Handing Trump And Pence A Gift

This is an interesting argument by Will, whose last name is not "Bunch sign up for my newsletter":

The thing that's driving me crazy about the impeachment coverage on TV cable news is that the primary goal isn't getting him out of office these last 12 days (although that would he helpful). It's all about banning him from running in 2024 and removing him from public life

— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) January 8, 2021

Surely, as Bunch suggests, the primary goal should not be getting Donald Trump out of office in the last few days of his presidency. That's especially true given that President Pence's first act would be to pardon Donald Trump in what would be for once, a President actually doing something on "Day 1."

Unless the US Constitution was, unbeknownst to the public, changed overnight, neither Donald Trump nor anyone else can be "removed from public life" except by incarceration.

Donald Trump could be impeached for a second time or be removed via the 25th Amendment, the latter highly unlikely, though it would let congressional Democrats and Republicans off the hook.

Yet, there is little chance Democrats will be officially in charge of the Senate before January 20 and thus there will be no conviction, if even a trial, of the President before that date. Obviously, then, he would not be banned from running in 2024 because he'd first have to be convicted by the Senate; nor removed from public life, whatever that phrase means.

Once he leaves office, Donald Trump could be impeached and tried in the Senate. The former may well happen; the latter will not, given that conviction requires a two-thirds majority and the distribution of power in the next Congress between senators Schumer and McConnell is yet to be determined.

If the Senate were to convict and- as is uncertain even in the next Congress- then rule that Trump could not again run for public office, it would be a punishment akin to that rendered upon more than 99.9% of Americans. Donald Trump could not enter another presidential race, just as you, I, and virtually every other individual will never even sniff the presidency.

This would not be a fate worse than death, the latter a far more likely condition for what in 2024 would be a 78-year-old man who has made at least two trips to the hospital in the past 14 months.

Nonetheless, there is an action which Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic officials, and much of the media realize holds greater peril for Donald J. Trump. That is prosecution, and not of the variety being investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office nor the New York State Attorney General but that which would be pursued by the Justice Department.

Joe Biden- and probably Merrick Garland, the presumptive upcoming Attorney General- would like to go in another direction. It would be easier for them to fulfill their fantasy of moving on or "not looking backward" were ex-President Trump to be impeached, thus "punished enough already," as we might hear.  Paradoxically, that may be why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, her caucus, many Senate Democrats, and Democratic-leaning legal analysts see impeachment, if the 25th Amendment is not invoked, as the easy way out.

 

 

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Thank Goodness, No Deplorables

One of these has been proven wrong and one was right. Can you guess which one is which?

In her column in The Washington Post on November 4, 2016, Kathleen Parker wrote

If Trump wins, he’ll be held more or less in check by the House and Senate because that’s the way our system of government is set up. Not even Republicans are eager to follow Trump’s lead....

The same, alas, can be said about both Clinton and Trump. Whatever they’ve projected or promised won’t be reflected in the reality of the presidency. It never is. Whatever they may wish to be, the president is only one-third of the equation — granted, with an armed force.

On a happier note, either way — cue Gloria Gaynor — oh, yes, we will survive.

Eight weeks earlier, another woman had commented

I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he’s done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?

Virtually no one stood up to agree with Hillary Clinton. Either folks didn't agree with her or, well, it's Hillary and you know those emails. Right?

Clinton wasn't completely accurate- she did make up the word "generalistic." However, after the events of January 6 in the nation's capital, this appears particularly prescient:

.... there’s so much more than I find deplorable in his campaign: the way that he cozies up to white supremacist, makes racist attacks, calls women pigs, mocks people with disabilities — you can’t make this up. He wants to round up and deport 16 million people, calls our military a disaster. And every day he says something else which I find so personally offensive, but also dangerous.

In the four years since, many people had found offensive Donald Trump, his actions and his words- but particularly his words, because that's where we are.  The culture of outrage focuses nowadays far less on behavior than on the spoken word, sometimes even from 15-year-old private citizens.

