Hullabaloo

Thursday, June 06, 2019

 
They were incrediby brave

by digby


If you've ever been to Omaha beach (or any of the beaches where they landed) you can see just how brave a person had to be to try to get on that shore with the guns overhead. You had to know your chances were very slim. But they did it:

I took this photo of Sgt Major Robert Blatnik 5 years ago. This was the stretch of Omaha beach in Normandy where he came ashore on #DDay. He commanded 901 men. Head count 24 hours later and about 500 yards inland, they had 387. 500 yards. Let that soak in. #neverforget pic.twitter.com/bYYWw30ZTU

— Doug Dunbar (@cbs11doug) June 6, 2019

This is why the WWII generation didn't fetishize their military service even though a vast number of them participated. It was gruesome. They just wanted to get the job done and then try to put it behind them. I don't spend a lot of time venerating the Greatest Generation. I grew up with them, was raised by them --- my father was in the South Pacific --- and they were far from perfect. But millions of them did rise to the occasion when it was necessary. I assume the same thing would happen today. Let's hope we never have to test that assumption.

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digby 6/06/2019 05:30:00 PM

 
He lies? You don't say ...

by digby




It took them long enough:

It’s (almost) official: The president of the United States is a liar.

This will not come as a revelation to people who have closely followed President Trump’s public statements and Twitter feed and have long doubted his veracity. It is, instead, a late-dawning recognition by mainstream news organizations, which until fairly recently shied away from branding the president’s many questionable utterances as outright lies.

Nowadays, many in the news media are no longer bothering to grant Trump the benefit of the doubt. In routine news and feature stories, Trump’s dishonesty carries no fig leaf. It is described baldly.

A recent sampling:

● CNN: “The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods.”

● Minneapolis Star Tribune: “President Trump lies to troops about pay raise.”

● Financial Times: “The real reason Donald Trump lies.”

● Los Angeles Times: “Mueller report exposes all the president’s liars.”

● Chicago Tribune: “Why are Trump’s lies not ruinous to him? Because truth can be in the eye of the beholder.”

● The New Yorker: “It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It on Purpose.”

● Foreign Policy: “Does It Matter That Trump Is a Liar?”

As recently as last summer, a debate still raged within newsrooms: Could a presidential statement, no matter how blatantly false, be deemed a “lie” since, by definition, the word implies awareness of falsity and intent to deceive? How can journalists know what’s in Trump’s mind, even when he repeatedly says transparently untrue things, such as “the wall is under construction right now” on the southern border with Mexico, or that the United States pays “a disproportionate share” of the cost of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)?

Unfortunately, working the refs still pays dividends:

But the Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, has said his newsroom strives to use the word “judiciously” because using it repeatedly “could feed the mistaken notion that we’re taking political sides.”

They should stop worrying about this. The right has demonized the "liberal media" for half a century and it worked. The battle has been lost. They should just tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

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digby 6/06/2019 03:30:00 PM

 
Will we see Mueller by July 4th?

by digby



This was inevitable:

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told Democratic leaders at a closed-door meeting this week that he could issue a subpoena to Robert Mueller within two weeks if he is unable to reach an agreement to secure the former special counsel’s public testimony, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

Nadler’s comments at the Tuesday meeting were his clearest remarks to date on the possibility of compelling Mueller’s attendance at a public hearing. The committee is still negotiating with Mueller, who, according to Nadler, is thus far only willing to answer lawmakers’ questions in private — a nonstarter for most House Democrats.


The sources cautioned that the committee has not settled on a timetable for a potential subpoena to Mueller. Speaker Nancy Pelosi hosted the meeting, and four other committee chairs were in attendance.

On Wednesday, Nadler told reporters that he was “confident” Mueller will appear before his panel, and that he would issue a subpoena “if we have to.”

“We want him to testify openly. I think the American people need that,” Nadler added. “I think, frankly, it's his duty to the American people. And we'll make that happen.”

This is fine. In fact, it's doing Mueller a favor. He doesn't want to be seen as a Ken Starr Javert-like prosecutor out to get the president. And frankly, I don't think he is. (He could have done a lot more to hurt Trump than he did, and he pulled his punches quite a bit.)

But he has to testify, nonetheless. Compelling him to do it lets him off the hook and gets what the Democrats want too. Unlike Trump's brainwashed cultists, I don't think he's going to defy a congressional subpoena. But nobody can accuse him of being eager to do it and for a few people that may make him more credible.

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digby 6/06/2019 02:00:00 PM

 
Emoluments, schmoluments

by digby



Well, at least the money's not going to a global charity that saves millions of lives. That would be wrong:

In July, a wealthy Iraqi sheikh named Nahro al-Kasnazan wrote letters to national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging them to forge closer ties with those seeking to overthrow the government of Iran.

Kasnazan wrote of his desire “to achieve our mutual interest to weaken the Iranian Mullahs regime and end its hegemony.”

Four months later, he checked into the Trump International Hotel in Washington and spent 26 nights in a suite on the eighth floor — a visit estimated to have cost tens of thousands of dollars.

It was an unusually long stay at the expensive hotel. The Washington Post obtained the establishment’s “VIP Arrivals” lists for dozens of days last year, including more than 1,200 individual guests. Kasnazan’s visit was the longest listed.

“We normally stay at the Hay-Adams hotel,” Kasnazan, 50, said in a recent interview with a Post reporter in Amman, Jordan, where he lives in a gold-bedecked mansion and summons his servants by walkie-talkie. “But we just heard about this new Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and thought it would be a good place to stay.”

Kasnazan said his choice of the Trump hotel was not part of a lobbying effort, adding that he came to Washington for medical treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, about 45 miles away. Kasnazan, who socialized with State Department officials while in Washington, has set up several new companies in hopes of doing business with the U.S. government.

His long visit is an example of how Trump’s D.C. hotel, a popular gathering place for Republican politicians and people with government business, has become a favorite stopover for influential foreigners who have an agenda to pursue with the Trump administration.

A gallery of would-be foreign leaders — including exiles and upstarts who cannot always rely on a state-to-state channel to reach Trump’s government — have been gliding through the polished lobby of the Trump International Hotel since it opened in 2016.

A few weeks before Kasnazan checked in, a pair of exiled Thai prime ministers spent the night. A few weeks after, a Post reporter saw a Ni­ger­ian presidential candidate holding court in the lobby. None stayed as long as Kasnazan, the leader of an order of Sufi Muslims who said he served as a paid CIA informant in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

These visits offer proximity to Trump’s political orbit — as family members, advisers and fans regularly pass through the hotel and snap selfies at the bar — while putting money into a hotel the president still owns.

“We saw all the Trumpers,” said Entifadh Qanbar, a Kasnazan spokesman and aide who was frequently with him at the hotel. “Many ambassadors, many important people. We didn’t talk to them, but we saw them in the hallways.”

The downtown D.C. hotel has emerged as a bright spot in the president’s portfolio at a time when there are signs of declining revenue at some of his other properties. Lobbyists for the Saudi government paid for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel just three months after his election. Executives from the telecom giant T-Mobile booked at least 52 nights there last year.

The president’s ability to profit from foreign customers, in particular, while in the White House has drawn sharp criticism. The Trump Organization is battling a pair of lawsuits, including one filed by Democratic members of Congress, alleging that the business it does with foreign governments violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars payments to presidents by foreign states.

