Are Trump Supporters Over Confident About 2020?

In what I hope my turn out to be a prophecy, a piece in New York Magazine posits the question of whether Donald Trump supporters are too over confident about Trump's re-election prospects in 2020 and, as a result might not turn out in force to vote.  The piece considers the non-stop pro-Trump propaganda by the right wing media which could result in his cult like followers finding themselves in a bubble detached from mainstream America where - much as the far left of the Democrat base - and posed to receive a severe shock if the con-man of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is not re-elected. The piece also notes the over confidence of the Clinton campaign in 2016 that allowed Trump to eke by in three states by the slimmest of margins and win the Electoral College.   Democrats are nowhere as confident and, hopefully, this will cause them to strive harder and to go to the polls to stop the human cancer that currently inhabits the White House.  Here are highlights:

If you forced yourself to watch significant portions of the House Judiciary Committee’s markup of articles of impeachment, you undoubtedly heard the Republican hypothesis that the entire exercise is an effort to head off a certain Trump reelection next year. This assumption was often hurled at Democrats as a taunt . . . .
 Impeachment aside, any casual perusal of pro-Trump conservative news and opinion outlets shows an impressive consensus that the president is cruising to a 2020 victory, with impeachment viewed as a base-mobilizer rather than a development that will repel swing voters, . . .
 This take on impeachment rather notably collides with the claim that it is intended to head off Trump’s reelection, since Democrats infallibly know the Republican-controlled Senate will acquit him. But the fact remains that Trump fans are feeling more, not less, confident about 2020, and they were pretty confident earlier, as National Review observed over a month ago: . . . . The survey shows that 56 percent of voters believe the president will be reelected. Eighty-five percent of Republicans and 51 percent of independents were confident in Trump’s reelection effort, compared to 35 percent of Democrats.

Eighty-five percent is a lot of confidence in a president who lost the popular vote the first time around and has never been anything other than underwater in his job-approval ratings.

You don’t need a poll to grasp that Democrats aren’t remotely as confident about 2020. The simple fact that Democratic voters are obsessed with the electability of prospective nominees tells you all you need to know about that. And this anxiety — if not pessimism — is constantly reinforced by analysis suggesting Trump can again win while losing the popular vote by an even greater margin than before.

This contrast in moods is, to put it mildly, a reversal of the situation going into the 2016 general election. Of all the reasons Trump won, you have to figure overconfidence in the HRC camp — leading to strategic missteps by the campaign, and indifferent turnout and protest voting among the rank-and-file — was a significant factor.

There is no polling lead by the Democratic nominee or mistake by Trump this time around that will convince Democratic voters this election is in the bag. But it’s possible that a solid year of triumphalist braying from Trump, his campaign, his party, and his media allies, will persuade some of his own voters that he’s already won, so it’s safe to spend Election Day in other pursuits, or at the grocery and liquor stores stocking up for the big victory celebration. It could be a fatal mistake.

The Pitfalls of Assessing Candidate Electability

Poll after poll has shown that the main concerning of Democrats is picking a presidential nominee who can defeat Donald Trump.  Depending on one's ideology, who that individual might be ends up with an array of candidates all over the map. In my personal view, a candidate too far to the left - e.g., Sanders, Warren, etc. - will end up with Trump being re-elected and the nation being condemned to four more years of moral and political nightmare (more Americans self-identify as "conservative" than "liberal"). In the final analysis, who will prove to electable or not will not be known until the day after the 2020 election. A piece in Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the issue of electablility (read the entire piece since it shows historically how off some prognostications have proven to be).  Here are excerpts:

We’re not exactly sure when the awkward word “electability” really entered the national lexicon, but the concept — voters and party bigwigs making a pre-election assessment about who is likeliest to win — is surely as old as democracy itself.

“Electability” is clearly on the minds of Democrats as they determine who gets the nod to challenge President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee seeking a second term in the White House.

A few weeks ago, the Huffington Post’s Kevin Robillard and Amanda Terkel explored the idea of electability in the Democratic Party primary. It’s something everyone seems to care about, but few can persuasively define or determine:

The perception of which candidates stand the best chance of toppling Trump will play a major role in deciding who ultimately wins the Democratic Party’s nomination, according to polling and interviews with campaigns, operatives and rank-and-file voters across the early primary states.

But many of those perceptions and theories — Joe Biden can win back the Rust Belt! Isn’t Elizabeth Warren a bit like Hillary Clinton? Bernie Sanders can win West Virginia! — are based on flimsy evidence. And unlike the simple question of whom voters like the most, the question of electability involves evaluating what other people might like. And that’s something voters — and even political operatives — aren’t great at.

Certainly Trump’s victory is a great argument against the idea that so-called electability can be discerned in advance. For much of the campaign cycle it didn’t seem like Trump was capable of winning, but then he did. This was a vindication for Conway, obviously, but also for many conservatives who believed in the wake of John McCain and Mitt Romney’s losses to Barack Obama that the rank and file had bowed to party leaders concerned about “electability” and nominated candidates many GOP base voters didn’t like only to see them lose anyway. As Laura Reston of the New Republic put it in a 2016 piece from the late stages of the GOP primary about Ted Cruz and John Kasich arguing they were more electable than Trump, “The way rank-and-file conservatives see it, the party acceded to its most ‘electable’ candidates in the last two cycles… For many, if not most, Republicans, ‘electability’ has come to look like a way to both compromise the party’s principles and lose general elections.”
 There are some problems with this argument from conservatives. Politics is often about timing, and the political conditions in 2016 for Trump (an open-seat election coming off two terms of a Democratic president with relatively mediocre approval ratings) were better than those for McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. The former had to deal with the weight of George W. Bush’s unpopular presidency and the latter faced the unenviable task of running against an incumbent president. Obama, it now seems very fair to say, was also a superior campaigner than Hillary Clinton and had better favorability numbers.

