Idiot Begs Electable Candidate to Run on 2020. Nation Suffers Major Mental Breakdown.
Political Party to Commit Mass Suicide to Appease the gods of Wall Street.
Trump: 0. Democrats: 0. The People: 1
Throughout the country, the Trump administration’s policies are being met by resistance - no thanks to Democratic elites.
1.
Donald Trump was handed a major defeat a couple nights ago when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate his travel ban. The three-judge panel, which included a George W. Bush appointee, unanimously rejected one of Trump’s key arguments: that when it comes to immigration and national security, the actions of the executive branch are not subject to judicial review.
Although our jurisprudence has long counseled deference to the political branches on matters of immigration and national security, neither the Supreme Court nor our court has ever held that courts lack the authority to review executive action in those arenas for compliance with the Constitution. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has repeatedly and explicitly rejected the notion that the political branches have unreviewable authority over immigration or are not subject to the Constitution when policymaking in that context.
FDR was handed defeat after defeat by the courts, yet managed to turn their intransigence - which was arrayed against what a clear majority of the nation wanted - into a symbol of the old regime that needed to be gutted and into a source of even greater power for him and his party.
That’s a little hard to do when:
a) you were put into office by a minority of the electorate;
b) your policies are unpopular;
c) you and your voters belong to the party that is both creator and custodian of that old regime; and
d) your proposals are being struck down by judges appointed by your party.
That signifies not an opportunity for you to wrestle that old regime to the ground - since in so many respects you don’t want to touch the old regime - but instead a crisis within the old regime, which you were elected to reform and save, not destroy.
Sad.
2.
It seems as if Trump’s campaign promises about immigration - his rhetoric about Muslims and refugees, his willingness to say what so many people in his party thought but were too polite or smart to say - will continue to come back to haunt him in court. If that overtly racist rhetoric turns out to sink him, or at least these policies, it’ll be another nail in the coffin not just of Trump but of conservatism and the GOP.
Throughout the campaign, I said that Trump’s rhetoric was a sign of the weakening of the conservative cause: a racist or nativist dog whistle used to be enough to mobilize majorities. No more: now the party needs a megaphone, just to mobilize an ever dwindling base. But if it turns out that that megaphone is precisely what sinks the policies the base wants, there’s going to be major turmoil within the party, from top to bottom.
This is the kind of political incoherence that weak parties in weak regimes find themselves in. Again, this is not a symptom of Trump, his erraticness, or his incompetence. This is a symptom of the impasse the Republican Party has found itself as the premises of the Reagan regime start to get shaky.
3.
According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, there’s been a marked shift in public opinion on immigration.
Back in November, Americans were asked:
Do you support or oppose suspending immigration from ‘terror prone’ regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions?
At the time, respondents favored suspending immigration by 50-44 percent.
As of two days ago, those numbers have flipped. Now respondents oppose suspending immigration by 50-44 percent. That’s a 12-point flip in public opinion - against the president’s position.
With new presidents, and presidents we think of as politically potent, you expect to see the exact opposite trend line: that is, policies and proposals getting more popular, not less. Yet the opposite seems to be happening with Trump.
What so many on the Left fear about Trump -wrongly, in my view - is his allegedly intuitive feel and appeal to the masses, particularly on these issues of nationalism, immigration, race, and religion. Yet it seems that that is precisely where he is falling down. And not merely because of the incompetence of his administration. But also, critically, because of the opposition and resistance so many people have mounted. Making his policies chaotic, disruptive, and a big hot mess, actually turns people off to those policies because it shows that they (the policies) can’t deliver what most people want: a sense of a calm and stability.
4.
This piece by Marc Tracy about Steve Bannon’s reading habits is really interesting and smart.
Tracy ran into Steve Bannon at an airport. Bannon was reading The Best and the Brightest.
At first glance, that makes sense: Bannon loathes the liberal Ivy League technocrats who populated the Obama administration and whose predecessors got us into Vietnam.
But what defined those Johnson-era technocrats, Tracy shows, is not that they knew what they were talking about; half the time, they hadn’t a clue. They were just part of the smart set, who by virtue of a certain temperament and repertoire of skills and attitudes, were presumed to be the natural leaders of the nation (not unlike the Vox set today, but I digress).
As Tracy argues, though, “Mr. Bannon seems less a repudiation than a reincarnation of the tragic protagonists of The Best and the Brightest.”
Indeed.
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to NPR, and one of Trump’s flunkies, Sebastian Gorka - who has a plummy English accent of the sort that got Dean Acheson into so much trouble with the McCarthyite right; autres temps - was heralding Bannon as a strategic genius who thinks strategically and strategizes like no other strategist. The man needn’t know anything specific; it’s just his cast of mind that matters.
And Trump himself, I would add, is just the CEO version of the best and the brightest, peddling what he allegedly learned from the art of the deal as somehow the Rosetta Stone to governing a nation.
5.
Jonathan Chait thinks Obamacare may survive, and Matt Yglesias itemizes all the ways in which Trump has met defeat thus far.
If they’re right - and I’ve suggested that I think they are - Trump is going to start to look less and less appealing to his base.
It’s hard to overstate how devastating it can be to a president not to be able to win on signature campaign promises. Whatever ideological fervor he can muster, he starts looking weak. Very weak. And that is something that no president - least of all Trump, who has made a fetish of his efficacy and strength - can afford.
6.
Listen to this story from Sunday’s Weekend Edition on NPR.
A California Republican congressman, who was reelected with more than 60 percent of the vote, thought he’d convene a friendly little conversation at a town hall. Hundreds of hostile constituents showed up, and after failing to respond adequately to their concerns, he had to have a police escort on his way out. One woman, who has never been politically active before, is quoted saying something like, “Apparently, this is now what I do on weekends.” And, apparently, these are being organized across the country.
