2020: America's Ongoing Civil War

As the highly flawed Democrat presidential nomination process seems at this point headed towards nominating a candidate who is almost assured to lose in November, 2020, a  piece in Salon looks at the ongoing civil war in America where Trump and white supremacists and religious extremists are actively engaged in a war turning back time and undo the progress of the last five decades.  Should Trump be re-elected and worse yet, Republicans recapture control of the House of Representatives, by 2024 America will be unrecognizable and the verdict is out on whether democracy will have survived. I try to be optimistic, but at the moment, it is difficult not to be highly pessimistic about the future. Here are highlights from Salon:

In what amounted to a casual aside at his rally in Colorado Springs on Thursday night, Donald Trump drew the battle lines in this election as clearly as I've heard them drawn yet. Facing another of his virtually all-white audience in the city that is headquarters to multiple fundamentalist sects and several Christian megachurches, Trump waved his arms and asked, "By the way, how bad were the Academy Awards this year?" The crowd jeered loudly. "Did you see it? And the winner is … a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about?" he went on with undisguised disgust.

Trump may as well have waved a Confederate battle flag. The crowd knew exactly what he meant. "Make America Great Again" now had a point of origin, and the greatness they yearned for had not been expressed by the Oscar win of "Parasite" director Bong Joon-ho or, God forbid, the election of Barack Obama, but by Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. 

Trump is letting us know that he and his base don't think of this as an election. It's a civil war. They want to turn the clock back to the time that Negroes knew their place and women were happy making biscuits in the kitchen and employers could pay their workers anything they wanted and the question of who got to vote was decided by a few white men in a smoke-filled room. 

Look around you. With William Barr at the Justice Department and Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and Senate Republicans voting in lockstep with Mitch McConnell, living in Donald Trump's America feels like the South won the Civil War. If we don't get our shit together and drive him from office at the ballot box in November, we'll lose this one, too. 

Trump made use of an enemy foreign power, Russia, to win election in 2016, and if what the intelligence community told the Congress this week is correct, he's in the process of doing it again. There won't be any investigation of foreign interference this time.

Republicans voted in lockstep to acquit him and nothing happened. There were no consequences for Trump, and now he's unbound. He's going to accept Russian help with his campaign right out in the open, and he'll stand up at one of his rallies and look into the cameras and say, "I did it, and fuck you." 

Donald Trump is who he always was: a mobbed up grifter from New York who learned from his father that you can welch on debts, pay people off and game the system, and when you get caught, walk away. If you're outrageous enough about it, people will be so stunned they are unwilling or unable to act. . . . I never believed in your democracy, I never believed in your capitalism, I never believed in your establishment, and look what I did! I got elected president! Fuck you! I'm going to take everything I want! I'm going to fly Air Force One anywhere I want, and I'm going to play golf more often than Arnie Palmer, and I'm going to bellow racism and lies at my rallies, and I'm going to jack up the Secret Service for rooms at my resorts, and I'm not going to pay a fucking cent and what are you going to do about it? I'm going to call Vladimir Putin on the phone and I'm going to get him to help me steal another election, and fuck you."

That's Trump's philosophy in a nutshell: do whatever you want and say "Fuck you." He's getting away with it the same way he got away with stiffing contractors and welching on bank loans and going into bankruptcy and taking out more loans and when they come due saying "Fuck you." 

I think we stand a chance to beat him, but we'll have to dig ourselves out of a deep, deep hole when he's gone. Some of us never will: The children ripped from their mothers' arms at the border, the voters who will go to the polls and be turned away, the poor who will go hungry when their food stamps are cut, the land and water and air that will be despoiled, the species that will go extinct, the companies that will fail, the women whose health clinics will close, the hopes that will be dashed and gone away forever.

Trump has cut the heart out of America. He's turning our democracy into a dictatorship, and he's not finished.

