victim of the Democrats, persecuted by a Dark State "witch hunt," aided and abetted by the "enemy of the people"-- the press.

Senate Majority Leader, Moscow-Mitch McConnell will be in charge. He will make and promulgate the rules (to be fair, as did Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi in the House) and people such as Lindsey Graham--chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee--will be in flagrant political ecstasy.

We won't be hearing more from Fiona Hill or anyone like her. Rather it will be left to Devin Nunes to whine to the Senate how Trump was railroaded in the House. Adam Schiff will be assigned by Mitch a small desk by the men's room.

As good as it felt the past two weeks to see young bureaucrats put their careers and perhaps lives at risk to tell the truth about how Trump led the effort to undermine the stirring of democracy in Ukraine to advance his own political agenda, that's how bad it will feel when Chief Justice Rogers gavels the trial to commence. We will hear nothing but conspiracy theories 24/7 even on MSNBC. It will be as if it had morphed into Fox News.

And at the end of the day, Trump will still be in office, his favorabilities will have risen, and the Democrats will be viewed by an increasing number of voters as politically-motivated obstructionists. Defeating Trump next Election Day will be considerably less likely. Reelecting a majority of the new class of Democratic House members will also be more difficult. 

This is why since 2018 when the Democrats gained control of the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted the move to impeach Trump.

But there is a relatively easy way for the Democrats to get out of this pickle and actually gain political standing--move the goal posts from impeachment to censure. 

Get the House to condemn Trump's behavior and move on. Take impeachment off the table. Censuring a sitting president is a big deal and would demonstrate to moderate voters that the Democrats are capable of behaving decisively and moderately.

They can do this as it is possible for one house of Congress on its own to censure colleagues and members of the administration, including the president.

It would also free up the Democratic senators who are seeking the presidential nomination--Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. As impeachment "jurors" they would be like hostages in the Senate for at least a month during the height of the primary season. Mitch McConnell will relish muzzling them. And Lindsey will launch investigations into everything from the Bidens to Hillary Clinton's server.

Spare us.

August 12, 2019--Jack: Women

Jack was waiting for us at the Bristol Diner. It was not as if we had an appointment to meet. In fact, I had been avoiding his texts and phone messages. I was trying to spend less time and energy thinking about, talking about Trump. There would be plenty of time for that, I thought, after Labor Day. It would still be more than a year until the election. Plenty of time for political talk. Yes, I had relapsed into Trump Fatigue. 

We were tempted to ignore Jack's patting on the banquette, signally he was holding two places for us. I whispered to Rona, "Maybe let's go to Crissy's. I'm not in the mood for Jack."

"I know what you're thinking," he said with a smile, "I promise not to keep you more than half an hour. Come, sit with me for a while."

And so reluctantly we shuffled over to him and slid into the booth.

"I'll just have coffee," I said to Sarah, "We can't stay very long today." Rona said the same.

Without so much as a hello Jack launched into his latest rant.

"I know you and your people care only about who can beat Trump. You're putting aside your concerns about where candidates stand on health care or immigration. You're whole focus is denying him a second term."

"That pretty much sums it up," I said, "Almost everyone I know is thinking about the election that way. There will be time for debates about policy after a Democrat is elected. I agree with Tom Friedman about that. He warns, if we want a revolution and Trump wins we will have a revolution not of our liking when, for example, he gets to appoint two more Supreme Court justices like Kavanaugh and Gorsuch."

"Though one thing," Jack said, "does show up on the screen with a lot of you guys."

"This I'm interested in hearing,"I said.

"With six women seeking the nomination, many of you this time around not only want to nominate a woman, but unlike with Hillary who turned out to be a terrible candidate, you want to elect one. Most realistic, considering the poll numbers, only two have a real chance of being nominated, with winning another story. Forget Gillibrand and Klobuchar. The only two who have a chance are Warren and Kamala Harris. At the moment they're the only ones close to Biden in the polls."

"That could be true," Rona said, "But I continue to wonder if America is open to having a woman as president. They tell pollsters that they are but I'm skeptical. Among other things by what he says and how he behaves Trump sanctions not only racism and white supremacy but also sexism. And in so doing exposes how extensive it still is."

Rona continued, "Even Trump's female supporters--and there are more of them than any liberal would like to acknowledge--can in their own way be quite sexist. Why else did so many of them vote for him rather than for the first woman to be the nominee of a major party? And don't tell me it was because Hillary was such an ineffective candidate or won the popular vote. The country's just not ready for a female president. Though with Biden unravelling because of gaffs, there could be a woman next in line."

