The Moral High Ground, Lost

Blown opportunity.  On March 6, I wrote (typed)

Yet 6-7 days after Democrat Omar made her comment decrying alleged dual allegiance, House leadership has been unable or unwilling either to remove Omar from the Foreign Relations Committee or to denounce anti-Semitism.

In the coming days, Pelosi and her caucus will do something. The optimum decision would be to remove her from a committee which has jurisdiction over foreign affairs, including in the Middle East, which includes the Jewish state and American ally, Israel.

They did do something. Under the Speaker's leadership, House Democrats pushed through a measure with the support of every Democrat and most Republicans. Omitting the name "Ilhan Omar," the resolution argued "whether from the political right, center or left, bigotry, discrimination, oppression, racism and imputations of dual loyalty threaten American democracy and have no place in American political discourse."

One Democratic aide, perhaps generously, labeled it "a kitchen-sink resolution." Nonetheless, after its passage I hoped "Omar will learn to curb her tongue and Twitter finger."

So far at least, it appears that she has. However, no one has ever lost money betting against Donald J. Trump making a vile remark- or two. And so it was that when he was

Addressing American Jews on Saturday in Las Vegas, President Donald Trump casually invoked the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty by referring to Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “your prime minister.”

Given that Trump was speaking to Jewish Republicans — including Sheldon Adelson, the American casino magnate who is one of Netanyahu’s biggest donors — the president was not wrong to assume that the crowd was strongly pro-Israel, but the accusation that the loyalty of non-Israeli Jews to their home countries is somehow suspect has a long, ugly history.

Later in his address to the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering, Trump referred a second time to American Jews as if they were Israelis by saying that a victory for Democrats in the 2020 election “would cripple our country and very well could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

Several journalists expressed discomfort as Trump went on to suggest that his Jewish supporters should explain “to some of your people” in business and finance that they should stop opposing his imposition of tariffs on imported goods.

Prepare to be shocked! shocked! Trump elevated his hypocritical game by remarking during the same speech “Special thanks to Rep. Omar of Minnesota. Oh, I almost forgot. She doesn’t like Israel ... I’m so sorry!”

Trump will be Trump, hypocritical, bigoted, partisan to an unprecedented degree.  But it was a missed opportunity a month ago for the Democratic Party which the President slammed and slandered, and which decided that the words "Ilhan Omar" or even "the congresswoman from the 5th district of Minnesota" could not be uttered in an "anti-hate" resolution.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over the process which led to the resolution, the Democratic Party considered criticizing the individual who had made the remark(s) which precipitated the vote.Then it whiffed, instead settling on a grab bag of victims, thus (as one GOP opponent properly quipped) "left out the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we left out Wiccans, we left out Jehovah’s Witnesses, we left out disabled people."

Democrats ceded the high ground on anti-Semitism. It was theirs to lose, and they lost it, lost it under Coach Nancy Pelosi, responding to concerns of the black and progressive caucuses. Now President Trump clearly has accused American Jews of dual loyalty, and the Democratic reaction is....... silence.

It didn't have to be this way. Democrats could have placed in front of House members a statement of disapproval of an apparent anti-Semite, passed it overwhelmingly, and now credibly condemned President Trump.

Instead, leadership made an unforced error in deciding not to offend its pro-Palestinian bloc. Now President Trump, whom Democrats realize is reprehensible, has reinforced one of the oldest tropes about American Jewry. In (lack of) response, congressional Democrats, Jew and non-Jew, cannot find their voice. This was a failure of leadership, and for once it was not of Donald Trump's making. 

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Trump And God, A Dyad

He's out of touch, and not only because he likes touching men and women who don't want to be touched. When criticized for praising GOP members of Congress during the fall campaign, Joe Biden responded in January

I read in the New York Times today that one of my problems if I were to run for president, I like Republicans. OK, well, bless me father for I have sinned. From where I come from, I don't know how you get anything done. I don't know how you get anything done unless we start talking to one another again.

From where I come, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God, but he has his Christian church and I have mine.

Switching awkwardly from the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament to the people of solely the Old Testament, I refer to Wikipedia, which explains

Dayenu (Hebrew:דַּיֵּנוּ) is a song that is part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The word "Dayenu" means approximately "it would have been enough", "it would have been sufficient", or "it would have sufficed" (day in Hebrew is "enough", and -enu the first person plural suffix, "to us"). This traditional up-beat Passover song is over one thousand years old. The earliest full text of the song occurs in the first medieval haggadah, which is part of the ninth-century Seder Rav Amram.[1] The song is about being grateful to God for all of the gifts he gave the Jewish people, such as taking them out of slavery, giving them the Torah and Shabbat, and had God only given one of the gifts, it would have still been enough.

