Accurate And Not Very Unfortunate

One of the disappointments of the 2016 presidential election is that we were deprived of the opportunity of seeing Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick Conway slink back into the sewer she came out from.

Fortunately, though, she has done a minimum of  gloating, instead preferring whining. Politico reports

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest’s assessment that President-elect Donald Trump may have known about Russian cyberattacks targeting the U.S. electoral process was “breathtaking” and “very unfortunate,” Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Thursday morning.

Speaking at his daily press briefing, Earnest referenced a remark Trump made at his most recent formal press conference, held in July, when he publicly invited Russian hackers to search for emails deleted from the personal server of Hillary Clinton.

Trump later said he was being sarcastic when he made the remark, but Earnest said Wednesday that the comment “might be an indication that he was obviously aware and concluded, based on whatever facts or sources he had available to him, that Russia was involved and their involvement was having a negative impact on his opponent’s campaign.” Conway took exception to the press secretary’s comment in an interview Thursday morning on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“That is just remarkable. That is breathtaking. I guess he's auditioning to be a political pundit after his job is over soon. That is incredibly disappointing to hear from the podium of the White House press secretary,” she said. “Because he basically — he essentially stated that the president-elect had knowledge of this, maybe even fanned the flames. It's incredibly irresponsible and I wonder if his boss, president Obama agrees.”

Evidently, it takes very little to take away Mrs. Conway's breath. During the campaign, her boss pleaded "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.... They probably have them. I’d like to have them released” She is deeply offended- offended!- that the statement could possibly be interpreted as Trump encouraging a foreign power to undermine his nation's electoral system by continuing to hack e-mails of a political party and release them to the public.

Conway, noticing effort of the Hamilton Electors, fears for the legitimacy of  Mr. Trump's election, hence, his presidency.  Politico contines

As she and other members of the president-elect’s team have done regularly, Conway said any suggestion that Russian cyberattacks aided Trump’s win is simply the latest excuse from Democrats upset by the election’s outcome.

“I think coming from the podium and basically trying to relitigate a political campaign when the president and the president-elect and their senior staff are trying to work together very closely to have a peaceful transition of power in a great democracy with just about a month plus ago, I find it to be very unfortunate,” Conway said.

The impact upon the election of  the hacked e-mails, unlike the clearly determinative effect of FBI director Comey's actions, is nearly impossible to determine.  Matthew Yglesias explains

it's challenging to know with any certainty what did and did not move votes. What's more, the election was so close in the three crucial swing states that essentially anything could have been the difference maker. It does seem, however, that Clinton was hurt very badly by late-breaking revelations from the FBI that it had uncovered new emails related to the investigation into her private email server — emails that later turned out to be irrelevant or duplicates.

But there was something more insidious in Conway's remarks than her feeble attempt to refute the notion that the emails influenced voters. The well-spoken Conway, carefully choosing her exact words as always, claimed (emphasis mine) "he essentially stated that the president-elect had knowledge of  this, maybe even fanned the flames."

Notwithstanding first glances, he actually said no such thing.  Earnest had stated

There was ample evidence that was known long before the election, and in most cases long before October, about the Trump campaign in Russia, everything from the Republican nominee himself calling on Russia to hack his opponent. It might be an indication that he was obviously aware and concluded, based on whatever facts or sources he had available to him, that Russia was involved and their involvement was having a negative impact on his opponent's campaign.







Earnest did not "essentially state" Trump knew. He stated it "might be an indication," which, given the facts known, is far less accusatory than it could have been.

More significantly,  Earenest referred to the pre-election period, when the individual was candidate Donald J. Trump running for political office. He was not President-elect Trump, eleccted by the American people (albeit without a plurality of the vote) to be their next President.

It is a crucial distinction, given the greater credibility and legitimacy of someone given the nod for President rather than a candidate spinning every which way in order to win an election. The choice of "President-elect" rather than Trump or- the more precise "candidate Trump"- was not accidental.

Kellyanne Conway knows the distinction and spoke accordingly in order to de-legitimize the words of the President's spokesman. And there should be little doubt where the truth lies when considering her words against those of someone who is, well, Earnest.







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Of Little Or No Help

Politico's Edward-Isaac Dovere details the infighting among the Clinton camp, organized labor, the DNC, and state organizations in the Midwest which contributed to triumph on November 8 for someone clearly unqualified, corrupt, and misogynist.