One could argue that because of extenuating circumstances, McCain and Romney, who lost, were more “electable” than Trump, who won, but on its face it’s kind of a silly argument because of what actually happened. Yes, perhaps Romney and McCain both would have won in 2016, and Trump would have lost in both 2008 and 2012. But ultimately, how can one say for sure?

The bottom line here is that there are a lot of candidates who seem unelectable until, that is, they are actually elected.

Polls almost universally show Joe Biden running better against Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2020 matchup than his rivals for the Democratic nomination. Similar polls during 2015 after Donald Trump took the lead in the GOP primary generally showed him performing poorly against Hillary Clinton compared to other Republican contenders.

Does that mean that any GOP nominee was destined to win in 2016 against Clinton? Perhaps. But then one looks at the granular election results, and the immense improvements Trump made on recent Republican performances in the electorally vital rural areas and small cities of Big Ten Country. It is reasonable to wonder: Could Jeb Bush have done that? Or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio? Perhaps so, but perhaps not.

It would be tempting for Democrats to look at Trump and argue that if Trump could fly in the face of conventional wisdom and run hard to the right and still win, then they could beat him by doing the same thing themselves and running to the left.

That may end up being the case, but there are a few factors Democrats should consider before coming to that conclusion. For one thing, self-identified conservatives still outnumber liberals in the general public. It may be that the general electorate would be more open to a far-right candidate than a far-left one because of the nation’s ideological orientation.

Additionally, the reality of Trump’s 2016 candidacy may be more complicated than just saying he was and is a far-right conservative.

Certainly on immigration he is. But Trump also subverted usual GOP messaging on other issues.

Logically, the most “electable” Democrat would be able to claw back some Trump voters who reside in that populist ideological portion of the electorate. We already mentioned Biden’s strength in general election polls against Trump compared to other Democrats, although we don’t think such polls are all that predictive at this point. Still, a polling edge combined with Biden’s support from the more moderate elements of the Democratic Party and his coolness to some of the more progressive policy proposals that have been discussed during the Democratic primary so far, like Medicare for all, might lead one to believe Biden is the most electable.

That said, Bernie Sanders is already going after Biden for his votes to authorize the Iraq war and in support of NAFTA. Couldn’t Trump do the same, effectively getting to the left of Biden on international issues and holding his populist support in the key heartland states as a result?

At the same time, could it also be possible that a Democrat who did emphasize racial justice issues could generate better turnout among nonwhite voters, thus improving on Clinton’s margins enough in big, diverse, and electorally important cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia to overcome Trump’s huge margins in the countrysides of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania? Alternately, could such a Democratic candidate reshape the electoral map altogether by competing better in the diverse, growing Sun Belt than the whiter Midwest?

Different people will evaluate these different “electability” arguments in different ways. Our only point is to say that the uncertainty associated with each, and many other such arguments that will emerge, demonstrates how tricky assessing who is likeliest to win actually is.  

Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020

With now 20 candidates for the Democrat 2020 presidential nomination, the obsession of Democrats ought to be determining which candidate can beat Donald Trump.  All else should pale in comparison  and Democrats should avoid repeating past mistakes.  They need a candidate that can generate excitement and not just among their fraction of the party base that border on cultist for that 

candidate.  Rightly or wrongly, Trump generated excitement among the white supremacists, Christian extremists, and those who wanted to blow up the system.  Excitement is what gets voters to the polls.  A winning candidate also needs to be free from as much baggage as possible that drag the candidate down or turn off critical elements of the voter base.  A lengthy piece in Vox makes the case that if Joe Biden is the 2020 nominee, Democrats will be making the same mistake they made in 2016 by nominating Hillary Clinton.  This go round, there are more candidates to choose from and Democrats need to think long and hard about the most important question: who can beat Trump. A candidate's perfection on every policy issue matters matters far less since, if the candidate cannot win, their policy issues are meaningless. Here are article highlights which too me, are on point:

To a certain kind of Democratic Party establishmentarian, Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because she was not “likable” enough — a sentiment that may or may not be thinly veiled code for saying that she’s a woman. Their solution in 2020 is good old Joe Biden.

Biden, on the likability frame, is the opposite of Clinton — a back-slapping pol man who enjoys shooting the breeze with reporters. But the reality is Clinton was plenty likable at key moments in her career. Most notably, one of the main reasons the Democratic Party rallied around her so hard in 2014-’15 is that when she was secretary of state, her approval ratings were far higher than Barack Obama’s, and she was an in-demand midterms surrogate even in states where he was toxic.

Biden, meanwhile, was not especially popular as vice president during Obama’s first six years in office and only saw his numbers rise as he appeared to step out of the electoral arena — swapping places with Clinton as the kind of generic Famous Democrat Who Isn’t Running.

What brought Clinton down was public exposure not to her personality — which was sparkling enough to make her the most admired woman in America for 17 years straight before losing the claim to Michelle Obama in 2018 — but extended public scrutiny of every detail of a decades-long career in public life. This, in turn, is the exact same problem Biden will inevitably face as a presidential candidate. Americans like outsiders and fresh faces, not veteran insiders who bear the scars of every political controversy of the past two generations.