If we had the Internet and not YouTube, it would have been enough. Still, we have one of the interpretations below from YouTube and lyrics here. 

Nonetheless, you need not bother with learning those lyrics praising God for what he did not have to do, yet chose to do. Norm Coleman, who was somehow a United States senator from Minnesota until the great Al Franken (barely) defeated him, is now chairperson of the Republican-Jewish coalition. Introducing President Trump on Saturday at the organization's annual convention, he

led the audience in an adapted version of the Passover reading “Dayenu,” as he recounted what Trump had done for Israel.  “Dayenu” which roughly means "it would have sufficed" is a song of thanks found in the haggadah traditionally sung at during the Seder.

Coleman praised Trump with a speech riffing off the song with phrases like, "Had President Trump only put two conservative Supreme Court judges...Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, we would say: DAYENU. Had President Trump only appointed Nikki Haley ambassador to the UN, sending a powerful message that we will not tolerate the UN's anti-Israel bias: DAYENU."

Coleman was helpfully blasted by Jews including respected blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, William Kristol, and Alaska senator Brian Schatz, the latter asserting “This is not my kind of Judaism and I suspect I’m not alone in that view."

Credit to all those speaking  up for the Judaism Coleman chose to denigrate. Donald Trump has denigrated Christianity for a few years now, and there has been far too little pushback from Christians, especially from those who know better. The Jewish community, the vast majority of which has refused to be suckered by Trump, can handle this swipe at Judaism.So for those of us not Jewish, the main issue is somewhat different.

If Coleman's remarkable insinuation is roundly criticized by Republicans, I'll issue a mea culpa. The chance of that happening is slim and none, and slim has been observed riding out of town.This is not Donald Trump's party. He has not only taken over the party; the party is now Trump.

While most GOP politicians probably don't actually believe that President Trump is God, they at least want voters to believe that he is. Therefore, there will be no compromise. There can be no compromise with God.

Forty-five of every 82 Republicans with an opinion believe God wanted Trump to be President. Sarah H. Sanders claimed God "wanted Donald Trump to become President and that's why he's there."  It was a slippery slope from God putting Trump in the White House to Trump becoming God. God no longer has chosen sides. He is one side.

The disease infecting the GOP is not limited to Donald J. Trump, who retains the approval of nearly 90% of the Republican electorate.Unfortunately, Biden isn't the only Democratic presidential hopeful who does not understand that the problem is not limited to one man. O'Rourke, Buttigieg, are among those who don't recognize that the GOP, headed by the man with God's blessing, believes it is in a death match with its enemies.

However, Biden alone served as Vice President to a President whom Republican voters were unconvinced was born in the USA and whom they wanted obstructed at every opportunity. The other Democrats who want to be President are relatively inexperienced and may still learn.  Joe Biden has had plenty of opportunity and seems still to be completely unaware.

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Accenting The Obvious

At the National Action Network convention in New York City, New York, Representative Alexandria humble-bragging Ocasio-Cortez stated

I'm proud to be a bartender. Ain't nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with working retail folding clothes for other people to buy. There is nothing wrong with preparing the food that your neighbors will eat. There is nothing wrong with driving the buses that take your family to work. There is nothing wrong with being a working person in the United States of America and there is everything dignified about it.

Sandy is no longer a bartender, and has become such a sensation she's often referred to only by her initials, roughly akin to calling mega-superstar Lebron James "LBJ." Nonetheless, No one has said there is anything wrong with folding clothes for other people to buy, preparing food for your neighbors, driving buses, or being a "working person" at all. And if someone had, the congresswoman accepted for herself a responsibility to name names. Understandably, though, that's not the focus of criticism of her remarks, to which Ocasio-Cortez has responded

As much as the right wants to distort & deflect, I am from the Bronx. I act & talk like it, *especially* when I’m fired up and especially when I’m home.

It is so hurtful to see how every aspect of my life is weaponized against me, yet somehow asserted as false at the same time.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 5, 2019

Well, now, that's interesting because nobody- from the Bronx or otherwise- has stepped forward to say that Ocasio-Cortez ever has acted or talked as she did at the NAN gathering.  Unless she's living in the 1970s- well before Ocasio-Cortez was born- she doesn't walk around saying "ain't." Nor is it likely that many of her constituents in the Bronx do, however old they may be.

