Pelosi and Shumer Have Only Just Begun Reining in Trump’

For most of his life, Donald Trump has lead a life where he has escaped consequences. Born to wealth, he escaped service in the Vietnam War by his father's buying of a medical excuse to win him a deferment.  Throughout his business career, he has used bankruptcy to ditch failed ventures and let the pain fall on others - others he typical failed to pay. When banks ceased loaning him money, he seems to have found Deutsche Bank's apparent Russian money laundering operation to keep his business going when he wasn't selling properties to Russian oligarchs in his own money laundering gambit.  Then in his first two years in the White House he had emasculated Republicans only too happy to engage in political fellatio so as to avoid primary challenges from Trump's unwashed, hate-filled base of support.  Now, the game has changed with the shift of control of the House of Representatives to Democrat control.  This, combined with a majority of Americans opposing Trump and his agenda, means Trump's in for a continuing shock.  A piece in The Daily Beast suggests that Trump had best brace himself for numerous political spankings.  Here are article excerpts:

So, having won round one so resoundingly, what should the Democrats do next about the wall?

One thing: Remember that this is Donald Trump’s problem. And Mitch McConnell’s, and Kevin McCarthy’s (who? The House minority leader). They’re the ones who are trying to push a minority position down the country’s throat. [Trump] The president in particular, of course. But majorities of Americans are against the wall and always have been. So let Trump turn that around, if he can.

It’s worth chortling again for a few paragraphs over how ridiculous and weak they made Trump look. Remember, this is a man who spent years, going way back before he started campaigning in 2015, saying over and over and over how easy being president would be. Bring the Chinese to heel? Very easy. Make Middle East peace? Please. Get Mexico to pay for the wall? Piece of cake. He’s been saying these things in books and television appearances for years.

I can’t imagine who believed him—and if anyone out there was a big enough idiot to do so, that’s their problem. But the point is that he believed it. . . . . But in January, he met reality.

Nancy Pelosi took him to the cleaners, and she deserves enormous credit. Her State of the Union gambit was just inspired. The awesome tell at the way she discombobulated Trump was that he couldn’t even come up with a nickname for her. Did you see that? “Nancy Pelosi, or Nancy, as I call her…” Wow, Don, good one! Her first name!

Taking nothing away from her, though, it wasn’t all Pelosi. Chuck Schumer was the one who goaded Trump into accepting responsibility for the shutdown at that Dec. 11 meeting.

And it was right after those [Senate votes last week] votes that McConnell called Chuck Schumer into his office. McConnell wanted Schumer to agree to a down payment on the wall. Schumer said no and counter-offered a continuing resolution and put together a conference committee to negotiate this. And this is exactly what’s happening.

I’ve followed this stuff closely for many years, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve complained about the Democrats wilting during some congressional confrontation, not staying unified, and getting their hats handed to them by Republicans. Well—no more. The Democrats can play hardball now. They did it already on health care and tax reform, when they didn’t lose a single vote. And there’s no reason they shouldn’t do more of it going forward, on the upcoming debt ceiling fight, on budget stuff, and in the House on investigations and subpoenas of every kind. They have the leverage now to deny Trump a win on anything.

So this week, this conference committee that Schumer suggested will start their talks. The Democratic conferees are Richard Durbin, Pat Leahy, and Jon Tester from the Senate; and from the House, a sextet led by Nita Lowey of upstate New York. They’re mostly pretty senior, and the only lefty in the bunch is Barbara Lee of Oakland. The Senate Republicans are led by Richard Shelby of Alabama, who’s plenty conservative but not really a MAGA fire-breather.

[T]hey might find a way to cut a deal. And maybe the Democrats should cut one—if  and only if they get just massive concessions on Dreamers and temporary protected status people and whatever else.

But what they absolutely should not do in this case is make a deal for the sake of seeming like reasonable people. Healthy majorities of Americans are against the wall and think it’s basically pointless or won’t do the job Trump swears it will do. So the position they’re representing right now—no wall—is the reasonable position. They don’t need to budge an inch from that.

Trump already told The Wall Street Journal that he'll shut the government down again and considers a deal to be less than a 50-50 shot. He has probably persuaded everyone he’s going to persuade by now. He can buy all the duct tape from here to Laredo and it still won’t change things. And if it comes to him declaring his emergency powers, then so be it. That will be really popular.

Easy? His life has been easy. Life tends to be that way when you start it with $300 million. But he lived his whole life in a bubble of no consequences. Those days are gone. He owes consequences a very large bill indeed, and on a number of fronts, it’s about to come due.

