Emerging Pattern

Diversion- and this time it's not by Donald Trump personally.

To be fair, this was not Politico's intent in the article that

A stark generational divide among Democrats has emerged over what, if any, responsibility (Representative Katie) Hill should assume for the firestorm that led to her resignation this week, as well as whether the same standards would be applied to a male lawmaker. Some Democrats are also worried about the potential chilling effect on efforts to recruit younger candidates, particularly millennial women.

Getting it half right, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated "This doesn't happen to male members in the same way- revenge porn in this respect.... We're talking about a major crime.... being committed against her."

However, Ocasio-Cortez took office only this year (seems like almost a decade ago) and thus might not be fully ware of Al Franken, driven from office two years ago for having been accused of less, and probably having done less than what he was accused of.  It wasn't a case of revenge pornography- but Franken is a male, and that didn't stop Democratic leaders Pelosi and Schumer from encouraging him to take early retirement.  

Nonetheless, it has become clearer that Hill is less perpetrator than victim, as the congresswoman strongly implied. Salon reports

Jennifer Van Laar, a deputy managing editor at the conservative blog RedState, published a nude photo of Hill as part of a report alleging that Hill and a female campaign staffer were in a three-person relationship with her husband. The blog later alleged that Hill engaged in a relationship with a male congressional staffer.

Days later, Van Laar published another nude photo of Hill at The Daily Mail. Hill, who is openly bisexual and is in divorce proceedings with Kenneth Heslep, her husband of nine years, admitted that she had a relationship with the female campaign aide but denied the relationship with the congressional aide, which triggered a House ethics investigation.

Hill announced her resignation on Saturday after blaming her “abusive” estranged husband for the “smear campaign” against her and said it was perpetuated by her “Republican opponents.”

After publishing the photos and shortly before Hill’s resignation, Van Laar posted a tweet urging followers to “help us flip” Hill’s seat by backing Republican candidate Mike Garcia. In a later tweet, Van Laar promoted former Rep. Steve Knight, R-Calif., who lost to Hill in 2018, in hopes that he would run for the seat again.

George Padapoulos on October 29 declared his candidacy for Congress. However

Why was @GeorgePapa19 Tweeting this BEFORE the @RepKatieHill story and photos came out?

Was it for the same reason Roger Stone was Tweeting about the @alfranken story the day before that came out?
Are Democrats really still falling for this BS? https://t.co/ozildj7dR8

— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) October 31, 2019

Check it out- in November 2017 The Hill had noted

Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone appeared to know there were sexual misconduct allegations involving Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) hours before they became public.

Stone has been banned from Twitter, but at 1 a.m. on Thursday morning an account connected to him tweeted a quote from the Republican political operative.

"Roger Stone says it's Al Franken's 'time in the barrel'. Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of 'grabby' behavior," read the tweet from Enter the Stone Zone.

QUOTE: Roger Stone says it's Al Franken's "time in the barrel". Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of "grabby" behavior.

— Enter The Stone Zone (@stonezonetweets) November 16, 2017

Enter the Stone Zone is an account that claims to share "political commentary" from Stone.

Hours later, Leeann Tweeden, a KABC-AM news anchor, accused Franken of kissing and groping her without her consent in 2006. Tweeden said the incidents occurred during a USO tour to entertain troops abroad. She also tweeted a photograph of Franken as evidence.

It's questionable whether Franken actually was groping her.  Yet, there are parallels with the Hill. In both cases, GOP activist(s) appear to have had advance notice of the accusation. In each, Democrats avoided defending their fellow Democrat. Both individuals, lacking strategic air cover from their own supporters, chose to resign.

And in neither incident there been more than a stray Democrat picking up on the likely Republican strategy behind it.  

Share |

A Proud Texan Proud Of Texan Gun Laws

Retweeting right-wing Breitbart News, Texas senator Ted Cruz on Monday commented

Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens. 

Huffington Post reports

In reply, Lightfoot told Cruz to “keep our name out of your mouth.”

In the same tweet, she posted a graph showing how nearly 60% of the illegal firearms that were recovered in the city between 2013 and 2016 actually came from outside Illinois.

They were, Lightfoot wrote, “mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation.” 