The company, which runs the hotel, declined to answer questions about how much Kasnazan paid for his stay, or whether it had informed anyone at the White House about the sheikh’s long visit. The company said it donated the profits of his stay to the U.S. Treasury as part of a voluntary policy aimed at countering claims that the president is in violation of the emoluments clause. Critics argue that the policy is insufficient, saying that the Trump Organization does not explain how it calculates its foreign profits or identify its foreign customers.

The Trump Organization did not say how much the profits were from Kasnazan’s stay and did not explain why in his case it applied the “foreign patronage” policy, which it has said is for business from foreign governments. He holds no government office, and his spokesman said he paid the bill himself.

The White House and the National Security Council declined to comment about the visit. State Department officials said that they were not aware of any official meetings between their personnel and Kasnazan at that time, but that they could not say whether informal meetings were held.

Kasnazan willingly acknowledges an ambitious political agenda: He’s advocating for a U.S. military confrontation with Iran and wants U.S. help to blunt Iranian influence in Iraq. He also considers himself a viable candidate to become president of Iraq — even though others view him as a minor political figure.

In addition, Kasnazan has recently registered several companies in the United States to provide private security, oil field services and construction, and said he is eager to do business with the Trump administration.

“We are looking for opportunities,” he said.

Kasnazan checked into the Trump hotel on Nov. 30, a day after his brother, a former Iraqi trade minister, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison on graft charges. Kasnazan is also facing charges, said Judge Abdulsatter al-Beriqdar, a spokesman for the Iraqi judiciary.

“Once they are in Iraq, they will be arrested,” al-Beriqdar said.

Kasnazan denies the corruption allegations and says the charges are politically motivated.

Kasnazan said he paid for a suite and one additional room at the Trump hotel, and stayed there with his wife and children until Dec. 26. Qanbar, the spokesman — who for years worked for Ahmed Chalabi, a deceased Iraqi dissident who helped foment the Iraq War — declined to specify the cost but estimated that it was a “couple thousand” dollars per night.

Suites at the Trump hotel range from about $1,000 to $2,000 per night; at the Hay-Adams, they are about $840 to $1,840 per night.

During his recent stay in Washington, Kasnazan said, he socialized with some of the State Department’s Middle East experts outside of the hotel. One of them, Col. Abbas Dahouk, recently retired as a senior military adviser at the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and previously served as a military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia.

Dahouk said he viewed Kasnazan’s visit to the Trump hotel as an effort to make “himself available to talk about Iraq and to speak truth to power,” while seeking U.S. support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq.

“It’s easier to meet people” at the hotel, he said. “Maybe indirectly to also show support to Trump.”

“From his perspective, Trump is America,” Dahouk added.

There is much more to the story and I urge you to read it.

This is exactly why the emoluments clause was put into the constitution. Presidents are not supposed to be taking money for access. It's thoroughly corrupt. And it's happening right in front of our eyes.

But the way it looks now, there's nothing we can do about it. The Democrats are anxious to sweep all this under the rug so they can pretend it didn't happen and politics are completely normal in America rather than almost hopelessly polluted by the criminals of the Republican Party.

The Republicans under Trump have found out something very important. They can make up scandals and cripple Democrats with nonsensical claims but they can actually do all the things they claim the Democrats do and get away with it. This is an extremely valuable insight. You can be sure they will put it to very good use.

Oh, and for those of you who think a guy like this can't actually have any effect on policy, think again. Remember a hustler named Ahmad Chalabi? He got over on the so-called "grown-ups." You think someone like this couldn't get over on Donald Trump and Jared Kushner?


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digby 6/06/2019 12:30:00 PM

 
Muddled

by digby



I think David Leonhardt of the New York Times articulates the thinking of a lot of people in the last few days. They've been patient with the Democrats. But it'sJune. The Democrats have been in charge of the House for 6 months. One quarter of the time they have to conduct oversight on Trump before the election is over. And Michael Cohen was the only must-watch hearing they've done.

I’ve been mostly positive about the approach that Democratic leaders have taken to the Trump scandals. Those leaders, starting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have insisted on investigating President Trump’s business practices and his 2016 campaign. But the Democrats have also shown some sensible restraint.

Rather than rushing into impeachment hearings as soon as they won House control, they understood that such hearings wouldn’t necessarily persuade more Americans of Trump’s unfitness for office. They have instead vowed to hold hearings that will lay out the evidence of Trump’s misbehavior.

The problem is that the Democrats haven’t actually held many hearings. With the Mueller investigation now completed, I think it’s getting to be time for Democrats to stop explaining what they are going to do and start doing it.

As is, the Democrats’ message is becoming muddled. Both House and Senate Democrats insist that Trump has committed grave offenses that are damaging the country (which he has). In response, they are doing … relatively little. The combination, as my colleague Michelle Goldberg has written, is “increasingly incoherent.”

Remember how much information the Michael Cohen hearing produced and how much attention it generated? It was an excellent example of how Congress can shine light on a president’s wrongdoing. The House should now insist on calling Robert Mueller to testify, even if Mueller would prefer to avoid the spotlight. They should fight, in court if need be, to call any Trump aides or associates who have relevant information.

Until Democrats act, the party’s message about Trump’s wrongdoing is likely to remain unpersuasive to anyone who isn’t already persuaded.

You know how everyone says the DOJ and the White House are slow walking all the documents and subpoenas so they can get closer to the election? Well, it is looking more and more as if the Democrats might be doing the same. If they don't get started soon, it's likely this will fizzle out and we'll get into budgets and government shutdowns and whatever the latest atrocity Trump has committed and that will be that.


Here's the last half of Goldberg's column:

[T]he real reasons for Democratic hesitation on impeachment are obvious enough. Democrats don’t have the votes in the Senate to remove Trump, and fear an acquittal in that chamber could embolden him. A majority of voters is not yet convinced that impeachment is warranted, even if they believe Trump is a criminal. Many newly elected Democrats in swing districts don’t want to have to vote on impeachment, and Democrats fear a backlash similar to the one Republicans faced after impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998.

All these hazards are real. But there are also dangers if Democrats fail to take their appraisal of Trump to its logical conclusions. Following public opinion on impeachment, as opposed to attempting to shape it, makes them look weak and vacillating. Endless calls for further investigation send the message that the staggering corruption and abuse of power that Trump has already engaged in is somehow tolerable. And as Brian Beutler has pointed out, if Democrats don’t seize the offensive in both procedural and narrative terms, Republicans will, pressing on with their Benghazi-style investigations into the origins of the Russia probe while inviting even more foreign help in 2020.

The point of impeachment is not to remove Trump before the 2020 election. It is to make clear, in the starkest possible way, why Democrats believe he should be removed. The remainder of his term should be consumed by a formal, televised presentation of all the ways he’s disgraced his office. It’s true that were Trump to be re-elected after such a reckoning, he might be even further unleashed. But were Trump to be re-elected in the absence of impeachment, it would still be seen as a vindication for him, and would leave Democrats humiliated by their excess of caution.