Anti-LGBT Rep. Marcia Fudge May Challenge Pelosi for Speakership

Fudge is seemingly part of  the "civil-rights-for-me-but-not-for-thee crowd"
and has voted against protecting LGBT Americans. 

Surveys have shown that 82% of LGBT voters supported Democrats at the polls in the 2018 midterm elections and many gave generously to Democrat candidate campaigns.  Indeed, in some very close Democrat victories, the LGBT vote may have won the day for Democrats (the LGBT community, including the husband and I, worked very hard for Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's winning campaign).  Enter Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge who has opposed the so-called Equality Act that would expand non-discrimination protections for LGBT individuals and women and by adding those categories to the Civil Rights Act.  Fudge now wants to challenge Nancy Pelosi - a long time LGBT ally - for Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Unlike Fudge, Nancy Pelosi wants to make passage of the Equality Act a Democrat Party priority.  I can think of few ways to more thoroughly insult and alienate the LGBT community than to put someone like Fudge in as Speaker of the House.  Some in the LGBT community have described Fudge as part of the "civil-rights-for-me-but-not-for-thee crowd."  Others have noted that the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus supported the Amendment to the Civil Rights Act, so Fudge is an out of the mainstream outlier.  A piece in Roll Call looks at a meeting meeting between Pelosi and Fudge.  Here are excerpts:

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi met with her potential competition for the speaker’s gavel on Friday, Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, who left the meeting still contemplating a bid.

“No,” Fudge told reporters when asked if Pelosi asked her not to run. “What she asked me was basically how we could get to a point where I could be supportive.”

Asked if such a point exists, even if she opts not to run against Pelosi, Fudge said, “There is a point, yes, but it’s going to take some.”

Fudge said she used the meeting to tell Pelosi about some of her concerns, adding that she needs more time to talk to people and think about whether she will run against her. The Ohio Democrat is headed home for Thanksgiving and plans to announce a decision shortly after the holiday.

She also told Pelosi she would speak with her again after Thanksgiving, presumably before any public announcement.

Asked if the meeting encouraged her toward running, Fudge said, “No, but it didn’t discourage me either.”

If she does run, Fudge said she hasn’t decided yet whether she’d seek the caucus nomination on Nov. 28, in which only a simple majority vote is needed to be selected the caucus’s choice for speaker, or challenge Pelosi during the floor vote Jan. 3. 

Pelosi clearly is trying to avoid a floor fight.

“I think her goal is to try to quickly as possible unify the caucus, and I understand that,” Fudge said. “And that is why I thought it was important that when she asked me to come and see her that I did so.”

The conversation with Fudge was “candid and respectful,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Among the issues discussed, according to Fudge, were succession planning and “the feeling in the caucus of people who are feeling out and left behind.”

Politico reports that the Pelosi-Fudge meeting was at the behest of incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).  Here are highlights:

Nancy Pelosi sat face to face with her potential challenger, Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, on Friday as the California Democrat continued her fight to reclaim the speaker’s gavel.

The two women huddled at the behest of incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a key Pelosi ally and senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus who is also close with Fudge, the CBC’s former chairwoman.

Pelosi also spent Friday afternoon meeting with incoming Democratic lawmakers who during their campaigns vowed to oppose her as speaker, including Reps.-elect Max Rose (N.Y.), Jeff Van Drew (N.J.), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.) and Haley Stevens (Mich.).

After Pelosi met with the incoming freshmen who had called for new leadership during their campaigns, some skeptics left the room expressing an openness to supporting her.

With her opponents continuing to work against Pelosi, the California Democrat's allies are hitting back in her defense.

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky blasted Pelosi’s critics for defying “the majority voice of the caucus.” She suggested they are worse than the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative rabble-rousers who banded together to defy GOP leadership for years.

“The majority rules!” Schakowsky said, aghast. “The very idea of organizing without even an opponent. … They do not have a candidate.”

I'm not necessarily a Pelosi fan, but I surely do not want an anti-LGBT individual like Fudge in the position of Speaker of the House.  Similarly, I do not want an inexperienced novice in the position given that the next 2 years will require a Speaker who can play hard ball and hold Trump and other GOP misogynists to account.