The multitudes of protesters- all were protesters, a significant minority something much worse- gathered at the US Capitol yesterday aren't all deplorable.  A few do not suffer from the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or Islamaphobic attitudes toward which Clinton pointed.

But many of them do, and they were present at the Capitol to protest a free and fair election and to support someone openly racist, sexist, xenophobic, and Islamaphobic. (He deserves a pass on the homophobic, for all we know.)  And make no mistake about it: most of these folks are not stupid. When they tell pollsters that the election wasn't fairly held, they do not necessarily believe the election was rigged. Their response is a proxy for their support (and love) for Donald Trump and firm conviction that too many people dangerously erred and harmed their country by not giving him another chance to make America great again.

"Let's call Trump. He'll be happy. We're fighting for Trump." then continues, "We need to get our boy Donald J. Trump into office."pic.twitter.com/WIy0sUwKIO

— Cleavon MD (@Cleavon_MD) January 7, 2021

A side, but analogous, note: when a pollster once asked me whether I approved or disapproved of President Barack Obama, I asked her if there were a follow-up question in which I could indicate my reasoning. She said there was not, and thus I noted approval of an insufficiently bold President because disapproval inevitably would be cited as opposition to a Democrat routinely denounced as a dictatorial liberal.

Deplorable acts are committed by deplorable people. After many years as a reality show host (successfully) building a radically false image of himself, Donald J. Trump now has spent five years telling us who and what he is.  And so a tremendous number of people protested in Washington to overturn a democratic election in which voters decided to turn the guy out of office.

Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or whatever, they consciously made a decision. "Deplorable" seems pretty mild now and the many wise men (and women) who reviled the candidate who warned us over four years ago about her opponent should concede error. Perhaps they would, too, but you know, it was Hillary.

 

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Not The First Time

It didn't start yesterday.

George Will is accurate and being celebrated on left Twitter after noting "on Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies." And you can't beat (emphasis Will's) "Hawley — has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment?"  (Hawley is right about $2,000 stimulus checks but the push by him and Sanders hasn't succeeded.)

Nonetheless, Will is trying to blow smoke up our posteriors when he advances the notion that there are three discrete parties in politics:

America’s three-party system — Democrats, Hawley-Cruz Republicans, and McConnell-Sasse Republicans — will continue to take shape on Wednesday. Watch how many of these Republican senators who might be seeking reelection in 2022 have the spine to side with the adults against Hawley-Cruz et al. and the Grassy Knollers among their constituents: John Boozman, Richard Burr, Mike Crapo, Charles E. Grassley, John Hoeven, Mike Lee, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Richard C. Shelby, John Thune, Todd C. Young.

Today, they are assuring what was already assured, that Joe Biden will be inaugurated President on January 21, 2021. However, each one has sided with the authoritarian on nearly every vote in this regime. All of them delivered a stunning rebuke to the rule of law and American democracy when they ignored the overwhelming evidence against President Trump in order to vote not guilty at his impeachment trial.

During the impeachment hearing early this year, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned 

Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in [this] very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide, and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our Democratic affairs? The short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. You can't trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. He will not change and you know it.

What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.

After the President was impeached, all 15 of those GOP senators, though (or maybe because) aware that Trump would cheat, then not go quietly if defeated for re-election, voted for acquittal.

This isn't the GOP's first rigging rodeo. CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer recalls

On November 21, the Florida Supreme Court authorized manual recounts in four counties and set a November 26th deadline. The next day, the Miami-Dade County canvassing board decided to focus solely on the contested ballots in order to meet the deadline. To hunker down and avoid the media frenzy that had descended on Miami, the officials decided to move to a smaller room on the 19th floor so they could be closer to the ballot-scanning machine, according to an account in Salon.

But Republican operatives, congressional staffers and lawyers had organized a group of protesters to fly to Florida, and the mob of "50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones and Hermes ties," as described by the Wall Street Journal, gathered in the high-rise building where the recount was taking place.

When New York Congressman John Sweeney, who was working for the Bush campaign, learned that the recount had been moved to another room, he ordered, the troops to "shut it down."