Some Democrats might fear a repeat of the mistakes Republicans made when they impeached Clinton two decades ago, but this suggests a lack of faith in their own leadership. Clinton was impeached for covering up sex with an intern. Were Trump to be impeached, it would be for covering up his entanglements, financial and otherwise, with a hostile foreign power, blatantly profiting from his office, declaring himself above the law, and demanding freedom from oversight as the price of fulfilling ordinary presidential responsibilities. If Democratic politicians don’t believe they can make the public see the difference between these two impeachment scenarios, perhaps they are in the wrong line of work.

Besides, the notion that Republicans suffered a devastating rebuke as a result of the Clinton impeachment is overblown. Republicans kept the House in the 1998 midterms, though Democrats gained five seats. Clinton was damaged enough that his vice president, Al Gore, held him at a distance while running to succeed him. In the 2000 election, Republicans won the presidency, kept the House, and narrowly took the Senate, giving them trifecta control of government for the first time in nearly half a century. Can this really be the cautionary tale that’s frightening Democrats from doing all they can to hold a lawless president to account?

At the Center for American Progress conference, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, praised Representative Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican who, on in a Twitter thread on Saturday, laid out the ways that Trump had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Responding to Amash’s case against the president, members of the wealthy family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said they were cutting off their financial support for the congressman. The conservative House Freedom Caucus, which Amash helped found, condemned him, and he’s facing a primary challenge.

“The fact that he is willing to risk his seat shows a lot of the courage of that conviction, and that has been in very short supply,” Schiff told the audience. He added, “Courage is contagious, but so is cowardice.” He’s right, but not just about Republicans.

Pelosi said she doesn't want to impeach Trump, she wants to see him in jail. First of all, this notion she's spreading that he can't be indicted if there's a Senate acquittal on impeachment is just nonsense. There's no double jeopardy attached and impeachment isn't a criminal proceeding anyway.

She may be trying to say that an acquittal would make it politically impossible for a Democratic Department of Justice to pursue Trump, but let's get real. The likelihood of the next president's Attorney General indicting Trump for these crimes is not very high. After all, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi (and I!) have spent the last two years decrying all the disgusting "lock her up" chants at Trump rallies as UnAmerican Banana Republic behavior because we don't jail defeated political rivals in this country. By doing that, he's inoculated against the Democrats doing it to him.

Unless Trump actually does shoot someone on 5th Avenue, there is almost no chance he's going to be indicted. In fact, there's every chance he'll pardon himself and the case will be litigated until long after he's in the grave. It's certainly possible that the state of New York could indict him on crimes that have nothing to do with these federal offenses. And there will likely be civil cases that will keep him and his family in court for years. But impeachment would have no effect on that anyway.

The most important reason to impeach Trump isn't to build a case that will put him in federal prison. It's to make it clear to the Americans people exactly what has happened and take a stand in defense of the constitution. He has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. He's abusing his power every single day. They are not criminal offenses and the only way to make it clear that this abuse of power is unacceptable is to impeach him, and if they can't convict, then take it to the big jury --- the American people. But they have to make the case.

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digby 6/06/2019 11:00:00 AM

 
The ugliest American and his propaganda team on display

by digby


I was in France during the 50th anniversary of D-Day and it was a moving experience. The war was very real and immediate to Europeans even 50 years out and I'd guess it is today as well. The Normandy coast is a very solemn and beautiful place. You know something monumental happened there.

This time, it's been bespoiled by an ignorant barbarian:

Fox News and Trump use the graves of Allied service members as props during interview in which the president lies about Mueller and demeans Nancy Pelosi pic.twitter.com/ArDN87jnv5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 6, 2019

I'm so sorry.

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digby 6/06/2019 09:00:00 AM

 
The War Against Feet 

by tristero

You can't make this silliness up:

 Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny -- the metric system.

By the way, anyone who chooses to engage with Carlson and argue for the benefits of the metric system is falling for his idiotic trap. Don't. Just don't, okay?
tristero 6/06/2019 08:00:00 AM

 

Our allies' last-ditch effort

by Tom Sullivan

Men and equipment arrive in Normandy following D-Day invasion, 1944. (National Archives.)

Seventy-five years ago today, WWII allies launched Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion. The Washington Post headline calls it "the Normandy invasion that saved Europe from Nazism." And not just Europe.

Before the U.S. President Donald J. Trump arrived in France, British Prime Minister Theresa May presented Trump with a framed draft of the Atlantic Charter Churchill signed in 1941 along with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Queen Elizabeth II gave Trump a 1959 first edition of Winston Churchill’s "The Second World War" in a single edition (abridged) bound in a crimson and gold-tooled cover, no doubt to catch his eye. Hitting him over the head with both might have been less subtle.

Commemorations all over. Speeches. Statistics. Vintage aircraft. Reenactors. A friend was aboard one of the Dakotas that flew into Normandy.

Naturally, the American president, an "avowed nationalist" (Washington Post), is delivering speeches in Normandy. One hopes they were written by someone with the good sense not to allow him space to ad lib. Trump sat arms crossed and yawning as French President Emmanuel Macron "mixed praise for America’s veterans with a full-throated embrace of the kind of multilateralism Trump has railed against as he’s pursued an 'America First' agenda."

The Post observes:

The D-Day commemoration comes after two years of Trump either slighting or actively undermining the two principal institutions that have worked to ensure Europe’s postwar stability and transatlantic ties: the European Union and NATO. Some see the emotional power of the Normandy landscape as a last-ditch attempt to ensure that those transatlantic ties still hold.

“As far as the Europeans are concerned, I think the general tone is one of desperation at the possibility that the lessons of history could be forgotten,” said Francois Heisbourg, a former French presidential adviser and a senior adviser at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank. “The lesson of history is that the West exists, and when the West is divided, very bad things happen. We don’t forget that it took the Americans two years to get involved in World War II. But we also know we were saved by the Americans — not only by the Americans, but without the Americans it would not have been possible.”

Of the 10,000 who died that day in Normandy, Michele Heller's father was not among them. Her Czech father had escaped his native country and the Nazis, made his way after four years to the U.S. and enlisted. He survived one of the earliest waves of the D-Day landings, the Battle of the Bulge and more. Like many WWII veterans, her foreign-born father rarely spoke of what he'd seen and experienced in defense of his new country.

His immediate family members who did not escape Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia perished in concentration camps. Except two cousins, twins, reserved for Josef Mengele's medical experiments.

Heller writes this morning both as a commemoration and as a reminder:

In the 1840s, half of all U.S. military recruits were immigrants. Today, 40 percent of active-duty personnel are racial or ethnic minorities, and 13 percent of U.S. veterans are foreign-born or children of immigrants.

Why am I telling the story my dad had buried so deeply? Because relaying his experience is a way to illustrate the personal ramifications of anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, racist sentiment. Nationalist fervor, economic crisis and other factors resulted in the Nazis’ ascendance, their anti-Jewish laws and eventually the war that upended my dad’s youth and took the lives of many of his compatriots, friends and family, both on the battlefields and in the concentration camps.

My father-in-law fought in the front lines in Europe late in the war, including in the Battle of the Bulge. The West Virginia native rarely spoke of combat. He did want to revisit some of the beautiful towns he remembered. He never made that trip. He returned from the war to attend Columbia University and spent a career as a librarian. But the war haunted him. His shelves were filled with books about the war. It was an experience one never really gets over.