Ultimately, Clinton did not win because she failed to win in either Pennsylvania or Florida, which states she lost narrowly, but whose results do not appear to have been brought about by a dysfunctional campaign. Without victory in one of those states, the Democrat could not have prevailed, even if she had carried Michigan and Wisconsin.

The failure in Michigan was both remarkable and unavoidable, with one factor particularly intriguing. Dovere writes

Sanders threw himself into campaign appearances for Clinton throughout the fall, but familiar sources say the campaign never asked the Vermont senator’s campaign aides for help thinking through Michigan, Wisconsin or anywhere else where he had run strong..... People who asked for Vice President Joe Biden to come in were told that top Clinton aides weren’t clearing those trips.

The failure to approve a visit by the Vice-President was emblematic but not determinative, while the failure to get Senator Sanders involved in Wisconsin and Michigan may have been both.  And there seems an assumption that Clinton could have been dragged across the finish line in the latter state if the campaign had gotten President Obama more involved. Dovere adds

It was already November when the campaign finally reached out to the White House to get President Barack Obama into Michigan, a state that he’d worked hard and won by large margins in 2008 and 2012. On the Monday before Election Day, Obama added a stop in Ann Arbor, but that final weekend, the president had played golf on Saturday and made one stop in Orlando on Sunday, not having been asked to do anything else. Michigan senior adviser Steve Neuman had been asking for months to get Obama and the first lady on the ground there.

According to Dovere, internal numbers from Clinton's campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, NY showed the Democrat ahead by five points in Michigan on the morning of November 8. Nonetheless, by early afternoon, campaign headquarters found "urban precincts" (were) down 25 percent.

Urban precincts, dominated by black voters, were down disastrously- after an appearance by President Obama two days earlier, who presumably would have helped considerably there.  In Pennsylvania, a state the campaign was confident of carrying, a massive rally featuring the candidate and her husband, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, and Mr. and Mrs. Obama was held the evening before the election.  (This may have been spurred by the strategy of acting DNC chair Donna Brazile to run the vote up in cities so as to prevent Trump from winning the popular vote while Clinton won the electoral vote, thereby jeopardizing a mandate. Seriously.)

Clinton lost Pennsylvania the following day, by a little more than she lost Michigan, in what everyone- no matter other disagreements- agrees was a "change election."  Massive amounts of people fed up with "Obamacare" and believing the country was on the "wrong track" rather than the "right track" either rushed to the polls to vote for Donald Trump or were adequately disillusioned not to vote for either major party candidate.

Gallup polls imply that President Obama had a 56% or 57% approval rating on the day of the election.   However, reliable polls also suggested that Clinton would win the national popular vote by more than she did, and state polls had her running significantly stronger in such swing states as North Carolina and Florida, as well as the aforementioned Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  And those polls were not asking people what they thought of the first black President, whose election some voters insist proved that America is not "racist."

Amidst all the explanations- and there are a lot, mostly legitimate, of them- of Trump's victory, there is one missing. President Obama may have ultimately damaged Mrs. Clinton's chance of prevailing in a "change election." Clinton grabbed hold of President Obama, hung on tight, and lost a race that could not be lost.

Hillary Clinton may have done better acknowledging the problems with the Affordable Care Act and aggressively promoted solutions.  She might have acknowledged the long-term decline of the middle class and emphasized the importance of unions (which President Obama has failed to do) in maintaining an adequate standard of living.  She could pointed to the role of free and unfair trade pacts, promoted by the incumbent President, in the loss of American jobs.

It might not have worked, and would have been a major gamble in a race she was heavily favored to win, and very likely would have in the absence of voter suppression, voting irregularities, and GOP operative Jim Comey.  However, as people point to Hillary Clinton as representing the political establishment and embodying the status quo, they ought to admit that the popularity of the incumbent Democratic President may not only not be transferable, but may be highly overstated.












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After Mitt, Carly

GOP  presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was ready to pounce when Jake Tapper asked at a debate on September 16, 2015 the inevitable question:

In an interview last week in Rolling Stone magazine, Donald Trump said the following about you. Quote, "Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?" Mr. Trump later said he was talking about your persona, not your appearance. Please feel free to respond what you think about his persona.