So two takeaways:
First, this is happening in Republican districts. There’s a lot of criticism of the Left - and frankly a lot of self-flagellating criticism on the Left - about how we’re in a bubble, we’re only speaking to ourselves, and so forth. These types of events are happening in Republican districts, sometimes in Republican states. Criticize away, but don’t let your lefty angst blind you to the great organizing that is actually happening in these areas.
Second, also pay attention to all these people who were previously apolitical or not involved who are now getting involved. I’m seeing this everywhere, sometimes with people I know personally. This is not a movement of the usual suspects. People are changing right before our eyes: not because they’re getting lectured to or talked at with the right political line, but because they’re acting, getting out there in the streets, and doing things and learning things while and through they’re doing them. That’s what matters.
7.
Apparently,
Establishment Democrats have been surprised by the longevity and ferocity of grassroots opposition to President Trump . . .
Longevity? The man has been in office for exactly 20 days. I guess neoliberalism has fucked with the time horizon of these people more than I realized.
8.
Back in the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher took stock of her party’s failure at the polls, took a close look at the opposition’s successes, and came to a realization: “The other side have got an ideology. We must have one as well.”
Nancy Pelosi? Not so much.
Pelosi, asked if Dems will face primaries the way the GOP did from Tea Party:
“We don’t have a party orthodoxy. They are ideological.”
- Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 9, 2017
9.
It still amazes me, when you consider how massive the racial wealth gap is in this country, that Hillary Clinton managed to present herself in the primary as the candidate concerned with racial equality while simultaneously claiming, “Not everything is about an economic theory.”
I hope, the next time we have to fight this fight on the Left, people realize that when a candidate is saying something like that, she’s not signaling an intention to confront racial inequality. She’s actually telling you, in no uncertain terms, that she won’t.
10.
About a month ago, we were hearing a lot about how the problem with democracy is that it mobilizes the masses, who then threaten democracy by making it difficult for elites to preserve liberal principles like the rule of law and the integrity of institutions. Now we’re seeing that it may be those very masses who actually save democracy and those liberal principles.
Trump: 0. Democrats: 0. The People: 1
Dear Liberals: You Can’t Resist Trump Without Protesting Democrats Too
As an unprecedented wave of outrage swells against the Trump administration, Mnar Muhawesh, host of ‘Behind the Headline,’ wonders why people weren’t more outraged with Obama’s policies on mass surveillance, whistleblowers, and war.
MINNEAPOLIS - Remember our former commander in chief - Barack Obama? Well he’s on vacation. After eight years in the Oval Office, he’s decided to unwind with billionaire Richard Branson. His recent kitesurfing adventure seems to be the only news item competing with President Trump’s “Muslim ban” and the opposition to it and the contentious confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Education secretary.
Attention is turning to Obama’s post-presidency antics as we move further into the Trump administration.
The weekend that Trump took the oath of office, this country saw the largest political mobilization in U.S. history. And with each passing day of his presidency many Americans are growing increasingly outraged by the actions of the real estate mogul-turned reality TV-star-turned commander in chief.
And while the Democratic Party and the establishment left mourn Obama’s exit from the White House, they’re warning that we’ve entered a period of fascism in U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets in protest. They’re also mobilizing online and over the phone in a swell of engagement and outrage that seems unprecedented in recent memory.
And to a certain point their outrage is justified: Our president is a man who campaigned on a platform of bigotry.
He drove racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia into the mainstream, railing against political correctness and bringing into stark contrast the deep divisions among us.
Trump is waging war on the media and issuing orders that put a blanket ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries - nations that have been a target of U.S. imperialism and destabilization for more than 30 years. These orders are illegal, unconstitutional, and, frankly, morally reprehensible.
He could even breach international law if the U.S. Embassy in Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to occupied East Jerusalem, as he recently gave the green light for Israel to do so.
Trump has put Iran “on notice” - whatever that means - for an attack on the U.S. Navy which the Islamic Republic never committed. This has driven the United States into the closest military confrontation with Iran since 1979.
Millions of people gathered around the world in Women’s March protests the day after the inauguration. But as these protests swelled, one perhaps couldn’t help but wonder why there wasn’t any mobilization even remotely on this scale in the previous eight years during Obama’s presidency.
Perhaps it’s not too late to remind those who blindly followed the former “commander in cool,” who stamped each of his authoritarian policies with the platitudes of “Hope” and “Change,” of just how Trump’s new policies wouldn’t be possible without the full dictator’s toolkit that Obama and the Democratic Party prepared for him.
It was Obama who dropped more than 26,000 bombs on foreign soil - and that was just in 2016. It was Obama who destabilized and destroyed the very countries these victims of war are fleeing. And it was Obama who simultaneously approved arms sales to terror groups and dictatorships while expanding the war on terror.
It was Obama who expanded Bush’s drone war - a practically invisible war in which thousands of people have been killed without trial. Worse yet, many of those killed in drone strikes in countries like Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan, have been civilians whose only “crime” was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was Obama who gave Israel a record rate of $6 billion in military aid, more than any other administration in US history, emboldening the apartheid colony.
It was Obama who waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers. During Obama’s presidency there were eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act - that’s more than double those under all previous administrations combined.
It was Obama who continued to expand executive powers - including the ability to declare war unilaterally, meaning a president wouldn’t need congressional approval- that had already been dramatically expanded under the George W. Bush administration.
It was Obama who expanded Bush’s surveillance state right up until the very end.
Obama’s use of a secret court system, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, allowed his administration to ignore a federal court ruling that found bulk surveillance illegal. This ended up granting the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans.
With all the outrage over Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” and other policies, it seems logical that there would have been a similar blow back when Obama created the conditions for the death and destruction which refugees now hope to flee. Yet the same people calling executive overreach under Bush suddenly got quiet when Obama the Democrat came into office. But now that a Republican or Trump is behind the wheel of this enormous vehicle of practically unlimited power, those once quiet voices are rising up again.
