Westchester County Workers

Summarizing, there isn't much to say about Attorney General William Barr, except:

- He came;

- he lied;

- he won't go to the House (Judiciary Committee) because he is exposed and frightened

There isn't much to say about former Special Counsel Mueller- still a Justice Department employee- either except::

  - The Department of Justice will refuse to allow him to testify;

  -  A subpoena will be issued by the House of Representatives;

  -  The Justice Department will challenge the subpoena in court;

  -  Mueller will be free to testify promptly- if he resigns.

Unavoidably, a great deal more which would be a major scandal in any other Administration are reported but barely reach the consciousness of most voters as the President's effort to tear down the rule of law proceeds. Nevertheless,the Washington Post's Joshua Partlow and David Farenthold are on the job, on Tuesday writing

Allegations that workers were routinely shortchanged on their pay at President Trump’s suburban country club are now the subject of an inquiry by the New York attorney general, whose investigators have interviewed more than two dozen former employees....

In interviews, six former Trump workers told The Washington Post that they felt systematically cheated because they were undocumented. Some told The Post about being denied promotions, vacation days and health insurance, which were offered to legal employees. The same pattern of unpaid labor was also described by a former manager.

Others recounted practices that could violate labor laws. Two told The Post that they had been required to perform unpaid side work. Two others said managers made them work 60-hour weeks without paying them overtime.

Well, why not? If  here illegally and decline extra work or complain about working conditions, feel free to voice your complaints to the fellows at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The report continued

A spokesman for the New York attorney general’s office confirmed that it had received complaints from workers about conditions at the club but declined to comment further.

The Trump Organization has denied the allegations, and workers who spoke to The Post did not keep paper records of the extra hours they said they worked.

But Juarez was among nearly 30 former employees at Trump’s golf courses in New York who met with prosecutors in February. They handed over pay stubs and W-2 forms and answered questions about their salaries, hours, tips and lack of benefits in one-on-one interviews over many hours, according to several workers. Some have follow-up meetings scheduled in coming weeks.

On Thursday, the Post published a follow-up by Partlow and Farenthold, who noted

There was a conscious effort to pay less wages because they knew about the lack of documents,” said the former manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company policy. “You know, where are they going to go?”

Trump’s company called these accounts “nonsense.”

It is an ongoing theme of this blog that if an individual (or family) is in the USA illegally, he should not be here and, yes, should be deported. However, in the absence of such a policy, the immigrant should be treated decently, with dignity, and for his/her benefit (and that of the country) should be made a full-fledged American citizen.

That should be accomplished with little hassle and not with deliberate speed. If not done, the person is left vulnerable and subject to exploitation.  That is the case with at least a couple of Trump properties, another reason that any immigration proposal which comes out of this Administration must be treated with a great deal of suspicion.

Share |

Weak As Always

While the (Attorney General William) Barr hearing proceeds in the Senate Judiciary Committee, our minds explore the ways in which Donald J. Trump is a full-blown liar and would-be traitor. Treason requires giving aid and comfort to an enemy, and Russia is not at war with the USA and is not even on the federal government's terrorist list, so there is that.

But let us not forget that Donald J. Trump is a weakling, a rough facsimile of a coward. A couple of weeks ago we learned

In the summer of 2017, President Trump told Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to have then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions thwart Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to the special counsel’s report. Trump also told Lewandowski to fire Sessions if he refused a meeting to talk about the issue, the report says.

The report details a meeting between Trump and Lewandowski, which came just two days after Trump met with former White House counsel Don McGahn and asked him to have Mueller removed. In the meeting, Trump “brought up Sessions and criticized his recusal from the Russia investigation,” the report says.

Trump's former campaign chairman pushed the job off to deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, who told him it would be taken care of, but who understandably didn't perform the task. A private citizen, Lewandowski was not even a member of the Administration, accountable to the President. Yet Trump was trying to get him to do the dirty work of the President.

Lewandowski was not the only Trump associate with enough sense to defy President Trump.  On Monday, The Hill reported

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis declined to carry out orders from President Trump or otherwise limited his options in various attempts to prevent tensions with North Korea, Iran and Syria from escalating, The New Yorker reported Monday, the latest account of Trump’s own officials trying to check his worst instincts.

"The president thinks out loud. Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation," a former senior national security official told The New Yorker.

"We prevented a lot of bad things from happening."

Oh, like maybe World War III or a nuclear war, though more likely an invasion of South Korea by North Korea. The article continues

In 2017, following a series of North Korean ballistic missile tests, Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin removing the spouses and children of military personnel from South Korea, where the U.S. military has a base. An administration official told the magazine that "Mattis just ignored" the order.

In another instance in the fall of 2017, as White House officials were planning a private meeting at Camp David to develop military options for a possible conflict with North Korea, Mattis allegedly stopped the gathering from happening. He ignored a request from then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster to send officers and planners, according to a former senior administration official.

The accounts, included in a profile of national security adviser John Bolton, reveal that the former Marine Corps general routinely sought to downplay any potential conflicts across the globe.

Mattis resigned from his Pentagon position last December, one day after Trump announced that he would withdraw troops from Syria, a decision Mattis opposed.

A confrontation in the Mideast between major world powers was not out of the question, either. Continuing:

The defense chief also sought to ward off possible conflicts in the Middle East.

As Iraq was preparing for parliamentary elections in late 2017, McMaster was worried about any meddling from Iran and asked the Pentagon to give options to counter such a move.

