Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell

Nikki Haley Has Said What She Said and Will Until She Says What She Used to Say

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Trump: Nikki Haley donors will be barred from "MAGA camp"

The Lovely Mrs and I did our duty and voted in Tuesday’s primary. “Two for Joe,” as the kids might say. It was perfunctory and quiet in the Edina gym where we scanned our ballots … after inspecting them for threads of Chinese bamboo and tell tale signs of Italian satellite mischief.

A couple hours later, home and safe from rampant, hell-hole crime, out of control inflation and the toxic embers of this once great country of ours we noted the resounding defeats of Nikki Haley everywhere but Vermont. Then, the next morning to no one’s surprise, the former South Carolina governor called it quits … without endorsing You Know Who … yet.

Prior to this, whenever the topic of Haley came up I tried to make the point that while I’d never vote for her over any Democrat I can imagine, there was no doubt that a Nikki Haley presidency would be more or less Republican business as usual. Sane, experienced, corporate tax-cutting, regulation-gutting conservatives would occupy pretty much every cabinet level office and key spots in the federal bureaucracy. She would at least make a cri de coeur for supporting Ukraine. She would explain the financial and moral/reputational cost to the United States of appeasing Vladimir Putin. In other words, despondent liberals and the country would survive to fight another day.

The contrast to a deeply demented Trump 2.0 was and is stark.

But like a lot of people, I always regarded Haley as as craven as she was intensely ambitious. Following her career from a distance I couldn’t recall her ever taking a political risk in pursuit of a higher ethical standard. She was a parody of The Weathervane Politician. Everyone points to her “courageous” decision to … finally … take the Confederate flag down off the top of the goddam state capitol. But precious few point out that she only did that in the aftermath of a racist lunatic murdering nine people at a Bible study meeting in Charleston.

Now I grant you, yanking the Stars and Bars is more than Mitch McConnell or any Republican dared do after Sandy Hook. But still … good lord, what does it take to make a stand against … the Confederacy?

The pundit class I respect gives Haley credit for finally finding her voice in the past three months and at long, long last saying what is obvious to everyone outside the Trump cult. This is much the same way they credit hapless Mike Pence for doing one honorable thing, on January 6. It took Haley too damn long to get where she finally got, and she may yet spin another 180, but she finally did it and said it. Which is more than you can say for … well the list is hundreds of pages long.

One assumption is that she’s playing a long game, gambling that if Trump loses and takes the House and Senate down with him, she’ll be regarded in 2028 as the Prophet and the torch-bearer for the resurrection of a Reagan-Bush-style Republican party. A countervailing assumption is that Trumpism has so thoroughly captured and controlled the white, rural base Nikki Haley will be quickly forgotten as post-Trump the mob shifts towards, who knows, Tucker Carlson? Don Jr.? Josh Hawley? Jeanine Pirro?

The major irony in this, as I see it, is that I strongly suspect Nikki Haley, or any Republican capable of putting two coherent paragraphs of thought together AND courageous enough to say into a microphone that Donald Trump is exactly what we all see he is, namely, an incompetent vulgar fraud, would crush Joe Biden in November. There are that many people, women in particular, nigh on to desperate for anything new.

But the GOP is now so far gone with white rural grievance and delusional evangelicism that Haley or whoever is going to need a completely new party.

That said, I say she endorses Trump by Labor Day.

Student Loan Forgiveness and The Ghost of John Kline, (Who?)

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Rep. John Kline

I know and you know that if a Democrat president signed a bill tomorrow giving every kid a pony, every hard-working goober a shiny new truck and every family a week’s pass to DisneyWorld, Republicans would leap up and howl about how unfair all that is to … kids who wanted a dog, guys who just bought a new truck and families who agree with Ron DeSantis that DisneyWorld is a woke cesspool of transgender grooming.

As the parent of a (fully employed) kid who stands to get roughly $8900 wiped off his monthly bills, I am pleased with Joe Biden’s long brewing decision to wipe out chunks of federal loans. It is certainly a lot of money — up to $500 billion by some estimates — and I don’t see what if anything it does to suppress the rampaging rate of tuition increases. But hey, removing $8900 in bills from mostly middle-class family ledgers counts as a good day to my way of thinking. Those people will almost certainly turn around and (inflation hysteria alert!) spend it on something other than a check to the government.