Why Trump's Impeachment and Removal Is Necessary

The book "Mortal Republic" one is presented with the fall of the Roman Republic and its descent into a dictatorship under Augustus Caesar and his successors.  The fall did not happen over night, but it involved and undermining of the institutions, norms, and practices and practices of the Republic, a move towards calling for violence against political opponents, and a division of the populace into hostile factions.  These are precisely the things we are witnessing under Donald Trump and Senate Republicans who bear sharp parallels with members of the Roman Senate who closed their eyes to abuses of power and office in order to further short term interests (many latter would lose their lives and or property as autocratic rule grew).  At a number of stages, the collapse of the Roman Republic could have been averted had principle and political courage won out.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case of why Trump's impeachment and removal from office is essential to stop the collapse of the American Republic. Here are  article highlights:

This is not just an impeachment. It’s the endgame for Trump’s relentless assault on the institutions, norms, and practices of America’s liberal democracy for the past three years. It’s also a deeper reckoning. It’s about whether the legitimacy of our entire system can last much longer without this man being removed from office.

I’m talking about what political scientists call “regime cleavage” — a decline in democratic life so severe the country’s very institutions could lose legitimacy as a result of it. It is described by one political scientist as follows: “a division within the population marked by conflict about the foundations of the governing system itself — in the American case, our constitutional democracy. In societies facing a regime cleavage, a growing number of citizens and officials believe that norms, institutions, and laws may be ignored, subverted, or replaced.” A full-on regime cleavage is, indeed, an extinction-level event for our liberal democratic system. And it is one precipitated by the man who is supposed to be the guardian of that system, the president.

In the current scandal over Ukraine, Trump is insisting that he did “nothing wrong” in demanding that Ukraine announce investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden, or forfeit desperately needed military aid. If that is the president’s position — that he can constitutionally ask any other country to intervene on his behalf in a U.S. election — it represents a view of executive power that is the equivalent of a mob boss’s. It is best summed up in Trump’s own words: Article 2 of the Constitution permits him to do “anything I want.”

We have become so used to these attacks on our constitutional order that we fail to be shocked by Trump’s insistence that a constitutional impeachment inquiry is a “coup.” By any measure, this is an extraordinary statement, and itself an impeachable offense as a form of “contempt for Congress.” We barely blink anymore when a president refuses to cooperate in any way, demands his underlings refuse to testify and break the law by flouting subpoenas, threatens to out the first whistle-blower’s identity (in violation of the law), or assaults and tries to intimidate witnesses, like Colonel Alexander Vindman.

He seems to think in the Ukraine context that “l’état c’est moi” is the core American truth, rather than a French monarch’s claims to absolute power. He believes in the kind of executive power the Founders designed the U.S. Constitution to prevent.

There are valid criticisms and defenses of Trump’s policy choices, but his policies are irrelevant for an impeachment. I actually support a humane crackdown on undocumented immigration, a tougher trade stance toward China, and an attempt, at least, to end America’s endless wars. But what matters, and what makes this such a vital moment in American history, is that it has nothing to do with policy. This is simply about Trump’s abuse of power. He lies and misleads the American public constantly, in an outright attempt to so confuse Americans that they forget or reject the concept of truth altogether. Lies are part of politics, but we have never before seen such a fire hose of often contradictory or inflammatory bald-faced lies from the Oval Office. He has obstructed justice countless times, by witness tampering, forbidding his subordinates from complying with legal subpoenas, and by “using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct” both the Mueller and now the Ukraine investigations. (I quote from Article 1 of Nixon’s impeachment.) Trump has also “failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives … and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas.” (I quote from Article III of Nixon’s impeachment.) He has declared legal processes illegitimate if they interfere with or constrain his whims and impulses. These are not old-fashioned battles with a bureaucracy over policy; that’s fine. They are assaults on the legitimacy of the bureaucracy, and the laws they are required to uphold. These are definitional impeachable offenses, and they are part and parcel of Trump’s abuse of power from the day he was elected.

And most important of all, Trump has turned the GOP — one of our two major parties with a long and distinguished history — into an accomplice in his crimes. Senator Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most contemptible figure of the last couple of years, even says he will not read witness transcripts or follow the proceedings in the House or consider the evidence in a legal impeachment inquiry, because he regards the whole impeachment process as “BS” and a “sham.” This is a senator calling the constitutional right of the House of Representatives to impeach a president illegitimate.