Virginia Re-elects Kaine, Throws Out Three Republicans

Virginia continues its transformation into a blue state as Tim Kaine handily defeats GOP extremist and Neo-Confederate Corey Stewart and three Republican members of Congress go down to defeat.  Elaine Luria sent Donald Trump puppet Scott Taylor into retirement, pro-Trump David Brat lost to Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, and Jennifer Wexton utterly crushed Barbara Comstock.  Following the calls to racism and  trends of other recent elections, Virginia's cities and suburbs voted heavily Democrat while its increasingly out of touch with reality, backwater rural regions voted against their own long term economic interest and allowed themselves to be duped by GOP calls to racism and hatred of others.  Thankfully, Virginia's urban and suburban areas - the economic dynamo of Virginia's economy - reject GOP efforts to create a new Gilded Age filled with discrimination and bigotry.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Virginia voters reproached President Donald Trump for the second year in row as Democrats flipped three congressional races and scored a convincing victory in a U.S. Senate race.

Democrats won GOP-held districts in Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and the Richmond area, boosted by suburban voters unhappy with the president. The Virginia victories helped put Democrats on track to take control of the U.S. House.  All three Democratic congressional victories were by women, two of whom are new to politics.

"We succeeded at the polls tonight because voters rejected the politics of hate, the politics of division and the politics of ideology," said Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer.  She knocked off Republican Dave Brat in a Richmond-area district. Brat was a tea party favorite who scored a major upset four years ago when he defeated then-U.S. Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a GOP primary.

In Hampton Roads, Elaine Luria defeated Republican Rep. Scott Taylor. Luria, a former Navy commander, had never run for office before, like Spanberger. A former Navy SEAL, Taylor was viewed by many as up and comer in the GOP who had potential for future statewide run.

Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock, another rising star in the GOP, lost her Northern Virginia seat to state Sen. Jennifer Wexton.

Democrats controlled only four out of 11 congressional seats in Virginia prior to Tuesday. Now they are set to control seven seats to the GOP's four.

The strong showing by Democrats highlights Virginia's continued dislike of the president, particularly among suburban voters. Virginia served as an early indicator for anti-Trump energy during its 2017 race for governor. Democrats trounced Republicans in all three statewide races and won more seats in the state House than virtually anyone expected.

Health care and immigration were top issues in voters' mind in this election, according to a wide-ranging survey of the electorate. And nearly 7 in 10 voters said Trump was a reason for their vote.

One bright spot for Republicans was Denver Riggleman, who won an open seat in central Virginia against Democrat Leslie Cockburn in a district that Trump won by 11 percentage points.

With Corey Stewart's huge loss to Tim Kaine, one has to wonder when the Virginia Republicans will decide to come into the 21st century and stop nominating lunatic Neanderthals. 

The Only Way to Save the GOP is to Defeat It

I gave up on any hope of reforming the Republican Party from within years ago.  Rather, I came to believe that the only thing that might offer hope is to subject the GOP to crushing election defeats which, just maybe, would cause the party leadership to cast Christofascists and now white supremacists from the party and into the political wilderness.  In my view, these elements of the GOP base must become political untouchables who are unwelcome in polite and moral society.  Now, in a column in the Washington Post, former George W. Bush White House official Michael Gerson  is making pretty much the same argument as the one I have been making for over a decade.  If you believe in the GOP of old, go to the polls and vote Democrat in November.  Here are excerpts from Gerson's column in the Washington Post:

University of Chicago researchers — who clearly have a lot of time on their hands — have found that the use of certain brands and products is a good predictor of your level of affluence. This is an exercise in the obvious when it comes to a $1,000 iPhone. But the same proves true with Ziploc plastic bags, Kikkoman soy sauce and Cascade Complete dishwasher detergent.

By this measure, Democratic performance in Ohio’s 12th District special election might be called the Ziploc opening. Or maybe the Cascade cascade. The Democratic candidate, Danny O’Connor, appears, as of Thursday, to have lost by one point in a district that went for Donald Trump by 11 points in the 2016 presidential election. And most of O’Connor’s gains likely came in white-collar suburbs, among college-educated white voters who have been alienated by the president.

 

Democrats nearly secured a seat Republicans have held since 1982. . . . . if Democratic candidates make comparable gains across the country in November, they will win control of the House.

 

To win the House, Democrats need to secure gains in the suburbs of places such as Atlanta, Houston and Dallas. At least some of these voters are Baylor University-educated fathers or mothers packing Ziploc-bagged sandwiches to be eaten by children at Christian schools.

In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles E. Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?

They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward. And they should vote Republican in Senate races with mainstream candidates (unlike, say, Corey Stewart in Virginia).

 

American politics is in the midst of an emergency. . . . If Democrats gain control of the House but not the Senate, they will be a check on [Trump] the president without becoming a threat to his best policies (from a Republican perspective) or able to enact their worst policies. 

[T]he House will conduct real oversight hearings and expose both Russian influence and administration corruption. Under Republican control, important committees — such as Chairman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp.