But while we’re listening to the usual hytperbolic ranting from the usual suspects — Marjorie Taylor Greene, (a bail out for Ivy League brats!), Ohio Senate candidate J.D.Vance, (so unfair to D+ kids who couldn’t get accepted to Hillbilly Ellegy Community Bible College!) and Mitch McConnell (a reckless giveaway to the takers!) let’s pause and consider Minnesota’s own John Kline.

You say you’ve already forgotten old John? The guy who parked himself in Congress representing southern Minnesota’s Second District for 14 years? The guy whose most noteworthy accomplishments were hoovering up prodigious amounts of campaign contributions from for-profit colleges? In turn for proposing more and more legislation that let those, um, conservative benefactors, burrow ever deeper into taxpayer-supported federal guaranteed loan programs? Where they mined fat profits off their hefty tuition costs? While quite often delivering dubious-to-worthless degrees to students then saddled with serious decades-long debt?

That guy.

Here’s a quote from a (U of M) Minnesota Daily editorial back in Kline’s day: “Kline and two others introduced the bill, titled ‘Supporting Academic Freedom through Regulatory Relief Act’, July 10. [Think about that name for a second as you read on.] It would prohibit the Obama administration from restricting federal student aid from schools whose students graduate with lots of debt and have low repayment rates. The for-profit college industry became the subject of much criticism after a 2012 investigation by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee revealed excessive tuition prices, abhorrent recruiting practices, poor student outcomes and wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. The investigation reported taxpayers had spent $32 billion on companies that run for-profit colleges, but the majority of students who enrolled later dropped out. Federal data also shows that a majority of for-profit colleges receive more than 70 percent of their revenue from U.S. government programs.”

Point being — and I realize I don’t have to point this out to you, dear informed reader — but the howling of today’s MAGA-nauts about the “unfairness” of Joe Biden’s “giveway” is 99.9% pure hypocrisy and bad faith. They led the fight to game the federal student loan program, which certainly did not drive tuition costs anywhere but up while saddling thousands of kids from “hard-working, middle-class families” with a mountain of debt and a generally value-less degree.

And THAT is before we mention ol’ Mitch’s signature accomplishment in the Trump years, namely the $2.3 trillion worth of tax cuts Republicans gave away to, you know, “benefactors”, “productive Americans” and people who don’t blink at $30 cocktails at the 19th hole of their private club. [If you’re scoring at home that’s four times the size of Biden’s student loan forgiveness] Maybe you bought a new Porsche with your winnings off that sweet deal, but my taxes jumped up about $900 the next year.

So, as usual, let’s ignore the raging of cynical fools.

Bottom line here is that I suspect Republicans will go hunting for a judge who will slap an injunction on Biden’s executive decision. And, whether it stands or not, loan forgiveness will do next to nothing to stall out the 130% increase in tuitions since 1990.

Oh, and one more thing, entirely unrelated I’m sure, did you see where the University of Alabama just signed football coach Nick Saban to a contract extension worth $94 million over eight years?

And have you forgotten that the highest-paid public employee in the vast majority of states is a … basketball or football coach?

Liz Cheney Ain’t Going Nowhere in This Republican Party

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There are easily a dozen ways to help you understand Liz Cheney — daughter of the spawn of Beelzebub and Darth Vader and holder of the most famous name in Wyoming politics — losing by 40 points to the GOP’s latest example of terminal cynicism. But spending a couple days with Mark Leibovich’s new book, “Thank You for Your Servitude” helps square the edges and color in between the lines.

I’m an unabashed fan boy for Leibovich’s writing and style of reporting. If you’ve read nothing by him — he recently moved to The Atlantic after 16 years with The New York Times — start with “This Town”, his 2013 classic. It’s a [Tom] Wolfian dissection of the DC social scene, where TV anchors, pundits, well-heeled reporters, society grande dames and perpetually self-serving politicians interwine incestuously to reap the benefits of the prestigious game of … mmm, public service. Written during the Obama administration, it’s a scene-setter for characters and fault lines that cracked wide open during the Trump epidemic.

