Tag Archives: impeachment

Excuse Me, What Exactly Do You Find “Offensive and Absurd”?

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Classic quotes of the Trump era never stop coming. There was Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”. Donny’s, “My administration has done more for the Black community than any President since Abraham Lincoln” and (my gal) Marjorie Taylor Greene complaining how, “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true … .” Truly immortal verbiage, each of them. But to those we now add Lindsey Graham reacting to the (Second) impeachment managers’ meticulous tick tock of the January 6 Trump mob riot by saying, “most Republicans found the presentation … offensive and absurd.”

The issue is not the chaos and violence of the attack mind you … but the presentation of the evidence of it. That’s what a Republican, 26-year veteran of Congress finds “offensive and absurd.”

Really, where do you go with something like that?

Prior to the start of this latest trial my attitude was, “Fine. Knock yourselves out. But we all know how this ends.” Impeachment deux was going to be another noble exercise in futility. There was — and is — no way 17 Republicans will ever vote to convict a life long con man turned reality TV star who is the most potent force in their party.

But after four days I’m here to say that the Democrats have significantly exceeded my expectations. While another acquittal is not in doubt, they have presented for the historical record a vivid, indelible, moment-by-moment, easily-accessible and indisputable chronicle of the highest crimes imaginable short of pulling out a gun and shooting an opposition candidate dead on live TV.

And the Republicans are no in a corner where they will go on record and vote to excuse it.

As W. might say, “Mission Accomplished.”

America’s beard-stroking class is full of punditry of … where do we go now? … when one of the only two viable political parties the country has has become so mired in fears of Trump, of Trump’s fevered and semi-literate base and the consequences of riling either of them to an intramural insurrection that they’ve acquiesced to a fantasy world. A world where for all intents and purposes Trump really did win “in a sacred landslide”, where “patriots” beat and kill cops, where stark visual/audio evidence is “offensive and absurd”, (or “crap” as Graham described it to Sean Hannity a few nights ago.)

Because I’ve come to believe the only plausible route out of this dungeon of grievance-stoked insanity is through a refortification of the so-called center-right, aka traditional country club Republicans, I’ve spent a lot of time lately listening to right-of-center podcasts like Charlie Sykes’ “The Bulwark.” (A former right-wing Wisconsin talk radio host turned mortified/horrified never-Trumper, Sykes has a polished, reassuring manner. He’s been good company as I’ve devoted a mid-winter cold spell to renovating the basement library/bedroom.)

Like other old school conservatives, Sykes and his guests are struggling to see a future for a party where a shameless nincompoop like Marjorie Taylor Greene exerts more influence on likely voters than Liz Cheney, the daughter of the goddam Voldemort of American Republicanism, Dick Cheney, for chrissakes. Facts are tough to ignore. And the fact is that Greene and the roughly 150 other GOP congesspeople like her are far … far… more reprentative of the zeistgeist of modern conservatism (or whatever you want to call it) than either Liz or Dick Cheney, or any Bush or any side show act like Mitt Romney.

Sykes and other former Republican bloviators and strategists correctly see a party overrun with post-policy grifters. People like Greene who clearly don’t have the faintest idea or interest in any form of legislation — save maybe gun rights and another round of tax cuts for their donors — but who have hit on an infallible grift. Namely, raging about any and every kind of hysterical nonsense that trends on social media … and encouraging people to write them a check to “fight for it.” (Greene is reported to have raised more than $1.5 million in the past couple months.)

A few old school Republicans gathered (on Zoom) a couple dsys ago to discuss the idea of creating … wait for it … a new party, and abandoning the “Republican” brand to the Greenes and Matt Gaetz’ and Louie Gohmerts and Oath Keepers of the world. But their central issue would also be money.

While fat corporate/tycoon dough would possibly follow a new party led by Ben Sasse, to pick a name, the Marjorie Greenes (like the Michelle Bachmanns before her) float on a sea of a handful of whack-a-doodle millionaires (Bachmann had Tim and Bevery LaHaye of the “Left Behind” novels fortune), but mainly they tap a fathomless sea of $25 and $100 checks from, well, from the likes of Hillary Clinton’s ‘”deplorables.” That sea will not be writing checks to Ben Sasse.