The protesters yelled and screamed, accusing the canvassers of trying to steal the election. The chants became fiercer and the demonstration increasingly raucous as they directly confronted the county officials. "Stop the count. Stop the fraud," they chanted.

Miami-Dade Democratic County Chairman Joe Geller bore the brunt of the protesters' ire. When someone handed him a sample ballot to test one of the voting machines, the protesters surrounded him and demand that he desist, accusing him of stealing ballots.

"This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me. At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death," he recalled. The police escorted Geller so that he could safely leave the building. Republican organizers denied that the situation ever became violent.

The strategy worked. Hours after the riot, the board decided to shut down its operations and the manual recount in Miami came to an end. (David Leahy, one member of the canvassing board, told the New York Times, "This was perceived as not being an open and fair process. That weighed heavy on our minds." But days later he denied the protests played a role in ending the manual recount.) The Supreme Court later handed the victory to George W. Bush, and a number of the participants in the Brooks Brothers Riot went on to serve in the administration and work in conservative politics.

Nor did the lying about the election process begin in 2020 as

“This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me,” recalled Geller, who is now a state legislator. “At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death.”

Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent.

“That’s all bulls---,” he told The Post. “There was no violence. There was no threatening behavior.”

Although senators Hawley and Cruz are straight-up authoritarians, their GOP colleagues chose to condone the President's crimes when they had the chance to shut them down.  Assaulting democracy is how Donald Trump rolls. But it's also how the Republican Party rolls.

 

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There Is A Reason For The Legal System. Use It.

This is what I'd expect from a Senior Adviser to the Lincoln Project:

The President of the United States is threatening the Georgia Secretary of State in order to flip an election and reverse the votes of the citizens of Georgia.

This is an impeachable offense and for anyone enabling it, a criminal conspiracy.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 3, 2021

There are sixteen (16) days left in the Trump presidency. He will not be impeached again, and Nichols knows it. Nichols has another  idea, which is to

shroud these seditionists in silence and opprobrium in perpetuity: no television interviews, no sinecures at universities or think tanks, no rehabilitating book tours, no jokey late-night appearances, no self-serving op-eds.... and must not be trusted ever again with political power.

Amen to the first but as long as there is a First Amendment, government can neither prevent those self-serving, generally paid opportunities, nor the right to run for political office. 

Lawyer and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa, whom no one would mistake for a Republican, is more disappointing:

It would be nice if we could finally stop getting stuck on the “Was it a crime?” question. Was it? Maybe. But not committing a crime is the floor, not the ceiling. The bigger picture is that Trump has NO place holding a position of public trust and should never, ever, do so again

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 3, 2021

Donald Trump will never be appointed to "a position of public trust" or to anything, nor does he want to be.  He will not be elected to anything (again) either, but it's not within the purview of anyone to deny him the opportunity to try.

Nonetheless, there are two things the federal government can do. One is to establish a sort of truth commission, which would investigate the Trump Administration. Inevitably a bi-partisan group, it would conclude that, in the words of then-President Reagan, "mistakes were made" and in the mode of the Iran-Contra commission, no specific individual was specifically responsible or could be held accountable.

One suspects that Rangappa, Nichols, and others outraged by extortion and other efforts of President Trump to overturn a free election represent those whom David Frum recognizes as 

The sensible American majority (which) surely wants an end to Trump controversies after Inauguration Day, a return to normal governance and the crucial work ahead: overcoming the pandemic, restoring the economy, and renewing U.S. leadership of the world.

Holder of a law degree while a veteran, practicing journalist, Frum continues

But Trump gets a say too, as he got a say in the impeachment crisis. Trump is abusing the power of the presidency until his last hour in office. And his nonstop abuse seems likely to force a reckoning even by those most eager to move on. Trump will not be ignored; he will not let the chapter quietly close. Show him a red line, and he will cross it. And if the country’s red lines are to be reestablished, Trump will have to face the law he violated and violated and violated again.