Mainstream Democrats like other mainstream Democrats. But what it means to be a mainstream Democrat has changed significantly since Biden entered the Senate 46 years ago. As Democrats gear up to take on Trump, the party’s best shot is to do anything possible to avoid repeating the 2016 experience of defending decades’ worth of twists and turns on various issues from the Iraq War to LGBTQ rights to banking deregulation.

In 2008, Democrats responded to the evident unpopularity and failure of the 2003 war in Iraq in the sensible way — by nominating someone who'd spoken out against the war when he had a chance. . . . yet Democrats chose to saddle themselves with a nominee who’d been a prominent advocate for it.

[A] well-known Iraq War supporter who, unlike Trump, was actually in the Senate at the time was very poorly positioned to argue against him. And by 2020, there’s simply no reason to do that again. Most of the party’s bench consists of people like Sens. Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, who are young enough not to have participated in the war debate in Congress.

[W]hat’s Biden’s excuse? He was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time — the guy with privileged access to top officials in the American government and around the world. The guy who, though he surely couldn’t have stopped Bush’s folly, certainly could have warned about it.

Foreign policy experience theoretically should be a big Biden advantage over his rivals. But in reality, on one of the only foreign policy controversies voters actually paid attention to or remember, Biden got it wrong in a big way.

[S]ince the founding generation passed away, voters have tended not to want to put veteran politicians in the White House. With only a handful of exceptions, the voters choose to elevate an “outsider” who’s going to “fix the mess in Washington” (or drain the swamp) rather than an inside player who’s mastered the system.

Candidates don’t get credit with voters for mastering Washington. Instead, they end up on defense, defending political decisions that don’t look great in hindsight.

Another major problem for Clinton that emerged over the course of the campaign related to her paid speeches for major banks during the brief window between her service as secretary of state and running for president.

Biden is in no better a position. He spent his whole career in the Senate representing Delaware, a major center of the consumer credit side of the banking industry. He was so close to the local banking giant that he was jokingly referred to as “the senator from MBNA” (which has since been bought by Bank of America).

This made him, among other things, a champion of mostly GOP-supported legislation in 2005 whose aim was to make it more difficult for hard-pressed families to discharge their credit card debt in bankruptcy. . . . Clinton was unusually tight with Wall Street for a Democrat because she represented New York in the Senate, and bankers were her dairy farmers and cheesemakers.

But “I just happen to represent a state whose local business interests are unusually evil” is a terrible public-facing argument (which, of course, is why Clinton didn’t make it). The reality is that very little about Biden’s career is extraordinary. But this, again, is precisely why the voters tend not to choose congressional veterans — people hate business as usual in Washington and want to elect leaders who’ll change the game, not play by the rules.

Biden looks bad in hindsight on a lot of issues.  Marriage equality is in some respects the best example. If you trace the long arc of the Democratic Party’s slow, steady embrace of LGBTQ equality as a cause, then Biden is clearly right there on the journey with everyone else. At a critical moment, he actually led the stampede, as the first Obama administration official to openly embrace marriage equality during the great Obama flip-flop of 2012.

But back in 1996, as a senator, he voted for the viciously discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. This was, at the time, a totally unremarkable vote — virtually everyone in Congress voted for it.

Biden has, in recent years, been a champion of criminal justice reform just like most Democrats. But in earlier years, when most Democrats were “tough on crime” drug warriors, Biden was a “tough on crime” drug warrior who as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee authored a number of harsh anti-drug laws.

It would be a mistake to see him as some kind of carceral maniac, warmonger, or anti-gay bigot — he was a normal Democrat who had normal Democratic Party positions on a variety of issues over time. But while that extreme normality appeals to party regulars, just as Hillary Clinton appealed to them, the sheer duration of normality means you end up flip-flopping or getting behind the curve in a way that a younger politician wouldn't. And then there are some unique home-state issues.

Had Biden not opted to run, he’d have gone down in history as a senator who was very well-liked by his colleagues and the press, and who served as the popular vice president for one of the most influential presidents of all time. . . . But as a candidate, he’s much too big a fish to be ignored by his rivals, and they’ll have to tear him down.

Some of that will be policy-based, but some of it will probably be personal. Biden has followed Clinton’s footsteps in doing paid speaking gigs while also harboring presidential ambitions — an error that proved costly for her and will likely prove costly for him if it ends up under the microscope. , , , especially because Biden himself can’t seem to decide what he thinks about his handling of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings — alternately apologizing for having mishandled things and griping that it’s unfair for Anita Hill to blame him.

Add it all up and you get a negative portrait of Joe Biden — the buckraker who failed to protect a sexual harassment victim and spent the aughts boosting the Iraq War and bank deregulation after fueling mass incarceration and anti-gay discrimination in the 1980s and ’90s.

Times change, and the 2020 presidential campaign will be waged in this moment. And Democrats deserve a nominee who can either plausibly claim to have been prescient on the big changes that have swept progressive politics or is new enough to elective office to simply be of the current moment.