A former McMaster aide said Mattis later sent a Pentagon official to the White House without any options in hand.

"I asked him what happened to the options," the former aide told The New Yorker. "He told me, 'We resisted those.' You could feel everyone in the meeting go, 'Excuse me?'"

Mattis also reportedly prevented Gen. John Nicholson, then head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, from meeting Trump.

After Bolton replaced McMaster, he asked the Pentagon for multiple options in April 2018, after Syrian President Bashar Assad dropped chemical weapons on civilians in a suburb of Damascus. Mattis gave only one option, a limited strike with cruise missiles, which angered Bolton.

Administration officials told the magazine that Mattis was likely attempting to limit information to Trump so he could not make ill-advised decisions.

Evidently, people around Donald Trump realize this is not a normal man and not a normal presidency. Therefore 

"There are a lot of people in the administration who want to limit the president’s options because they don’t want the president to get anything done," a former senior administration official said.

Management 101, Donald: when you're in charge (supposedly) and underlings are ignoring your demands, fire them. It's a tried-and-true tradition and shouldn't be that difficult. Fortunately, there are individuals in the federal government who know they can ignore this fraud of a man repeatedly and face no consequences.

Share |

Speaking The Unspeakable

Rod Rosenstein has submitted to President Trump his letter of resignation, concluding "America first," mimicking a successful campaign slogan. More significantly, he commented "I am grateful... for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations," an odd remark for someone holding a position in which he should have no personal conversations at all with the President of the United States of America.

The letter itself may be a plea for a nomination to a federal judgeship.  Taking a different approach,

 CNN anchorperson Don Lemon asked colleague Chris Cuomo Monday night “I’ve been wanting to ask you this. There have been reports about him, right. Do you think he’s a double agent type?”

We don't know, and may never know, whether Rosenstein simply was able to see beyond the horizon by recognizing that he had in Robert Mueller a man with impeccable credentials who could be rolled. We may learn what Rosenstein was up to if House Democrats succeed in having the now ex-Special Counsel testify, under oath, in public, and in a manner to elicit the most information. 

That is the only way in which it will be even possible to determine what Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed by then-Acting Attorney General Rosenstein, was thinking as he conducted an investigation, prepared a report, and looked on as the report was delivered to Congress. For now,  unfortunately, we have to lean on those few individuals who will question conventional wisdom, recognize a sort of Republican version of bait-and-switch, and have the courage to be politically incorrect.

The latter brings us, as it often does, to Bill Maher, who Friday evening noted "if Dostoyevsky had written the  report, it would be called 'Crime and No Punishment.'" He continued

Mueller's report is full of buts:  Don Jr. met with the Russians, but; Manafort gave internal polling data to a Russian, but; Trump obstructed justice every day, but....

Throughout, pundits, lawyers, and Democratic politicians have lionized Mueller as the stern and objective tough-guy ex-Marine who has selflessly and tirelessly served the public interest in both Republican and Democratic administrations. The image, which somehow has largely persisted even following release of the report., has not escaped the attention of Maher, who stated

Just because you have a stone face, doesn't mean you belong on Mt. Rushmore....

And you, tough guy, couldn't get the the President's taxes. You couldn't "follow the money?" You couldn't interview Trump, we're told, because he couldn't testify under oath without perjuring himself?" And that's our problem? It's one feckless punt after another.

Although a memorandum from the Office of Special Counsel investigating Nixon and one from the Office of Independent Counsel investigating Clinton argued that an incumbent president could be indicted, lawyers (with journalists and others following their lead) have been arguing otherwise. Unsurprisingly, in 1973, the Office of Legal Counsel under President Nixon's Justice Department, as well as the same office under the Clinton Justice Department in 2000, contended that a sitting president could not be indicted.

Despite the conflicting legal history, it became accepted wisdom that a President while in office is immune to indictment. Though (or maybe because) he isn't a lawyer, Maher understands

For a guy who didn't want to break precedent by indicting a president, Mueller sure created a lot of new precedents. That's what law is- new precedents. It's always evolving. You can't indict  a sitting president? It's not in the Constitution. It's not even a law. It's a guideline, like drinking white wine with fish or f _ _ _ _ _ _ your cousin. It's a f_ _ _ _ _ _ memo.

In a passive-aggressive manner, the Special Counsel seemed to be urging impeachment proceedings.  "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime," Mueller noted, "it also does not exonerate him." He acknowledged "if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state."  But Maher recognizes

The Attorney General is corrupt. The Congress is dysfunctional. What good is leaving a road map for impeachment if you know a tribal before party Republican Senate will never remove the President?.Bob, your trail of bread crumbs isn't good enough. We're not that smart anymore. America is an aging shortstop. You have to hit it right at us.

While the subject (Donald Trump) of the investigation was not interviewed in-person (and otherwise, only about collusion) and the President's taxes not requested (as far as is known)

To me, this report is summed up in the words "Donald Trump Jr. declined to be voluntarily interviewed." So make him. Was he too busy? You couldn't work around his tweeting schedule?

We don't know why Robert Mueller conducted a shoddy investigation, nor whether the apparent careerist Rod Rosenstein foresaw how it would play out or instead has some hidden interest in the rule of law or the quaint notion of equal standing under that law. However, it is clear that sworn testimony by Robert Mueller, though not sufficient, is necessary to determine what happened and why.

Share |

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.

Share |

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.

Share |

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.

Share |

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.

Share |