I don't have to ask myself what he would think about our current commander-in-chief's efforts to resurrect the evils he fought to consign to those history books.


Undercover Blue 6/06/2019 06:00:00 AM

Wednesday, June 05, 2019

 
Robert Mueller is a witness, not just a prosecutor

by digby





This chart by Ryan Goodman at Just Security spells out exactly why Robert Mueller needs to testify before congress. He's not just a prosecutor. He's a witness to what William Barr said and did and the record show that they were in clear disagreement:

Chart: A Side-by-Side Compa... by on Scribd

There are dozens of questions that need to be answered about the Rosenstein, Barr, and Special counsel interactions. He's the only one who can be expected to be honest about it. He has to testify.

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digby 6/05/2019 05:00:00 PM

 
The fashion report

by digby



I don't usually care about what the presidents and their spouses and family wear. But in this case, we have two women in that family who are fashion models and frankly, have little else to offer. So I'd expect them to be fabulous in this regard. And the men are all
extremely wealthy and used to wearing these monkey suits (and have access to the best tailors in the world) so there is no excuse for this mess:



Melania and Ivanka are beautiful women and they wear clothes well but on foreign trips Melania dresses in costume and Ivanka often has some real misses. This trip was particularly bad for her.

Here's the Royal Watch at the Daily Beast:

The royals played it safe during the state visit, with Camilla in various flouncy white dresses and the queen in her usual siren block colors of blue and pink.

And the Trumps looked like they were starring in their own episode of Dynasty.

Fans will remember that the 1985 season the show ended with the Carringtons and Colbys in the fictional European country of Moldavia, where some terrorists shot everybody at the ceremony. (The next season, the principals miraculously roused themselves from the hail of bullets and carried on being vile to each other. And there was even a duplicate Krystle, but we digress.)

The shocks in London were restricted to the fashion variety. Everything was a little too much. On the final day, to commemorate D-Day, Melania wore a belted cream coat, which was very romantic rather than somber, and paired it with a hat, best described as a “sharp flying saucer.” Trump's hair, briefly slicked back over the weekend to make him look like a mobster on the Atkins Diet, returned to its usual squirrel-about-to-disappear self.

Both Melania and Ivanka have had a maximalist week, clothes-wise, notable for a sheer, dramatically sleeved red evening gown (Melania) and a strange Dalmatian-dotted day outfit (Ivanka).

The entire Trump family headed to London, including Tiffany, whose evening dresses looked more confining than delightful. They Instagrammed a lot of their journey, when not—yes, you Jared and Ivanka—lurking creepily behind curtains. (Surely, a royal servant should be dispatched to make sure they've actually gone.)

There were no fashion disasters, merely the lingering impression that the Trump family dresses as it comports itself on the national and international stage: they'll do it their way, thanks. If you think they look “too much,” they most surely don't care.

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digby 6/05/2019 03:30:00 PM

 
Gaslighting o' the day

by digby

RNC SPOX @LizRNC: "POTUS is exactly right. He said there are no Winston Churchills. But I do see quite a few Benito Mussolinis in the Democratic field"

FOX NEWS ANCHOR @HARRISFAULKNER: "Ooh!... I do understand the socialism aspect of that, so let's stay in the lane of the money" pic.twitter.com/xqsESPhdCw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 5, 2019

This is what Trump voters see and hear from the spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.

As we are commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when the allies undertook one of the most massive, dangerous missions in world history to defeat the psychopathic monster Adolph Hitler and his compatriot Benito Mussolini.

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digby 6/05/2019 01:30:00 PM

 
John Kerry must be banging his head against a wall today

by digby

The pro-Vietnam War hardhat riot of 1970

Those of us of a certain age have spent our entire lives listening to wingnuts descend like a gaggle of screeching harpies on anyone who opposed the Vietnam War, much less dodged the draft. They crucified Bill Clinton for years over the issue and even a war hero like John Kerry was ruthlessly smeared. Vietnam was the crucible that every politician of that generation had to account for. A man who said something like this would have been relentlessly pilloried by every Republican and half the Democrats in this country:

Piers Morgan says, "you were not able to serve in Vietnam because of bone spurs on your feet, do you wish you'd been able to serve? Donald Trump said this:

"Well, I was never a fan of that war, I'll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war. I thought it was very far away ... and at that time nobody ever heard of the country. Today they're doing very well, in fact on trade they're brutal, very brutal, they're great negotiators, they're great business people. Nobody ever heard of Vietnam. People said, 'what is happening over there?'. So I was never a fan. This isn't like I'm fighting against Nazi Germany, we're fighting against Hitler. And I was like a lot of people. Now, I wasn't out on the streets marching, I wasn't saying I was going to move to Canada like a lot of people did ... but no, I was not a fan of that war. That war was not something we should've been involved in"

Morgan askes, "would you like to have served generally, perhaps in another ..." Trump said,"I would not have minded that at all, I think I would have been honored, but I think I'm making up for that now, look, 700 billion dollars I gave last year and this year it's 716 billion dollars and I think I'm making up for it rapidly..."

I'm sure his old wingnut white guy cultists are all clapping like like the brainwashed trained seals they are. But it galling. After all the years I've had to listen to their bullshit about Vietnam and they end up loving this Richie-Rich asshole whose daddy bought him out of the war. Now he says he's making up for it by saying he "gave" a lot of money to the military like he wrote a personal check!

Just as we no longer have to pay any attention to the conservative evangelicals when they talk about morality, neither do we have to care when the wingnuts wave the flag in our faces. I will be screaming "Donald Trump" in their faces until the day I shuffle off my mortal coil.


Update: And by the way, he didn't have any bone spurs. He can't even remember which feet they were on.

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digby 6/05/2019 12:00:00 PM

 
No, Trump does not want to be impeached Part XXV

by digby





From the Atlantic piece I linked in the post below:

[T]he recent Mexico event illustrates Trump’s preferred method of relief in moments of crisis. In the days leading up to the tariff announcement, the news cycle was captivated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s first public remarks since he was appointed to his role more than two years ago. Mueller reiterated that his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice in the executive branch did not, in fact, amount to a “total exoneration” of the president. Hearing these words from Mueller himself spurred many Democrats to ratchet up calls for impeachment, and Trump was clearly affected by the fallout. “How do you impeach a Republican President for a crime that was committed by the Democrats? WITCH-HUNT!” the president tweeted on Wednesday.
[...]
That Trump reverted to tariffs on Thursday offers a clue as to just how distressing the past week has been for him. Trump is no stranger to bad weeks, of course. But according to the senior campaign adviser, he was particularly unnerved by the media attention Mueller’s statement received. “Mueller controlled the news cycle,” this person said. “It was 24/7 the last couple of days. And that’s what bothers him.” Added to that was the increasing number of 2020 candidates calling to begin impeachment proceedings against the president, a topic most have been loath to touch on the campaign trail. For any public bluster from the White House welcoming an impeachment fight, Trump has zero private desire to take one on, according to a second senior campaign official. “To be impeached?!? No one wants that,” the source told me in a text message.

Personally, I don't care whether Trump "wants" to be impeached. It shouldn't affect the decision to do it. But I don't believe it anyway and I suspect the Democrats who keep saying it don't believe it either. That's because it makes no sense and the Democrats may be timorous but they aren't dumb.