I was surprised that both Rona and I were so easily drawn into political talk. Our fatigue was clearly not that deep seated.

"Let me give you an example," Jack said, "of why I too don't think you can elect a woman.

"I'm listening."

"So there was this terrible shooting in El Paso. And what happened? Joe Biden, Cory Booker, and that mayor from South Bend whose name I can never remember all gave major speeches about it. Booker even gave his from the pulpit of the church in South Carolina where there had been another massacre four years ago. Where a white guy targeted black people and where Obama spoke and sang 'Amazing Grace.'"

Jack paused and peered at us. "I see you're not getting it."

"Getting what?" I asked.

"What's missing from this picture?"

"Enlighten me."

"Women."

"Women?"

"Yes, Democrat women candidates."

"They spoke out," Rona said, "Among other things they accused Trump of being a racist and, even more seriously, a white supremacist. Which he is. I think you're splitting hairs. I felt they were very forceful. Very effective."

"But none of the women gave a speech. A big picture, presidential-style speech, one in which they put all the pieces together. About the history of racism in this country, about how various ethnic groups have been treated. They missed the opportunity that most of the leading male candidates--Sanders excepted--seized. To show how they would act if president and incidents of this kind occurred. As they surely will. These men not only made speeches of this kind but they also showed how they would behave as mourner-in-chief."

"I hate to agree with you," Rona said, "But, thinking about it now, I must admit the women may have missed an opportunity. My guess is that they didn't want to be stereotyped as emotional women by making a speech of this kind. That they didn't want to be perceived as being soft in a situation that calls for toughness."

"It calls for both," Jack said. "For sure it's a tricky line to straddle when a woman wants to show she can be both compassionate and tough-minded. Look at how Hillary got all tangled up in whether or not to vote for the war with Iraq. She eventually voted for it in large part to show she had cajones."

"Along with most other Democratic senators," I said, "Half of whom were thinking about running for president, she botched this and paid the price."

"So this wasn't so bad after all," Jack said.

"What wasn't?" I asked.

"Spending a little quality time with me." He laughed. "When was the last time we agreed about anything?"

Rona said, "I'm not sure we're agreeing now."

"Let's order some food," I said. "Sarah."

June 25, 2019--Biden's Sister Souljah Moment

As is his propensity, last week Joe Biden stepped in it.

But then again, perhaps he didn't. 

This flap, significantly taken out of context, was from something he said when Vice President, in a commencement address at Yale in 2015. Among many things he spoke about how when he was in the Senate he attempted to work directly with even other senators who were avowed segregationists and racists to advance important legislation.

Some of his current rivals, though acknowledging he is not himself a racist, claimed he minimally showed insensitivity to people of color who do not look back to that Jim Crow era with any sense of nostalgia or bipartisan clubbiness. Among others, sensing a political opportunity, Cory Booker called on Biden to apologize.

That really got under Biden's skin.

He fired back, "Apologize for what? He knows better. I don't have a racist bone in my body."

I suspect the old Joe would have tied himself up in knots of contrition and squeezed out a version of a self-righteous apology. But not this Joe. He doubled down. Tripled down. And in at least two regards this may have been the politically smart thing to do.

Voters this time around are looking for feistiness not wimpiness, confrontation not nuance. Even many liberals who pride themselves on being measured and understanding--never hot under the collar, no drama--more than anything want their candidate to be able to go toe-to-toe with Trump and take him down. After that, we can get back to seeking dialogue and reasonableness in the hope that maybe we can get a few legislative things done. Like fixing Obamacare and Social Security. Like doing something about our collapsing infrastructure. Like rebuilding our standing in the world.

For any of this to happen, assuming the Dems capture the White House and retain their majority in the House, it will be essential to figure out ways to work across the aisle with at least a half dozen Republicans. Biden by insisting on his ability to do this is boldly putting the spectrum of his political history out for review. Admittedly, some of it is on the compromised side.

Related, but more complicated, if he is to recapture some of the white, blue-collar vote that last time went overwhelmingly to Trump and more than anything else put him in the White House, he needs to demonstrate that though he is responsive to voters of color and progressive in other ways, he will not allow himself to become their agent. 

So this current flap could turn out to be Biden's Sister Souljah Moment. The original was in 1992 when Bill Clinton was the Democratic nominee. He was at risk of being perceived as pandering excessively to black voters as part of his strategy to win at least a few southern states, but in the process he risked alienating enough moderate white voters to lose to incumbent George H.W. Bush.