Historian Jon Meacham, one the more valuable of regular cable pundits, made an interesting point the other day when he said that while it’s true contemporary Republican senators fear Trump and his raging Borg-like base, what they fear is much is the full schism they’d create if they vote to convict Trump. Such a vote would very likely be the impetus for … Trump to create a new party. A Trump party based on nothing but Trump is a fear that is a stark, plain-to-be-seen possibility given the man’s cult-like appeal to seething mobs.

Almost any percentage of Republican voters who followed Trump away from the established party — and poll after poll shows an inviolable 32% who express a near religious attachment to him — translates to certain doom for any Republican caught in a three-way race with a Democrat and a Trumper.

Moreover, it then becomes a good question whether once reliably Republican corporate/tycoon cash continues to follow any Republican — old school or Trumper — into a campaign neither has a chance of winning. Far better, if you’re running the Home Depot political action account, to re-aim that money at “gettable” Democrats who’ll do big money bidding for the right price.

It’s a perilous predicament Reoublicans find themselves in. And if it weren’t for the fact they’ve built their careers on race-baiting, science-denying, economically-divisive “crap” that is truly “offensive and aburd” I might feel sorry for them.

The Trial of the U.S. Senate is Actually Going Pretty Well

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Even if by some miracle John Bolton is forced to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, and says out loud (or in closed door deposition) that, “Yup, he did it,” I don’t put the chance of Trump being convicted at anything better than 10%. Which would be up from the .01% it is right now.

It is indisputable that the modern Republican party is a Trump cult and every Republican senator (and hell, every elected Republican official) deeply fears their “head on a pike” by failing to immediately genuflect in every conceivable, humiliating way to the demands of Trump.

But, by contrast, the “Trial of the U.S. Senate”, which is as it has been described by several Democratic leaders as well as strategy-minded pundits, is improving its position with each passing day. Because, with each passing day, some new confirming/damning piece of evidence leaks out, much as it has for months now. More to the point, there is no reason — zero — that leaks of “bombshell” in-the-room, first-hand-witness evidence, recordings of Trump himself confirming everything he’s been charged with and further details of truly grotesque abuses of power and corruption will not continue to pour out right up to election day.

Once past primary season, after Republican Senators (in particular) have staved off the latest siege by saucer-eyed, frothing-mouth Trumpist candidates, they will have to find a way to constantly, and I do mean constantly, explain why they consented to a sham trial and summary acquittal … in the face of roughly 70% of their constituents saying that witnesses and evidence are of course a part of any kind of fair and open court proceedings.

Throwing Trump out of office — as in having a couple beefy bouncers grab him under each arm and drag him out to a chopper on the South Lawn — is every liberal’s and a majority of adult America’s fondest fantasy. But … regaining control of the Senate, crippling Mitch McConnell and neutering Bill Barr, will have a far more immediate and productive impact on restoring some level of lawfulness on our much-debased institutions.

The long-game of the Democrats’ impeachment strategy has always been to hang as much unequivocal shame as possible on Republican Senators. And they’re doing a pretty good job of it.

I have to concede a level of wishful thinking here, but given their complicity in what is known and — importantly — what is yet to be revealed about Team Trump, the reelection prospects of more than just the usual handful of Republican Senators are far from cheery.

The media environment is much different than when Joe McCarthy was ridiculed into oblivion, or when Richard Nixon conceded to Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott. But being fully complicit in so naked and shameless a sham as a witness-free Trump acquittal really is like painting a glowing red “S” on your chest. Not for “superman”, but rather for “stooge.”

Just as those of us in the “reality-based” bubble fail to understand the long-festering, cultish greivances of those in the Trump bubble, so those speaking to and appealing to only those in the Trump bubble fail to appreciate what is going on outside their nearly impermeable membrane.

The usual “pivot” back to the center for cats like Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins and Martha McSally, isn’t going to be nearly as easy given the venomous abhorrence of all things Trump by liberals and a general weariness/embarrassment of Trump’s constant vulgarity and stupidity by that mystical “persuadable” voter.