American Democracy Is in Crisis

Many will argue that Hillary Clinton was a flawed presidential candidate and that the Clintons have their own baggage.   Even if these complaints are true, in my view, Clinton's defects were never enough to justify voting for Donald Trump unless perhaps one is a white supremacist/racist or evangelical Christian who cared more for stripping others of their rights while more or less throwing the Bible into the sewer.  Now, we daily witness the unfolding scandals of the Trump/Pence, the growing number of convictions and plea deals that make the Trump regime as perhaps the most corrupt and scandal plagued in America's history.  Meanwhile, Trump and his Vichy Republican enablers are steadily and deliberately undermining the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law as self-style patriots worry more about whether or not black NFL players are kneeling for the national anthem than possible conspiracies between Trump and his minions and a hostile foreign power.  In a lengthy new piece in The Atlantic, Hillary Clinton vents and reminds all of us that her warnings about Trump/Pence were all too true.  How does this nightmare end?  The answer, vote for Democrats on November 6th at every level possible so as to cripple the GOP and most importantly, put control of Congress back in the hands of Democrats.  Here are article highlights:

It’s been nearly two years since Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes to become president of the United States. On the day after, in my concession speech, I said, “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” I hoped that my fears for our future were overblown. They were not.

In the roughly 21 months since he took the oath of office, Trump has sunk far below the already-low bar he set for himself in his ugly campaign. Exhibit A is the unspeakable cruelty that his administration has inflicted on undocumented families arriving at the border, including separating children, some as young as eight months, from their parents. According to The New York Times, the administration continues to detain 12,800 children right now, despite all the outcry and court orders.

Then there’s the president’s monstrous neglect of Puerto Rico: After Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, his administration barely responded. Some 3,000 Americans died. Now Trump flatly denies those deaths were caused by the storm.

And, of course, despite the recent indictments of several Russian military intelligence officers for hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016, he continues to dismiss a serious attack on our country by a foreign power as a “hoax.”

Trump and his cronies do so many despicable things that it can be hard to keep track. I think that may be the point—to confound us, so it’s harder to keep our eye on the ball. The ball, of course, is protecting American democracy. As citizens, that’s our most important charge. And right now, our democracy is in crisis.

I don’t use the word crisis lightly. There are no tanks in the streets. The administration’s malevolence may be constrained on some fronts—for now—by its incompetence. But our democratic institutions and traditions are under siege. We need to do everything we can to fight back. There’s not a moment to lose.

As I see it, there are five main fronts of this assault on our democracy.

First, there is Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law. . . . . That ideal is enshrined in two powerful principles: No one, not even the most powerful leader, is above the law, and all citizens are due equal protection under the law. Those are big ideas, radical when America was formed and still vital today. The Founders knew that a leader who refuses to be subject to the law or who politicizes or obstructs its enforcement is a tyrant, plain and simple. . . . That sounds a lot like Donald Trump. He told The New York Times, “I have an absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department.”

Second, the legitimacy of our elections is in doubt.

There’s Russia’s ongoing interference and Trump’s complete unwillingness to stop it or protect us. There’s voter suppression, as Republicans put onerous—and I believe illegal—requirements in place to stop people from voting. There’s gerrymandering, with partisans—these days, principally Republicans—drawing the lines for voting districts to ensure that their party nearly always wins. All of this carries us further away from the sacred principle of “one person, one vote.”

Third, the president is waging war on truth and reason.

Earlier this month, Trump made 125 false or misleading statements in 120 minutes, according to The Washington Post—a personal record for him (at least since becoming president). To date, according to the paper’s fact-checkers, Trump has made 5,000 false or misleading claims while in office and recently has averaged 32 a day.

Trump is also going after journalists with even greater fervor and intent than before. No one likes to be torn apart in the press—I certainly don’t—but when you’re a public official, it comes with the job. You get criticized a lot. You learn to take it. You push back and make your case, but you don’t fight back by abusing your power or denigrating the entire enterprise of a free press. Trump doesn’t hide his intent one bit. Lesley Stahl, the 60 Minutes reporter, asked Trump during his campaign why he’s always attacking the press. He said, “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

Fourth, there’s Trump’s breathtaking corruption.

Considering that this administration promised to “drain the swamp,” it’s amazing how blithely the president and his Cabinet have piled up conflicts of interest, abuses of power, and blatant violations of ethics rules. Trump is the first president in 40 years to refuse to release his tax returns. He has refused to put his assets in a blind trust or divest himself of his properties and businesses, as previous presidents did. This has created unprecedented conflicts of interest, as industry lobbyists, foreign governments, and Republican organizations do business with Trump’s companies or hold lucrative events at his hotels, golf courses, and other properties. They are putting money directly into his pocket. He’s profiting off the business of the presidency.

Trump makes no pretense of prioritizing the public good above his own personal or political interests. He doesn’t seem to understand that public servants are supposed to serve the public, not the other way around.

Fifth, Trump undermines the national unity that makes democracy possible.

Democracies are rowdy by nature. We debate freely and disagree forcefully. It’s part of what distinguishes us from authoritarian societies, where dissent is forbidden. But we’re held together by deep “bonds of affection,” as Abraham Lincoln said, and by the shared belief that out of our fractious melting pot comes a unified whole that’s stronger than the sum of our parts.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Trump doesn’t even try to pretend he’s a president for all Americans. It’s hard to ignore the racial subtext of virtually everything Trump says. Often, it’s not even subtext. When he says that Haitian and African immigrants are from “shithole countries,” that’s impossible to misunderstand. Same when he says that an American judge can’t be trusted because of his Mexican heritage. None of this is a mark of authenticity or a refreshing break from political correctness. Hate speech isn’t “telling it like it is.” It’s just hate.