Nor is "wrong" pronounced like "rahng," as Ocasio-Cortez did, in Manhattan, the Bronx, or Washington, D.C. It's not even a common pronunciation in the deep south. It's from- oh, I don't know, and neither does she.

Whatever accent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was trying to mimic in her verbal analog to blackface, she did a bad job.  And if you're going to patronize a group of people, at least do it well. Sometimes success is an effective defense.

Nevertheless, Ocasio-Cortez has figured out that when the facts are not on your side, accuse your opponent of "weaponizing" something or other, as Trumpaholics are doing.

Now that the House Ways and Means Committee has finally requested Donald Trump's tax returns, House Minority Leader McCarthy claimed Democrats "voted yesterday to weaponize the IRS to attack political opponents."  Representative Kevin Brady of Texas chimed in "That's the dangerous precedent that comes when you weaponize the tax code" while Georgia's Bob Woodall, a GOP member of the Ways and Means Committee, claimed “to see what the Ways and Means Committee is doing, now to use its Article 1 power to weaponize the tax code is really disturbing.” Karl Rove added "weaponizing the IRS in this manner so that you can use the IRS to get the tax return of a political opponent to embarrass them or attack them."

Impressively, Ocasio-Cortez recognizes that this country is not the ethnocentric "America" or even the "United States" but the "United States of America."  So at least she knows where she is, even if she hasn't found the authentic accent.

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Smarter Than a Ph.D.

Smarter than a fifth-grader?  Donald J. Trump is smarter than a fifth-grader, the Democratic Party, or congressional Republicans.

The media was shocked, and I was unimpressed, to learn last September that Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein had suggested during a meeting wearing a wire in the White House to record the chaos there. Neither we nor House Republicans and Democrats recognized what was following, even when the following month the infamously vindictive Donald J. Trump sat down the official whom he learned the previous month had broached the idea of spying on him.

While most of the country expected Rosenstein to be relieved of his duties

President Donald Trump declared a reprieve Monday for Rod Rosenstein, saying he has no plans to fire his deputy attorney general whose future has been the source of intense speculation for two weeks.

“I’m not making any changes,” Trump told reporters as he returned to the White House after traveling with Rosenstein to an international police chiefs’ conference in Florida. “We just had a very nice talk. We actually get along.”

Evidently they did, because two months later Rosenstein would claim

that a memo critical of the ongoing Russia investigation written by President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next attorney general had no impact on the ongoing probe.

The memo, written last summer by attorney general nominee William Barr, was sharply critical of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations of collusion between the Russian government and the 2016 Trump campaign. But Rosenstein said Barr's past memo would have no impact on Mueller's probe.

Four months later and The New York Times reports

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

Barr has not claimed that the analysis was his alone. Rather, in his second memorandum to congressional leaders, he maintained ""Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense."

Nonetheless, Democrats appear rather content with the DAG.  Last week, Roll Call noted

Most Democrats have not publicly registered complaints about Rosenstein, like they have with Barr and his alleged bias stemming from his June 2018 memo.

“Nobody has expressed any concern about Rod Rosenstein’s involvement to date,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries said.

Oversight Chairman Elijah E. Cummings suggested he does not question Rosenstein’s objectivity, noting he’s known him for 15 years because he served as a federal prosecutor out of his district in Baltimore. The problem, the Maryland Democrat said, is he doesn’t know what process the DOJ used to determine there wasn’t sufficient evidence of obstruction by Trump.

Republicans, though, have generally been far less generous toward Justice's #2 guy, as we're reminded

House Republicans complained during their time in the majority that Rosenstein deliberately slow-walked responses to their oversight requests. Freedom Caucus members threatened to file articles of impeachment against him, and Trump reportedly mulled firing him.

Republicans found more reason to question Rosenstein’s objectivity last summer after reports that he had discussed secretly recording Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Despite threats to do so last year, House Judiciary Republicans never subpoenaed the DOJ for the documents that allegedly chronicled Rosenstein’s suggestion, a set of memos former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote during his tenure as acting agency head in 2017.

