Today's Must-Read: What We Say, What They Hear

From Digby:

I came across this comment by a commenter named peacerme over at Emptywheel (reading this piece.) I thought it was a good way to think about the problem of prosecuting Trump.

I truly fear the codependent belief that Dems have acted out for years, that taking the moral high ground is the moral equivalent of letting bygones be bygones. This would be what happens in domestic violence when he/she or they forget about the beating last night and move on hoping it will never happen again.

Ignoring the broken laws of the Republican Party. From Iran contra, to Plame, to Iraq war, to Russian interference in our elections, to literally torturing children on the border in a way that will alter their brains for life. Dems behave with this moral superiority that is really just codependency.

There's more, of course, but my own summation, given the history of Democrats' reaction to the excesses and outright lawlessness of Republican administrations, is simply this: We say "We're better than this. It's time to move forward and leave this behind us." What they hear is "You got away with it, so you can do it again and nothing will happen to you."

I think it's way past time to remind the Republicans that the rule of law includes punisment for transgressions, anr "moral high ground" be damned.

Now What?

OK -- the Senate had it's "trial" -- and frankly, Stalin couldn't have staged a better show -- acquitted Trump (no surprize there -- Moscow Mitch told us right up front that was going to happen), all this just after Trump gave his State of the Union address, as usual chock full of lies. Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy at the end.



Cue the right-wing outrage -- "How disrespectful!". Trae Crowder -- a/k/a the Liberal Redneck -- has some thoughts on that:

Of course, it's all Democrats, out to destroy America. (Just a reminder: it's called "projection".) Franklin Graham is just one example:

What we saw from President Donald J. Trump’s opposition last night during the State of the Union address felt like a very personal resentment and hatred for the successes of America that had just been spoken of. How could leaders in Congress be so indignant about good news for the people of this country?

It gets better:

BREAKING: I'm filing an ethics complaint against @SpeakerPelosi for destroying @realDonaldTrump's State of the Union speech.

Her conduct was beneath the dignity of the House, and a potential violation of law (18 USC 2071).

Nobody is above the law. She must be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/dXPPWQNtI8

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) February 6, 2020

You may remember that Gaetz is not only rabidly pro-Trump, he's not very intelligent.

There. That's my summation of the news for the past few days.

Compare and Contrast

I'm not really making any decisions on Democratic presidential candidates at this, although I will probably vote for Buttigieg in the primary -- he's smart and he knows what questions to ask.

That said, this article is illuminating on the differences between Buttigieg and the other contenders, in this case Elizabeth warren. A sample of Buttigieg's responses:

Jake Tapper: Let me just ask you, some of your Democratic opponents including senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who I’ll be talking to shortly, called the strike a “assassination.” They say it’s an assassination. Do you believe it was an assassination?

Pete Buttigieg: I am not interested in the terminology. I’m interested in the consequences and I’m interested in the process. Did the president have legal authority to do this? Why wasn’t Congress consulted? It seems like more people at Mar-a-Lago heard about this than people in the United States Congress who are a coequal branch of government with a responsibility to consult. Which of our allies were consulted? The real-world effects of this are going to go far beyond the things that we’re debating today and we need answers quickly.

I like the way Buttigieg cuts through the press' attempts to frame the discussion and gets to the core issues.

Read the whole thing -- it's not all that long.

With thanks to commenter Lazycrockett at Joe.My.God.

Giggle du Jour

Somehow, I find this a particularly appealing image:

Spotted at Midlands Beer Garden in Washington, DC. (Reminder: 4% of this city voted for Trump.) pic.twitter.com/kD3zoIaAfU

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 7, 2019

In Memoriam

Damn. Elijah Cummings has passed.

Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a son of sharecroppers who rose to become one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress and a central figure in the impeachment investigation of President Trump, died on Thursday in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was 68.

His death was confirmed by a spokeswoman, Trudy Perkins, in a statement that said he died of “complications concerning longstanding health challenges.” No other details were given. Mr. Cummings had been ailing in recent years and used a motorized wheelchair.

This is a disaster.