I don’t know whether Trump ignores the suffering of Puerto Ricans because he doesn’t know that they’re American citizens, because he assumes people with brown skin and Latino last names probably aren’t Trump fans, or because he just doesn’t have the capacity for empathy. And I don’t know whether he makes a similar judgment when he lashes out at NFL players protesting against systemic racism or when he fails to condemn hate crimes against Muslims. I do know he’s quick to defend or praise those whom he thinks are his people—like how he bent over backwards to defend the “very fine people” among the white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia. The message he sends by his lack of concern and respect for some Americans is unmistakable. He is saying that some of us don’t belong, that all people are not created equal, and that some are not endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable rights as others.

And it’s not just what he says. From day one, his administration has undermined civil rights that previous generations fought to secure and defend. . . . Nearly every federal agency has scaled back enforcement of civil-rights protections. All the while, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is running wild across the country. Federal agents are confronting citizens just for speaking Spanish, dragging parents away from children.

How did we get here?

Trump may be uniquely hostile to the rule of law, ethics in public service, and a free press. But the assault on our democracy didn’t start with his election. . . . . Over many years, our defenses were worn down by a small group of right-wing billionaires—people like the Mercer family and Charles and David Koch—who spent a lot of time and money building an alternative reality where science is denied, lies masquerade as truth, and paranoia flourishes. . . . . they opened the way for the infection of Russian propaganda and Trumpian lies to take hold. They've used their money and influence to capture our political system, impose a right-wing agenda, and disenfranchise millions of Americans.

I don’t agree with critics who say that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy—but unregulated, predatory capitalism certainly is.

There is a tendency, when talking about these things, to wring our hands about “both sides.” But the truth is that this is not a symmetrical problem. We should be clear about this: The increasing radicalism and irresponsibility of the Republican Party, including decades of demeaning government, demonizing Democrats, and debasing norms, is what gave us Donald Trump. Whether it was abusing the filibuster and stealing a Supreme Court seat, gerrymandering congressional districts to disenfranchise African Americans, or muzzling government climate scientists, Republicans were undermining American democracy long before Trump made it to the Oval Office.

Now we must do all we can to save our democracy and heal our body politic.

First, we’ve got to mobilize massive turnout in the 2018 midterms. There are fantastic candidates running all over the country, making their compelling cases every day about how they’ll raise wages, bring down health-care costs, and fight for justice. If they win, they’ll do great things for America. And we could finally see some congressional oversight of the White House.

When the dust settles, we have to do some serious housecleaning. After Watergate, Congress passed a whole slew of reforms in response to Richard Nixon’s abuses of power. After Trump, we’re going to need a similar process. For example, Trump’s corruption should teach us that all future candidates for president and presidents themselves should be required by law to release their tax returns. They also should not be exempt from ethics requirements and conflict-of-interest rules.

Congress should also repair the damage the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act by restoring the full protections that voters need and deserve, as well as the voting rights of Americans who have served time in prison and paid their debt to society. We need early voting and voting by mail in every state in America, and automatic, universal voter registration so every citizen who is eligible to vote is able to vote. We need to overturn Citizens United and get secret money out of our politics. And you won’t be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it’s time to abolish the Electoral College.

When we think about politics and judge our leaders, we can’t just ask, “Am I better off than I was four years ago?” We have to ask, “Are we better off? Are we as a country better, stronger, and fairer?” Democracy works only when we accept that we’re all in this together.

In 1787, after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street outside Independence Hall, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” That response has been on my mind a lot lately. The contingency of it. How fragile our experiment in self-government is. And, when viewed against the sweep of human history, how fleeting. Democracy may be our birthright as Americans, but it’s not something we can ever take for granted. Every generation has to fight for it, has to push us closer to that more perfect union. That time has come again.

Making the Case: Without Russia, Trump Wouldn’t Have Won

A piece in the Washington Post makes an argument that might drive the malignant narcissist in the White House to have an aneurysm or heart attack were it to come to his attention (I won't speculate if that would be a good thing or a bad thing - readers can draw their own conclusions).  The thrust of the column?  The bottom line is that but for the actions of Russian hackers and Russian derived fake news, Donald Trump would not be in the White House. For an individual who can never admit his own failings and whose ego is insatiable, the premise of the article goes to his apparent core as an egomaniac and insufferable liar and braggart.  Yet, if you read the full piece it is hard to refute - notwithstanding GOP talking points, lies and attacks on "sour grapes" Democrats - that it is probably correct in its conclusion.  But for Putin/Russia, Clinton would now be in the White House and the ongoing national nightmare would not be happening.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump is willing, under duress, to briefly and begrudgingly admit that Russian “meddling” took place in 2016 before reverting to calling it a “big hoax.” But he always maintains that the plot against America had no impact; he describes it as a “Democrat excuse for losing the ’16 Election.” Faithfully echoing the president, other Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), say it’s “clear” that the Russian interference “didn’t have a material effect on our elections.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders even claims that the U.S. intelligence community reached that conclusion.

Not quite. Here is the intelligence community’s assessment, partially declassified in January 2017: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.” When then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo claimed last fall that “the intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election,” his own agency rebuked him.