Rather than reflecting on these and other horrendous acts perpetrated by the Obama administration, however, much of the Democratic and liberal bases are looking back on the Obama administration as “the good old days.” They and many others are demonstrating, en masse, against the powers that Donald Trump now has access to, ignoring the fact that not only did Obama himself use those powers, in many ways, his administration created and expanded them for the next successor.
The role of the independent press during times of great political upheaval is to wade through the chaos in order to provide the public with hard-hitting truths that transcend party lines.
Because the truth is, it doesn’t’ matter if a Republican or Democrat is in office - the policies from both parties look the same.
But we can’t begin to fight against the looming attacks against our civil liberties and the human rights of people everywhere - not just in the United States - without first acknowledging the crimes of previous administrations -Republican or Democrat - and the powers that they expanded for their successors.
If there’s going to be any genuine resistance to the Trump administration, then we have to be prepared for what tools he now has available, thanks largely to the former Democratic and Republican administrations before him, especially Obama.
With large swathes of America ready to protest, it’s time for the real anti-war movement to seize on that momentum and push for real change that actually creates conditions for a more peaceful world. It’s time to empty out the dictator’s toolbox and dismantle the system that’s brought us to this point. To “Hope” and “Change,” we say: Your move.
Dear Liberals: You Can’t Resist Trump Without Protesting Democrats Too
Hillary Clinton should absolutely not run for president in 2020. And Democrats should stop her if she tries.
There's a purposely provocative piece in Politico magazine this week that aims to make the case that Hillary Clinton is going to run for president for a third time in 2020. Citing the scaling back of the Clinton Global Initiative and her plans to write a seventh book as evidence, Matt Latimer concludes: “Yes, barring some calamity, Clinton is running. And this brave columnist will go one step further. Not only will Clinton run again, she has an excellent shot at getting the Democratic Party nomination again.”
Wrong. And not just wrong on Clinton running again. But wrong on the fact that if she runs she could or would have the inside track on the Democratic nomination.
Let's take it piece by piece.
First, the idea that Clinton is angling to run again.
Ask yourself a simple question: Why?
Clinton has now lost twice in runs for the White House. And they were defeats of the devastating variety.
In 2008, Clinton was not only seen as the clear favorite but, up until December 2007, it looked like she would cruise to the nomination as then-Sen. Barack Obama struggled to energize his supporters. Fast forward a few months and it was clear that Clinton was going to lose on delegates alone, but she chose to slug it out all the way until June before bowing to the inevitable.
Then came 2016 when Clinton, again, was seen as the clear favorite for not only the Democratic nomination but also the White House. The Democratic field was significantly less talented than eight years prior, but Clinton was unable to put them away, and Bernie Sanders pushed the nomination all the way to the bitter end. In the general election, Clinton was regarded as a massive favorite against Donald Trump who did, literally, the opposite of what every seasoned campaign aide told him to do for the duration of the campaign. He was engulfed by a scandal regarding sexist comments caught by an “Access Hollywood” mic. She drastically outspent him everywhere. Polling showed she would win easily. And she lost.
One loss like that would be more than enough for most politicians. Two is approaching Greek tragedy levels.
Then there is the fact that Clinton will be 70 this October. She has two young grandchildren. A daughter and son-in-law. A husband. Why commit to spending - at least - two years more away from your family on an activity that has brought you nothing but heartache for the past decade?
The only possible answer is that Clinton is deeply committed to public service. That she promised not to fade away in her concession speech in November 2016.
I'd argue there are lots of ways that someone as high-profile as Clinton could remain relevant - to the country and her party - without running again. National spokeswoman. Fundraiser. Policy maven. Key endorser.
Which brings me to the second point: If Clinton showed signs that she truly is interested in running, Democrats should make very clear that they aren't interested.
Clinton ran two national campaigns. In each, she looked on paper to be a sure thing. In each, she didn't win. Why? Because there was something about her that people didn't like or trust. Her email problems in this past campaign exacerbated that problem, to be sure, but there was always an undercurrent of distrust surrounding her.
It's possible that as the Trump presidency continues, there will be buyer's remorse that benefits Clinton. I wouldn't be surprised if there is polling some time in the next few months that shows Clinton's popularity surging even as Trump's continues to sink.
But what we know about politics is that the perceptions people have of politicians rarely change all that much. Mitt Romney, had he run again in 2016, would have been saddled with the “out of touch rich guy” label he had to wear in 2012. John F. Kerry, if he had run again in 2008, would be the Swiss-cheese ordering, windsurfing Boston Brahmin.
So, too, with Clinton. The second she started to show interest in running for president again, people would remember all of the things they didn't like about her. The same trust and likability issues would dog her. She would be forced to grapple with perception issues beyond her control to fix. And, as the last two campaigns have proven, Clinton simply lacks the candidate skills - and they are significant - to have any chance of fundamentally altering the narrative about her. Had she been able to do so, she would have already done it in time for the 2016 race!
Then there is the matter of Trump. While it is, of course, possible that Trump doesn't make it to the point where he stands for a second term, that seems less than likely at the moment. (Trump has already established a 2020 reelection committee and is raising money into it.) And Trump beat Clinton with a simple message: She is the status quo you hate; I am radical change. She's a politician; I'm not. She is of Washington; I hate Washington.
The best way for Democrats to beat Trump, to my mind, is to not allow him to claim the outsider mantle again. Nominating Clinton would do just that. Sure, Trump will have spent four years in Washington by 2020. But Clinton, in the eyes of lots and lots of voters, will never be able to shake the image of being a traditional Washington politician. It's exactly the sort of race Trump wants to run - against Washington but needing four more years to truly overhaul it.
The simple fact is that the public has had two chances to elect Hillary Clinton president. Neither time has it done so. You can argue forever about her relative qualifications and how she has worked her entire life to hold that one job. But this is a democracy where the electoral college vote decides who the president is. And twice, the public has chosen someone other than Clinton. That's just the reality.
Clinton should not - and I believe will not - run again in 2020. But Democrats would be foolish to, again, place all their bets on Clinton. That time has passed.