Today's Must-Read: Telling It Like It Is

Interesting profile/analysis on Beto O'Rourke -- makes me want to vote for him:

Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman from Texas who is now a Democratic presidential candidate, has been titillating the schoolmarms of the American press corps by saying naughty words. He let an F-bomb fly while dressing down the media for pretending that it was debatable whether Donald Trump was responsible for inspiring the mass shooting in El Paso, O’Rourke’s hometown. He let loose another one in response to another mass shooting in the Midland-Odessa area, which is relatively nearby by Texas standards.

Somehow, the press response to this was simultaneously one of feigned delicacy at his language and hardened cynicism, the assumption being that O’Rourke was using this extremely common word that almost everyone uses in private out of some political calculation. The possibility that mass slaughter in his own backyard had rattled O’Rourke out of political calculation and into talking like a normal person — no doubt the way all these pundits speak in casual conversation — was dismissed out of hand.

But let’s just assume for a moment that it’s real and what we’re seeing now is a man who, shaken by having to deal with unimaginable horrors inflicted on his once-peaceful community, has run out of fucks to give. When it comes to pandering to the pearl-clutching instincts of the Beltway media, Beto’s fuck-giving account is cleaned out.

I confess I've gotten pretty fed up with the Democrats' response to Trump's continuing atrocities against America (this latest bag of bullshit from Nancy Pelosi is just one more example of the Democrats' complete misreading of the mood of their constituents -- mean, is she seriously talking about changing the law to allow sitting presidents to be indicted when everyone knows that Moscow Mitch will spike any such attempt?)

This is a good example of how completely off in space too many Democrats in positions of prominence are:

During the most recent debate in his home state of Texas, O’Rourke didn’t flinch when asked if he was serious about this, saying, “We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against a fellow American anymore.”

As Max Boot at the Washington Post noted, some Democrats, such as Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, flinched, scolding O’Rourke for giving Republicans an excuse to flip out about “gun-grabbers” on the left.

But what these Democrats fail to understand is that, buoyed by the radicalism and cash infusions of the NRA, Republicans are already calling Democrats a bunch of gun-grabbers. Since they’re going to make that accusation one way or another, why not do what O’Rourke’s doing, and just stake out a position that might actually open a discussion about real-world approaches to preventing gun violence?

It's not even a matter of giving Republicans an excuse -- they're already calling Democrats "gun grabbers". These Democrats should be shooting back, starting with the fact that a huge majority of Americans favor just that sort of approach -- which, by the way, worked very well in Australia and is now underway in New Zealand. And in both cases, it took one mass shooting to trigger their response. We have one at least once a month, and the Republicans blame everything except the NRA. And what are the Democrats afraid of -- offending Trump's base?

At any rate, read the whole article.

Today's Must-Read: Am I Surprised?

Not really: The "Christian" right is turning Americans off to religion:

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee formally acknowledged what has been evident for quite some time: Nonreligious voters are a critical part of the party’s base. In a one-page resolution passed at its annual summer meeting, the DNC called on Democratic politicians to recognize and celebrate the contributions of nonreligious Americans, who make up one-third of Democrats. In response, Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to Trump, appeared on Fox News, saying the Democrats were finally admitting they are a “godless party.”

This was hardly a new argument. Conservative Christian leaders have been repeating some version of this claim for years, and have often called on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against a growing wave of liberal secularism. And it’s true that liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades. But blaming the Democrats, as Jeffress and others are wont to do, doesn’t capture the profound role that conservative Christian activists have played in transforming the country’s religious landscape, and the role they appear to have played in liberals’ rejection of organized religion.

It's beyond hope that someone as arrogant and self-absorbed as Robert Jeffress would confess to being the problem, if he could even entertain the notion. However:

Social scientists were initially reluctant to entertain the idea that a political backlash was somehow responsible, because it challenged long-standing assumptions about how flexible our religious identities really are. Even now, the idea that partisanship could shape something as personal and profound as our relationship with God might seem radical, or maybe even a little offensive.

But when two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular, those conventional reasons couldn’t explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldn’t fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives. In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian right’s involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that most Americans at least in theory believe in traditional American values: equality under the law, welcoming immigrants (and unless you're a pureblooded American Indian, your ancestors were immigrants -- although, taking a somewhat longer view, every human being in the Americas is descended from immigrants, given that there were no humans here until about 15,000 years ago), generosity, a government that actually does provide for the common welfare, those sorts of things, all of which are diametrically opposed to the Republican-evangelical program.