Having just finished “Thank You for Your Servitude” — (thanks again to Sir Richard the Noble for sending it over as a gift) — Cheney’s predicament was not only fully predict-able, but perfectly understandable as well. She is, as many have said, a creature from a party, an “ethos” if you will, that quite literally no longer exists. In interviews with the likes of Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy and various other modern Republican “leaders”, Leibovich lays it out with kind of morbid hilarity.

I quote mark “leaders” because they are all quaking in terror of the Trumpy base. From Mitch McConnell on down each of them live as a hostage in a Circus Maximus where a mere whispered criticism of a character all regard (but only in private) as a ludicrous fop has become an excommunicatable offense.

Chatter this morning is where Cheney goes from here? She seems to have hinted at running for President. But how? And as what?

Delicious as it would be to have her up on a debate stage with Landslide Donny, I see no one imagining how she mounts a primary campaign as a Republican, if only because of security concerns. As it was in her home state of Wyoming, with her family name slapped on countless buildings, she didn’t dare announce her campaign visits more than a couple hours in advance for fear of locked and loaded Trump-o-nauts showing up to protect their … you know … freedoms … from radical socialists like … Liz Cheney.

So maybe she runs as an independent? Walking point for a reimagining of Daddy Cheney’s kind of conservative politics? The kind with all the sweet tax cuts for Halliburton board members, evisceration of social safety nets, deregulation for any drilling operation that sees money in national parks, wildly disproportionate paranoia about feckless dictators and … gotta love this … the mythical Unitary Executive, where buffoons as unqualified as, oh I don’t know, a multiply bankrupt reality TV “star” can do whatever he damn well pleases once “POTUS” is part of his official title.

Face it, independent = futile, electorally. Although given Cheney’s standing via the January 6 committee she’d be guaranteed plenty of free media if Trump himself is in the 2024 race.

And if Trump isn’t? Well, as Leibovich points out repeatedly in his book, even absent Trump the Candidate, no Republican who hasn’t bent the knee, slurped the lifted loafer and kissed the sprawling booty of Donald J. will have any traction with the cult of chronically pissed off D+ students who have total control of the party today and for the forseeable future. There simply is no infrastructure for a new-breed-like-just-the-old-breed Republican like Liz Cheney.

If Trump declines to serve again, the Republican base circa 2024 is primed for a much smarter and far uglier version of a loathsome freedom(s) fighter. I give you Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, etc. ad infinitum.

It’s Up to American Business, i.e. “The Marketplace”, to Put the Final Nail in the Pandemic

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Damn how I wish I were more shameless than I am. Maybe I could take an on-line course. If I do, my goal would be to outdo these two recent spit-takes from RepublicanWorld.

First, there was this one from the wattled Sith Lord, Mitch McConnell. “My warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics. It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of America’s greatest political debates.”

When asked to define the activities that executives should avoid, he responded, “I’m not talking about political contributions.”

That’s … well, pretty damn rich … from a guy who has personally pulled in something like $4.5 million from corporations and corporate tycoons staying in politics … in just the last five years. A guy who was a key figure in pushing through Citizens United and someone who has coordinated over $400 million in mostly dark money contributions from corporations to various Republican PACS.

But for some reason I like this next one even better. Try to follow this.

Republicans are gathering soon for their annual spring retreat in — where else? but Florida. The state where the Republican governor is making a big, everything-and-the-hog-trough stink about the woke-hippie-commie-cancel culture-socialist- Hollywood elite-job-killing idea of “vaccine passports”. You know, a card or app for proving you’ve been vaccinated and therefore less of a risk to everyone else.

Talk about outrageous Big Brother BS! Where do these freedom-hating libruls get this stuff?

So … it was amusing in the usual gob-smacking way to read a release the Republican National Committee sent out to attendees of the upcoming spring break, or whatever. .

“Proof of a negative COVID-19 test result is required in order to receive your credentials for the weekend. If you or members in your party fail to fulfill this requirement, you will be denied entry to the 2021 RNC Spring Retreat.”