He calls it "the 'I' word" He said it's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word. He goes nuts when it comes up. Of course he doesn't want to be impeached.

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digby 6/05/2019 10:30:00 AM

 
The Congressional Republicans can defy Trump --- when there's money involved

by digby



My Salon column this morning:

President Trump and his massive family entourage managed to make it through Tuesday on their British visit without a truly terrible gaffe. That's a major accomplishment. Trump did insult the mayor of London again and stuck his nose into Brexit politics during a press conference with outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May. And yes, he lied and said that there were many people greeting him enthusiastically on the streets and there were just a few small protests, calling all the reports which showed the opposite "fake news." But all of that is par for the Trump course.

He did say a couple of things that were newsworthy. A British reporter asked him if a post-Brexit unilateral trade deal with the U.S. would mean that Britain's National Health Service was on the table. He said it would be. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whom Trump refused to meet on this trip, pledged to fight to his last breath to prevent allowing their "precious, wonderful National Health Service" be privatized by American corporations. Trump walked back his comment later, leading some to suggest that he didn't even know what the NHS was when the question was asked. That's possible, but U.S. ambassador Woody Johnson had told the BBC just a few days before that the NHS would have to be part of any U.S.-U.K. trade deal, so it seems likely that this is something that's been discussed inside the Trump administration.

When asked about reports that the Republicans in the Congress were resisting his threatened tariffs on Mexico, which Trump has said he will impose under his elastic definition of "national security," the president said it would be "foolish" of them to defy him, reminding them that he is very popular with Republican voters. (He lied, as usual, saying that at 94% his popularity among the GOP base is the highest ever. In fact, it's consistently in the high 80s, and not the highest ever.) His comment was clearly meant as a threat to Republicans who are thinking of breaking with him on his trade war.

We'll see whether they come through. Even if Republican leaders ultimately capitulate, their little rebellion illustrates the fact that as much as they like to pretend they're powerless to stand up to Trump because of his stranglehold on the base, they are willing to put up a fuss when it's something they truly care about. Or, to be precise, when it's something their big donors care about. This latest front of Trump's trade war is definitely one of those times.

American business has been fairly sanguine about the tariffs on Chinese goods. They realize that this trade war is being waged very stupidly, but Chinese companies have pushed unfair trade practices for years and business was willing to give Trump some room to maneuver, perhaps thinking that the "madman" theory might just work in this situation. They've stood back as Trump abrogated NAFTA and put Canada and Mexico through the wringer for some mild improvements to the deal, even as people suffered for it. He's threatened Japan and Europe with tariffs if they don't do what he wants. But Trump's impulsive threat to slap tariffs on Mexico unless they stop immigration and drugs from coming over the border may have shaken the business community out of its complacency.

Some very powerful Republican interest groups are unhappy about this, and while GOP senators and representatives are undeniably concerned about Trump's popularity, they are even more concerned about their big-money backers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation are just a few of the business groups protesting this move. Some of those, led by the Chamber, say they are planning to sue the White House to stop the tariffs on Mexico. Republicans in Congress may not care about children being put in cages or left in vans overnight in the middle of the summer. But they come to attention when the titans of capitalism get upset.

The New York Times reports that White House lawyers came to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to speak to the Senate Republican conference and they got an earful, particularly from the two Republicans from Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz called it a $30 billion tax, while Sen. John Cornyn said, "We’re holding a gun to our own heads." Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told the Times, "The White House should be concerned about what that vote would result in, because Republicans really don’t like taxing American consumers and businesses."

Trump somehow believes that the tariff will be paid by Mexico because he is clueless about how this all works. Until now, Republicans have allowed him to pretend that foreign nations will pay for his trade war because nobody they really cared about was complaining. But it seems they can find their voices to oppose the president when they want to, which suggests that otherwise they really don't have a problem with most of the stuff he does. With the exception of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who openly admits he loves most of what Trump is doing, they don't even seem to care that he's creating new executive powers out of thin air. There's no precedent for using tariffs as a foreign policy tool, or an attempt to curb immigration.

As I said, we don't know how this one will go. It's possible that Republicans and the Mexican government can come up with some sort of "deal" that Trump will call a big victory and the whole thing will go away, at least for now. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to think that's how it will go, telling the press, "Our hope is that the tariffs will be avoided, and we will not have to answer any hypotheticals.” Paul has indicated that the Senate may have the votes to override a potential presidential veto and get rid of these tariffs, if it comes to that. Trump's new NAFTA agreement would be a likely casualty of this conflict as well.

It's amazing how Congress can come together to thwart this president when they really want to.

The tariff ultimatum was made against the advice of just about everyone in the Trump administration — except, that is, for Stephen Miller, the president's hard-line anti-immigrant adviser. The Atlantic reports that White House aides say this all stemmed from Trump's anger over Robert Mueller's appearance at the Justice Department last week, quoting an unnamed adviser who said, “Whenever a negative story comes around, his instinct is to pivot to immigration or trade. It’s kind of like his safety blanket." This was a twofer. Trump felt insecure so he shook up the financial markets and threatened to damage a vast segment of the American economy to make himself feel better. What's a little economic turmoil — and an unexpected tax on businesses and consumers — when the president needs his blankey?

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digby 6/05/2019 09:00:00 AM

 
Impeach! Just Come Out and Say it!! 

by tristero

The editorial board of the NY Times (and others) have been hinting more and more strongly that they are in favor of impeachment. Today, Ian Prasad Philbrick, described as "on the editorial staff of the Opinion section" published articles of impeachment against Trump based on the Nixon and Clinton impeachment articles. This is not direct enough.

It's time for Dean Baquet, Marty Baron, and other media leaders to just come out and say it: impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump (and many others in his administration) are more than warranted. Doing a Mueller "wink wink nudge nudge" is simply unacceptable. It implies the problem isn't as serious as they clearly know it is (but are afraid to say so).

Should the major media come out openly for impeachment, it will surely serve to embolden the unconscionably feckless Democrats who are inching closer to impeachment but so slowly it may be too late before they take action.

And wow, do they ever need more embolden-osity.  Even now, the Democratic leadership truly believes that if they give Trump enough lebensraum he'll self-destruct. He won't. The strategy they're pursuing has a name. It's called appeasement and appeasement never works:.

When the British first got wind of the new German chancellor, he seemed so vulgar as to be harmless. Described by one British paper as a “stubby little Austrian with a flabby handshake, shifty brown eyes and a Charlie Chaplin mustache,” Hitler cut an uninspiring and ridiculous figure. 

Within a month, he had used a fire in the Reichstag to suspend parts of Germany’s constitution. A month after that, the Nazis announced a boycott of Jewish shops. Germany started to rearm and rebuild its military in ways that were illegal under the provisions of Versailles...

Every time Germany or Mussolini’s Italy upped the ante — becoming ever more demanding and brazen — the British had to ask themselves whether the latest transgression was serious enough to merit a “preventive war...” 

Hitler kept presenting himself as a man of peace, even if “Mein Kampf,” his bellicose, self-aggrandizing autobiography, suggested otherwise. The English translations of the book were expurgated versions, omitting the nastiest passages. “Mein Kampf” had also been published in 1925, years before Hitler had attained the dignified position of chancellor; those who wanted to could simply dismiss the book as intemperate juvenilia. 