Among the laws the federal government needs to enact is one requiring a background check on all private gun transactions, aside from the transfer of a firearm from one individual to a member of his immediate family. Currently, according to the Brennan Center

Twelve states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia require universal background checks at the point of sale for all sales and transfers of all classes of firearms, whether they are purchased from a licensed dealer or an unlicensed seller.

Not surprisingly, things are much different in Ted Cruz's state, inasmuch as

handgun license holders in Texas are exempt from the federal background check requirement when purchasing a handgun.2 (Note, however, that people who have become prohibited from possessing firearms may continue to hold state firearms licenses if the state fails to remove these licenses in a timely fashion.)

Texas does not require private sellers (sellers who are not licensed dealers) to initiate a background check when transferring a firearm.

This should be quite inconvenient for its junior senator. We were reminded , slightly less than 24 hours after Cruz's tweet, of the deadly consequences of policies in such states as Texas because

A law enforcement official says a gunman who killed seven people in West Texas had obtained his AR-style rifle through a private sale, evading a federal background check.

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Tuesday because the person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Officials said Seth Aaron Ator had previously tried to obtain a gun but failed a federal background check.

Obtaining the weapon through a private sale, as opposed to buying it through a licensed gun dealer, would've allowed Ator to skirt the background check.

And Ted Cruz remains among the very few things senators Lindsey Graham and Al Franken agreed about:

Share |

An Accommodating Party

Times change, people change, but our major political parties sometimes appear not to.

On November 1, 2000 the New York Daily News, responding to speculation that George W Bush would win the popular vote while Al Gore would take the presidency with a majority of the Electoral College, found

The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course. In league with the campaign - which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness - a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. "We'd have ads, too," says a Bush aide, "and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted.

" Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. "You think 'Democrats for Democracy' would be a catchy term for them?" asks a Bush adviser....

And what would happen if the "what if" scenario came out the other way? "Then we'd be doing the same thing Bush is apparently getting ready for," says a Gore campaign official. "They're just further along in their contingency thinking than we are. But we wouldn't lie down without a fight, either.

It did come out the other way but they did lie down without a fight.

The Democratic Party still does not like a scuffle, and I'm not referring to the failure of the H. Clinton campaign to develop a strategy it would implement if Clinton were to have won the popular vote while Trump triumphed in the Electoral College  If it had come out the other way, the GOP might still be in court- and in the streets- demanding that its presidential candidate displace Hillary Clinton at 1600 Washington Avenue.

The Democratic Party won't fight for its presidential candidates but, to be fair, it won't fight for its US Senators, either. In "The Case of Al Franken," the arguably incomparable Jane Mayer chronicles the events leading to the resignation of the Minnesota senator for sexual harassment alleged by a conservative radio talk show host. She explains

On December 1, 2017, seven female Democratic senators—Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Claire McCaskill, Mazie Hirono, Patty Murray, Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto—met with Chuck Schumer to tell him that most of them were on the verge of demanding Franken’s resignation. At least one of them had already drafted such a statement, and the group’s resolve hardened further when some of its members learned of an impending Politico story that contained a seventh allegation, by a former Senate staff member. The accuser, whose name is being withheld at her request, was known to some of the seven female senators. The woman said that, in 2006, when Franken was still a comedian, he had made her uneasy by looking as if he planned to kiss her. The senator she had worked for hadn’t known of the allegation at the time, but vouched for her credibility.

According to someone familiar with the situation, Schumer spoke with Franken later that day, advising him to take the issue more seriously and to reach out to the women senators. Franken has no recollection of this conversation, but says that it’s wrong to suggest he wasn’t already taking the matter seriously. His plan was still to respond to Tweeden’s claims at the Senate Ethics Committee hearing. “I was going by the book,” Franken told me. “We didn’t think we should mount a lobbying campaign. But then it all started cascading.” He faults Schumer for not insisting to his caucus that an investigation was under way, and that due process required facts before a verdict.

The effort to get rid of the effective Franken was jump-started and distorted by a "struggling conservative talk-radio station whose survival plan was to become the most pro-Trump station in Los Angeles," which chose to avoid checking the facts, vetting the accuser's statement, or requesting a response from the accused before going with the story.

There were seven Democratic senators whom Mayer quotes who now regret having called upon Franken to resign. Whether it's a Democratic senator under attack or an instance in which the popular vote and the Electoral College produce different outcomes, Democrats have to understand that Republicans will be Republicans and they cannot flinch before they are even hit.

Share |