If you tried to compile a digital book of all the utterly without-shame things Republicans have said over the last 20 years you’d quickly deplete the world’s known supply of terabytes.

But the combination of “vaccine passports” and corporations and a comment Dr. Fauci said the other day convinces me that actual companies, gigantic, large and small are going to have to fill a leadership role to put an end to this pandemic that Republicans refuse to accept. Fauci conceded it simply wasn’t possible for the government to require vaccination (i.e. proof of vaccination) as criteria for returning to work, attending sports and entertainment events, filling bars and restaurants. The political blowback was too predictable.

Proof of vaccination as a requirement for returning to the office, flying on a plane or attending a concert or a football game was something that was going to have to come from businesses … of all types and sizes.

And I’m thinking it actually might.

At the current rate of vaccination, the country should hit the 70% threshold for “herd immunity” by the Fourth of July. At that point airlines, concert and sports venues, and even bars and restaurants would be on not just safe financial ground to restrict access to the fully vaccinated, but such a requirement would likely spur on attendance by responsible (i.e. vaccinated) people who might otherwise still be reluctant to wade into a plane/office/concert hall/mosh pit packed with resistant idiots.

I ask you, what would your reaction be to bars, restaurants or businesses putting up signs saying “Proof of COVID Vaccination Required for Entrance”? I know my wife, The Lovely Mrs, would be far more likely to walk through those doors.

That 70% threshold is of course imperiled by the 49% of Republican men who, getting their science information from Sean Hannity, Alex Jones and the ghost of Rush Limbaugh, are saying they will “never” get a COVID shot. That all-too familiar stone age thinking poses the possibility of extending all the tedious COVID protocols long past the point where they would otherwise be necessary.

This then is where “the marketplace” comes in. If these gibberish-infused gentlemen (and their wives, albeit in smaller numbers) find themselves denied access to airlines, hotels, bars, restaurants, sports events, Ted Nugent concerts or even the office they used to work in, their attitude is likely to change, and very quickly.

So fine, corporate America, do as Mitch says and stay out of politics. Instead, just do what’s best for your bottom line.

The Gun is Smoking and the Shootin’ Has Just Begun

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Happy day after “Smoking Gun Day.”

When it’s all said and done — and it’s a dead certainty that after Ambassador Bill Taylor’s presentation yesterday that something will be done — one the greatest ironies of the Trump era will be how much the demise of his tabloid reign of blunder and vulgarity was the result of him being led around by the exact same kind of wildly implausible right-wing fantasy theories.

We’ll debate for years how much Trump actually believed this latest one, about how the nefarious Ukrainians and not the “very strong and powerful” Russians — were the real culprits in the election meddling of 2016. Not that it even matters if he even thought it was true. But the fact that Rudy Giuliani, working off the FoxNews/talk radio playbook, managed to convince Trump this was an angle with real marketing possibilities, says everything about Trump’s strategic acuity and his sense of the gullibility of his base.

Functionally illiterate in terms of understanding the Constitution and basic rules of presidential behavior, Trump has lived by the sewer-dipped sword of “sigh and gasp” inducing right-wing lunacies. From Obama’s birth certificate, to immigrant invasions, to Hillary’s e-mails and on and on … and on and on, his presidency, if we can even call it that, has been a ceaseless hopscotch back and forth from every bit of ludicrous nutjobbery belched up by conservative America’s most paranoid and cynical circus performers … a profitable shtick fueled by a shrewd assist from Vladimir Putin’s troll farms.

And now Trump is about to die, or at least be impeached, by that same tabloid-crazy sword.

If you’re Trump, the scariest words uttered by anyone in the moments after Taylor dropped his hand grenade on the “no quid pro quo” defense was Mitch McConnell saying, “I don’t recall any conversations with the president about that [Ukrainian] phone call.”

It’s always likely, of course, that Moscow Mitch was lying. He places no great value in public truth-telling. But by in effect saying, “The President is on his own on this one”, McConnell is signaling that the door is fully open to letting this impeachment thing go where it may.