Bouverie’s chronological narrative conveys how appeasement transformed over the years: from a reactive, fearful policy to an enthusiastic, idealistic project to what can only be deemed a strenuous exercise in willful denial...

Sincerity typically requires consistency, but somehow Hitler’s volatility worked in his favor. He became so prone to tantrums that even when he talked to the British ambassador in Berlin about “annihilating Poland,” the relative lack of “the usual histrionics” meant that the genocidal comment wasn’t taken as an immediate threat. Hitler was constantly graded on a curve. 

If the Times, the Post, and many others stopped dithering and told what they know is the truth — that this president has to be removed from office before an existential catastrophe occurs — perhaps the Democratic leaders will wake up.

This is very, very serious, folks.
tristero 6/05/2019 07:30:00 AM

 

A mile wide and an inch deep — again

by Tom Sullivan

Platte River in central Nebraska. Panorama photo by Jetuusp via Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.

People's devotion to American institutions, the very idea of the United States of America, is not as rooted as they believe. Like teenage boys in a high school locker room boasting about sexual romps, those who talk about it the most sometimes do it the least. Boasts about love of country can be like that. Hugging flags by someone who invites foreign interference in American elections is like that.

Patriotism is a secular religion. For all their hands-over-hearts public piety, I have long written many of our conservative countrymen's faith in their country is a mile wide and an inch deep. But like believers' faith in Jesus, we can, as 2nd Amendment devotees do, be selective about what parts of the Constitution we believe sacrosanct and which we treat more as suggestions when pressed.

The Week's Damion Linker examines the religious right's shift away from considering themselves in the 1980s and 90s a moral majority — allied with social conservatives — to seeing themselves as an embattled minority making a last stand arrayed against “the tyrant state.”

The presidency of George W. Bush with his "faith-based initiatives" cooled their fervor temporarily. But with Sen. John McCain's loss to Barack Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney's in 2012, plus the declaration of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, they flocked to Donald Trump for protection.

"It would be a purely transactional relationship, like the one a businessman struggling with neighborhood crime might enter into with a local mob boss," Linker writes. If democracy is not giving them the America they demand, social conservatives (a faction, anyway) are prepared to discard it to preserve political control by the religious right:

Maybe its problem isn't that it's too weak but that it's accepted the legitimacy of liberal rules that place it at a competitive disadvantage in its battles with the left. Instead, social conservatives need to fight harder and even be willing to fight dirty, seeking to win at any cost, just as their secular liberal enemies do.

Or so they believe. Certainly, for some time social conservatives have considered themselves the only Real Americans™. All others are pretenders and illegitimate. For decades now, conservatives have trafficked in rumors of rampant voter fraud perpetrated by (non-white) liberal foes, undetected, yet present behind any election loss by champions of the right. To fight these implacable, invisible foes, American true believers needed tougher measures. They would, like Sohrab Ahmari, op-ed editor of the New York Post, question "the legitimacy of a system designed to keep liberals in charge," Linker argues.

When social conservatives thought they were the moral majority, it made sense for them to dream of exercising real political power. When they recognized that they were a minority, it made sense for them to resign themselves to adopting a defensive posture and preparing to live out their days in a country as dissenters from the reigning liberal consensus.

What makes no sense is for social conservatives to think they can be both weak and strong at the same time — a minority that wields the power of a majority.

Unless, of course, social conservatives no longer care about democracy.

Linker's column focuses on Ahmari's minority views among social conservatives. But the view that any president not carrying the Republican brand is illegitimate is long-established. As is superficial piety from people publicly supporting spreading the blessings of democracy to the world while privately undermining democracy here.

NC Policy Watch comments on how the Hofeller documents demonstrate Republican operatives at the highest levels have worked throughout this decade to rig the electoral system in their favor, and now by adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Gerrymandering, Rob Schofield writes, is "much too polite a word to describe what the Trump administration and its Republican Party allies are trying to do to our democracy." Common Cause of North Carolina director Bob Phillips describes the Hofeller papers as "smoking gun" that reveals the Trump administration plans to rig the census ... so Republicans might rig redistricting ... so they might rig elections permanently in their favor. And whether or not a majority of voters support them and their policies. GOP vote suppression measures are the chocolate sauce on their dessert.

Speaking to the Hofeller affair's meaning for the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the census matter, Adam Serwer comments on Justice Scalia's view that the Voting Rights Act constitutes a black "racial entitlement." Serwer writes:

Since the rise of Trump, the American right has been offered a stark choice between the democratic ideals it has long claimed to believe in, and the sectarian ethno-nationalism of the president, which privileges white identity and right-wing Christianity over all. Scalia didn’t quite have it right: The fundamental question for American democracy since the founding has indeed been whether it is a “racial entitlement,” but only because of those who have tried for centuries to ensure that white people alone are entitled to it.

A mile wide and an inch deep. The Trump GOP has already abandoned "the pretense of liberal democracy," Serwer concludes, in favor of securing "white political hegemony over a changing electorate."

In January 2018, David Frum warned:

Maybe you do not much care about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.

Frum was late to his own former party.

Now comes a time of testing.


Undercover Blue 6/05/2019 06:00:00 AM

Tuesday, June 04, 2019

 
The Grown Ups

by digby

That's how the Republicans always sold themselves to the public.

Here are the Republican Campaign Committee grown-ups, following the example of their Dear Leader:



Yes, Max Rose is on the short side. Haha.

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digby 6/04/2019 06:01:00 PM

 
Trump's dull day

by digby





Trump held a press conference with outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May today. It was pretty uneventful. He insulted the London Mayor and the labor leader and inappropriately gave his opinions on UK politics. Nothing unusual in that. And he claimed there were only happy Londoners greeting him and no protests when the truth is that there were very few happy greeters and a large number of protesters in the streets. The sign above is a sampling.

The following, however, might have some real consequences:

a telling moment -- Trump's (lack of) response to a policy-related question about the National Health Service (NHS) suggests he's not really familiar with what it is pic.twitter.com/KL0DlqTXmn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 4, 2019

This follows the Ambassador's comments over the weekend saying the same thing. Yikes. His Brexit buddies do NOT want this on their agenda.


I did enjoy this ...

WOW -- huge boos for Ivanka and John Bolton when they emerge for the news conference!

(@kilmeade quickly tries to gaslight and says the boos weren't really for Ivanka) pic.twitter.com/cMl819A9Zg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 4, 2019

Sure, they were booing Bolton not Ivanka. They know this. Because they know. Somehow...


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digby 6/04/2019 04:30:00 PM

 
Oh my, somebody on the right notices the GOP's grifter problem

by digby



This is nothing new, of course. Ever since the late 70s when Paul Weyrich and others in the Reagan Revolution/Conservative movement discovered they could make big bucks by bilking little old ladies and guzzling from the billionaire's trough, it's been a dominant feature of Republican politics. But the money has gotten huge in recent years (for obvious reasons --- there are more billionaires than ever funding their grift) and it's become something they really can't avoid talking about anymore.

Here's Jim Geraghty of National Review:

The Huge Albatross to the Conservative Movement that Few Want to Talk About

Back in 2013, Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised $2.2 million in funds vowing to support Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor in Virginia. Court filings and FEC records showed that the PAC only contributed $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s effort.