 

Alternatively: If Republicans retain control of the House in November, Trump will (correctly) claim victory and vindication.  . . . Perhaps worst of all, a victorious Trump will complete his takeover of the Republican Party (which is already far along). Even murmured dissent will be silenced. The GOP will be fully committed to a 2020 presidential campaign conducted in the spirit of George C. Wallace — a campaign of racial division, of rural/urban division, of religious division, of party division that metastasizes into mutual contempt.

 

This would leave many Americans entirely abandoned in U.S. politics: . . . Traditional Republicans who miss a time — not so long ago — when leaders such as Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush modeled grace and led the West in defending freedom.

In a democracy, a vote is usually not a matter of good and evil. . . . . The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.

House of Representatives Erupts in Chaos After GOP Kills LGBT Vote

The Republican Party has again demonstrated that it is the party of Christian extremists, hate and anti-LGBT bigotry by defeating a measure that would have barred anti-LGBT employment discrimination by federal contractors.  In the world of the GOP it remains perfectly fine to fire gays solely on the basis of the sexual orientation.  It's an issue that upsets me immensely since I was fired for being gay over a decade ago.  The financial consequences were ruinous for me and my family and it has taken years to recover from it. Of course the House Republicans acted no differently than what we see in the Virginia General Assembly literally every year where pro-LGBT bills are killed and anti-LGBT employment discrimination remains legal in Virginia.  The situation is ironic since a Republican acquaintance has been trying to convince me to come to a fundraiser for a GOP candidate running for the Lt. Governor nomination that he and his wife are hosting.  He wants me simply to talk with the candidate, no monetary contribution required whatsoever.   With votes like this in the House, the question is why bother.  When push comes to shove, it's a strong bet that Republicans will always defer to the "family values" hate groups that set the GOP's social agenda: anti-LGBT animus, racism, and bigotry.   Politico looks at the events in the House.  Here are excerpts:

The House erupted in chaos Thursday morning with Democrats crying foul after Republicans hastily persuaded a few of their own to switch their votes and narrowly block an amendment intended to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination.

It was an unruly scene on the floor with Democrats chanting, "Shame!" after GOP leaders barely muscled up the votes to reject, 212-213, an amendment by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would have effectively barred federal contractors from getting government work if they discriminate against the LGBT community.

At one point, a monitor in the House gallery showed there were 217 votes supporting the legislation, eliciting cheers of joy from Democrats who thought the measure might actually pass. But over the course of about 10 minutes, those votes suddenly dropped one by one to 212 — and the amendment failed.

A number of lawmakers from western states, who originally voted yes, changed their votes. According to a list tweeted out an hour after the vote by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office, they included: California Reps. Darrell Issa, David Valadao, Jeff Denham, Mimi Walters, and Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, Rep. David Yong of Iowa and Rep. Bruce Poliquin of Maine. Their offices have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Maloney, the amendment's author, was furious with Republicans for how they handled the floor fight over his offering. He singled out Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in particular for criticism, saying the No. 2 House Republican personally lobbied GOP members to change their votes when it looked like Maloney's proposal would pass.

"The leader [McCarthy] went around and twisted their arms, and they voted for discrimination," Maloney said. When Maloney complained directly to McCarthy, he said the majority leader told him "to get back on your own side."

"The members who switched are going to hold a very special place in American history as the people who didn't have the guts to stand up and support the will of the House," Maloney said off the chamber floor after the vote. "They literally snatched discrimination out of the jaws of equality."

The acrimony undermined a success for Ryan earlier that day regarding his commitment to regular order. Just moments before the LGBT vote, he’d shepherded the first House vote to bar the Confederate flag from flying in mass graves at federal cemeteries.

When the votes began shifting out of the 'aye' column on Maloney's measure, booing erupted in the chamber. Almost every Democrat was on his or her feet shouting and eventually they broke out in a chant, pointing their fingers at the other side of the chamber where the Republicans sit: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

As the amendment was being voted down, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen appeared to shake her head in disappointment. The Florida Republican has a transgender son and is one of the few Republicans who has been outspoken in advocating for the LGBT community.
After the chair closed the vote, Democrats continued shouting in anger.

“I’ve been the majority leader. I’ve been the whip,” Hoyer said on the floor after the vote as he blamed GOP leadership for pushing lawmakers to switch their votes. But he again hit the seven Republicans who changed their positions. “They will have themselves to look at tonight in the mirror and explain to themselves whether their first vote was a principled one.”

Why would I want to attend an event for anyone in a political party that engages in such bigotry? Nothing I could say could outweigh the foul dictates coming down from The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group.