And the GOP as a whole has consistently backed Trump rather than the Constitution. Sixty-two percent of Republican supporters have said that there is nothing Trump could do, no crime or war crime, no high crime or misdemeanor, that would lead them to vote against him in 2020. There is only one way to describe this, and that is a cult, completely resistant to reason or debate. The cult is so strong that Trump feels invulnerable. If Trump survives impeachment, and loses the 2020 election, he may declare it another coup, rigged, and illegitimate. He may refuse to concede. And it is possible the GOP will follow his lead. That this is even thinkable reveals the full extent of our constitutional rot.

Trump has fast-forwarded “regime cleavage.” He is appealing to the people to render him immune from constitutional constraints imposed by the representatives of the people. He has opened up not a divide between right and left so much as a divide over whether the American system of government is legitimate or illegitimate. And that is why I don’t want to defeat Trump in an election, because that would suggest that his assault on the truth, on the Constitution, and on the rule of law is just a set of policy decisions that we can, in time, reject. It creates a precedent for future presidents to assault the legitimacy of the American government, constrained only by their ability to win the next election. In fact, the only proper constitutional response to this abuse of executive power is impeachment. I know I’ve said this before. But on the eve of public hearings, it is vital to remember it.

Voters Are Warming to Impeaching Trump

Perhaps Trump fatigue is finally taking hold or perhaps the Ukrainian shakedown and requests for yet another foreign intervention into U.S. elections has awakened the heretofore lethargic, but two polls suggest that a plurality of Americans support seeing Trump impeached and ultimately removed from office.  One can only wonder if support for impeachment will grow if Democrats are smart in how they conduct hearings and properly expose Trump's criminality and abuse of his office for personal gain with no thought about the best interests of the nation (in Trump's narcissistic mind, the two are one and the same much like dictators and despots of the past).  Whatever the cause for growing support for impeachment, it is seemingly a good sign that decency and a thirst for honesty are not totally dead in today's America.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this shift in voter opinion.  Here are excerpts:

Two new polls suggest that American voters are warming to the idea of impeaching President Trump. According to a Morning Consult poll conducted from September 24 to 26, 43 percent of the public now backs impeachment proceedings. That figure has increased seven points from an earlier Morning Consult poll, carried out from September 20 to 22. Meanwhile, an NPR–PBS NewsHour–Marist poll, conducted the day before the whistle-blower report became public, finds that voters are roughly split on the subject; 49 percent support impeachment, and 46 percent do not.

One possible reason for the increase in public support for impeachment is so obvious it almost doesn’t need an explanation. Trump is not having a very good week: As a call record and now a declassified whistle-blower report attest, Trump asked the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the son of a political enemy — Hunter Biden — with the assistance of the Justice Department and Rudy Giuliani. Trump later tried to withhold military aid from Ukraine. The unspooling crisis encourages talk of impeachment, and a number of House Democrats have come out in support of beginning the process.

By now throwing her support behind an impeachment inquiry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has helped shift public opinion in tandem with media coverage of Trump’s misconduct. But she is an extremely late convert to the cause of impeachment, despite the president’s corruption and alleged sexual violence. Her ambivalence provided shelter to more moderate and conservative members of the party, who think an impeachment inquiry would cost them their seats. Whether these members will follow Pelosi’s lead is an open question.

Though no one can say with certainty that voter enthusiasm for impeachment will continue to grow, the president’s handling of the Ukraine scandal has clearly harmed him. A good number of Democrats already seem to realize that the story leaves them with no option but to endorse impeachment proceedings.

But there are still stragglers. Some, like conservative Henry Cuellar of Texas, equivocated even as evidence of presidential misconduct became increasingly difficult to ignore. Cuellar, who is currently locked in a primary battle with progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, has said that he’ll support proceedings “if investigations prove that impeachment is the necessary course of action,” the Texas Tribune reports.