Do take the time to read the whole report -- it's pretty interesting, if a little soft-pedaled.

Via The New Civil Rights Movement.

Mayor Pete

Strangely enough, this is the first time I've seen Pete Buttigieg in action -- chalk it up to my habit of skipping over videos that people post in comment threads. However, this one I did watch, and I think it's worth sharing:

He's not at all what I expected. I mean, I knew he was intelligent, thoughtful, and (usually) right on the mark. I didn't expect him to be so forceful -- and he's not pulling any punches.

I especially like the way he's taking back "values" from the fascists -- oops, I meant the Republican/evangelical con men.

With thanks to commenter Lazycrocket at Joe.My.God.

A Club the Democrats Won't Use

Interesting post by Digby on why, even if the House passes articles of impeachment, Trump won't come to trial:

GOP senators say that if the House passes articles of impeachment against President Trump they will quickly quash them in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has broad authority to set the parameters of a trial.

While McConnell is required to act on articles of impeachment, which require 67 votes — or a two-thirds majority — to convict the president, he and his Republican colleagues have the power to set the rules and ensure the briefest of trials.

“I think it would be disposed of very quickly,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“If it’s based on the Mueller report, or anything like that, it would be quickly disposed of,” he added.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to McConnell’s leadership team, said “nothing” would come of impeachment articles passed by the House.

Given the Senate GOP firewall, Cornyn, who’s also a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he doubts that Democrats will commence the impeachment process.

“It would be defeated. That’s why all they want to do is talk about it,” he said. “They know what the outcome would be.”

(Note: She seems to be quoting from another source, but there's no link.)

Yes, we all knew that. What Digby notes as significant is this:

There was a time when Senators would say something like, "nothing I've heard so far adds up to an impeachable offense as far as I'm concerned, but of course, I will look at all the evidence before I render a judgment" (because I at least pay lip service to our constitution and legal system to show I'm not a total hack.) They don't bother with such niceties anymore --- the old "hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue" thing is dead and buried. It's pure partisan power playing now accompanied by WWE style trash talk.

What strikes me is that this is the opening Democrats need to really hammer the Republicans in the next election: indict not only Trump but the whole Republican party as anti-American and determined to establish a dictatorship.

The Democrats won't pick up on it, of course.

Sigh.

Today's Must Read: That Scandalous Feinstein Video

You may have run across coverage of an interchange between Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a group of high-schoolers. I'd strongly recommend you search out the full video rather than the edited version that's being jumped on the media. Here's some level-headed coverage from Adam L. Silverman at Balloon Juice:

Earlier today Waleed Shahid, fresh off of getting dragged for posting barbered and highly edited clips of Senator Harris from her town hall on his twitter feed several weeks ago, decided it was time to set his sights on the senior senator from California. As I suspected in the comments to an earlier post, Shahid had once again posted heavily edited videos on his twitter feed to go after someone that doesn’t measure up to his purity fanaticism. Fortunately, just like the last time, someone came along to set the record straight.

Silverman goes on to include a twitter-feed with the full, unedited video, which puts things in a very different light. Then he goes on to discuss the "Justice Democrats," who seem to be interested in anything but justice.

To be quite candid, I'm more than a little fed up with the left-wing purity police and the rush to judgment (a prime example, this post at Crooks and Liars; at least she included a link to the full video, although she posted the edited version). They gave us Donald Trump, and now seem intent on a reprise for 2020. Assuming he hasn't been impeached.

(Footnote: yes, I've been largely silent, due in part to a slow recovery -- I think I pushed too hard too fast -- and in part to being sick of the news, which is full of breathless speculation on -- well, you name it.

Something du Jour

I really don't know how to describe this, but it's worth repeating:

Thanks to commenter Boreal at Joe.My.God.

Antidote

Trump gave a nationally broadcast speech last night. Same old lies. The Democrats gave a nationally broadcast response, with facts. I didn't listen to either one.

On the other hand, there's this:

Colorado entered a new era of Democratic political dominance Tuesday as Jared Polis was sworn in as the state’s 43rd governor, promising to make the state’s booming economy fairer and health care more affordable.