Not that McConnell himself — up for reelection in Kentucky where at last glance he had the lowest approval of any incumbent Senator in the country — would ever vote for conviction. But if you’re someone way smarter than Trump, you’d be explaining to POTUS, when he isn’t getting political advice from “Fox & Friends”, that McConnell is signalling that he will not require his nervous Republican Senate colleagues to vote in lockstep for Trump’s acquittal.

I continue to believe that McConnell is actively considering a Mike Pence presidency. Due diligence requires as much from him. And that he will accept Pence — i.e. allow a Senate conviction of Trump — provided he’s confident the electoral blowback from Trump’s deranged Second Amendment/evangelical/racist base will be minimal, or at least less bad than with Trump on the ticket again in 2020.

That said, one of McConnell’s key tasks when — not if — Pelosi hands him the articles of impeachment, will be to protect his most vulnerable members. Maine’ Susan Collins (second only to McConnell in terms of miserable home-state popularity), Cory Gardner in Colorado, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Martha McSally in Arizona — all up for reelection in 2020 — certainly understand the risk in putting their names to a vote acquitting a now demonstrably corrupt and incompetent Trump.

I have no idea how exactly Mitch will avoid a vote. But based on our long, sordid history with the man, you know he’s got his Federalist Society brain trust working on any permutation, truncation or contortion of the Senate trial process that gets him out of Trump and on to Pence with the least damage to his precious majority.

There are a few trusting souls who believe Chief Justice John Roberts will not put up with a historic dump of McConnell treachery. But me, I prefer to expect the worst.

Anyway, with Ambasador Taylor’s assiduously documented smoking gun, the game of impeachment is fully afoot. Which means it is time … again … to turn to the great Bette Davis …

“Fasten you seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And What If Mitch Has Finally Had Enough of Donny?

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Watching the shock wave rippling out after what should be Donald Trump’s fatal blunder, I keep wondering how close we are to Mitch McConnell at deciding at long last that Trump is no longer a useful idiot?

The fundamentals of McConnell’s support, (with McConnell being the most prominent face of establishment conservatism), remains what it has always been. Any intelligent, calculating conservative — in politics or business — can see clearly that America’s demographic trend lines are not moving in their favor. The USA will soon be a minority majority country with more and more citizens refusing to vote for, much less protect the oligarchic ambitions of rich white guys.

The great backstop to this inevitability therefore is stocking the U.S. court system with hundreds of conservative-to-right-wing judges who will reliably thwart liberal legislative goals designed to realign the country’s wildly out-of-whack economic balance.

And to date McConnell, in mitered-tight coordination with the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal club — Bill Barr, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh being among its most celebrated members — has done a superb job. With Donald Trump sucking up all the attention the media has to give, McConnell and Barr’s re-fitting of the country’s judicial system has gone on with very little notice and resistance.

In the wake of this week’s Trump meltdown(s) we’ve heard more about how Capitol Hill Republicans “loathe Trump”, and how if the vote could be taken in secret, without their names attached, 30 GOP senators would vote for impeachment. Allowing the usual 50% for hyperbole and bullshit, this rings true.

Trump has been a useful dunce. He’s inattentive to policy, bored by “intellectuals” and think tanks and, as we see with this self-inflicted Ukraine fiasco, all but entirely focused on his personal needs. In other words, up to this point, he’s been a nearly ideal fool, easily manipulated by characters like MCConnewll who truly understand the long-term demographic peril facing the Republican party and are skilled at manipulating the bureacraciesa most critical levers of power.

But now … McConnell has to be reassessing this relationship.

Trump appears to have blundered so badly, so flagrantly, and in a way so easily understood by the general public, that Moscow Mitch has — has — to be running separation scenarios. It’s simply due diligence.

Trump has always been expendable to McConnell (and Barr, et al) if they could do it without infuriating Trump’s base. (Please note that for once I’m not referring to them as slack-jawed racist goobers.) That’s still a tricky move. But with the control they already have over the court system, McConnell and Barr could effectively throw Trump under the bus simply by lifting the myriad obstructions they’ve planted.

By allowing subpoenas to take effect and permitting key witnesses to testify — given that impeachment is a clear “legislative purpose” — and letting the Democrats’ case proceed they could argue to Trump’s low-information voters that they resisted as best they could. “But those damned radical Democrats just built up too much of a head of insane steam and (illegally) railroaded the process!”