Back in 2014, Politico researched 33 political action committees that claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party and courted small donors with email and direct-mail appeals and found that they “raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs.”

Back in 2015, RightWingNews reviewed the financial filings of 21 prominent conservative PACs and found the ten 10 groups at the bottom of their list spent $54.3 million only paid out $3.6 million to help get Republicans elected.

Back in 2016, campaign finance lawyer Paul H. Jossey detailed how some of the PACs operated and lamented, “the Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered — and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives.”

In 2016, Roger Stone founded the Committee to Restore America’s Greatness. It raised $587,000 and spent $16,000 on independent expenditures supporting Trump.

In 2016, Great America PAC raised $28.6 million from donors. They donated $30,125 to federal candidates. In 2018, Great America PAC raised $8.3 million from donors. They donated $31,840 to federal candidates.

In 2017, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said that despite the actions of a PAC that claimed to be raising money for a Clarke bid for U.S. Senate, he was not running. That PAC raised $2 million.

In 2018, a federal indictment declared grassroots conservatives across the country gave $23 million to scam PACs run by William and Robert Tierney from 2014 to 2018, believing they were supporting conservative groups like “Republican Majority Campaign PAC,” “Americans for Law Enforcement PAC,” and “Rightmarch.com PAC.” Only $109,000 went to candidates.

In the 2018 cycle, Tea Party Majority Fund raised $1.67 million and donated $35,000 to federal candidates. That cycle, Conservative Majority Fund raised just over $1 million and donated $7,500 to federal candidates. Conservative Strikeforce raised $258,376 and donated nothing to federal candidates.

Put Vets First PAC raised $3.9 million in the 2018 cycle; they gave $9,000 to federal candidates.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that David Bossie’s group, Presidential Coalition, had raised $18.5 million in 2017 and 2018 to support state and local candidates in furtherance of the Trump agenda. Only $425,442, or 3 percent, went to direct political activity.

Not every non-donation expense is illegitimate; legit political-action committees have to pay for rent, electricity, computers, the phone bill, etcetera. But when such an exceptionally small portion of the money they raise goes to the candidates they’re allegedly designed to support or measurable efforts on their behalf, one can fairly ask what the true purpose of the organization is.

Politico didn’t specify which 33 PACs they reviewed; if their list overlaps entirely with the RightWingNews list, then the total sum listed above would be $127 million; if they don’t overlap at all, it would be $177 million. That is money that could have gone directly to candidates’ campaigns or other actions that would have advanced the conservative cause in recent cycles. But instead it went into more fundraising expenses, more overhead costs, or into the pockets of those running these PACs.

And some folks want us to believe that the problem with the conservative movement is David French?

Why is the conservative movement not as effective as its supporters want it to be? Because day after day, year after year, little old ladies get called on the phone or emailed or sent letters in the mail telling them that the future of the country is at stake and that if they don’t make a donation to groups that might as well be named Make Telemarketers Wealthy Again right now, the country will go to hell in a handbasket. Those little old ladies get out their checkbooks and give what they can spare, convinced that they’re making a difference and helping make the world a better place. What they’re doing is ensuring that the guys running these PACs can enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle. Meanwhile, conservative candidates lose, kicking the dirt after primary day or the general election, convinced that if they had just had another $100,000 for get-out-the-vote operations, they might have come out on top.

What’s more, most of these PACs thrive on telling conservative grassroots things that aren’t true. Clarke didn’t want to run for Senate in Wisconsin, Laura Ingraham wasn’t interested in running for Senate in Virginia, and Allen West wasn’t running for Senate in Florida. The PACs propagate a narrative in which they’re the heroic crusaders for conservative values, secure borders and freedom, up against corrupt establishment elites . . . when they’re in fact run by those coastal political operatives and keeping most of the money for their own operations.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Oh, every PAC does this.” Nope. In that RightWingNews study, Club for Growth Action PAC had 88 percent actually went into independent expenditures and direct contributions. Republican Main Street Partnership had 78 percent, and American Crossroads was at 72 percent. That allegedly corrupt “establishment” is way more efficient at using donors’ money than all of these self-proclaimed grassroots conservative groups. Over on the liberal or Democratic side, ActBlue charges a 3.95 percent processing fee when passing along donations to campaigns.

When these individuals get called out for the way they’re spending donors’ money, they revert to a familiar responses of denial, evasion, and blaming the messenger. When asked about how little of the money his group raised was spent on political activity, Bossie’s first response was “this is fake news brought to you by a collaboration of the biased liberal media and unabashed left-wing activists.” Never mind the fact that the criticism was based upon his own group’s periodic reports of contributions and expenditures with the IRS (forms 8872) in addition to annual tax returns (forms 990).

There's more at the link.

I would just point out that there is one YUGE problem with his article. They have the biggest grifter in US history sitting in the White House. He's an authentic professional con man. And they love him for it.

Hanging the David Bossies out to dry after all these years is missing the forest for the trees. The president of the United States is selling his brand right out of the Oval Office.


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digby 6/04/2019 03:00:00 PM

 
There were a lot of "party switchers" in 2018

by digby



I'm of the opinion that voters should choose who they believe in primaries and pick the lesser of two evil in a general election. It's not an optimal situation most of the time because you often end up having to back someone you may not entirely believe in. (I've been in that position pretty much all of my adult life.) But that's how our system is constructed and everyone learns at a certain point in their lives that you need to both advance your preferred agenda and also defend against the agenda of the other side. If the behavior of Trump and the GOP over the past few years hasn't shown you that then you aren't paying attention. Politics is both aspirational and defensive.

Anyway, I will be voting for my preferred candidate, whoever that is, in the California primary next year because that's what I do. The field will be somewhat winnowed by that time I'm sure. But that doesn't mean that I'm not keenly aware of what it's going to take to beat Trump and I'll be watching the candidates over the next few months to see how I feel about that. It will, I'm sure, be a factor in my choices as well. Trump is such an extreme threat that you just have to think about it.

Ron Brownstein has a column on CNN today with the latest data on 2018 that everyone should check out as they think about these things:

President Donald Trump's political base may not be as impregnable as commonly assumed. And that could have big implications not only for the Democrats' strategy against Trump in 2020 but also for their choice of a presidential nominee.
Detailed new research by the Democratic voter-targeting firm Catalist found that the party's big gains in the 2018 congressional election were fueled not only by unusually high turnout among voters sympathetic to the party, but also by larger-than-expected defections from the GOP among voters who had backed Trump two years earlier.

Those findings offer potentially critical evidence as Democrats are debating the best approach to beating Trump in 2020. On one side are progressive activists who say the party should prioritize mobilizing nonvoters, particularly young people and minorities, with an unabashedly liberal agenda. On the other are centrists who say Democrats can't tilt so far left on issues such as single-payer health care and the Green New Deal that they alienate swing voters who backed Trump in 2016 but may be open to reconsidering now.
Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, most recently at last weekend's California Democratic convention, have made the former case, while former Vice President Joe Biden, along with several second-tier hopefuls such as former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, have most explicitly identified with the latter argument.