“Our mission now is to make Colorado a place for all families to have a chance to thrive today, tomorrow and for generations to come,” Polis said after taking the oath of office. “I believe there is nothing that Colorado needs to do that Coloradans can’t get done. There is nothing wrong with Colorado that what is right with Colorado can’t fix.”

Polis’ longtime partner, Marlon Reis, and their two children stood with him for the ceremony on the west steps of the state Capitol. He took the oath at precisely noon, his left hand on a siddur, a Jewish prayer book.

In his first speech as governor, Polis celebrated the diversity of the state and recognized the historic moment: Polis is the first openly gay governor elected to lead a state. He also is Colorado’s first Jewish governor.

The lesson here is that when a Democrat runs on clearly articulated policies that benefit everyone, Democrats win elections. (At least, when Republicans don't have a chance to rig the election.)

Via TaMara at Balloon Juice, who notes: "Invocations were done by the Spiritual Leader of Ute Mountain Tribe, the Head Priest of a Sikh Temple, and a Baptist minister."

More Like This, Please

Democrats in general should pay attention to this: Sen. Sherrod Brown laying out what these tax cuts really mean:

Wow, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone explain how wretched the GOP tax bill is for middle America as well as Sherrod Brown explained it pic.twitter.com/m8ooxLGBab

— 𝙋𝙖𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙠 𝙆𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙣 ⚡️ (@Patrickesque) December 1, 2018

Via Digby.

How Not to Win Friends, etc.

I made the mistake, earlier in this election season, of signing an online petition or two for some good cause or other. I have since been inundated with e-mails from everyone you can think of on the left, urging me to sign another petition, call everyone I know and urge them to vote, go door-to-door stumping for the Democrats, etc., etc., etc. They've come from, among others, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi. I'd be really flattered if I though any one of them had actually sent the e-mail or had any idea who I am.

I'm talking more than a dozen a day.

My response to all this activism: I voted already. I don't do phone banks or door-to-door, especially in this weather. Back off.

PA-18

I admit it -- I've been following the results in the special election for the congressional seat in Pennsylvania's 18th district. It looks like Conor Lamb, the Democrat, took it, but very narrowly.

1) His opponent, Rick Saccone (who had to suffer through a Trump rally "in his support) will sue for a recount. Count on it.

2) Trump took this district by 20 points in 2016. Blue tsunami, anyone?

(I'm not going to join the chorus of "watch the Dems blow it". I have a feeling that Trump is so toxic to the majority of Americans that not even the DCCC can screw it up.)

Today's Must-Read: It's the Economy, Stupid!

It's a given that Republicans don't know how to manage the economy (and you have to manage the economy -- when left to its own devices, we get 1929 or 2008). Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo builds on a piece by Ryan Cooper on how the Democrats have now embraced Republican-style economic management:

After three decades of New Deal programs that gave the country "the greatest economic boom in American history" and broadly shared prosperity, the 1970s began a slow return to the kind of economics that dominated the decades ahead of the Great Depression. That model, which functioned instead "on behalf of a tiny elite," focused on "deregulation, tax and spending cuts, union busting, and free trade." New Deal regulatory structures, Chicago School economists insisted, were "a drag on economic growth."

That in itself is a curious formulation, and an even more curious response to decades of boom that produced the largest middle class in the history of the world. A drag how? It is the [s]ame response that has produced the insistence over the last year of soaring corporate profits that large corporate tax cuts were necessary to kick-start an economy that for titans of industry was already performing brilliantly. After building the largest, most evenly distributed wealth -- lin the world (African Americans would disagree), returning to rule by an oligarchy wasn't happening fast enough?

To answer that last question, No, of course not: they want it all and they want it right now.

So now we have both parties subscribing to an economic philosophy that has been proven, time and again, to be bullshit -- at least, in terms of what the New Deal gave us, and to which politicians of all stripes pay lip service, if nothing else.

Read it. And think about what your life is going to be like in the new Gilded Age.