[O]utside experts who have examined the Kremlin campaign — which included stealing and sharing Democratic Party emails, spreading propaganda online and hacking state voter rolls — have concluded that it did affect an extremely close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Clint Watts, a former FBI agent, writes in his recent book, “Messing with the Enemy,” that “Russia absolutely influenced the U.S. presidential election,” especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump’s winning margin was less than 1 percent in each state. [W]e know its propaganda reached 126 million people via Facebook alone. A BuzzFeed analysis found that fake news stories on Facebook generated more social engagement in the last three months of the campaign than did legitimate articles: The “20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.” Almost all of this “fake news” was either started or spread by Russian bots, . . . Elsewhere on social media, tens of thousands of Russian bots spread pro-Trump messages on Twitter, which has already notified about 1.4 million users that they interacted with Russian accounts. The Russian disinformation, propagating hashtags such as #Hillary4Prison and #MAGA, reflected what the Trump campaign was saying. Russia also hacked voting systems in at least 39 states, and while there is no evidence that vote tallies were changed, Russians may have used the stolen data to target their social media or shared the results with the Trump campaign. The Senate Intelligence Committee found that “in a small number of states” the Russians may have been able to “alter or delete voter registration data,” potentially disenfranchising Clinton voters. And then there was the crucial impact of the Russian hacks of Democratic documents disseminated primarily by WikiLeaks.

The first tranche of stolen documents — more than 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments — was strategically released on July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. The second tranche of stolen documents was released on Oct. 7, just 29 minutes after The Post reported on the “Access Hollywood” videotape in which Trump is heard boasting about grabbing women by the genitals. A third release of stolen emails, on Oct. 11, revealed that Democratic operative Donna Brazile, while working at CNN, had provided debate questions to Clinton during the primaries and that senior Democratic operatives, who were themselves Catholics, had exchanged emails disparaging Republicans who cherry-picked their faith for political gain. This fueled Trump’s narrative that the election was “rigged” and that the “Clinton team” was, as he said, “viciously attacking Catholics and Evangelicals.” The latter charge, unfair as it was, proved especially important in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — swing states with lots of Catholic voters. Now, by contrast, Trump and his apologists pretend that the Russian intervention — including the WikiLeaks revelations — was no big deal. That beggars belief. Even if the Russians had failed, they still attacked our democracy. Yet they didn’t fail: Trump won. Watts concludes: “Without the Russian influence effort, I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day.” That is the inconvenient truth the Putin Republicans won’t admit.

We are truly living a real life version of a spy thriller where the White House has been co-opted by a hostile foreign power.

Putin's Revenge on America

Frontline will be running a two-part documentary “Putin’s Revenge,” that will debut on PBS member stations on two consecutive Wednesdays, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, at 10 p.m.  The program will look not only at Putin's rise to power in Russia - he is a former KGB operative - and his long simmering hatred towards the United States.  It also looks at Putin's plan to use cyber-warfare against his international foes, a list that has America at the top followed by other western nations, with resentments that stretch all the way back to the presidency of George H.W. Bush.  With American democracy in disarray and civil discourse trending downward even as Donald Trump - Putin's favored presidential candidate - strives to roil the western alliances, Putin must be smiling.  As American retrenches, Russia and China move into the void. All of these events, of course, are contrary to the interest of America and its citizens - even those embracing Trumps calls to racism and bigotry - and make up part of Putin's revenge on America.  A piece in Salon looks at the program and the message Americans need to hear.  Here are article excerpts:

Outwardly the purpose of “Putin’s Revenge” is to walk viewers through the political rise of Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin, which the documentary dutifully does by building its narrative around interviews with Russian journalists and dissidents as well as expert contributions from journalists and biographers covering Putin for such publications as The Atlantic and the New York Times.

But Kirk and his co-writer Mike Wiser inform their biographical map by filtering Putin’s hardline autocratic methods through a psychological profile that draws more than a few parallels — Trump. Putin’s history as a former KGB officer is as common knowledge as that photo of him riding a horse shirtless.

Diluted into a meme long ago, that photo is a small part of a long campaign that began with Boris Yeltsin unwisely handing the presidency over to him in 1999. In part one of “Putin’s Revenge,” which airs Wednesday, Kirk and Wiser expediently trace his campaign to consolidate power to the opening days of what was initially his interim leadership, when he sold himself as a reform and a democrat — with the help of his public relations coach.

Even then, a former Putin advisor tells the interviewer, Putin understood that “everything could be manipulated. Any kind of press, any TV program is all about manipulation. It was decided what TV channels would show what news.”

Viewers who have been keeping up with current events are likely familiar with much of this timeline, starting with demolishing of independently run television studios and Putin’s move to bring broadcast media under government control.

That in itself is telling, as is the familiarity of exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen and opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, whose claim to fame among American viewers is that he survived two assassination attempts by poisoning. Gessen and Kara-Murza have appeared on a number of American news programs as well as night-time talk shows such as “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and “The Daily Show.”

But as “Putin’s Revenge” spells out, they are guest stars in a reality show produced by a man obsessed with image and pathologically concerned about how the world sees him. If the similarity to our thin-skinned president is alarming, it should be.

Kirk and Wiser expand upon this idea in the second half, which frames Putin’s animosity toward the united states as a product of a resentment over a lifetime’s worth of perceived humiliations. The title’s “Revenge” refers to his seething over the actions of a number of American presidents, dating back to George H.W. Bush’s celebration of the Berlin Wall’s fall (when a young Putin was a counter-intelligence agent stationed in Dresden, Germany, which Gessen refers to as “a backwater”).

From there, many moments in recent history were seen by Putin as one slight upon another. Bush’s post- 9/11 and the subsequent topping of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as well as uprisings brewing in former Soviet countries were seen as existential threats. As he centralized power, restoring Joseph Stalin’s national anthem with new words in the process, his quest to make Russia great again became just as much about elevating his standing in the world and deteriorating America’s.

By innovating tactics in cyber warfare and enabling the viral spreading of misinformation via social media, “Putin’s Revenge” posits that Russian interference with American democracy was only a matter of time. Clinton, the latest in a line of old foes, had a questionable reputation among America’s electorate that made her a ripe target. The media’s obsession with the headline-grabbing salaciousness of Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape drowned out the government’s warning about the hack in October — a warning handled and presented with insufficient urgency, Kirk and Wiser point out.