The events of this month make Tlaib look prescient and underscore the risks of the party’s fearful approach to impeachment. We’ve been here before: Morning Consult says that this month’s poll numbers “nearly match” its findings in August 2018, amid the convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Public opinion is malleable, but Democrats behave too often as if the opposite is true. The window is open, and they can’t afford their old ambivalence.

One can only hope Congressional Democrats are re-watching the tapes from the Watergate investigation and formulating an approach that will convince all but the racists and religious fanatics of Trump's base that it is time for the cancer in the White House to be removed.

Mueller Speaks: No Exoneration of Trump; Barr Mislead Public

Robert Mueller finally broke his silence and released a statement that he read today.  The statement confirms that Mueller's investigation did NOT conclude that Trump/his campaign had not committed a crime. Stated another way, the report in way exonerates Trump. Trump's claims to the contrary are, like so many other of his utterances, lies.  Mueller's statement also makes it clear that Attorney General William Barr has mislead the American public and seemingly has been more concerned with acting as Trump's consigliere than serving the citizens of  America.  One columnist in the Washington Post summed up Mueller's statement and the perilous state of our democracy in this manner:

If this man of precise language was not inviting Congress to impeach the president, he certainly seemed to be inviting the belief that he didn’t charge Trump with crimes only because he couldn’t. And because Mueller chooses words carefully, it’s also worth noting which one he didn’t use: “collusion.” Instead, he implicitly rebuked a president who constantly, maddeningly, refers to Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election as the “Russian hoax.” 

Mueller ended his nearly 10-minute statement where it began, and where the entire investigation began: with a Russian attack on the United States. There “were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American,” Mueller said.

If our country’s political health were better, the Russian attack would get the attention of every American. But Mueller gives us more credit than we deserve. His report assumed that our leaders would take seriously the Russian threat when presented with overwhelming evidence. It assumed that political leaders would soberly weigh the evidence that Trump obstructed his investigation.

Instead, Trump laughs about the whole thing with Putin, Republican leaders quash bipartisan efforts to protect the 2020 election from another attack, and GOP lawmakers, instead of pondering the president’s culpability and Mueller’s damning findings, demand investigations of investigators’ “treason” and attempted “coup.”  In appealing to their better angels, Mueller was naive. 

Russia is preparing to attack us — again. Trump is poised to benefit — again. Unlike in 2016, we now know Russia’s bad intentions, thanks to Mueller. That Trump and his allies facilitate the Russian attack by refusing to protect against it is the essence of collusion. 

Frighteningly, as the column notes, Trump, Putin, Russian intelligence agents and William Barr have other would be co-conspirators: Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and every other Republican member of Congress who continues to act to protect Trump - and their own re-election chances - and giving Trump and his base political fellatio at the express of the nation as a whole.  For those inclined to read (which rules out Fox News viewers), the following is Mueller's entire statement as published by CNN.  Read it if you question my reading of it.

Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel's Office.

The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking today because our investigation is complete. The Attorney General has made the report on our investigation largely public. And we are formally closing the Special Counsel's Office. As well, I am resigning from the Department of Justice and returning to private life.

I'll make a few remarks about the results of our work. But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office's written work speak for itself.

Let me begin where the appointment order begins: and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election.

As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system.

The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information, and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization WikiLeaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.

And at the same time, as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to interfere in the election.

These indictments contain allegations. And we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.

The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood. That is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office.

That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate.

The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign's response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.

And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the President.

The order appointing me Special Counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation and we kept the office of the Acting Attorney General apprised of the progress of our work.

As set forth in our report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime. The introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision.

It explains that under long-standing Department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view—that too is prohibited.

The Special Counsel's Office is part of the Department of Justice and, by regulation, it was bound by that Department policy. Charging [Trump] the President with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.

The Department's written opinion explaining the policy against charging a President makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report. And I will describe two of them:

First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting President because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents are available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could now be charged.

And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.

And beyond Department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of an actual charge.

So that was the Justice Department policy and those were the principles under which we operated. From them we concluded that we would not reach a determination -- one way or the other -- about whether [Trump] the President committed a crime. That is the office's final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the President.