Republicans wanted Trump to get rid of Rosenstein while Democrats (myself included) thought of him as the last line of defense against a lawless President determined to squelch. Neera Tanden tweets, however, "maybe now we know why Rod Rosenstein kept his job." She refers to a May, 2017 luncheon meeting of Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes with then-FBI director James Comey. A few days after Comey was fired by the President in May, Wittes explained that Comey had

expressed wariness about the then-still-unconfirmed deputy attorney general nominee, Rod Rosenstein. This surprised me because I had always thought well of Rosenstein and had mentioned his impending confirmation as a good thing. But Comey did not seem enthusiastic. The DOJ does need Senate-confirmed leadership, he agreed, noting that Dana Boente had done a fine job as acting deputy but that having confirmed people to make important decisions was critical. And he agreed with me that Rosenstein had a good reputation as a solid career guy.

That said, his reservations were palpable. “Rod is a survivor,” he said. And you don’t get to survive that long across administrations without making compromises. “So I have concerns.”

In retrospect, I think I know what Comey must have been thinking at that moment. He had been asked to pledge loyalty by Trump. When he had declined, and even before, he had seen repeated efforts to—from his point of view—undermine his independence and probe the FBI’s defenses against political interference. He had been asked to drop an investigation. He had spent the last few months working to defend the normative lines that protect the FBI from the White House. And he had felt the need personally to make clear to the President that there were questions he couldn't ask about investigative matters. So he was asking himself, I suspect: What loyalty oath had Rosenstein been asked to swear, and what happened at whatever dinner that request took place?

Rosenstein likely had been compromised. It could have taken place at an earlier dinner meeting, as Wittes speculated. Or it might last October when he and the President "just had a very nice talk. We actually get along.”

While Republicans seethed at Rod Rosenstein and Democrats believed he was a staunch defender of the rule of law, Donald Trump knew what he had. He knew, at least as of September 2018, that he had someone he could legitimately- even justifiably- fire for having suggested the extraordinary step of surreptitiously recording the President of the USA.  He knew he had someone who understandably wanted to keep his job, with a government pension and all that went with it. Blackmail was rarely so easy.

As James Comey probably suspected, Rod Rosenstein would neither fall on his sword nor become another Andrew McCabe.  Donald Trump, who is to Rosenstein as Putin is to Trump, has learned far better than any grade schooler ever can the lessons of organized crime.

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The Issue Might Not Be The Issue(s)

New York Times conservative syndicated columnist Ross Douthat recommends that Joe Biden be Joe Biden if he runs for the Democratic nomination for President. He believes that the Delawarean should take

ownership of his record: not defending everything, not avoiding all apologies, but arguing explicitly that some tough-on-crime policies were a necessary response to a destructive multi-decade crime wave, that some moderation on abortion should be acceptable in the Democratic Party and that the Ocasio-Cortezan turn on economic policy should be questioned or resisted. And, yes, defending his personal familiarity, hugs and nose-rubs and hair-kisses and all, and in the process questioning some aspects of #MeToo.

Otherwise, he argues,

in a primary where Biden is just an old white dude running away from his record, the party’s various moderate voters will almost certainly fracture and go to fresher candidates with cleaner pitches — to the Texan Jesus or the South Bend Meritocrat or the Mean Minnesotan or the Racial Optimist. (That would be Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, respectively — none of whom are likely to challenge the Great Awokening directly, but all of whom offer something to Democratic voters wary of the left.)

To run the way I’m suggesting, on his record rather than against it, would exact a possibly extraordinary cost. Just to campaign this way would make Biden hated by many liberals in a way that would make today’s Twitter animosity look mild. To win the nomination this way would produce fury on a scale that far eclipsed the pro-Sanders anger in 2016 and guarantee a strong 2020 showing for Jill Stein’s grifter left (if not a more sincere alternative). And to lose the nomination this way — which would remain, obviously, a strong possibility — would ensure that Biden exited the stage of liberal politics not as an elder statesman but as a wrong-side-of-history bad guy.

Naturally I’d still like Biden to try it — not least because some of the party’s Reagan and Clinton-era compromises were Actually Good, and it would be good for today’s Democrats if a prominent Democrat defended them.

This is all very interesting but is little applicable to former Vice-President Biden's chance at gaining the nomination.  There is a reason that Democratic presidential aspirants are spending more time than ever before in South Carolina.