Perhaps because, though a veteran, practicing journalist, Frum holds a law degree, he understands what the lawyers serving as contributors and pundits on cable news don't. Courts love to declare an issue "moot."

Biden wants to leave Trump's fate to the states and to civil litigation. But if Trump self-pardons, the next administration must contest the pardon's validity - and to do that, they must prosecute Trump, because courts won't answer theoretical questions. https://t.co/FniEg9tKAh

— David Frum (@davidfrum) January 4, 2021

Once Donald Trump leaves office, there is no reason he cannot be prosecuted. The incoming Biden Administration must not make a mockery of justice at the highest levels of government by condoning flagrant lawbreaking. Its duty is clear.

 

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Winning Too Much

You may remember in mid-November we learned

More than 130 Secret Service officers who help protect the White House and the president when he travels have recently been ordered to isolate or quarantine because they tested positive for the coronavirus or had close contact with infected co-workers, according to three people familiar with agency staffing.

The spread of the coronavirus — which has sidelined roughly 10 percent of the agency’s core security team — is believed to be partly linked to campaign rallies that President Trump held in the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, according to the people who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation.

In all, roughly 300 Secret Service officers and agents have had to isolate or quarantine since March because they were infected or exposed to infected colleagues, according to two people with knowledge of the figures.

That's only one of the reasons Matt Stoller is misleading- as pertains to the President- when, in slamming New York governor Cuomo, he claims "when Trump costs lives through incompetence it's fascism; when Cuomo does it it's 'frustrating.'"  Five New York Times reporters explain

The decision to run the government’s response out of the West Wing was made in the early days of the pandemic. The idea was to break down barriers between disparate agencies, assemble public health expertise and encourage quick and coordinated decision-making.

It did not work out like that, and by fall the consequences were clear.

Mr. Trump had always tolerated if not encouraged clashes among subordinates, a tendency that in this case led only to policy paralysis, confusion about who was in charge and a lack of a clear, consistent message about how to reduce the risks from the pandemic.

Keeping decision-making power close to him was another Trump trait, but in this case it also elevated the myriad choices facing the administration to the presidential level, bogging the process down in infighting, raising the political stakes and encouraging aides to jockey for favor with Mr. Trump.

The result at times was a systemwide failure that extended well beyond the president.

In terms of the President's primary interest- reelection- the only "failure" was a delay of about a few weeks in the announcement that a drug company was submitting for approval a vaccine to prevent Covid-19. The NYT five continue

In an Oval Office meeting with senior health officials on Sept. 24, the president made explicit what he had long implied: He wanted a vaccine before the election, according to three people who witnessed his demand.....

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the scientific leader of Operation Warp Speed, said the president never asked him to deliver a vaccine on a specific timetable. But he said Mr. Trump sometimes complained in meetings that “it was not going to happen before the election and it will be ‘Sleepy Joe’” who would ultimately get credit.

Partly as a result, as of December 30, only 2.6-3 million Americans had received the first of two shots against the coronavirus and it is unlikely that individuals in lower-risk populations will be offered it before the second half of 2021.   At that pace, herd immunity by prevention is unlikely to be achieved before 2022. It might be achieved by death earlier. Congratulations, Mr. Trump.

President Trump has dumped the problem onto the states, which have let this stinking mess go down to the counties, most of which lack the money or expertise (or both) to proceed at more than a snail's pace. Mission accomplished, Mr. Trump.

The charge of "fascism" is leveled less often than facts demand. For Donald Trump, it was not incompetence. It was not the inability to execute a plan. It has been intentional, an effort to weed out people he believes have bad genes, a campaign cut short on November 3, or which will be on January 20.

They had eight months to plan.

They knew the vaccines would likely be approved during the holidays and snowy weather months ago.

They boasted for months that the military, who they claimed had depthless experience in these things, would be involved.

What fucking bullshit. https://t.co/I2sY5kVIS9

— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) December 31, 2020

 

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The Flintstones Gather In Philadelphia

"We'll have a gay, old time."

                    -from theme song to The Flintstones, 1960-1966

 

They had a gay, old time in south Philadelphia on New Years Day.