Better yet, they could maneuver in a replacement for Trump appealing enough to the base and far, far more appealing to traditional Republicans repulsed by Trump’s vulgarity and corruption.

And no, I don’t mean Mike Pence. Pence is what he appears to be, a vacant stooge. In that way he would be every bit as easy to manipulate as Trump. But he possesses not even a scintilla of charismatic attraction for “the base.”

Far better — McConnell’s dream — would be somehow replacing Trump with the scariest proposition of all, namely, “competent Trump”. A candidate every bit as reliably retrograde and autocratic as Trump, only vastly smarter and therefore capable of functioning — of doing McConnell’s will and protecting conservative power for another generation without a popular majority — in a manner that presents the public face of a thoughtful adult, not a scatter-brained teenager without impulse control.

And who might that be? Among all the names regularly churning among conservative deep thinkers (sic), Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton strikes me as Candidate #1. His style of corrupted intellect — in the vein of Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and that ilk — could reliably sell and deliver everything McConnell and stegosaur Republicans believe they need to maintain power as places like Texas and Arizona and Florida tip blue.

Sci-fi scenario: Pence resigns for “health reasons” and is replaced by Cotton sometime in the spring.

Far be it for me to give Donald Trump any advice, but Donald, if you’re listening, I hope you’re not so stupid you believe Mitch McConnell has your back come hell, high water and catastrophic election defeat.

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.

Our Boy Donny, Now Wearing the Scent of a Loser

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As of dawn Wednesday November 7 we entered the “Donald Trump is unequivocally a loser” phase of this tragi-comic farce. You and I have known this for a long time, going back to his multiple-bankruptcy days in Jersey casinos. But now it gets more interesting. A lot more interesting. Because now his world leader peers and heretofore gutless Republican leadership have hard evidence that the guy is not only the fool they always knew him to be, but a toxic fool teetering on the brink of what is likely an extremely fast and inevitably crushing downhill slide.

Even Trump knows this, I truly believe.

Look at it this way: he’s a character, a “brand”, built almost entirely on gross exaggeration, absurd misrepresentation and outright fraud. He’s never been what he claimed to be, only what some of the media and public wanted him to be. (The serious New York and national press have been fitful at best in assessing their responsibility in the co-creation of the Trump myth over all his years as a ubiquitous, gaudy socialite.)

Not being utterly stupid, Trump — as we know from his estranged biographer — has always been keenly aware of being stiff-armed by New York’s truly wealthy and (somewhat less flagrantly) corrupt. His thin-veneer aristocratic stylings far too gauche for the city’s truly wealthy and well-bred. Everything about him, his self-baked celebrity status, the licensing of his name, his TV career has been dependent on his “brand” of being “a winner.”

But “a winner” he is not anymore, and everyone can see that. The only crowd clinging to the myth is he himself, his family (maybe) and his base, i.e. MAGA Goober Nation. Deep within FoxNews and Rush Limbaugh world, I suspect even they know what’s gone down.

This is new. We haven’t been here before. Republicans, for example, had no choice but play along as long as he was demonstrating an ability to drive goobers to the polls and win elections. But politics, especially among the most craven and cynical, which describes Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to a “T”, is absolutely merciless when your mojo evaporates and you lose the scent of a winner. Friends can’t abandon you fast enough.

And in Trump’s case, combined with what may end up a 38-39 seat Democratic wave in the House and Senate losses in Arizona, Nevada and Montana, the scent of loser is settling on him like a wool coat downwind from a Nebraska feedlot.

International leaders — political animals all of them — are as familiar with a loser’s scent as anyone here in the States. Where until last week they had to play along and patronize Trump the Fool as America’s guy at the table, not knowing how long the clown show was going to last, they now know Robert Mueller and House Democrats are going to lay siege to the Trump Myth and expose it for the unsophisticated fraud it has always been. That reality makes Trump not only eminently ignorable as a peer, but a rich target for moral opposition, as France’s Emmanuel Macron did in his anti-nationalist speech — to Trump’s face — last weekend.