It's the same reason Democratic ad and communications strategist Danny Barefoot was in South Carolina a month ago on behalf of a Democratic hopeful (whom he definitively stated is not Bernie Sanders).  All of his tweets from the focus group he conducted are here and the most relevant are below:

We will be asking voters their opinions about individual candidates, showing them short clips, and asking them their thoughts on potential negative messages. We won’t be doing much horse race stuff but hopefully we’ll still get some good insights. Follow along/mute as you see fit

— Danny Barefoot (@dannybarefoot) March 5, 2019

Now we’re on to Biden. One woman says it’s the closest we can get to a 3rd term for Obama w/o electing Michelle. Lots of chuckles but also lots of heads nodding in agreement. Another says she would vote for him today but isn’t sure if he’s too “old” or “sloppy” to take on Trump.

— Danny Barefoot (@dannybarefoot) March 5, 2019

Yeah…most of these hits just aren’t landing. In response to a short description of Biden’s opposition to integration efforts one woman asks if we’re honestly asking her to believe he is a segregationist. https://t.co/yoAxPHBa4J

The Anita Hill hit is better. [After being shown a quick explainer] When asked if Biden owes her an apology the room is unanimous that he does. A few people haven’t heard of Anita Hill.

— Danny Barefoot (@dannybarefoot) March 5, 2019

This isn't just name ID. These SC women really like Biden. They don't want to take chances in 2020 and feel like he's a sure win.

— Danny Barefoot (@dannybarefoot) March 5, 2019

Extrapolate as you wish but it's reasonable to conclude, from this one isolated event coupled with common sense, that black women in South Carolina

1- want a third Obama term;

2- believe that the best way to a 3rd Obama term is with Biden;

3- believe that Biden is electable;

4- are unimpressed by criticism of the former Vice-President, except maybe as it applies  to Anita Hill.

Criticism of Senator Biden because he mishandled the Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings is potentially explosive, not only for Biden but also for his opponents. Although I don't recall a breakdown by gender, southern blacks at the time of the Judiciary Committee hearing generally supported the nomination of Thomas to the Supreme Court (disturbing, but true).  Of course, times have changed, values about women's place in government and society have improved, and Thomas has been a dreadful Justice, including on voting rights.

Obviously, #2 may be undermined if Barack Obama, choosing to remain nominally, publicly neutral (most likely scenario) or to endorse another candidate, fails to endorse the ex-Veep.

African-Americans, however, are the most significant portion of the Democratic base and, arguably, middle-aged and elderly black women are the core of that base. (Does a base even have a core?) They may form the group most determined to see Donald Trump defeated.

In the 2008 primary campaign, blacks initially generally favoredHillary Clinton, then perceived as the candidate of the party establishment, over Barack Obama, who had positioned himself somewhat as an outsider. It was only when Obama demonstrated that he had a serious chance of winning the nomination that the sentiment of the black community swung toward the first black with a legitimate chance of becoming President. As that occurred, not coincidentally Obama became, if not a party insider, recognized as being in the mainstream of the Democratic Party establishment.

It's not surprising, then, that Joseph Robinette Biden at this early stage would be the favorite among black voters and that criticism of the guy who loyally served President Barack Obama for eight years would fall on (mostly) deaf ears.  So far.  It is tenuous approval, wide but not deep, and very much vulnerable to any one of a number of changing circumstances. 

Policy will take center stage in Democratic debates, as it has in Douthat's analysis. Nonetheless, if Barefoot's experience is representative of a critical subset of voters- black women in South Carolina- other factor(s) may prove even more important in determining who gains the nomination.

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Lousy Leadership

Susan Rice, Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor under President Clinton, has tweeted "I was with Joe Biden when no one was looking, and he was always a champion for women. She links to an article by Elizabeth Alexander, press secretary to Senator and Vice-President Biden, who contends

Joe Biden took the rare step of paying staffers through their entire maternity leaves, an uncommon benefit even now in the Senate (or elsewhere). What you won’t read about is how he recruited women who had worked for him in the Senate, and had “gaps” in their paid work history because of family demands, to be (very) senior staff in the White House. Those years in between compensated work were just as valuable to him as any traditional work experience.

What you won’t read about it is how he supported staff (like me) when they wanted to go to law school at night or needed to take time off to study for the bar exam, or when they asked to work one day a week from home, or work a reduced schedule so they could reliably pick up kids from school or be present each night at the dinner table. You won’t read about the way he’d debate and differ with staffers with the same intensity, regardless of gender.

You won’t read about how he’d tell male staffers and senators who were repeatedly interrupting a woman to pipe down, so he could hear what she was trying to say. You won’t read about the time another senator asked one of his female staffers to make coffee. Biden's response, that female staffer later told me, was that he’d make the coffee instead.