Hillary Clinton should absolutely not run for president in 2020. And Democrats should stop her if she tries.
Hillary Clinton 2020 Is a Reality. Get Ready for Eight Years of Trump
Democrats Need a Coherent and Powerful Message
Clinton’s communications director demonstrates how Democrats shouldn’t communicate…
One of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election is that nobody had any idea what she actually wanted to do as president. Everyone knew what Trump wanted: to build the wall, bring back the jobs, and bomb the shit out of ISIS. But it was never clear what Hillary Clinton was actually proposing to do. The messaging from the Clinton campaign was entirely focused on who she was (an experienced and responsible person, rather than an unhinged and bigoted one) rather than any actual plan she had for how to fix the country’s problems.
This really isn’t an exaggeration. You can try it on your friends: ask them what Clinton’s main plans were (no, desperately lifting Bernie Sanders’s free college proposal doesn’t count). See if they can tell you. Even Joe Biden saw it, saying that Clinton never figured out why she was running in the first place, beyond feeling as if it was something she probably ought to do. We hear sometimes about how Clinton had the most progressive platform ever. But nobody can remember what was actually in it.
One serious problem of the Clinton campaign, then, was its failure to craft a clear message. Because Clinton wanted to court both moderate Republicans and Sanders socialists, her public statements frequently ended up saying almost nothing (witness her official comments on the Dakota Access Pipeline, which were rightly mocked as meaningless). An important lesson to learn from Clinton’s loss should be: it’s got to be clear what you stand for. And you have to stand for something, you can’t stand for everything. Furthermore, saying things like “ we face complex and intersectional challenges” is not a compelling diagnosis of America’s social ills. It’s empty language, it won’t resonate. (I remember multiple news stories from the campaign in which voters said they literally couldn’t understand the words that Clinton was speaking.)
But Clinton Democrats have not necessarily learned this lesson. Witness what Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s former communications director, had to say recently on the subject of what to make of the large anti-Trump protests:
I think that a lot of this energy is not - the base is there, but you are wrong to look at these crowds and think that means everyone wants $15 an hour. Don’t assume that the answer to big crowds is moving policy to the left. I think the answer to the big crowds is engaging as much as you can to be as supportive as you can and understanding - what these people want, they are desperate. It’s all about identity on our side now. They want to show he does not support me. I support you, refugee. I support you, immigrant in my neighborhood. I want to defend you. Women who are rejecting Nordstrom’s and Neiman Marcus are saying this is power for them. Donald Trump doesn’t take me seriously, well, I’m showing you my value and my power, and I think it’s like our own version of identity politics on the left that’s more empowering, and I think that’s we’re - that’s a safer place to be.
There are a few issues to note here. First, if anyone wondered whether Clinton Democrats would have learned that they needed to care more about economic issues, the answer is no. Palmieri, like Nancy Pelosi, does not sense any need to respond to the economic populism that led 13 million voters toward Bernie Sanders in the primary and helped Trump win crucial Rust Belt states. The standard progressive criticism of Clintonian centrism is that it values racial diversity and inclusive gender politics, but it actually doesn’t care about lifting the living standards of working-class people of any race or gender. Palmieri confirms that this impression is no myth; it’s “all about identity” these days, and we shouldn’t assume people want $15 an hour. (Is there actually anyone who doesn’t want $15 an hour?) And “power,” to this contingent of Democrats, is about whether you shop at Neiman Marcus or not. It’s not about, say, power in the workplace.
But there’s a separate important question to ask: what is Palmieri actually talking about here? Look again at the above paragraph. It’s almost totally without meaning. What is “a safer place to be”? What does “it’s all about identity” even imply? Yes, one gets the fact that she’s rejecting calls to adopt more progressive economic policies, and that she thinks doing politics means deciding which expensive department store to shop at. But the most striking thing about the statement is its utter vacuousness. She wants to be supportive and empowering, but we get almost no specifics as to what that entails. (Palmieri also said that voters were “scared” rather than “angry,” a distinction just about as clear and useful as the one between “greatness” and “goodness” in the baffling Clinton slogan “America is great because America is good.”)
Now remember that Palmieri was Clinton’s communications director. That should have meant she was the person most skilled at delivering a clear message. She should at least have been able to speak an intelligible English sentence. But Palmieri’s style is the Clinton style: the words slip through your fingers like sand, and nobody has any idea what is actually being said. (Incidentally this same communications director, when she was once asked whether the Clinton Foundation would return Bill Cosby’s donations, replied: “They, um, but you know, the, uh, the foundation has, uh, it’s, uh, buh, there’s been a lot of donors that, uh, have given, uh, have given money, uh. They, uh, as our friend Paul Begala said, it’s, you know, wealthy people giving money to help poor people. Uh, we think that’s, uh, that’s a positive thing.” Loyalty rather than competence has long been the central criterion by which Clinton staffers are selected.)
Thus, while one important goal for the Democratic Party must be to offer policies that materially benefit the working class, another goal is to find ways of speaking that people actually understand and relate to. You’re not going to sway people towards your message if you don’t really have one, if there’s no clear and coherent vision for what the party means and stands for.
This in itself is a reason why the progressive wing of the party needs to shape its direction, and why the DNC needs a Keith Ellison rather than a Tom Perez. Even if you disagree with what the progressives are offering, they’re actually offering something, something intelligible and cogent. As with Trump, everybody knew what Bernie Sanders stood for: Medicare for all, reining in Wall Street, free college. You can take it or leave it, but at least there’s something to actually take. Centrists don’t have an actual vision, because they form their politics by triangulating between whatever worldviews are on either side of them. That means that they don’t really believe in anything, or at least that their beliefs are not founded on obvious inner moral convictions.
But in order to win people over, you’ve got to actually believe in something. People see through empty rhetoric about empowerment and inclusiveness. They know that politics is about what the government does, and that unless you’re telling them what you plan to do with the government, you’re not actually telling them anything. If Democrats are going to get back into power, they need a simple and morally forceful set of basic values and policy plans.