Following laughter, Fiorina replied "You know, it's interesting to me, Mr. Trump said that he heard Mr. Bush very clearly and what Mr. Bush said. I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."






She might have added "what women everywhere heard was 'that is the face of the next Director of National  Intelligence.'"

Presumably, Fiorina won't be tapped for the job, with Trump adding her to the list including Mitt Romney of  People I Really Want to Humiliate.

And so we have Fiorina, having descended from on high at Trump Tower, telling (as she stated it, video below) a group of reporters

First thing is he has really cool stuff in his  office.  All thee athletes have given him incredible memorabilia. I was particularly taken by Shock O'Neal's shoe, which is huge.I guess it takes a champion to know a champion.

Cool! But note to Carly: No one believes you spontaneously came up with "I guess it takes a champion to know a champion." If you're going to be fed your lines, the least you can remember is that "Shaquille O'Neal" is pronounced as "shack," not "shock."








After the Access Hollywood tape was revealed in October, Fiorina wrote "Donald Trump does not represent me or my party,.  I understand the responsibility of Republicans to support their nominee. Our nominee has weighty responsibilities as well. Donald Trump has manifestly failed in these responsibilities.”  Now she says "people recognize the opportunity our new president-elect has to really make a huge impact on peoples' lives in this country..."

No more accurate statement can be made about the guy who has bragged about not paying taxes, has encouraged violence at rallies, and once commented "You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” That huge impact awaits as the march of the deplorables continues, a group well represented by Mrs. Fiorina.






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Able And Not Willing

In a classic example of a Friday night news dump, The Washington Post has reported

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

After months of considering how to respond to the consensus assessment, the White House in September decided to call out the Russians

but they worried that doing so unilaterally and without bipartisan congressional backing just weeks before the election would make Obama vulnerable to charges that he was using intelligence for political purposes.

Instead, officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security.

Obama dispatched Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official.

Specifically, the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions.

Though U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical that hackers would be able to manipulate the election results in a systematic way, the White House feared that Russia would attempt to do so, sowing doubt about the fundamental mechanisms of democracy and potentially forcing a more dangerous confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you, that Republicans would put politics above country.  There should have been little surprise that

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Mrs. McConnell, more commonly known as Elaine Chao, now is the President-elect's choice for Secretary of Transportation, several years after she largely slept on the job as George W. Bush's Secretary of Labor.

Yet no one, especially President Obama, could have expected Mitch McConnell to prioritize the national interest.  During the transition in 2008, seven GOP senators told Vice President-elect Biden to expect "unified resistance," as demanded by then- Minority Leader McConnell. In October, 2010, McConnell stated "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." And then there is the matter of Judge Merrick Garland.







Still, the President took "no" as an answer.  McConnell threatened Obama, and Obama blinked. That is a sound metaphor for the past eight years.  The Post report concluded

Some Clinton supporters saw the White House’s reluctance to act without bipartisan support as further evidence of an excessive caution in facing adversaries.

“The lack of an administration response on the Russian hacking cannot be attributed to Congress,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who was at the September meeting. “The administration has all the tools it needs to respond. They have the ability to impose sanctions. They have the ability to take clandestine means. The administration has decided not to utilize them in a way that would deter the Russians, and I think that’s a problem.”

We have a problem, and with Obama's willingness to take what McConnell gave him, we soon will have a  President Trump and a Senate of 52 Republicans. Atta guy, Mr. President.







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Robots, Immigrants. And No Citizens

AFL-CIO  President Richard Trumka says Andrew Puzder, President-elect Trump's choice for Secretary of Labor, is “a man whose business record is defined by fighting against working people."

As the awful cliche would have it: "what was your first clue," Mr. Trumka?  The New York Times reports

.... he has argued that the Obama administration’s recent rule expanding eligibility for overtime pay diminishes opportunities for workers, and that significant minimum wage increases would hurt small businesses and lead to job losses.

He has criticized paid sick leave policies of the sort recently enacted for federal contractors and strongly supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he says has created a “government-mandated restaurant recession” because rising premiums have left people with less money to spend dining out.

Speaking to Business Insider this year, Mr. Puzder said that increased automation could be a welcome development because machines were “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall or an age, sex or race discrimination case.”