The greatest victory of all of course would be the defeat of McConnell himself in Kentucky. But despite having the (second) lowest approval rating of any senator in his or her home state (Collins just eclipsed him) no one to date sees any serious chance of him losing.

Not after that multi-million dollar deal with mobbed-up Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to build an aluminum plant in Kentucky and the titanic influence of every 1%-er indebted to McConnell (and Paul Ryan) for so handsomely improving their portfolio with that 2017 tax cut bill.

But a guy can dream, substantively.

Impeachment Blahs?

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One thing I always try to keep in mind anytime there’s an issue or event requiring more than an hour of the public’s attention is: how high is the entertainment quotient here?

Take impeachment, where for all the headlines, all the indignation on cable news and all the chanting at rallies like the one I attended last night in downtown Duluth, (+2 degrees, but “Hey, hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go”), there doesn’t seem to be the same pitch of fervor that I remember back when ’70s-era Republicans were telling us every president did what Richard Nixon did, so get over it.

A lump of beautiful coal for you, Donnie boy. Duluth. Dec. 17.

Good public entertainment requires juicy dollops of suspense, excitement, hilarity or prurient appeal. Mix and match as you see fit.

But other than Trump’s Stephen Miller copy-edited letter to Nancy Pelosi, the antics of Rudy, Lev and Igor and the fools-at-court blithering of Doug Collins, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz and other House Republicans, hilarity is in pretty short supply with this impeachment drama.

Likewise any prurient appeal. Especially if like me you’re still trying to bleach your neurons of the image of Donny having his way with a porn queen.

There’s been too much inevitability about this episode to really grab and hold an American audience. Going way back, everyone familiar with Trump’s career as a fraudulent real estate buffoon (of the casino-bankrupting variety) knew he was such a reckless fool it was inevitable that sooner or later he’d screw the pooch so badly he’d get himself impeached. We’re just amazed it took this long.

But now we’re dealing with the House’s long inevitable vote to actually do the deed, and that’s rolled in with the very high expectation that Mitch McConnell will cook the Senate trial into a quickie nothingburger putting a “fully exonerated” Donald on the road to reelection against a creaky, bumbling Joe Biden.

As loathsome a national embarrassment as Trump is nothing galls me more than the fact that there has never been even an hour of reckoning for Mitch McConnell. You know the system is in shambles when he flat-out says things like he said to Sean Hannity last week, about how he, the jury foreman, is tightly coordinating his trial duties with the defendant, right before, during and after he takes that oath to be impartial … and there’s no legal downside.

There are various ideas being floated to force a series of votes on things like the witnesses (Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, John Boltobn) Mitch doesn’t want anywhere near the trial cameras.

There’s even an interesting idea whereby Pelosi and Adam Schiff don’t even formally send the articles of impeachment to McConnell to begin a trial. They do this on the grounds that (pick one) McConnell has disqualified himself by his public remarks to Hannity and/or the obvious fact that Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, is still running around try to get Scorsese-worthy Ukrainian wise guys to invent a tale or two about those Biden bastards. In case you’ve forgotten, that presidential attorney Rudy who is being paid by his “translators” Lev and Igor, the former of whose wife recently came in possession of a $1 million check from a Russian gangster.

Point being, the plots to pollute the next U.S. election and obstruct Congress are clearly still going on. So … instead of a sham trial led by a guy who has said he’s in the bag for the defendant, Pelosi and Schiff hang on to these articles and announce they’re contining the dozen or so inquiries slogging through the Trump-crippled U.S. court system.

Wait long enough and the SDNY may spit out its case against Rudy, Lev and Igor … and Principal #1. Or maybe … really maybe … in June the Trump-toady Supreme Court will go all Nixon on him and compel him to release his tax returns.

Whatever. As effective as the Democrats have been in telling the story of Trump’s Ukraine scandal, the Senate trial, hobbled and gelded by Moscow Mitch, is going to need several twists of plot to go boffo at the box office.

Trump’s “Are You [Bleeping] Kidding Me!?” Moment, Episode 3216

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Frankly, I could give you a dozen other reasons why Trump should have been impeached months ago. But if this latest WTF! moment — where he’s (apparently) “promising”/i.e. threatening to withhold US military support to Ukraine (a leverage against Donald’s pal, Vladimir Putin) unless Ukraine coughs up some dirt Team Trump can use against Joe Biden — is without question the great rotting egg of Trump in-the-White Houe corruption. It’s an abuse so flagrant and impeachment-worthy that if that if it isn’t the tipping point for Nancy Pelosi to fire the impeachment starting gun nothing ever will.