For those of you who do not recall what Clinton audaciously did, here is the best definition of a Sister Souljah Moment I have as yet come upon--

It is a critical moment in a campaign when a candidate takes what appears to be a bold stand against certain extremes in his or her own party and offers a calculated denunciation of that extreme position or special interest group. 

Such an act of repudiation is designed to signal to centrist voters that the politician is not beholden to traditional, and sometimes unpopular, interest groups associated with the party, although such a repudiation runs the risk of alienating some of the politician's allies and the party's base voters.

In 1992 popular African-American hip hop artist and social activist, Sister Souljah, provided Clinton with the opportunity to criticize her extreme views about race relations and thereby demonstrate he was not beholden to any special interest groups.

In a Washington Post interview Sister Souljah was quoted as saying (in response to a question regarding black-on-white violence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots):

Question: Even the people themselves who were perpetrating that violence, did they think that was wise? Was that a wise reasoned action?

Souljah: Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?... White people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, are above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind?

Speaking to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition in June 1992, Clinton responded both to that quotation and to something Souljah had said in the music video of her song "The Final Solution: Slavery's Back in Effect" ("If there are any good white people, I haven't met them").

Clinton said: "If you took the words 'white' and 'black,' and you reversed them, you might think the KKK's David Duke was giving that speech." 

This elicited a storm of hot debate but most dispassionate observers concluded that Clinton won the political battle and that helped him do better than expected, like it or not, among disaffiliated white voters.

I said "like it or not" because I do not like any of this. But politics is an ugly business and if Biden roughing up Booker will help him defeat Trump I will find a way until the day after Election Day 2020 to live with it.

January 22, 2019--Democrats: How's It Looking So Far?

How's the 2020 campaign shaping up for you now that five or six of the 35 Democratic candidates who will eventually join the race are announced, sort of announced, are out and about in Iowa, or haunting CNN and MSNBC?

I just listened to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who was being interviewed by Jake Tapper. He popped the Roger Mudd question--the one in which Mudd asked candidate Teddy Kennedy, "Why do you want to be president?" Kennedy's stumbling response ended his candidacy on the spot. 

Gillibrand said, she's a mother of young children and wants all children in America to have the same opportunities as hers. So she's the Mommy Candidate.

Earlier in the week Chuck Todd asked former HUD secretary Julián Castro the same question. He said he wanted all Americans to have the same opportunities he had. He has children and wants the same for them. So he's the Daddy Candidate.

Beto O'Rourke is on some sort of Jack-Kerouac stream-of-consciousness road trip from which he occasionally sends out videos. One was while he was having his teeth cleaned. Another where he said he's doing this to "clear my head." Explitives included. I guess he's the Existential Candidate. 

Let's see, who else? Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown got a new, very kempt-looking haircut. His signature tousled mop some consultant must've convinced him didn't look presidential. Senatorial? Fine. But Oval Office? Not so much, especially considering the hair mess currently occupying it. So he's looking lean and all moussed up.

Three candidates last week who are on the Senate Judiciary Committee--Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris--had opportunities to demonstrate gravitas when questioning Attorney General designee Robert Barr during his confirmation hearing.

Each had prepared written questions and mumbled them, not able to look up from their papers and pretty much all failed to make eye contact. So he came off feeling more presidential than they.

Then poor Bernie Sanders is under pressure not to run--he had his turn, some are saying, and should turn his supporters over to 69 year-old Elizabeth Warren, who wasn't impressive last week while trying to look comfortable away from the Harvard Faculty Club when out in Iowa hanging with "ordinary" Americans. 

Bernie was forced to be in Vermont for three days of confrontational meetings last week about how his campaign is apparently riddled with sexual abuse. That should finish him off especially since, oblivious, he seemed to be hearing about this for the first time.

I don't know about you but thus far I am not impressed. 

Am I missing something? Does 100 year-old Joe Biden feel like our best option? Or will this gaggle of undistinguished candidates encourage John Kerry, Al Gore, and Hillary to jump into the race? That way there could be a subset of geriatric candidates while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her gang of Furies (too young to run) bop around the Capital in search of Mitch McConnell. I know he's looking forward to hosting them. At the moment, though, he's hiding from them and Trump.