There is one additional, significant indication of animus toward the working man and woman neither Mr. Trumka nor The New York Times will acknowledge.   CNBC found that in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year

Puzder supported a "path to legal status" that would be "short of citizenship" so long as the undocumented are "willing to accept responsibility for their actions and take their consequences." That path would include passing a background check, paying a fine and learning English, among other measures.

Puzder admitted on another occasion

If we were able to hire people who are currently here illegally, if there were a way to change their status so that they are here legally that would be a big benefit I think to us and to everybody else that has to hire workers in that category

It shouldn't be surprising that a  guy who opposes an increase in the minimum wage and mandatory sick leave policies and prefers robots to human beings would want to hire illegal immigrants with no chance to become citizens.  And of course

At an American Enterprise Institute conference in 2013, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, parent of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., riffed on the virtues of low-skilled immigrants and backed immigration reform.

"Our Hardee's restaurant operators in the Midwest and the Southeast often use the labor force in California as an example of what they would like their labor force to be," he said then.

"They're very hardworking, dedicated, creative people that really appreciate the fact they have a job," Puzder said. "Whereas in other parts of the country you often get people that are saying, 'I can't believe I have to work this job,' with the immigration population you always have the, 'Thank God I have this job' kind of attitude. So you end up with a real different feeling."

It is no surprise, either, that Andrew Puzder is particularly proud of his marketing approach, including Mexican guy and (white) American guy salivating over sexy, bikini-clad women playing volleyball in the desert at the Mexican/USA border. Profit is king and if women or immigrants can be exploited along the way, all the better. In the Wall Street Journal, he had written "every option should be on the talbe, except amnesty, which firgives illegal conduct. It isn't amnesty if immigrants admit wrongdoing and accept punishment."  And, apparently, substandard wages with no right to vote or opportunity to become citizens.














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Bad Politics, Bad Policy

When he announced his presidential candidacy in June, 2015, Donald J. Trump declared

I will build a great wall- and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me- and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build  a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. 

We didn't have to mark his words, because they were repeated often, and to cheering crowds.  As recently as the first of this month he maintained "trust me, we're going to build a wall."

He won't, of  course, and has no real intention to do so. Remarks substituting "fence" for wall, Trump's recent meeting with Paul Ryan, and his prospective Cabinet members- eager to shrink government so it can be drowned in a bathtub- testify to his disinterest.

Nonetheless, there may not have been  a candidate Trump, would not have been a presidential nominee Trump, and certainly wouldn't be a President-elect Trump without the pledge to build a wall, especially that voters generally (and especially GOP voters) always have been keener about building a wall than, say, deporting illegal immigrants.

Rahm Emanuel offered an autopsy of that election and noted that voters were presented "a change versus a status quo candidate in a change election."  He remarked

"I'm all for a socially inclusive message, but not at the exclusion of an economically robust message," Emanuel said at a Brookings Institution panel on the presidential election and the U.K.'s surprising vote to leave the European Union earlier this year.

"Look at when we won versus when we lost," he continued, after referencing Bill Clitnon's and Obama's successes. "The takeaway is  clearly about something tha's a more robust and inclusive economic message versus one that is just socially."....

That would be mere political pablum had not

Also at the event, Emauel reaffirmed that Chicago will remain a "sanctuary city" and offered a loud defense of the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

Asked if there were issues on which cities could work with the incoming Trump administration, Emanuel said there may be, in areas sch as infrastructure and, depending on the proposal, taxes, but not on immigration.

Under the latest iteration of Trump's tax plan, the average dollar amount the wealthy gain would far exceed the amount gained by the poorest taxpayers; the percentage of income saved by the rich is greater than that saved by taxpayers of modest income; and even the percentage of income which is recovered by the wealthy is greater than that of the working and middle classes.  But Emanuel proposes to cooperate with Trump on his tax initiatives.

Odder, though, is that Emanuel reaffirmed that Chicago will remain a "sanctuary city."

The Chicago mayor had concluded "I think we should go back to what I think has worked. And that to me is a .... very strong economic with a strong socially inclusive message. But not one at the expense of another."

Mrs. Clinton (and other Democrats) did have an economically inclusive, as well as a socially inclusive, message.  But there is little doubt that she emphasized- as a share of her cultural message and of her overall message- support for comprehensive immigration reform, for a welcoming approach to both immigrants (including ones here illegally) and refugees.