Today's Must-Read: Yes, There Are Fifty States

Interesting piece by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo on a grassroots effort to reinstate the 50-state strategy in the Democratic Party:

A friend sent a DKos post about a new organization, It Starts Today. The group hopes to "restart the 50-State Strategy" by raising small-donor money for every Democratic House and Senate race in the country, regardless of candidate. The reason is the Democratic Party has been playing the strategic targeting game at least since after 1994 and in the process losing ground in large swaths of the country:

Every time, it made sense in the short term. And, every time, this decision to be “strategic” and “efficient” also caused us to abandon more and more districts, essentially ceding them to the Republican party. As a result, each Democratic wave—think 2008—got reversed fairly quickly, as the Republican party rallied around a consistent message and fought back. Meanwhile, each Republican wave—think 2010—became that much harder to undo, as the Democratic Party focused on an increasingly smaller pool of “competitive” districts.

If you don't show up to play, you forfeit. It's been shortsighted, clearly, for Democrats in Congress, for winning the presidency, and for being able to advance an agenda when Democrats win it. Mark Warner put it bluntly when he told Yearly Kos in 2006, "[W]e cannot just go after 16 states and then try to hit a triple bank-shot to get Ohio or Florida." Yet that's how the party plays it again and again.

Let's face it, the Democrats' strategy for the past few cycles, ever since Howard Dean left the chairmanship of the party, has been a disaster. As Sullivan points out, not only have Democratic mid-term sweeps been reversed in the next election, but Republican sweeps haven't. And the GOP has made strong gains in state houses, and not just in red states: I'm still trying to figure out how our current governor in Illinois got elected, in a state where Democrats dominate the legislature.

Read the whole thing, of course.

Survey du Jour

Via Digby, this little gem:

Digby's comment: "It's especially neat that the "populist" GOP trusts banks and Wall Street more than labor unions."

I don't find that surprising: along with churches, Wall Street is one of the most top-down sectors of our society, and Republicans love their authority figures.

Special Elections: An Update

This, via Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice, has the right take:

Process is not just something that Mitch McConnell fucks with to suit his purposes. Process is what history is. We're in the middle of the process.

You don't turn a country around in a few months. Look how long it took the Republicans to turn the country into a plutocracy.

Georgia 6th

Well, Karen Handel, who has got to be one of the least appealing candidates in modern election history, won -- by about 5 points. There's been a lot of wailing and rending of garments on the left -- sure, it would have been stupendous if Ossof had taken the seat, but what's not being looked at by a lot of people is the actual numbers. Josh Marshall has what I think in the right perspective on this one:

All this being said, this is a heavily Republican district and Republicans just barely held on to the seat. Yes, nbspDemocrats gave it everything they had, with small donors from around the country pouring money into the race. But Republican SuperPacs poured millions into the race too. In the last three elections, Tom Price won this seat by 65%, 66% and 62%. A significant part of those almost 2 to 1 margins was due to the fact that Democrats fielded only nominal candidates who raised little or no money. But these are chicken and egg type questions. It is precisely because this is a strongly Republican district that Price drew no serious contenders. A better measure are the recent presidential results. There John McCain won the district by 62% and Mitt Romney won it by 61%. To use yet another measure, 538 rates it a +9.5 Republican district, which means it’s 9.5 percentage points more GOP than the country as a whole.

Democrats have lost five special elections to fill seats left vacant by Trump's cabinet appointments -- but they have lost by narrow margins. As Marshall points out, these were all "safe" Republican seats. They're not so safe any more.

Which all boils down to one thing: the GOP is going to have a fight on its hands in 2018. Can the Democrats take back Congress? Frankly, I doubt it, although the Senate might be a possibility. (Don't forget how heavily the Republicans in state legislatures have gerrymandered congressional districts to dilute minority/Democratic votes.) There might be some surprises, and a lot is going to depend on how horrible the Republicans' secret health care "reform" turns out to be -- and how smart the Democrats are about using that.

It's going to be issues like health care, jobs, and national security that are going to be key. Harping on how Trump and the Republicans are destroying American democracy isn't going to cut it: most people are very confident in the strength of our system, and Republicans don't think much of democracy to begin with.

And don't think Republican strategists aren't very aware of how their base is being eroded. They'll go low, because that's all they have. (And I can't quite shake the feeling that the press will fall in line.)

It's going to be an interesting couple of years.