Assuming all of this is accurate and none is spin- a huge, probably foolish, assumption given that it came from a press secretary- Joe Biden is probably kind to his staff. It does, however, read like the stories one hears about the private acts of kindness among professional athletes, who are then celebrated for doing good deeds in private- which conveniently become public. Anecdotal evidence typically sounds more impressive than it turns out to be when closely examined.

Joe Biden had a big opportunity to give women a break- when, in the early '90s, they especially needed one- and he failed miserably.  Jill Abramson, who wrote "Strange Justice" with investigative reporter Jane Mayer, notes there were many stories corroborating Anita Hill's testimony about the  practice of sexual harassment of women by one Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for the US Supreme Court. She explains

.... five members of Biden’s Judiciary Committee at the time of the hearings told me they were certain that if Biden had called the other witnesses to testify, Thomas would never have been confirmed.

The most devastating witness would have been (Equal Employment Opportunity Office employee Angela) Wright. In addition to what she told the committee about Thomas’s comments on her breasts, she — upset by the experience — had also told her colleague Jourdain that Thomas had commented that he found the hair on her legs sexy. (EEOC employee Rose) Jourdain, who came out of the hospital after a procedure just in time to corroborate Wright’s testimony and was cutting her pain medication in quarters so that she would be lucid, was never called to testify. Their accounts were buried and released to reporters late at night.

Wright would have killed the nomination. But Republicans, with faulty information spread by one of Thomas’s defenders, Phyllis Berry, claimed Wright had been fired by Thomas for calling someone else in the office a “faggot.” The man Wright supposedly labeled thus later said she never used the word, but Biden was too cowed to take the risk of calling her. Wright has since said repeatedly that she would have gladly faced Republican questioning. But in a pre-social-media age, that was that; the would-be witnesses weren’t heard from. Less than a week after the confirmation vote, Thomas was hastily sworn in for his lifetime appointment on the bench.

And there Clarence Thomas has remained for 28 years and counting, a lifetime tenure he probably would not have been granted were it not for the effort (or lack thereof) of Delaware Senator Joseph Biden.

It's there on the Supreme Court that Clarence Thomas has voted against reproductive rights and equal pay protection, and in favor of permitting employers on the basis of alleged religious belief to deny employees health coverage of contraception, and loosening the federal prohibition of workplace harassment. But rumor has it that he makes one heck of a cup of coffee.

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Accountability, She Says

Former NBC legal analyst and former US Attorney Mimi Rocah is right, up to a point, when she tweets

When women accuse Trump of something, he calls them liars & degrades them. Biden’s saying, I didn’t intend to make anyone uncomfortable but I’ll listen & learn.  If respectful statements like that aren’t welcomed, we’re just encouraging the Trump double down & smear approach.

Joe Biden is a decent person, probably a good person.  Donald Trump is not a good person, and he's not even a decent person. He does things personally and makes political decisions with a first priority that it degrades, angers, or harms others because he believes everything is a zero-sum game. If you lose, he wins.

So while contrasting Biden's behavior and motives with those of Trump is meaningful and relevant, it is setting the bar very low, perhaps below ground.

Lucy Flores was on point- and not only about the former Vice-President but about everyone, when she told Jake Tapper (at 5:58 of the video below)

You know, I fully recognize that- that this behavior- never do I claim this rises to the level of sexual assault or-or- anything of that nature. What I am saying is that it's completely inappropriate, that it does not belong in any kind of a professional setting, much less in politics and that is something that we should consider when we are talking about the background of a person who is considering running for President..

Flores clearly recognizes that it does not belong in a professional setting nor does it rise to the level of sexual assault.  She further recognizes something more elusive and less common- that lack of accountability is even more significant than lack of empathy. At 6:57 she adds 

I think that his response to the way in which he handled the Anita Hill Hearing was also completely inappropriate and lacks empathy and frankly lacks accountability. You know, saying that he wishes that there was something more that he could have done. I think- it's just again-it's just a complete lack of accountability. You were the chair. You were the chair of that hearing and you could have done anything you wanted.

Biden should not have to rack his brain to realize that he could have acted far more forcefully and effectively when chairing the Anita Hill hearing for the Senate Judiciary Committee. He might have seen House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairperson Elijah Cummings swiftly and effectively dispatch the objection of Republicans Mark Meadow and Jim Jordan to continuing the Michael Cohen hearing. Or better, more recently and more eloquently, there was

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