Most importantly, and worrisome, Trump himself now knows the jig is up. His behavior in the past week, at that press conference, outside the White House under the chopper blades, tweeting about California’s wildfires and blowing off WWI memorial events in France screams of a guy in the throes of a humiliation that he is defenseless to stop from consuming him … like a wildfire, you might say.

His Republican “friends”, having seen what playing cozy with Trump did for them in every precinct with a population density greater than 10 cows per square mile, have no reason at all to take any more bullets for him or block juggernaut investigations, even if they could.

Point being, until now we haven’t seen Trump-backed-into-a-corner recklessness. We soon will.

All Trump has today is the right-wing media and his base.

And both of them will drift away as they get sick of all the losing.

 

 

Face It, We May Have to “Go Low” to Stop Kennedy’s Replacement

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The past few nights I’ve been binge-watching “Billions”, the Showtime series starring Paul Giamatti as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York obsessed with taking down a hedge fund billionaire, played by Damian Lewis. There’s a lot to like about the show, (and it gets much better in the second season), but close to the heart of the drama is Giamatti’s character struggling to stay within the lines of propriety in pursuit of a criminal who is every bit his tactical equal and far, far better financed.

Some times, if there’s only person playing the game “the right way”, the rules are a serious impediment to winning. And not winning means truly nefarious activity prospers even more than it already is, exerting an even deeper and more insidious effect on hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent people.

You can see where this is going.

With Donald Trump being handed the opportunity to appoint a second Supreme Court justice in only 17 months, liberals/progressives/Democrats, whatever you want to call anyone who isn’t an evangelical Trumpist, are staring at a moment of moral reckoning attached to a seismic event.

One more Trump justice, very likely someone relatively young with a good chance at a 20-30 year run on the top bench, means the Court’s balance will shift well out of balance for the foreseeable future. That kind of keel-turning puts not just Roe v. Wade, but any control of dark money in politics, environmental protection, gun control, gay rights … and on and on … in serious, stark jeopardy.

So yeah, elections matter. (And with that thought in mind, let’s pause here and revisit the fact that the 78,000 votes in three states that handed the election to Trump were dwarfed by the numbers of the high-minded and naive who voted for Jill Stein having bought and sold the argument that Hillary Clinton was the second coming of the Gambino crime family.)

As most of us know, a variation of that Purity Of Essence mentality afflicts the entire Democratic establishment. Certainly to the extent of a willingness to resort to the kind of utterly shameless but effective tactics Mitch McConnell used in denying a vote on Merrick Garland in 2016.

That sort of thing is, you know, “low”. And “we” always “go high.”

But this heart attack serious. Particularly vulnerable are protections for all sorts of chronically at-risk constituents liberals/progressives/Democrats claim — claim — to be so concerned for and devoted to. Failing to stick a knife, even a nakedly low-minded knife, into this Court choice means, quite literally, capitulating (again) to powerful regressive forces ideologically opposed to the interests in those particular citizens.

By last night the usual Democrats were making the usual noises about “holding” McConnell to the same standard he applied to Garland, and denying him a vote until after the next Senate is seated in January. The usual verbiage of “appealing” to Republican colleagues, “reaching across the aisle”, “hoping” that Republican senators “will do the right thing” was making the rounds of cable chat shows and churning up a sickening knot in my stomach.

“Reaching across” and “hoping” is the same as accepting defeat.

Yes, a firestorm of public protest — from the usual cultural liberals — will crank up a lot of emotion over this. But I have no confidence that anyone in the current Democratic establishment has either the reptilian guile or the raw Darwinian instinct to stick one of their manicured hands deep into the septic system of politics and stop this next deployment of a weapon of bona fide mass destruction.

I’d use the example of Lyndon Johnson, a classic ratf**ker. Johnson would resort to anything. But Johnson usually had the benefit of a majority somewhere.

Which means your Chuck Schumers and Chris Murphys and Diane Feinsteins are going to have to reach down even deeper for a game-changer, for something ordinarily so obnoxious few parents would be proud to tell their children it is the “fair” and “honest” thing to do. (As though real-world everyday politics always are.)