Frontline’s consistently fulfills its purpose of lining up recent news with history to put current events in a context that’s simple to comprehend. And I suppose “Putin’s Revenge” would be chilling if we weren’t already drowning in apprehensiveness over the dangerous ignorance and instability of our own president, a handy gift to Putin whose thoughtless words enabled and encouraged hackers to attack and exploit our cultural divisions.

“Putin’s Revenge” paints Putin as a spiteful malevolence to sharpen the warning of what we could be facing in the coming campaign cycle. But it also arrives at time when Western media is questioning whether we’re assigning too much power to Putin, as the world’s attention starts to turn toward Russia’s upcoming presidential election.

The only Kremlin- approved challenger so far is a reality TV star and former Russian Playboy model, the daughter of a deceased former St. Petersburg mayor who was one of Putin’s early allies. Everybody understands that election is a sham, and unless Putin somehow decides to relinquish power, he’ll become the second longest-ruler in Moscow, outdone only by Joseph Stalin’s 29 years in power.

A Eulogy for Edie Windsor and a Call to Resist Injustice

The significance of Edie Windsor who died earlier this week is likely lost on most heterosexuals and most certainly on Republicans who regularly vote for candidates who seemingly revel in the denigration of gays - and for that matter every other minority.  As a married gay man, thanks to Edie Windsor, the Defense of Marriage of Marriage was struck down and the federal government was forced to recognize same sex couples for tax purposes and on many other issues.  She was one of those who I have recognized as a single individual who chose to put herself on the line and make a difference.  At her funeral today (the image above was from a photo taken by a friend at that ceremony) there were a number of speakers, one of whom was Hillary Clinton.  Clinton not only eulogized Windsor, but also used the occasion to call for renewed resistance to injustice.  Slat looks at Clinton's remarks at the funeral today.  Here are article highlights:

On Friday, hundreds of people came together at New York City’s Temple Emanu-El for the funeral of Edie Windsor, the “mother of marriage equality” who died on Tuesday at age 88. Windsor sued the United States government when it refused to recognize her marriage to Thea Spyer; her suit ultimately toppled the federal ban on same-sex marriage and paved the way for nationwide marriage equality. Among the luminaries who paid tribute to Windsor was Hillary Clinton, whose beautiful eulogy also functioned as an impassioned call to resist injustice with Windsor’s indomitable positivity and joy.

Clinton began by asking: “Doesn’t it just feel great being here to honor and remember someone who had such a positive, lasting influence on our country and the world?” That might seem like an oddly cheerful start for a eulogy, but Friday’s proceedings had a celebratory air given Windsor’s extraordinary accomplishments and richly lived life. (She remarried last year.) Windsor, Clinton said, “didn’t set out to make history”—but the love she shared with Spyer was “its own quiet revolutionary act.” When Spyer died in 2009 and the government demanded that Windsor pay an immense estate tax, “she knew she had two choices: Accept this painful injustice or fight back. She chose to fight back, all the way to the highest court in the land.”

Clinton continued:

The day Edie won, much of America cheered with her … with a recognition that a wrong had been righted. Through it all, her strength never wavered. … It is fitting that she will be immortalized in history books in that landmark decision synonymous with equal rights and dignity under the law. But she didn’t stop there. She continued to support the needs and the rights of the LGBT community. She helped change hearts and minds, including mine. And we are forever grateful to her for that.

Then Clinton reached the core of her address: the tension between our desire to improve the world and our despair over its seemingly intractable injustices. Windsor, Clinton pointed out, faced a great many injustices. She took care of Spyer for decades as her multiple sclerosis worsened, and when Spyer died, the government wouldn’t recognize their marriage; instead, it sent her a tax bill that she wouldn’t have had to pay if Spyer had been a man. This blatant cruelty might have made Windsor bitter or resentful toward her country. But, Clinton explained:

How she experienced loss, grief, and injustice made her only more generous, more open-hearted, and more fearless in her fight. She refused to give up on the promise of America. There wasn’t a cynical, defeatist bone in her body. That’s especially important for us to remember now. Through her determination and sheer force of will, she brought us another step closer to that more perfect union. Now, in this moment when so much hard-fought progress is hanging in the balance, it is up to all of us to pick up where she left off.

Clinton’s message, which echoes former President Barack Obama’s tribute issued shortly after Windsor’s death, isn’t exactly subtle. But it is a critical reminder in these exceedingly dark times of the wonderful things that America can accomplish when Americans stand up to prejudice and fear. Windsor fought for equality and achieved it in her lifetime. What will we achieve in ours? The forecast seems dire these days. But in her eulogy, Clinton urges us not to give up hope, not to waste our days with sorrow and helplessness. She closed with a quote from the poet Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“Let us continue to be inspired by Edie’s wild and precious life,” Clinton said. “And let us make her proud every day of how we answer that question for ourselves. Thank you, Edie.” 

Christofascists and much of the Trump/Pence base will no doubt be unmoved by Windsor's life or Clinton's remarks.  However, decent and moral people hopefully will hear the message and renew their determination to resist those who would trample on the rights of other citizens and make the conscious decision that they will not be akin to the "good Germans" who chose not to act and thereby helped the nightmare of Hitler's Nazi regime to grow. 

James Comey is Running Out of Excuses

Comey - Trump and Putin's accomplice?