Democrats Need a Coherent and Powerful Message
Trump: 0. Democrats: 0. The People: 1
Throughout the country, the Trump administration’s policies are being met by resistance - no thanks to Democratic elites.
1.
Donald Trump was handed a major defeat a couple nights ago when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate his travel ban. The three-judge panel, which included a George W. Bush appointee, unanimously rejected one of Trump’s key arguments: that when it comes to immigration and national security, the actions of the executive branch are not subject to judicial review.
Although our jurisprudence has long counseled deference to the political branches on matters of immigration and national security, neither the Supreme Court nor our court has ever held that courts lack the authority to review executive action in those arenas for compliance with the Constitution. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has repeatedly and explicitly rejected the notion that the political branches have unreviewable authority over immigration or are not subject to the Constitution when policymaking in that context.
FDR was handed defeat after defeat by the courts, yet managed to turn their intransigence - which was arrayed against what a clear majority of the nation wanted - into a symbol of the old regime that needed to be gutted and into a source of even greater power for him and his party.
That’s a little hard to do when:
a) you were put into office by a minority of the electorate;
b) your policies are unpopular;
c) you and your voters belong to the party that is both creator and custodian of that old regime; and
d) your proposals are being struck down by judges appointed by your party.
That signifies not an opportunity for you to wrestle that old regime to the ground - since in so many respects you don’t want to touch the old regime - but instead a crisis within the old regime, which you were elected to reform and save, not destroy.
Sad.
2.
It seems as if Trump’s campaign promises about immigration - his rhetoric about Muslims and refugees, his willingness to say what so many people in his party thought but were too polite or smart to say - will continue to come back to haunt him in court. If that overtly racist rhetoric turns out to sink him, or at least these policies, it’ll be another nail in the coffin not just of Trump but of conservatism and the GOP.
Throughout the campaign, I said that Trump’s rhetoric was a sign of the weakening of the conservative cause: a racist or nativist dog whistle used to be enough to mobilize majorities. No more: now the party needs a megaphone, just to mobilize an ever dwindling base. But if it turns out that that megaphone is precisely what sinks the policies the base wants, there’s going to be major turmoil within the party, from top to bottom.
This is the kind of political incoherence that weak parties in weak regimes find themselves in. Again, this is not a symptom of Trump, his erraticness, or his incompetence. This is a symptom of the impasse the Republican Party has found itself as the premises of the Reagan regime start to get shaky.
3.
According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, there’s been a marked shift in public opinion on immigration.
Back in November, Americans were asked:
Do you support or oppose suspending immigration from ‘terror prone’ regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions?
At the time, respondents favored suspending immigration by 50-44 percent.
As of two days ago, those numbers have flipped. Now respondents oppose suspending immigration by 50-44 percent. That’s a 12-point flip in public opinion - against the president’s position.
With new presidents, and presidents we think of as politically potent, you expect to see the exact opposite trend line: that is, policies and proposals getting more popular, not less. Yet the opposite seems to be happening with Trump.
What so many on the Left fear about Trump -wrongly, in my view - is his allegedly intuitive feel and appeal to the masses, particularly on these issues of nationalism, immigration, race, and religion. Yet it seems that that is precisely where he is falling down. And not merely because of the incompetence of his administration. But also, critically, because of the opposition and resistance so many people have mounted. Making his policies chaotic, disruptive, and a big hot mess, actually turns people off to those policies because it shows that they (the policies) can’t deliver what most people want: a sense of a calm and stability.
4.
This piece by Marc Tracy about Steve Bannon’s reading habits is really interesting and smart.
Tracy ran into Steve Bannon at an airport. Bannon was reading The Best and the Brightest.
At first glance, that makes sense: Bannon loathes the liberal Ivy League technocrats who populated the Obama administration and whose predecessors got us into Vietnam.
But what defined those Johnson-era technocrats, Tracy shows, is not that they knew what they were talking about; half the time, they hadn’t a clue. They were just part of the smart set, who by virtue of a certain temperament and repertoire of skills and attitudes, were presumed to be the natural leaders of the nation (not unlike the Vox set today, but I digress).
As Tracy argues, though, “Mr. Bannon seems less a repudiation than a reincarnation of the tragic protagonists of The Best and the Brightest.”
Indeed.
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to NPR, and one of Trump’s flunkies, Sebastian Gorka - who has a plummy English accent of the sort that got Dean Acheson into so much trouble with the McCarthyite right; autres temps - was heralding Bannon as a strategic genius who thinks strategically and strategizes like no other strategist. The man needn’t know anything specific; it’s just his cast of mind that matters.
And Trump himself, I would add, is just the CEO version of the best and the brightest, peddling what he allegedly learned from the art of the deal as somehow the Rosetta Stone to governing a nation.
5.
Jonathan Chait thinks Obamacare may survive, and Matt Yglesias itemizes all the ways in which Trump has met defeat thus far.
If they’re right - and I’ve suggested that I think they are - Trump is going to start to look less and less appealing to his base.
It’s hard to overstate how devastating it can be to a president not to be able to win on signature campaign promises. Whatever ideological fervor he can muster, he starts looking weak. Very weak. And that is something that no president - least of all Trump, who has made a fetish of his efficacy and strength - can afford.
6.
Listen to this story from Sunday’s Weekend Edition on NPR.
A California Republican congressman, who was reelected with more than 60 percent of the vote, thought he’d convene a friendly little conversation at a town hall. Hundreds of hostile constituents showed up, and after failing to respond adequately to their concerns, he had to have a police escort on his way out. One woman, who has never been politically active before, is quoted saying something like, “Apparently, this is now what I do on weekends.” And, apparently, these are being organized across the country.
So two takeaways:
First, this is happening in Republican districts. There’s a lot of criticism of the Left - and frankly a lot of self-flagellating criticism on the Left - about how we’re in a bubble, we’re only speaking to ourselves, and so forth. These types of events are happening in Republican districts, sometimes in Republican states. Criticize away, but don’t let your lefty angst blind you to the great organizing that is actually happening in these areas.