In “Billions” Giamatti’s US Attorney believes in the law, despises the parasitic power elite kiting money back and forth for their own fabulous gain and to the detriment of all the common chumps too honest/lazy to get in the game of stone cold killers. (Giamatti’s guy also has some basic male issues with his wife and her affiliations, but I’ll let that go for the moment.)

The point is: from time to time Giamatti wrestles with the entirely rational logic that you don’t stop a mob boss and his lethal capos with a noble assertion of the Boy Scout Oath.

The Big Difference Between Town Halls of 2009 and Today

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3One teeny, tiny thing missing from news coverage and punditry about Republicans and the their difficulties with the First Amendment at town halls is the matter of … actual, real facts.

Every news report about GOP representatives meeting constituents — in a public place, not check-writers at swank lawn parties — makes a point of comparing this eruption to what occurred over Obamacare in 2009. And yeah, it looks about the same. Pretty angry people, packed into an auditorium shrieking at some schlub who always looks like he/she’d rather be somewhere else. Like at a swank lawn party with polite people telling him/her how much they love them.

To date though I haven’t heard anyone dare say that while one group actually knows what they’re talking about the other was operating on ginned-up hysteria over set of unknowns and laughable misinformation. Specifically with regards to Obamacare, the program exists. That is what people in my country call a “fact.” People today know what it does and what it doesn’t. When they scream at some Congressman, most of who have been ranting and voting to repeal the law outright for seven years, they are operating on a foundation of factual reality.

Not so in 2009 when the other raging horde was bellowing about “death panels” and “socialism” and, my personal favorite, “the gubmint getting in between me and my doctor”, without ever acknowledging that some gargantuan, wealthier-than-God-himself insurance company was already in between them and their doctor sucking up so much space and air no piddly “gubmint” was ever going seriously compete for their health care dollar, (if they weren’t already on Medicaid). It was (yet another) fascinating explosion of viral, know-nothing conservatism. Not, you understand, that folks who know nothing and fear everything a smarty pants black liberal thinks is a good idea don’t have the right to rant and holler, too.

Today though, the people doing the yelling actually know quite a lot. They know how Obamacare works, at least for them. They also know for an absolute fact the people they’re yelling at did nothing to set it up or get it right and everything to sabotage it … without bothering even for minute to think hard enough to devise a replacement over the course of seven long years. They also know, off topic, that Donald Trump has not released his taxes, that he has a weird fondness for Vladimir Putin, that the Russians hacked into our election system and that our immigration system is still a mess, mainly because the same guys who they’re screaming at about Obamacare, have resisted every plan to improve immigration policy too, even the one George W. Bush tossed up.

There’s also the question of who whipped each group into its respective frenzy? True, 2009 liberals saw the Koch brothers behind every red-faced, “I don’t need no damned Obamacare, I got the emergency room” ranter. As though the Kochs themselves were robo-calling Red America warning them about some heinous gubmint plan to kill granny rather than treat her bunions.

The reality of that era was the match that lit the fuse to the crowds of 2009 came from their everyday, go-to source for entertainment and information — talk radio, FoxNews and fact-free websites, this being before we used phrases like “fake news.” As is their wont, the crowds of 2009 listened to and ingested hour after hour of fact-free, rabble-rousing bullshit and then went roaring off into the night to rant about “death panels” and “socialism” at the guy/gal standing on the stage, often in the precise words as their intellectual mentors on TV and radio.

There is no qualitative comparison to what the Jason Chaffetz (that oily little bleep), Mitch McConnell and Tom Emmer are hearing today. Town hall combatants today know that killing off Obamacare completely means no more coverage for pre-existing conditions. And, big issue here, that whacking the individual mandate means you, Mr./Ms. Republican representative of “the people” then have no way to pay for everything else. (Of course let’s remember that to 30% of America The Affordable Care Act is not so bad, but Obamacare, now that is the friggin’ devil’s work).

Point being, the difference between 2017 and 2009 is a yawning chasm between empirical reality and flat-out, fact-free partisan hysteria.

I repeat: There is little-to-no comparison of the level of factual literacy in the two eruptions.

Not that anyone in the press wants to say that too loudly.