If Donald Trump did collaborate with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 presidential election, it increasingly looks like they had an accomplice" FBI director James Comey who broke long time precedent and floated a letter against Hillary Clinton just eleven days before  election day.  The letter turned out to have no basis - something likely known by Comey.  Meanwhile he was sitting on explosive information about Trump's possible collusion with Putin and the likelihood that Putin had information with which to blackmail Trump once he was in office.  If Comey wasn't an actual Russian agent, he surely gave a major assist to Putin plans to put his puppet in the White House.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, Comey is about of excuses for his actions harming Clinton while protecting Trump.  Here are column highlights:

The rash of stories on Donald Trump and Russia published Tuesday leave many questions unanswered. The allegations, as sensational as some are and as damning as others are, are just that: allegations. Intelligence agencies (not to mention countless news outlets) have sought to verify them for months now, with little or no success. Though it might be nice to imagine Trump’s presidency collapsing before it’s even begun, the fact remains that we know little more now than we did last week about Trump’s ties to Russia and whether Vladimir Putin’s government has compromising information on the president-elect. There is one thing we do know, though: FBI Director James Comey’s intervention in the election last October — controversial at the time — looks completely indefensible now.

A few hours before the explosive CNN and BuzzFeed reports landed on Tuesday, Comey was at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the director whether the FBI has “investigated these reported relationships [between the Trump campaign and Russia]?” Comey replied, “I would never comment on investigations … in an open forum like this.” When Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) pressed Comey on the same question later in the hearing, he repeated that “especially in a public forum, we never confirm or deny a pending investigation.” (King dryly replied, “The irony of your making that statement here, I cannot avoid.”)

So Comey understands that the FBI weighing in publicly on open investigations, when charges are still being proved, is unwise. Doing so puts those being investigated at the mercy of innuendo and rumor. Yet Comey ditched this rule when he notified Congress 11 days before the election that the FBI was looking into whether there were previously unrevealed emails from Hillary Clinton on a laptop belonging to her aide’s estranged husband. (It should also be noted that this followed months of anti-Clinton leaks from Rudy Giuliani’s friends in the FBI’s New York field office.)

Worse, the search warrant for the emails unsealed in December shows that, as The Post reported at the time, investigators “had no new evidence of actual wrongdoing” on Clinton’s part. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported Tuesday that the FBI thought the allegations of ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia credible enough that they sought a wiretap on four members of Trump’s team.

[W]hile Comey stayed silent about new accusations against Trump, he piped up about a big nothing-burger against Clinton.

Despite a second letter later clearing Clinton (again) of wrongdoing, the blow Comey’s letter struck against Clinton’s poll numbers is obvious, . . .

Comey’s behavior remains inexcusable. It is a shocking and disturbing double standard: staying silent on allegations against one candidate despite reams of new information, while reviving allegations against another candidate despite absolutely no new information.

It is unlikely that a Trump administration will punish Comey for this mistake. History, however, will not judge him so kindly.

Is Donald Trump a Traitor?

Being of an age where I clearly recall the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency rather than face impeachment.  Throughout the national drama the two incessant questions about Nixon were "what did he know, and when did he know it."  Sadly, it seems that the nation is again in a situation where these questions are critical in terms of Donald Trump's complicity/collaboration with Russian intelligence services to throw the presidential election to Trump.  A new declassified report says Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered" an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.  Trump's response?  To question the validity of the report and to blame the Democratic National Committee for allowing the Russian hacking to happen.  Given that Trump is a pathological liar and is such a narcissist that he could never admit that his narrow Electoral College win might be due to Russian efforts, Trump's response isn't surprising. But the more frightening possibility is that Trump and his campaign knew of the Russian hacking, encouraged it and collaborated with a hostile foreign regime.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at what we know so far.  Here are highlights:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday afternoon put out a new report titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,” straightforwardly recapping a lot of what independent research has already determined. If you’ve only been vaguely paying attention to the story of Russian interference, this is a good opportunity to catch up.

Here are some of the main claims asserted in the report.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the presidential election. The campaign was meant to hurt Clinton’s chances and help Trump. The CIA and FBI have high confidence in these findings, the NSA has moderate confidence. (Why different confidence levels between three agencies? Who knows.)

 • As Clinton’s chances of winning crept upward, Russia changed tactics to undermine her predicted presidency.

• Among the participants were covert intelligence operatives as well as “Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls.’”

• And last but not least, Russian operatives did not mess with the vote tally, though they did obtain access to other parts of certain state and local electoral boards.

While it’s nice to see it all laid out like that in a government report, those claims are consistent with what the government and security experts have already been saying — and since the report doesn’t add any new, specific evidence to support those claims, it’s unfortunately not going to convince any skeptics. What is important is that the popular understanding of “hack” and its meaning in this specific case are divergent. Russia did not mess with the vote — it obtained access to damaging documents and waged a battle of publicity.

The rest of the report focuses heavily on the news network Russia Today, which is funded by the Russian government, a fact that’s never been hidden from the public — but, because it’s a public broadcast outfit, the evidence of Russian affiliation can be included in the report without compromising U.S. intelligence findings.

Did Russia’s actions cause Trump’s win? The way you answer that is likely going to be determined by your politics. But they certainly didn’t hurt, and the report does note that Russia now has an effective playbook for interfering in the democratic process for years to come.

The real question remains, what did Trump know of the Russian effort and when did he know it? Likewise, did his campaign collaborate with the Russian effort?  My gut feeling is that the answer to the last question is, yes.