We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the Attorney General—as required by Department regulations.

The Attorney General then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and the American people.

At one point in time I requested that certain portions of the report be released. The Attorney General preferred to make the entire report public all at once. We appreciate that the Attorney General made the report largely public. I do not question the Attorney General's good faith in that decision.

I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak about this matter. I am making that decision myself—no one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter.

There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.

The report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.

In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office.

So beyond what I have said here today and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress.

It is for that reason that I will not take questions here today.

Before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the FBI agents, the analysts, and the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. These individuals, who spent nearly two years with the Special Counsel's Office, were of the highest integrity.

I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments—that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.Thank you.

I for one are very fearful for the future if Republicans continue to put their increasingly toxic and corrupt party ahead of the best interests of the nation. Hopefully, history will deal with Trump, McConnell, Graham and others very harshly and they will rank with Hitler's collaborators who similarly worked to destroy Germany's democracy in the 1930's.

Trump's Claim of Monarchical Powers

Well before the 2016 presidential election numerous psychologists and psychiatrists warned that Donald Trump was a malignant narcissist and that giving him immense powers would be very dangerous.  Fast forward to today and Trump, through his lawyers - some of dubious professional merit - is arguing that he is a king or emperor and, therefore, above the law, the law being whatever he deems it to be.  Others would make a different analogy which leads to the same mindset: Trump is a crime boss who sees the law as only applying to others.  Either way, there is no legal precedent for the far fetched claims made by Der Trumpenführer.  A piece in the New York Times looks at both Trump's fantastic claims and the lack of any legal merit to them.  Here are excerpts:

[Trump] The president believes he is above the law. That’s the takeaway from the confidential 20-page memo sent by President Trump’s lawyers to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, published over the weekend by The Times. And it’s the same sentiment that Rudy Giuliani expressed on Sunday when he suggested that Mr. Trump has the power to pardon himself.

The central claim of the legal memorandum is that it is impossible for the president to illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling. That’s because, as president, Mr. Trump has the constitutional power to terminate the inquiry or pardon his way out of it. Therefore — and this is the key and indefensible point — he cannot obstruct justice by exercising this authority “no matter his motivation.”

This understanding of presidential power is radical and absolutist. It is also unsound and almost certain to be sharply rejected should it ever be proffered in court. Imagine, for example, that the worst version of facts proves true: that Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey, tried to fire Mr. Mueller, constructed a false account of the June 2016 Russia meeting, and tried to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal decision that was driven by Justice Department policy, all to protect his own skin and his family’s fortune. If this were the case, the elements of obstruction — in brief, the interference or attempted interference with an official proceeding, such as a grand jury investigation — would be plainly met. Most important, the president would have acted with corrupt intent as it is well understood under the law.

No tenable account of executive power holds that a president’s purposes in exercising powers accorded under Article II, “to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” have no import.  . . . This would very clearly violate the maxim that the president is not above the law.

If this sounds like legal theorizing, just consider the fact that Mr. Trump’s position is soundly contradicted by the Richard Nixon case. . . . Subsequent investigations into alleged abuses of presidential power — Iran-contra as well as Whitewater — took it as accepted law that the president is capable of obstructing justice. . . . . there is scant support among constitutional scholars or in the case law for the president’s drastic argument.

The second pillar of the letter submitted by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to Mr. Mueller is that he is too busy running the country to sit for an interview. . . . Here Mr. Trump’s position run completely afoul of another presidential precedent: that of Bill Clinton.

The Supreme Court rejected the argument unanimously, and Mr. Clinton was forced to testify, initiating an indecorous process that led to his impeachment.

The decision was so resounding, and the precedent so apposite, that it’s puzzling that Mr. Trump’s lawyers would even attempt to make it a main plank of their argument to the special counsel.

All three of Mr. Trump’s pillars of defense support no weight. Mr. Mueller may have practical or policy reasons for staying his hand in finding obstruction, but he needn’t worry about the proffered legal impediments. They are all losers.