And I say that as someone who has appreciation for Pelosi playing the calendar — the months between now and Election Day 2020 — strategizing to deliver a maximum blue wave while simultaneously thwarting the shameless mendacity of Bill Barr and “Moscow Mitch” McConnell. But now, with Trump (apparently) caught red-handed corrupting foreign policy for rank personal political purposes, Ms. Pelosi truly has no other choice.

She can expect the volume of outraged (regularly contributing) liberal voices to rise to an air raid siren pitch for her to consent to the Full Monty of Trump trials. (My apologies for the imagery.)

Part of Pelosi’s concern about pushing impeachment to the forefront, and thereby making it effectively The Only Story Anyone Talks About all through the election cycle — screw health reform, climate change, etc. — is that it would alienate voters (blue collar whites, mainly) who think DC never gets around to doing anything for them. To translate that thinking: Pelosi worries voters who never pay any great attention to the details of politics and never will, will digest Trump’s impeachment as just more of the never-ending DC food fight and stay home — or vote for next year’s Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.

The counter argument has always been that No Impeachment makes Democrats look timid and ineffectual (yet again), this time in the face of the most flagrant presidential corruption and incompetence in US history. If you don’t have the cojones to impeach Donald [bleeping] Trump, a manifest fool, you might as well strike impeachment from the Constitution.

Liberals will flock to the polls to exorcise Trump next November no matter what. But lacking an aggressive counter-attack on Trump, their faith in and fervor for Pelosi-like establishment Democrats is going to seriously dissipate. Much of Elizabeth Warren’s appeal is big time structural change and a head-on fight against corruption.

I have also emphasized that Pelosi isn’t playing impeachment chess so much with Trump’s band of White House nitwits, (good god, Rudy Giuliani) as she is with McConnell and Barr and the judges — a disproportionate number on appellate courts — those two Federalist Society warriors have squeezed into service. Each with very real power to ram a wrench into every subpoena Democrats issue.

Finally, there’s the fact that Senate Republicans remain so terrified of Trump’s base, the star-spangled twits, bros and goobers hootin’ and stompin’ at his backwoods bund rallies, voting to convict him in a trial remains the equivalent of self-immolation.

For me the answer to that has always been a matter of sequencing and timing — which may turn out to be Pelosi’s game all along. Namely, never give McConnell’s craven Senate caucus a chance to vote. Stage hearings — along the lines of the Corey Lewandowski farce last week — steadily all through the election cycle, laying out more and more (and more) details of Trump’s clown car kleptocracy until — oh, sorry Mitch, no time left on the clock — it’s Election Day.

Does that mean enduring 12-15 more months of an ugly, rancid, hyper-partisan, pigs-in-the-slop brawl right through priaries and conventions and fall campaigns? Yeah, but we’re going to get that impeachment or not.

Does anyone seriously expect anything about the coming year to be precedented and polite? People! It’s going to be insane. You know it and I know it.

Trump long ago went to cornered rat tooth and nail. He knows he’s looking at jail time and financial ruin if he loses the next election. Given a clear existential crisis for a reckless sociopath, I don’t see how Democrats have any option other than girding up and fighting the war they’ve been presented with on much the same (albeit it smarter) terms.

It’s an all-in game. Indisputably.

Impeaching Trump Will Require Smart, Savvy Storytelling

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If the Democrats are going to impeach Donald Trump — and there’s zero doubt that’s what Trump wants them to do — they’re going to have to be a hell of lot better storytellers than they’ve been so far.

All the reasons not to impeach Trump remain as valid as they’ve ever been.

A: No amount of evidence will convince the Republican controlled-Senate to convict him. As headlines go, he will be found “innocent.”

B: The “verdict”/acquittal will be strung out by Trump’s legal team and Mitch McConnell to conclude dramatically in the heat of next year’s election season, allowing Trump to rant with true finality, “Total exoneration!”