Second, also pay attention to all these people who were previously apolitical or not involved who are now getting involved. I’m seeing this everywhere, sometimes with people I know personally. This is not a movement of the usual suspects. People are changing right before our eyes: not because they’re getting lectured to or talked at with the right political line, but because they’re acting, getting out there in the streets, and doing things and learning things while and through they’re doing them. That’s what matters.
7.
Apparently,
Establishment Democrats have been surprised by the longevity and ferocity of grassroots opposition to President Trump . . .
Longevity? The man has been in office for exactly 20 days. I guess neoliberalism has fucked with the time horizon of these people more than I realized.
8.
Back in the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher took stock of her party’s failure at the polls, took a close look at the opposition’s successes, and came to a realization: “The other side have got an ideology. We must have one as well.”
Nancy Pelosi? Not so much.
Pelosi, asked if Dems will face primaries the way the GOP did from Tea Party:
“We don’t have a party orthodoxy. They are ideological.”
- Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 9, 2017
9.
It still amazes me, when you consider how massive the racial wealth gap is in this country, that Hillary Clinton managed to present herself in the primary as the candidate concerned with racial equality while simultaneously claiming, “Not everything is about an economic theory.”
I hope, the next time we have to fight this fight on the Left, people realize that when a candidate is saying something like that, she’s not signaling an intention to confront racial inequality. She’s actually telling you, in no uncertain terms, that she won’t.
10.
About a month ago, we were hearing a lot about how the problem with democracy is that it mobilizes the masses, who then threaten democracy by making it difficult for elites to preserve liberal principles like the rule of law and the integrity of institutions. Now we’re seeing that it may be those very masses who actually save democracy and those liberal principles.
Trump: 0. Democrats: 0. The People: 1
Dear Liberals: You Can’t Resist Trump Without Protesting Democrats Too
As an unprecedented wave of outrage swells against the Trump administration, Mnar Muhawesh, host of ‘Behind the Headline,’ wonders why people weren’t more outraged with Obama’s policies on mass surveillance, whistleblowers, and war.
MINNEAPOLIS - Remember our former commander in chief - Barack Obama? Well he’s on vacation. After eight years in the Oval Office, he’s decided to unwind with billionaire Richard Branson. His recent kitesurfing adventure seems to be the only news item competing with President Trump’s “Muslim ban” and the opposition to it and the contentious confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Education secretary.
Attention is turning to Obama’s post-presidency antics as we move further into the Trump administration.
The weekend that Trump took the oath of office, this country saw the largest political mobilization in U.S. history. And with each passing day of his presidency many Americans are growing increasingly outraged by the actions of the real estate mogul-turned reality TV-star-turned commander in chief.
And while the Democratic Party and the establishment left mourn Obama’s exit from the White House, they’re warning that we’ve entered a period of fascism in U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets in protest. They’re also mobilizing online and over the phone in a swell of engagement and outrage that seems unprecedented in recent memory.
And to a certain point their outrage is justified: Our president is a man who campaigned on a platform of bigotry.
He drove racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia into the mainstream, railing against political correctness and bringing into stark contrast the deep divisions among us.
Trump is waging war on the media and issuing orders that put a blanket ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries - nations that have been a target of U.S. imperialism and destabilization for more than 30 years. These orders are illegal, unconstitutional, and, frankly, morally reprehensible.
He could even breach international law if the U.S. Embassy in Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to occupied East Jerusalem, as he recently gave the green light for Israel to do so.
Trump has put Iran “on notice” - whatever that means - for an attack on the U.S. Navy which the Islamic Republic never committed. This has driven the United States into the closest military confrontation with Iran since 1979.
Millions of people gathered around the world in Women’s March protests the day after the inauguration. But as these protests swelled, one perhaps couldn’t help but wonder why there wasn’t any mobilization even remotely on this scale in the previous eight years during Obama’s presidency.
Perhaps it’s not too late to remind those who blindly followed the former “commander in cool,” who stamped each of his authoritarian policies with the platitudes of “Hope” and “Change,” of just how Trump’s new policies wouldn’t be possible without the full dictator’s toolkit that Obama and the Democratic Party prepared for him.
It was Obama who dropped more than 26,000 bombs on foreign soil - and that was just in 2016. It was Obama who destabilized and destroyed the very countries these victims of war are fleeing. And it was Obama who simultaneously approved arms sales to terror groups and dictatorships while expanding the war on terror.
It was Obama who expanded Bush’s drone war - a practically invisible war in which thousands of people have been killed without trial. Worse yet, many of those killed in drone strikes in countries like Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan, have been civilians whose only “crime” was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was Obama who gave Israel a record rate of $6 billion in military aid, more than any other administration in US history, emboldening the apartheid colony.
It was Obama who waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers. During Obama’s presidency there were eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act - that’s more than double those under all previous administrations combined.
It was Obama who continued to expand executive powers - including the ability to declare war unilaterally, meaning a president wouldn’t need congressional approval- that had already been dramatically expanded under the George W. Bush administration.
It was Obama who expanded Bush’s surveillance state right up until the very end.
Obama’s use of a secret court system, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, allowed his administration to ignore a federal court ruling that found bulk surveillance illegal. This ended up granting the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans.
With all the outrage over Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” and other policies, it seems logical that there would have been a similar blow back when Obama created the conditions for the death and destruction which refugees now hope to flee. Yet the same people calling executive overreach under Bush suddenly got quiet when Obama the Democrat came into office. But now that a Republican or Trump is behind the wheel of this enormous vehicle of practically unlimited power, those once quiet voices are rising up again.
Rather than reflecting on these and other horrendous acts perpetrated by the Obama administration, however, much of the Democratic and liberal bases are looking back on the Obama administration as “the good old days.” They and many others are demonstrating, en masse, against the powers that Donald Trump now has access to, ignoring the fact that not only did Obama himself use those powers, in many ways, his administration created and expanded them for the next successor.