Rather than picking one path, the new Catalist data on 2018 signals that Democrats need to do some of both in 2020. But, on balance, its analysis found that a clear majority of Democrats' gains from 2016 to 2018 came from voters switching their preference, rather than from changes in the electorate's composition.

"The number one thing I would say is winning elections isn't just about mobilization," said Yair Ghitza, Catalist's chief scientist, in an interview. "I do think that's something some people argue, and it's gained a bit of traction. What I try to point out here is that mobilization is incredibly important. But the idea that there are literally no swing voters left, is, I think, a misreading of a lot of the data that's out there."

Catalist analyzes electoral results by studying state voter files on who actually voted in each election. The state files provide precise information on some demographic characteristics of the voting population -- particularly gender and age -- and Catalist uses advanced statistical techniques to fill in its portrait of data that is available only in some places, such as race and education. Then it combines its turnout data with polling analysis and precinct-level results to produce its estimates of how each group in the electorate voted.

Its approach represents an alternative measure of voting behavior to the more familiar Edison Research exit polls (CNN is a member of the consortium that produces those polls), but for 2018 the two methods produced similar results on voting behavior for the key groups.

In the new analysis, Ghitza sought to quantify how much of the improvement in Democratic performance in 2018 compared with 2016 had resulted from changes in who voted versus shifts in preferences among the voters.
In 2018, Catalist calculated, Democrats won the total popular vote in House elections by 7 seven percentage points (after making projections for uncontested races). That was a gain of about 5 percentage points from Hillary Clinton's popular-vote margin over Trump in 2016.

That change derived from three big sources: who left the electorate between 2016 and 2018, who entered it and the changing preferences of voters who participated both times.

Gains from switches by voters

The falloff from voters who participate in the presidential election but then sit out the next midterm has become a huge problem for Democrats as their coalition has grown more dependent on young people and minorities; both of those groups turn out much more reliably in presidential than in midterm elections.

That's meant that considerably more Democratic than Republican voters typically stay home in the off-year election. That falloff was so severe from then-President Barack Obama's re-election victory in 2012 to the GOP sweep in 2014, for instance, that Ghitza calculates it cost Democrats fully 6 points in their share of the total vote.

Even comparing 2018 with 2016, more Democrats than Republicans stayed home, Catalist found. But because of the turnout gains among key party constituencies, that drop-off was much less of a problem than it typically is for Democrats. About 40% of all voters who participated in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections stayed home in the next midterms; but in 2018, only about 27% of 2016 voters sat out, Catalist found.

Moreover, the mix of voters who fell off last year was less lopsidedly Democratic than in the past: Republicans also suffered a drop-off, particularly among non-college whites and rural whites, two of Trump's key groups. Minorities, who usually slip as a share of the midterm vote, represented almost exactly as much of the vote in 2018 as they had in 2016. And while young people still declined as a share of the electorate in 2018, they did not do so nearly as severely as in the previous two midterm elections.
The overall result was voters who sat out the 2018 midterms after voting in 2016 cost the Democrats a manageable 2 percentage points in the total vote last year, only about one-third of their crushing decline in 2014.

And last year, Democrats offset that loss through the other major factor that shifted the electorate's composition: new voters. Catalist found that about 13% of the 2018 voters, some 14 million people, had not voted in 2016. That was a significantly bigger surge of new voters than in 2010 and 2014, when about 9% of the electorate had not participated in the previous presidential election.

And while the new voters had favored Republicans by 2 percentage points in 2010 and by a solid 7 percentage points in 2014, they provided Democrats a resounding advantage of 21 percentage points last year.

In all, Catalist calculated, new voters swelled the Democrats' total share of the 2018 vote by about 2.6 percentage points. When combined with their loss of around 2 percentage points from 2016 voters who sat out 2018, that meant changes in the electorate's composition contributed about half a percentage point to their overall vote gain from the presidential election to the midterm elections. That was a vast improvement from the midterm elections under Obama, when Democrats were hurt by the composition of both the drop-off and new voters.

"There was a massive turnout boost that favored Democrats, at least compared to past midterms," Ghitza wrote in a recent Medium piece explaining his research.

But by itself, that roughly half-point improvement in the Democratic vote from changes in the electorate's composition would not have been nearly sufficient to drive the party's sweeping gains last year.

"If turnout was the only factor, then Democrats would not have seen nearly the gains that they ended up seeing," Ghitza wrote.
In fact, Catalist calculated that nearly 90% of the Democrats' increase in their total vote from 2016 to 2018 came from switches among the roughly 99 million people who participated in both elections. Catalist projects that Democrats virtually broke even among those two-time voters in 2016 but won them by about 5 percentage points in 2018.

Vote switching, as opposed to shifts in the electorate's composition, accounted for about three-fourths or more of the Democrats' improvement compared with the 2016 presidential results in a wide variety of states, Catalist found. Those included their Senate victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Nevada and Arizona, as well as governor's victories in Nevada, Michigan and Maine.

Turnout and persuasion both matter

Catalist's research methods didn't allow it to estimate how many of the voters who moved to the Democrats in 2018 had switched from voting for Trump in 2016 versus how many switched from supporting one of the third-party candidates, libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. But Ghitza said that estimates he's seen in other private Democratic analyses of the election are that Trump voters accounted for about three-fourths of the switchers and former third-party voters about one-fourth.
The overall level of movement from Trump doesn't signal that his base is cracking. But it does suggest that it's a mistake to view all of his voters as immovably locked in behind him.

"He got votes from people who aren't considered his base in 2016," Ghitza said. "And so this could certainly be consistent ... with the idea that he has a floor and those people aren't leaving him but there are still swing voters out there that could be had."
These new findings aren't likely to end the roiling debate among Democrats about whether to emphasize mobilization of base voters or persuasion of swing voters in 2020. Comparing the 2018 vote with the results in 2014, as opposed to 2016, tilts the outcome so that mobilization looks relatively more important, Ghitza notes.

And the likelihood that total turnout could increase significantly in 2020 -- Catalist projects that over 15 million more people may vote next year than in 2016 -- will also encourage Democrats who want to prioritize mobilization, since many newly eligible voters are young and nonwhite.

The big question for that strategy is whether the Democratic message -- and nominee -- can inspire more turnout from those groups without becoming so polarizing that they help Trump mobilize his own core supporters, or alienate the swing voters who abandoned him in 2018.

"There's something to that argument" for mobilization, Ghitza says. "But it's clear that it is best to both mobilize and persuade, and to find a message that can do both. If the Democratic candidate has a message that only appeals to certain pieces of the country, then those mobilization advantages could end up being counteracted by increasing support for Trump on the other side."

I don't think it's clear that someone like Biden is a slam dunk with the "switchers" any more than I assume someone like Warren is too far left. People choose their candidates based upon a whole bunch of heuristics that go beyond policy. Neither is the base necessarily going to break against the more "centrist" candidates. This is all still being worked out and as people see these candidates more and more and compare them to each other (and to Trump) they'll start to sort it out.

But I think it's important to keep in mind that those 2018 party switchers (mostly college-educated white people, a majority of whom were women) were motivated by the total degradation of the GOP and its capitulation to Trump's extremism. I suspect they are going to be pretty pragmatic in 2020 as well. They know Trump is far worse than anyone the Democrats are going to nominate.

There really isn't any comparison.

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digby 6/04/2019 01:30:00 PM