C: As infuriated as every anti-Trump voter will become over the course of the process, there’s no reason to believe the critical fraction of voters who pay little to no attention to details will respond in any other way than by voting in Trump’s favor in 2020.

D: Impeachment will be the only topic every Democratic candidate will be asked about and judged on until election day 2020.

If you are “the chaos candidate” (tutored and guided by the international maestro of chaos, Vladimir Putin), the all-consuming, total partisan warfare of impeachment with certain acquittal is a dream campaign strategy.

That said, Elizabeth Warren and others are absolutely correct when they say Democrats have a constitutional obligation, based only on what is known about the Mueller report today, to bring charges against Trump, politics be damned.

The essential issue is storytelling, which in modern America does not come in the form of a legalistic, 448-page government document, or blockbuster reporting like the two New York Times stories on Trump’s freakishly fraudulent tax-filings. Big complicated stories — a bit like “Game of Thrones” — are best presented on television, serially, regularly, with heavy advance marketing, an eye and ear for sympathetic characters and shrewdly ascending drama.

Raise your hand if you think today’s Democrats have that skill set.

In addition to the enormous obstacles everyone can see in plain sight, (the GOP Senate looking at Trump’s 91% approval among their voters), Democrats have to be aware of what lurks hidden beneath the surface.

A lot of what explains Bill Barr’s behavior — a 68 year-old establishment Republican coming back to go all-in for a flagrant fool and scoundrel like Trump — has to do with his sympathy for the power game as played most recently by Dick Cheney. Barr’s “go [bleep] yourself” attitude toward both Congress and legal tradition is a step-for-step repeat of Cheney’s reign “under” George W. Bush. (I refer everyone interested to Bart Gellman’s “Angler” for a full dramatic narrative of The Cheney Process.)

More to the point — and this is absolutely critical — as Bill Barr plays lead pharisee for a fundamental restructuring of American governmental (and economic) power, he can draw confidence that McConnell, with the conservative and highly influential Federalist Society, have now thoroughly stocked most levels of the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court, with judges sympathetic to their belief system. This is key to support of the so-called Unitary Executive Theory.

As of 2019 the court stocking is so thorough — or at least adequate — that (Republican) presidents truly are immune to any kind of traditional criminal prosecution. The guess is Barr believes that there are now enough judges on “the team” that the wheels of investigation can be gummed up, delayed and conflicted so badly that the only likely result of anything as supposedly conclusive as impeachment is … confusion.

Mitch McConnell, accurately reading the changing demographics of America, where white Americans are rapidly diminishing toward minority status, has long understood that gaming and stocking the judicial system is the best (only?) way to sustain control over American culture well past the point Republicans are able to win presidential elections … by normal means.

However Democrats imagine impeachment playing out, are they truly prepared to deal with how far outside the bounds of good faith, normal politics and litigation McConnell will take Republicans to protect Trump?

I have no confidence that they do.

Democrats are still playing the game as though the rules matter, while McConnell, Barr and others are quite literally writing new rules on the fly.

But … good storytelling is as powerful an emotional device today as it was around the cave fires of the Neolithic age. The Trump-Russia saga has so many primary characters, so many sub-plots, supporting characters and red herrings, unless you’re a sad nerd consuming this episode daily like a tele-novela (guilty) it’s mostly a blur.

Democrats would be smart to seek out some crowd-sourced expertise from professionals with a demonstrated talent for strategic storytelling. When to play up or play down certain characters and information. Key emotional plot lines. Where personality matters. Likewise, they have to conceive of a way to advance their investigation beyond the realms that Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr can control.

The normal, traditional judicial system is not going to be their friend in this matter.

Snow Birds, Not Snowed Birds

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In his 2013 budget proposal, Governor Mark Dayton proposed a “snow bird tax” as a matter of fairness:

“It’s one of the unfairnesses that somebody can spend six months and one day out of the state and pay no state personal income taxes and come back here and take advantage of all the state has to offer for five months and 29 days. So, yes, there’s a snowbird tax.”

As Fox News dutifully reported, Florida GOP Congressman Trey Radel wrote a snarky rebuttal letter a few weeks back to Governor Dayton: Continue reading →