The role of the independent press during times of great political upheaval is to wade through the chaos in order to provide the public with hard-hitting truths that transcend party lines.
Because the truth is, it doesn’t’ matter if a Republican or Democrat is in office - the policies from both parties look the same.
But we can’t begin to fight against the looming attacks against our civil liberties and the human rights of people everywhere - not just in the United States - without first acknowledging the crimes of previous administrations -Republican or Democrat - and the powers that they expanded for their successors.
If there’s going to be any genuine resistance to the Trump administration, then we have to be prepared for what tools he now has available, thanks largely to the former Democratic and Republican administrations before him, especially Obama.
With large swathes of America ready to protest, it’s time for the real anti-war movement to seize on that momentum and push for real change that actually creates conditions for a more peaceful world. It’s time to empty out the dictator’s toolbox and dismantle the system that’s brought us to this point. To “Hope” and “Change,” we say: Your move.
Dear Liberals: You Can’t Resist Trump Without Protesting Democrats Too
Hillary Clinton should absolutely not run for president in 2020. And Democrats should stop her if she tries.
There's a purposely provocative piece in Politico magazine this week that aims to make the case that Hillary Clinton is going to run for president for a third time in 2020. Citing the scaling back of the Clinton Global Initiative and her plans to write a seventh book as evidence, Matt Latimer concludes: “Yes, barring some calamity, Clinton is running. And this brave columnist will go one step further. Not only will Clinton run again, she has an excellent shot at getting the Democratic Party nomination again.”
Wrong. And not just wrong on Clinton running again. But wrong on the fact that if she runs she could or would have the inside track on the Democratic nomination.
Let's take it piece by piece.
First, the idea that Clinton is angling to run again.
Ask yourself a simple question: Why?
Clinton has now lost twice in runs for the White House. And they were defeats of the devastating variety.
In 2008, Clinton was not only seen as the clear favorite but, up until December 2007, it looked like she would cruise to the nomination as then-Sen. Barack Obama struggled to energize his supporters. Fast forward a few months and it was clear that Clinton was going to lose on delegates alone, but she chose to slug it out all the way until June before bowing to the inevitable.
Then came 2016 when Clinton, again, was seen as the clear favorite for not only the Democratic nomination but also the White House. The Democratic field was significantly less talented than eight years prior, but Clinton was unable to put them away, and Bernie Sanders pushed the nomination all the way to the bitter end. In the general election, Clinton was regarded as a massive favorite against Donald Trump who did, literally, the opposite of what every seasoned campaign aide told him to do for the duration of the campaign. He was engulfed by a scandal regarding sexist comments caught by an “Access Hollywood” mic. She drastically outspent him everywhere. Polling showed she would win easily. And she lost.
One loss like that would be more than enough for most politicians. Two is approaching Greek tragedy levels.
Then there is the fact that Clinton will be 70 this October. She has two young grandchildren. A daughter and son-in-law. A husband. Why commit to spending - at least - two years more away from your family on an activity that has brought you nothing but heartache for the past decade?
The only possible answer is that Clinton is deeply committed to public service. That she promised not to fade away in her concession speech in November 2016.
I'd argue there are lots of ways that someone as high-profile as Clinton could remain relevant - to the country and her party - without running again. National spokeswoman. Fundraiser. Policy maven. Key endorser.
Which brings me to the second point: If Clinton showed signs that she truly is interested in running, Democrats should make very clear that they aren't interested.
Clinton ran two national campaigns. In each, she looked on paper to be a sure thing. In each, she didn't win. Why? Because there was something about her that people didn't like or trust. Her email problems in this past campaign exacerbated that problem, to be sure, but there was always an undercurrent of distrust surrounding her.
It's possible that as the Trump presidency continues, there will be buyer's remorse that benefits Clinton. I wouldn't be surprised if there is polling some time in the next few months that shows Clinton's popularity surging even as Trump's continues to sink.
But what we know about politics is that the perceptions people have of politicians rarely change all that much. Mitt Romney, had he run again in 2016, would have been saddled with the “out of touch rich guy” label he had to wear in 2012. John F. Kerry, if he had run again in 2008, would be the Swiss-cheese ordering, windsurfing Boston Brahmin.
So, too, with Clinton. The second she started to show interest in running for president again, people would remember all of the things they didn't like about her. The same trust and likability issues would dog her. She would be forced to grapple with perception issues beyond her control to fix. And, as the last two campaigns have proven, Clinton simply lacks the candidate skills - and they are significant - to have any chance of fundamentally altering the narrative about her. Had she been able to do so, she would have already done it in time for the 2016 race!
Then there is the matter of Trump. While it is, of course, possible that Trump doesn't make it to the point where he stands for a second term, that seems less than likely at the moment. (Trump has already established a 2020 reelection committee and is raising money into it.) And Trump beat Clinton with a simple message: She is the status quo you hate; I am radical change. She's a politician; I'm not. She is of Washington; I hate Washington.
The best way for Democrats to beat Trump, to my mind, is to not allow him to claim the outsider mantle again. Nominating Clinton would do just that. Sure, Trump will have spent four years in Washington by 2020. But Clinton, in the eyes of lots and lots of voters, will never be able to shake the image of being a traditional Washington politician. It's exactly the sort of race Trump wants to run - against Washington but needing four more years to truly overhaul it.
The simple fact is that the public has had two chances to elect Hillary Clinton president. Neither time has it done so. You can argue forever about her relative qualifications and how she has worked her entire life to hold that one job. But this is a democracy where the electoral college vote decides who the president is. And twice, the public has chosen someone other than Clinton. That's just the reality.
Clinton should not - and I believe will not - run again in 2020. But Democrats would be foolish to, again, place all their bets on Clinton. That time has passed.
Hillary Clinton should absolutely not run for president in 2020. And Democrats should stop her if she tries.
Click to viewHillary Clinton 2020 Is a Reality. Get Ready for Eight Years of Trump
Democrats Need a Coherent and Powerful Message
Clinton’s communications director demonstrates how Democrats shouldn’t communicate…
One of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election is that nobody had any idea what she actually wanted to do as president. Everyone knew what Trump wanted: to build the wall, bring back the jobs, and bomb the shit out of ISIS. But it was never clear what Hillary Clinton was actually proposing to do. The messaging from the Clinton campaign was entirely focused on who she was (an experienced and responsible person, rather than an unhinged and bigoted one) rather than any actual plan she had for how to fix the country’s problems.
This really isn’t an exaggeration. You can try it on your friends: ask them what Clinton’s main plans were (no, desperately lifting Bernie Sanders’s free college proposal doesn’t count). See if they can tell you. Even Joe Biden saw it, saying that Clinton never figured out why she was running in the first place, beyond feeling as if it was something she probably ought to do. We hear sometimes about how Clinton had the most progressive platform ever. But nobody can remember what was actually in it.
One serious problem of the Clinton campaign, then, was its failure to craft a clear message. Because Clinton wanted to court both moderate Republicans and Sanders socialists, her public statements frequently ended up saying almost nothing (witness her official comments on the Dakota Access Pipeline, which were rightly mocked as meaningless). An important lesson to learn from Clinton’s loss should be: it’s got to be clear what you stand for. And you have to stand for something, you can’t stand for everything. Furthermore, saying things like “ we face complex and intersectional challenges” is not a compelling diagnosis of America’s social ills. It’s empty language, it won’t resonate. (I remember multiple news stories from the campaign in which voters said they literally couldn’t understand the words that Clinton was speaking.)
But Clinton Democrats have not necessarily learned this lesson. Witness what Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s former communications director, had to say recently on the subject of what to make of the large anti-Trump protests:
I think that a lot of this energy is not - the base is there, but you are wrong to look at these crowds and think that means everyone wants $15 an hour. Don’t assume that the answer to big crowds is moving policy to the left. I think the answer to the big crowds is engaging as much as you can to be as supportive as you can and understanding - what these people want, they are desperate. It’s all about identity on our side now. They want to show he does not support me. I support you, refugee. I support you, immigrant in my neighborhood. I want to defend you. Women who are rejecting Nordstrom’s and Neiman Marcus are saying this is power for them. Donald Trump doesn’t take me seriously, well, I’m showing you my value and my power, and I think it’s like our own version of identity politics on the left that’s more empowering, and I think that’s we’re - that’s a safer place to be.
There are a few issues to note here. First, if anyone wondered whether Clinton Democrats would have learned that they needed to care more about economic issues, the answer is no. Palmieri, like Nancy Pelosi, does not sense any need to respond to the economic populism that led 13 million voters toward Bernie Sanders in the primary and helped Trump win crucial Rust Belt states. The standard progressive criticism of Clintonian centrism is that it values racial diversity and inclusive gender politics, but it actually doesn’t care about lifting the living standards of working-class people of any race or gender. Palmieri confirms that this impression is no myth; it’s “all about identity” these days, and we shouldn’t assume people want $15 an hour. (Is there actually anyone who doesn’t want $15 an hour?) And “power,” to this contingent of Democrats, is about whether you shop at Neiman Marcus or not. It’s not about, say, power in the workplace.
But there’s a separate important question to ask: what is Palmieri actually talking about here? Look again at the above paragraph. It’s almost totally without meaning. What is “a safer place to be”? What does “it’s all about identity” even imply? Yes, one gets the fact that she’s rejecting calls to adopt more progressive economic policies, and that she thinks doing politics means deciding which expensive department store to shop at. But the most striking thing about the statement is its utter vacuousness. She wants to be supportive and empowering, but we get almost no specifics as to what that entails. (Palmieri also said that voters were “scared” rather than “angry,” a distinction just about as clear and useful as the one between “greatness” and “goodness” in the baffling Clinton slogan “America is great because America is good.”)
Now remember that Palmieri was Clinton’s communications director. That should have meant she was the person most skilled at delivering a clear message. She should at least have been able to speak an intelligible English sentence. But Palmieri’s style is the Clinton style: the words slip through your fingers like sand, and nobody has any idea what is actually being said. (Incidentally this same communications director, when she was once asked whether the Clinton Foundation would return Bill Cosby’s donations, replied: “They, um, but you know, the, uh, the foundation has, uh, it’s, uh, buh, there’s been a lot of donors that, uh, have given, uh, have given money, uh. They, uh, as our friend Paul Begala said, it’s, you know, wealthy people giving money to help poor people. Uh, we think that’s, uh, that’s a positive thing.” Loyalty rather than competence has long been the central criterion by which Clinton staffers are selected.)
Thus, while one important goal for the Democratic Party must be to offer policies that materially benefit the working class, another goal is to find ways of speaking that people actually understand and relate to. You’re not going to sway people towards your message if you don’t really have one, if there’s no clear and coherent vision for what the party means and stands for.
This in itself is a reason why the progressive wing of the party needs to shape its direction, and why the DNC needs a Keith Ellison rather than a Tom Perez. Even if you disagree with what the progressives are offering, they’re actually offering something, something intelligible and cogent. As with Trump, everybody knew what Bernie Sanders stood for: Medicare for all, reining in Wall Street, free college. You can take it or leave it, but at least there’s something to actually take. Centrists don’t have an actual vision, because they form their politics by triangulating between whatever worldviews are on either side of them. That means that they don’t really believe in anything, or at least that their beliefs are not founded on obvious inner moral convictions.
But in order to win people over, you’ve got to actually believe in something. People see through empty rhetoric about empowerment and inclusiveness. They know that politics is about what the government does, and that unless you’re telling them what you plan to do with the government, you’re not actually telling them anything. If Democrats are going to get back into power, they need a simple and morally forceful set of basic values and policy plans.
Democrats Need a Coherent and Powerful Message