January 8, 2019--Know-It-All Trump

During Trump's rambling spritz of a news conference late last week, when talking about various ways to secure the border, to show his mastery of using concrete or steel as wall-building materials, while also acknowledging the need for more high-tech methods to intercept immigrants and asylum seekers, he said, "I know more about technology then anyone."

He has been using this trope--about being more expert about [fill in the blank] than anyone since even before he was elected. In fact, I have been gathering a list of things he claims to know more about than anyone in history. 

Drones and TV Ratings and ISIS made my list, but then yesterday morning AXIOS published a much more inclusive list.

Below are selections from their list--

• Campaign finance: "I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I'm the biggest contributor." (1999.) 
• TV ratings: "I know more about people who get ratings than anyone." (October 2012.)
• ISIS: "I know more about ISIS than the generals do." (November 2015.)
• Social media: "I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?" (November 2015.)
• Courts: "I know more about courts than any human being on Earth." (November 2015.)
• Lawsuits: "[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I'm the king." (January 2016.)
• Politicians: "I understand politicians better than anybody." 
• The visa system: "[N]obody knows the system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. . . Nobody else on this dais knows how to change it like I do, believe me." (March 2016.) 
• Trade: "Nobody knows more about trade than me." (March 2016.) 
• The U.S. government system: "[N]obody knows the system better than I do." (April 2016.) 
• Renewable energy: "I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth." (April 2016.) 
• Taxes: "I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world." (May 2016.)
• Debt: "I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me." (June 2016.)
• Money: "I understand money better than anybody." (June 2016.) 
• Infrastructure: "[L]ook, as a builder, nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump." (July 2016.) 
• Sen. Cory Booker: "I know more about Cory than he knows about himself." (July 2016.) 
• Borders: Trump said in 2016 that Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he was endorsing him for president because "you know more about this stuff than anybody." 
• Democrats: "I think I know more about the other side than almost anybody." (November 2016.) 
• Construction: "[N]obody knows more about construction than I do." (May 2018.)
• The economy: "I think I know about it better than [the Federal Reserve]." (October 2018.) 
• Technology: "Technology — nobody knows more about technology than me." (December 2018.) 
• Drones: "I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have." (January 2019.) 

My hands-down favorite--

How he knows more about Cory Booker than Cory Booker knows about himself.

December 13, 2016--Heap of Trouble

There's more than a month to go before Donald Trump assumes the presidency (though he jump-started his reign by sucking up all the oxygen at Saturday's Army-Navy football game) and already the Democratic field for 2020 is getting crowded.

At least in the eyes of people calling in to late-night radio talk shows.

Here's what I've been hearing--

The front runner for the nomination is Elizabeth Warren. Her closest challenger is former Newark mayor and current New Jersey senator Cory Booker. Lurking is New York governor Andrew Cuomo and of course Bernie is running around the country in quasi-campaign mode--again not showing up for his $174,000 per senatorial taxpayer-funded job, which alone puts him in the top 5 percent of earners. And then there's Joe Biden making noises that he is not ruling out yet one more run at the brass ring.

Just what we need to take the White House back from Donald Trump--two white guys who in 2020 will be nearly 80 years old, one a socialist, a Stanford-Yale-educated former mayor who in seven years as mayor accomplished almost nothing, and a Harvard professor who misrepresented herself as partly Native American so she could get a scholarship set aside for actual American Indians. Then there is Cuomo whose closest aides are likely to wind up in jail soon for bribery and bid-rigging and as part of a plea-bargaining deal could bring the governor down in tandem to what is happening just across the Hudson to fellow governor Chris Christie.

Late night-talk show folks refer to Cuomo as "a heap of trouble." And they're being kind.

These aspirants share one thing in common--a disdainful style of the sort that got Hillary Clinton in trouble with working people all across the middle of the country.

The Democratic Party is tearing itself apart after losing the presidency to someone with orange hair who lives in a gold-plated New York City condo triplex surrounded by buildings literally bearing his name.

They seem to think they had the "wrong message," while the real problem is the unspoken contempt they showed for average people. People with less education and inferior genetics. Ironically, while expressing concern about the plight of middle-of-the-country Americans they more fundamentally believe in a form of Social Darwinism (yes they do, as another mark of superiority, believe in Evolution) in which the meritocratically blessed advance while everyone else--the less fortunate--lag behind. Scatter food stamps for them, they say, and that will take care of the inequality problem. Anything other than looking within themselves in search of their own forms of narcissism and how that and the role they have been playing props up and helps rationalize the system.

Heap of trouble, indeed. And I'm not talking just about Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo