Pound Him

While recognizing that not all Democrats are created equal and sentiments inevitably vary, The New York Times finds that many Democratic voters are cool to impeaching Donald Trump and to the fight that it would entail.

At a meeting four House Democrats held with constituents in south Philadelphia,45-year old Joshua Thaler remarked

I believe that Congress should not pursue impeachment, and I say this as someone who deeply loathes the president and absolutely believes he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. It keeps the conversation on Trump rather than on our agenda.

On the occasion of a town hall event held by Democratic congresswoman Debbie Murcasel-Powell at a restaurant in Miami

“Someone has got to take a stand,” Mr. Bell said. But in an interview afterward, he added that impeachment would be a mistake.

Mr. Trump’s attempts to thwart Mr. Mueller’s investigators and Congress were “not right,” Mr. Bell said, but he said of the president, “He likes a fight, so if you try to fight him, you’re playing in his field.”

When Democratic representative Mike Levin appeared before constituents in Carlsbad, California

the only questioner who mentioned impeachment outright told Mr. Levin she was worried that a drive to oust the president would backfire and allow Mr. Trump to play the victim in the 2020 presidential election.

“He will rally his base, and we won’t have an opportunity for our candidates to talk about the issues because all the air will be sucked out and focused on him once again,” she said.

We should expect members of Congress to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. (April 29 is National Bad Cliche Day. Let your hair down, dress to kill, and use one today.) It is, though, understandable that rank-and-file Democrats would be reluctant to advocate impeachment of President Trump.  

For a year or so now, House Democrats have been touting the greatness of Robert Mueller and the sins of Donald J. Trump. Now, prompted by the opposition of their leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they are conspicuously reluctant to support impeachment. It would be naive to expect their constituents to support what House Democrats are fearful of undertaking.

Naive, but also wise.  Responding to the Times article, Steve M. recognizes "We need to be sensible -- but I think we need to be less afraid of our shadows."

The Washington Post video below is summarized "The Fix's Callum Borchers explains the years-long feud between President Trump and the hosts of MSNBC's 'Morning Joe,'" which resulted from Morning Joe helping get Trump elected, after which the latter turned against the hosts.

Check out the date: June 29, 2017. Mika Brzezinski and Scarborough kept it up for 18 months, and on February 21, 2019 Scarborough remarked in part

Donald Trump has been warned repeatedly that talking about enemies of the people is a Stalinist phrase, that it will encourage some of his more unhinged followers.

We’ve all known that Donald Trump and his words and his attacks about enemies of the people would lead to this type of behavior. This is now the second time that we know about, from the pipe bombs to yesterday, but yesterday was obviously far more specific, far more dangerous. And know that is exactly what Donald Trump is encouraging.

We heard nary a peep from Trump. Scarborough has continued the past two months, this morning noting

We are so far beyond dog whistles. The blood, the blood that is spilled is on your hands ... from white nationalists, from people that listen to that sort of rhetoric. You are just inciting violence.

The extremely erratic and unpredictable Trump may (probably not) respond to the MSNBC host.  But for a couple of years now, Scarborough and Brzezinski have berated, blasted, and (figuratively, thankfully) beheaded Donald Trump. And Trump's responses have been limited and muted compared to his vile comments about individuals who have not continually criticized, castigated, and condemned the President.

It's fashionable to point out that Donald Trump is a "bully." Only infrequently, though, does someone prescribe the prescription for the diagnosis. a bully does not back down in the face of timidity but only when confronted. Frequently.

Scarborough/Brzezinski understand. If most Democratic voters do not, it's up to the party's political class not to buck up back down when faced with a President who exploits anything he perceives as weakness.

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Gutless, As Usual

The issue of abortion has brought out the sniveling, sniffing coward in the White House, who at an electionrally in Green Bay, Wisconsin claimed

The baby is born, the mother meets w/the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. Then the doctor and mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.

A few months ago, in his last State of the Union address, the sniveling, sniffing coward in the White House had declared

Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth. These are living, feeling, beautiful, babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world. And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth.

You'll be shocked to learn that Trump made up the part about the New York legislation pertaining to ripping a baby from a mother's womb:

The legislation in New York would not have “allowed a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” It states a health care practitioner “may perform an abortion when, according to the practitioner’s reasonable and good faith professional judgment based on the facts of the patient’s case: the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.”

You will be equally shocked to learn that Trump was wrong upon claiming the Virginia legislation authorizes capital punishment:

The now-tabled bill in Virginia would have reduced the number of doctors required to agree that “the continuation of the pregnancy is likely to result in the death of the woman” or “impair the mental or physical health of the woman” from three to one. It would have also removed the phrase “substantially and irremediably” from the section describing the required conditions for a woman to have an abortion.  In other words, continuing pregnancy would no longer have to “substantially and irremediably impair” a woman’s physical or mental health, it would simply need to “impair” it. Lastly, the bill would have removed the 24 hour waiting period. The bill also specifies that measures of life support “shall be available and utilized” if there is evidence of viability.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) was widely criticized for his comments on the bill after he told a radio show, the procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Critics suggested the governor was endorsing infanticide. His office later said the governor was referring to medical treatment, not ending the life of a baby.

Trump not only wants to deny a woman reproductive freedom. He  wants to deny women's agency.  The language of  "ripping a baby from the mother's womb" portrays a woman so vacuous and emotionally fragile as to allow a baby to be snatched from her body without even a peep of protest.

That may be his particular perception of women. That may be the perception of women common in the community of forced-birth advocates, except in the Texas legislature. 

Generally, though, their motivation is less a low opinion of women- though that is a factor- than it is their cowardice.  Hiding behind the language of executing a baby or ripping it from a womb constitutes a refusal to accept the consequences of your own ideology or political values. 

There are many women who vote, and they would not take kindly to an abortion regime in which they are held partially responsible for the death of what forced-birth advocates insist are babies. And so we get the language of right-wing victimhood which creates an alternate universe in which the few doctors who perform an abortion are felons and the women who request them are victims.

It is only fitting that Donald J. Trump would be behind the violent language of executing a baby or ripping it from a womb and the cowardice that accompanies the graphic, deceitful rhetoric.

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A Very Good Day

One of the best days for Donald Trump in campaign 2016 was Halloween, when The New York Times misled the country with the headline "Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia."  Besides being highly misleading, it now appears- almost 30 months later- to have been flat-out inaccurate.

And one of (perhaps the) the best days of the Trump Administration transpired when The New York Times on September 21, 2008 reported

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

Rosenstein, as well as a Justice Department official present in the room denied that the remark was meant to be taken seriously, but almost no one bought that story and the damage was done. President Trump recognizes leverage when he sees it.

On October 17, 2018 the President met with Rosenstein on Air Force One, after which Trump- who has without evidence complained that President Obama wiretapped him-  declared he had "a good relationship" with the DAG, with whom he "had a very good talk." 

And a very good talk it probably was for Mr. Trump. Prescient Elie Honig and Mimi Rocah, both former US Attorneys at the SDNY, wrote a couple of weeks later

But the mere fact that Trump has summoned Rosenstein for the meeting creates an appearance—at a minimum—that Trump continues to try to exert influence over Mueller. That Rosenstein is attending the meeting similarly leaves open questions of what assurances he will have to give the president to remain in place.

Now we learn that Rosenstein was "teary eyed" in the meeting and told the President "I give the investigation credibility. I can land the plane." Pleading for his job, he then (and thereafter), told Trump that he believes the latter is being treated "unfairly,'" as described by The Washington Post.






The Post has reported that in Rosenstein's speech Thursday

“Some of the nonsense that passes for breaking news today would not be worth the paper it was printed on, if anybody bothered to print it,” he said.

He also criticized the Obama administration for not publicizing the “full story” about Russian hacking and social media influence operations.

Evidently concerned he wasn't being sufficiently transparent about his partisan bias, Rosenstein added “The rule of law is our most important principle. As President Trump pointed out, ‘we govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather [than] . . . the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will’.”

A slightly more generous Elizabeth de la Vega, in two tweets, poses five questions (though #1 and #4 are similar):

 were there before the final went to Barr? What was Rosenstein's role in the editing/rewriting of the report before it became final? When the final version was submitted to Barr, how many pages were in it?

— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) April 26, 2019

How much did Rosenstein water down the report before it became known as the final Mueller report? How much did Rosenstein "steer" Mueller away from areas of investigation and proposed courses of action? The entire process is in question. https://t.co/UZTUCXKhiW

— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) April 26, 2019

"The big picture on Rod," Benjamin Wittes argues, "is extremely complicated."  Yet just barely, and without answers to questions such as those posed by de la Vega, it will become quite clear that Rod Rosenstein became severely compromised when reports of his threat to record the President emerged.  That report, as well as the one of September 21, 2008, could scarcely have been better for Donald J. Trump.

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Member Of The Club

Huffington Post reports

Anita Hill, the law professor whose landmark testimony against now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is credited with transforming Americans’ understanding of sexual harassment, said Thursday that she is unsatisfied with Joe Biden’s apology to her.

The interview she gave to The New York Times was published the same day Biden announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential nomination. In it, Hill says a phone call Biden made to her earlier this month did not address the consequences of how he handled her Senate Judiciary Committee testimony in 1991.

“I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she said. “I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”

Biden was serving as the committee chairman when Hill came forward with allegations that then-Supreme Court nominee Thomas had sexually harassed her at two different jobs. Biden has long faced criticism for mishandling how Hill’s testimony was presented to the senators before they ultimately voted to confirm Thomas, who denied all of her allegations.

“The focus on apology to me is one thing,” she continued. “But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw. And not just women. There are women and men now who have just really lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.”

Specifically, Biden is blamed for not shielding Hill from Republican attacks during the hearing and for the way he structured the hearing. Notably, he allowed Thomas to testify before and after Hill, and he did not call upon three female witnesses who could have bolstered Hill’s testimony with accounts of their own experiences with Thomas.

The issue has cast a cloud over the former vice president’s political future for years and has only grown more damning as women have come forward in recent weeks to say he’d inappropriately touched them in the past.

Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), the first African American member of Congress from the state, endorsed Biden on Thursday. She said she took him at his word that he wished he could have done things differently back in 1991 and said she wanted voters to give him a chance to earn their vote.

“What I have seen over the course of the years, and as a result of that hearing, [is that he] has been introspective about it, has tried to actually dedicate his life to ensuring that issues like domestic violence, equal pay, issues even regarding the representation on the Judiciary Committee, are at the forefront,” she told HuffPost on Thursday.

However, Joe Biden's problem is not his stance on domestic violence, equal pay, or  quota issues, but rather that whenever in doubt- or not in doubt- he will defer to colleagues. Professor Hill recently stated that

she also faults Mr. Biden for letting the hearings get out of control — “The process went completely off track” — and for failing to restrain Republicans like former Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who brandished a copy of “The Exorcist” during the hearings, and former Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri, who while advising Judge Thomas enlisted the help of a forensic psychiatrist who suggested Ms. Hill suffered from “erotomania.”

In November, 2017 The Washington Post interviewed five female members, past or present, of Congress who have been strong supporters of Hill and critics of the manner in which the Delaware senator handled the hearings.  One of them noted

We went to see Biden, because we were so frustrated by it. And he literally kind of pointed his finger and said, you don’t understand how important one’s word was in the Senate, that he had given his word to John Danforth in the men’s gym that this would be a very quick hearing, and he had to get it out before Columbus Day.

This was not a matter of keeping one's word. As Democrat Jamie Raskin, US Representative from Maryland, noted this week "Biden’s chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee during the Thomas nomination reflected his sense of institutionalism a lot more than any sense of feminism."

Whatever change Ms. Rochester has seen in him, Biden has not changed fundamentally.  The democratic socialist magazine Jacobin explains

Nothing epitomizes Biden’s politics better than the speech he gave in 2011 at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, named after the Republican Senate Minority Leader who had at that point just finished up historically routing Biden and the administration he served. McConnell, who had candidly admitted his top goal was making sure Obama was “a one-term president” unless he did the GOP’s bidding, had turned a sixty-vote Democratic supermajority into an unavoidable necessity, stifling Obama’s legislative agenda and even slowing economic recovery to produce the Democrats’ “shellacking” in 2010. He then used this as leverage to get one of the most lopsided legislative “deals” in memory, trading the extension of unemployment insurance for the continuation of tax cuts for the rich, a markedly lower estate tax, and other giveaways that infuriated Democrats.

Joe Biden's apparent change of heart on women's issues does not reflect a new sensibility, but rather his enduring instinct to go along to get along. He has been a member of the boys club for a long time, and it is no different now that it is a boys and girls network. The gender composition is far more diverse, but he will still defer, suck up to power, and for the sake of collegiality and a sense of belonging consistently compromise any principles he may appear to have.

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(Nearly) Empty Promise

Cenk Uygur (video, below) is pleased with the response of Pete Buttigieg at his CNN town hall meeting to a question about campaign finance. The brilliant, very smooth, and otherwise superficial mayor stated

Corporations do not equal people and that money does not equal speech. Dome have said that within the framework of the constitution, you  can't draw those boundaries and that led to a decision that I think has been disastrous for our politics, which is the Citizens United decision. I don't believe that the Constitution says that but if it does, then that's going to be the direction that our federal judiciary takes going forward, then I think it's necessary to formulate a constitutional amendment to clear this up once and for all. I'm under no illusion that it's possible overnight to get that reform but I think most Americans actually agree that we need to get money out of politics.

Uygur wonders why the other Democrats running for President haven't brought up the need to topple the Citizens United decision, because of both the pernicious influence of money in politics and the practical difficulty of success.

There is, however, a third reason. Several of them have pledged not to accept donations from lobbyists, a promise first made (and largely kept) by Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign, then repeated in 2012 (somewhat kept). We're reminded

In his two runs for the White House, President Obama pledged that he would not accept money from registered lobbyists. But his campaign received donations from people who, while not registered, walk and talk an awful lot like lobbyists, including advisors who manage lobbyists. Consider that

Sunlight’s investigation into the political 1 percent of the 1 percent — the donor class whose members individually contributed at least $12,950 to political campaigns in the 2012 election — showed that many, many big donors in the influence business have contributed to the president.

At least four dozen of them — lobbyists and employees of lobbying or public relations firms — contributed to the president in 2011 or 2012. One officially registered lobbyist even donated and, unlike the other registered lobbyists who did so, his contribution was not refunded.

President Obama pledged on the campaign trail in 2008, “We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. We’re going to change how Washington works.”

But the policy ended up meaning that he would not accept money from officially registered lobbyists, a porous legal standard that allows many to influence government officials without ever registering to do so. Unless one spends at least 20 percent of his time lobbying on behalf of a client in a three-month period and makes more than one contact with an executive or legislative branch official, there is no need to register.

A recent Center for Responsive Politics report showed that of the registered lobbyists that deregistered in 2012, 46 percent remained with the same organization, suggesting that it’s easy for a lobbyist to adjust her workload to avoid registering.

That does not render irrelevant or moot a vow to eschew funds from lobbyists. However, its significance is limited and as a means of getting money out of politics (evidently Uygur's highest priority), it is being rendered meaningless. Kevin Robillard notes for Huffington post

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign won’t accept donations from federal lobbyists – but a fundraiser scheduled for the first day of his campaign also shows the limitations of such a pledge.

Biden is set to attend a fundraiser Thursday night at the Philadelphia home of Comcast executive David Cohen, according to an invite first published by Politico and later obtained by HuffPost. While Cohen is not a registered lobbyist, he does oversee the cable giant’s massive D.C. lobbying operation, which spent more than $4 million and involved more than three dozen lobbying firms in the first quarter of 2019 alone.

It sometimes may seem that Amazon (and a few other mega-corporations) rules the world. But not as long as there is a Comcast. Robillard adds

Cohen, a former top aide to then-Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, is a major political player in Pennsylvania and Washington, and Comcast’s lobbying operation is considered among the nation’s most powerful. But it’s fairly easy for Cohen and others to avoid registering as lobbyists, as long as they don’t spend more than 20 percent of their time directly interacting with lawmakers and staff.

Kirsten Gillibrand also is taking advantage of this loophole and Buttigieg, as well as "lesser-known candidates" Hickenlooper and Delaney are accepting money from lobbyists, However, Biden's move demonstrates that we have sort of come full circle:

For instance, Daniel Cruise, the head of government affairs for Juul, donated $2,800 to the presidential bids of both Harris and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Cruise is not a registered lobbyist. It’s also not the first time Cohen has taken advantage of such a loophole – he was able to donate to President Barack Obama and Biden’s 2012 reelection bid, which also eschewed lobbyist donations.

Of course he did.  This was only one of the cons the "only candidate who doesn't takea dime from oil company PACs or lobbyists" pulled off on the Democratic electorate, which still idolizes him.  It continues in both spirit and substance in the vow of those Democratic presidential aspirants not to accept money from lobbyists as they avoid, as Uygur indicates, taking the hard position on money in politics.

That Pete Buttigieg (Buttigieg!) is the first Democrat to go further rhetorically than Barack Obama demonstrates that for all its diversity in gender, race, and gender preference, this field of candidates thus far has been unwilling to stand apart in what really matters.

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Going Down The Same Road

We've seen this play before. The Washington Post reports

As the words left his mouth, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) could see the shape of the attack ads that could be used against him.

A questioner at a CNN town hall Monday night asked the presidential candidate whether he believes that incarcerated felons — the Boston Marathon bomber, for instance, or sex offenders — should be allowed to vote while they are serving their sentences.

Sanders’s answer: an unapologetic “yes.”

“I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy — yes, even for terrible people — because once you start chipping away … you’re running down a slippery slope,” Sanders said. “I do believe that even if they are in jail paying their price to society, that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.”

In a presidential campaign in which the Democratic candidates broadly embrace systemic changes to criminal justice — and as many Republicans also support such policies — Sanders’s comments nonetheless stand out.

Support has been growing nationally for re-enfranchising felons after they are released, and several states have taken steps in that direction. But the notion of voting rights for those still in prison has already opened up Sanders and other Democratic candidates to attacks from Republicans painting them as soft on criminals.

GOP operatives did not wait long to launch such attacks.

“Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination, just made it clear he wants convicted terrorists, sex offenders, and murderers to vote from prison,” the Republican National Committee said in an email to supporters shortly after Sanders’s statement that included a clip of the remarks.

“The Boston Marathon Bomber killed three people and injured 280 more,” the email said. “Bernie’s concern? That he gets his absentee ballot.”

There is no actual voting constituency committed to extending the franchise to individuals in prison.  Presumably, those most supportive of extending this right.... obviously are incarcerated, thus unable to vote and unable to apply serious political pressure. While in the general population there is some, and in the black community and in the elite punditry overwhelming, support for criminal justice reform, it's very likely that most Americans remain opposed to allowing incarcerated persons the right to vote.

It's going to happen, though. It won't be next month, next year, or in the presidential term of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, or a Democrat, but it will come about.

Fifteen years ago, Gallup found "roughly 6 in 10 Americans remain opposed to same-sex marriage, with only about a third supporting the concept." However, approval (now approximately 62%) of  same-sex marriage grew fairly rapidly in the public, the President of the USA in 2012 finally admitted he supported it,  and the Supreme Court ruled (narrowly) in 2015 that states could not prohibit gay marriage.

Currently, preventing incarcerated felons from voting is the politically safe option. It comes at no cost to taxpayers, prompting many Americans to favor it as a means to make criminals suffer without causing themselves any guilt or discomfort.

It is an exercise in self-deception. Most inmates are alienated from orthodox, law-abiding society and are little interested in voting. Those who do want to cast a ballot are more likely than their peers to want to be a productive citizen and adjust to societal norms. Discouraging that is counter-productive to any rehabilitative goal.

The concept of encouraging individuals- prisoners, immigrants, maybe others- to become an American is alien to a lot of people, and generally to the Republican Party. It contributes to the substantial support- among many "moderate" Republicans and centrists- for guest-worker programs, wherein the immigrant is permitted to work at a low-wage job but is denied the rights of Americans.

Therefore, and because fear is what most Republican campaigns are mostly about, if Bernie Sanders is nominated for President a major GOP tactic will be to link him to child sex predators, the Boston Marathon bomber, and possibly serial killers. Sanders evidently understands this. (There will be an effort to link any other nominee to Sanders' support of extending voting rights to prisoners, with less effect.) 