By contrast, on his way to nomination and election, Donald Trump opposed sanctuary cities. The platform of the Republican Party- in an effort to harmonize its position and that of its candidate- called for penalizing sanctuary cities (an imprecise term, admittedly).







Not by coincidence, Donald Trump won the presidency and his Party did quite well in congressional elections. Now Rahm Emanuel, advocate of sanctuary cities, scolds the Democratic Party for emphasizing social issues, which it did with immigration and with its attacks on Trump for belittling immigrants.

 The Democratic Party evidently had excessive faith in the power of changing demographics- especially the growing Latino population- which apparently has escaped the attention of the Chicago mayor. The prescription offered by Rahm Emanuel, who made his millions through investment banking, fervently promotes the charter school industry, and is hospitable to illegal immigrants, is more than a little suspect.

A greater emphasis on economic concerns shared by the middle classes and the poor,by minorities and whites, probably would have mitigated losses on November 8. That would conflict with the positions of Emanuel, a supporter of sanctuary cities and foe of unions, and is precisely the message the Democratic Party should reject.








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John Glenn Has Died, And Not Only Literally

Former Ohio Senator John Glenn, who died on Thursday, unexpectedly failed miserably in his effort to obtain the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. Jeff Greenfield remarks

There were important lessons from that failed campaign that resonate—or ought to resonate—today. A candidate without a compelling, thematically consistent message is at an enormous disadvantage. Attributes that political insiders see as powerful assets may turn out to be irrelevant to an electorate looking for something new.

Not only did Glenn lack the "compelling, thematically consistent message" necessary for a presidential nomination, he lacked the character needed, even then, to be win a general election for President. Charlie Pierce comments

In 1984, when John Glenn was preparing to run for president, I sat down in a bar on Beacon Hill in Boston for a chat with one of his chief strategists. This fellow smacked my gob across the room when he said that the campaign was planning to "downplay the hero stuff." My god, I thought. Without The Hero Stuff, Glenn was just a kind of boring old sod from Ohio. Without The Hero Stuff, he wasn't the first American to orbit the Earth. He wasn't the guy who spent the last of those orbits in a tiny spacecraft with a problem the gravity of which the folks on the ground could only guess. Without The Hero Stuff, he wasn't…an astronaut.

He would downplay the hero stuff.  Winning presidential candidates are hardly humble, whether like Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) and Bill Clinton they fake humility, or don't even bother, in the manner of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or Donald J. Trump. It was on May 1, 2003 when President Bush made history for the

first time a sitting president has arrived on the deck of an aircraft carrier by plane. The jet made what is known as a "tailhook" landing, with the plane, traveling about 150 mph, hooking onto the last of four steel wires across the flight deck and coming to a complete stop in less than 400 feet.

The exterior of the four-seat Navy S-3B Viking was marked with "Navy 1" in the back and "George W. Bush Commander-in-Chief" just below the cockpit window. On the plane's tail was the insignia of the squadron, the "Blue Wolves."

Moments after the landing, the president, wearing a green flight suit and holding a white helmet, got off the plane, saluted those on the flight deck and shook hands with them. Above him, the tower was adorned with a big sign that read, "Mission Accomplished."

Pretty bold stuff from a guy who skipped out of his National Guard duty. He was in turn succeeded in office by the guy who on Super Tuesday 2008 declared "change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." He defeated a guy who downplayed his heroic military service, which did spare the nation a Vice-President Sarah Palin.






We now have elected as President a man who in the last thirteen months alone, with the eyes of the nation upon him, stated

"I know more about ISIS (the Islamic State militant group) than the generals do. Believe me." 
"Nobody knows jobs like I do."
"I know more about foreign policy than anybody running." 
"Nobody reads the Bible more than me."
"Nobody knows more about trade than me." 
"Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."
"I've studied (the Iran deal) in great detail, I would say actually greater by far than anyone else."
"I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth."
"Nobody knows more about taxes than I do — maybe in the history of the world."
"There is nobody who understands the horror of nuclear more than me." 
"I understand money better than anybody,"
"Nobody knows debt better than me."
"Nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump." 

Donald Trump has shattered all records in the narcissistic sweeptstakes. Although it wasn't as bad in 1984,when  the failure of the self-effacing John Glenn may have foreshadowed a great cultural shift in which voters increasingly to elect candidates with extraordinary egos. And here we are.

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