Neither Republican nor Democratic politicians will recognize the parallel to same-sex marriage. Even Pete Buttigieg, who touts his marriage to a man, lacks the courage to acknowledge this, which as an extraordinarily bright individual he almost surely recognizes. (Buttigieg will take a bold stand on an issue.... when pigs fly.)  Politicians know what the right policy is, but figure they have enough time to "evolve" on the vote as they did on marriage.

But whatever the impact on the political fortunes of the junior senator from Vermont, it is coming, as well it should.

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Mostly Good

If as songwriter Steve Steinman claimed, two out of three ain't bad, Elizabeth Warren's response to a question at her CNN town hall meeting Monday evening wasn't bad.

Actually, it was quite good because she deftly avoided answering a fairly bad question while making the points she wanted to.  She was asked by St. Anselm College senior Jackson Dwyer

You have often been a vocal critic of police and the criminal justice system, both at the state and federal levels. As a Massachusetts voter and aspiring police officer who has lived through countless tragedies… how can you assure me that you will support legislation that keeps law enforcement safe?

Individual police departments throughout the USA prioritize the safety of their officers by equipping them with body armor and other equipment. There is little the federal government itself can do to enhance the safety of officers.

As the video posted by Think Progress indicates, Warren responded

You know, I talk with a lot of people in different parts of the criminal justice system, people who are law enforcement, people who are in the judicial system, people who are incarcerated … and what all of them tell me is we’ve got a problem. Our criminal justice system is broken, and right at the heart of that problem is race, and we have to address this head on.....

Study after study after study shows us that African Americans compared with whites are more likely to be — for exactly the same crimes — they’re more likely to be arrested, they’re more likely to be arraigned, they are more likely to be taken to trial. They are more likely to be wrongfully convicted and they are more likely to receive harsher sentences. That is a criminal justice system that is not only locking up too many people, it is a criminal justice system that has a problem of race right at the heart of it, and we need to call it out for what it is.

Racial disparity is probably at work if blacks are more likely than whites to be arrested for the same crime or if they are more often wrongfully convicted. They may be receiving harsher sentences because of racial bias. Sentencing, however, takes into account not only the offense but only the offender, such as his criminal record and likelihood of remaining out of trouble if not incarcerated.

If blacks are more likely to be arraigned, that, too, suggests racial disparity- but in the opposite direction. If someone arrested for an indictable offense is not arraigned, he may have been arrested unjustifiably or at least unnecessarily.

But this doesn't suggest a weakness in a candidate's response because the audience isn't eager to be bored by statistics, and too much detail or even explanation would brand a candidate- as Warren already has been- by the mainstream media as obsessively concerned with policy.

It's unfortunate, however, that neither Warren nor any other individual interested in reform ever dares to mention that injustice- especially racial disparity- in the criminal justice system varies markedly from one state to another. (That might hurt feelings.) Think Progress added

Warren closed the loop on the student’s question by responding that the best way to make police safer is, in fact, to make the criminal justice system more colorblind.

“No one is safer in a world where we have a broken criminal justice system… We need to make sure that everybody is entitled and gets good legal representation. Throughout the system we want to make sure the right people are incarcerated and not the wrong people because they couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer,” she said.

“Justice is not just for those who are rich, justice is for everyone and the only way we’re able to get that in America is if we’re able to put the resources into it. Third part of this is we should get rid of for-profit private prisons. It is an outrage in America.”

Private prisons often are owned by a company which has contributed to a judge's election or re-election, thus encouraging a judge to imprison a defendant.   Nothing would do more to end mass incarceration than eliminating private prisons.

If there is anything at the core of criminal justice malfunction, it is economics, of both the defendant and the system.  Once arrested for a serious offense, any person and any sandwich can be indicted, at which point a poor individual must rely on a (usually) overworked public defender, possibly hand-picked by the Court. A middle-class individual may be chancing bankruptcy to pay for a private attorney. The system isn't rigged, but it's close.

So Warren got two out of three right, failing on the third only as all others fail, refusing to acknowledge that not all states are born equal. That not only puts her far ahead of President Trump, but ahead of most of her Democratic rivals at present.

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