Not gay as in homosexual or LGBTQIA etc. but gay in the old timey, traditional sense of being joyous.

The City Council and Mayor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had cancelled the traditional and outlandish Mummers Day Parade, held annually on New Years Day. However, that didn't stop hundreds of Mummers, in their gaily decorated costumes, and onlookers from coming out to protest the cancellation and have, in The Flintstones vernacular, a gay, old time.

That would have been of little import, threatening little danger, without the expectation of news coverage.

But the expectation was there, and local news in Philadelphia didn't disappoint, as the video below reflects.  The obligatory, passing reference to the pandemic- "many, though, not always earing their mask"-was overwhelmed by the positivity of it all.

"Young and old danced in the streets," correspondent Alicia Roberts observed on CBS3, as images (plural) of the American flag appeared on screen. A handsome father was approvingly shown with his toddler perched on his back. A spectator appeared with an arm around a police officer and Roberts gushed "most who watched were peaceful, thanking police along Washington Avenue." Another assured the viewing audience "they support us, we support them, we love them."

Not only was the possibility of contracting and transmitting Covid-19 downplayed, they were honoring family and the past. Roberts stated "George Piccoli's father died in August from Covid complications" but George was there to assert "my dad was a great guy, he just loved New Years, he loved people." (Such a great, life-affirming way to honor his memory!)

A poster of a Marine in uniform popped up because, well, of course it did. The marchers love not only little children, law enforcement, and family, but also the troops.

And also God. There may have been no better way to end this love letter to lawlessness and selfishness than to be shown a white ribbon marked with "Struttin in Heaven #WoodyStrong13," described as "a photo and a nod to heaven."

The march was not only a party but a protest. Two placards were shown caricaturing and belittling the Democratic mayor, John Kenney, and one marked in part "Mummers Lives Matter."

The gathering may or may not spur a significant increase in Covid-19 cases in or about the city of Philadelphia. It is similar to the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer, which did not reignite Covid-19 growth, in that both are were localized, thus not requiring participants or spectators to seek dining or lodging in the area before returning home. However, the Mummers thing resembled this summer's annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, which also was a joyous occasion encouraging drinking and general fellowship.

Whatever the direct impact of the south Philadelphia festivities upon contracting and transmitting the coronavirus, the decision by the local television stations to glamorize- even to cover- the event was irresponsible and reprehensible. If you publicize it, they will come. If they come, local news will celebrate them. And if they are celebrated, people in the region will be encouraged to flout rules and safety measures and worsen the pandemic.

However, the coverage also illustrates how lucky we are to have a fairly vibrant, reasonably objective media in the USA. Not local news, of course, frequently an abomination. We have legitimate cable news networks, currently CNN and MSNBC.   And we still have traditional daily newspapers, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post,Tthe Wall Street Journal (editorial policy notwithstanding), and some others, which provide the best daily news coverage in America. That is insufficient but given that local news operations are beset by any combination of incompetence, fealty to sponsors, and an insufficient budget, it's not nothing.

 

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The Hope Of A New Day

Happy New Year and welcome to 2021!  In less than three weeks, President Donald Trump will be out of office and the country will become normal.

 

It's always good to start the new year off with  joke.  Here is a better one:

As we look ahead to 2021, I am filled with optimism that we can accomplish the good, hard, necessary work to confront the challenges we face and turn a new chapter in our nation’s history.

Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and healthy new year.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 1, 2021

Harris must have dipped, heavily, into the egg nog before concluding she is "filled with optimism" about the upcoming year.  In mid-2019, Ryan Grim reminded us of the effort at the tail end of 2012 by Democrats, a minority in the House of Representatives but majority in the Senate, to repeal the Bush tax cuts for thewealthy.  Senate Democrats had agreed to an extension, which

meant that the tax cuts were now expiring in 2012, and in order to repeal all of them — to go over what the media began calling the “fiscal cliff” — all Congress had to do was nothing. That, Harry Reid told me in an interview for my new book, was precisely his plan. “I wanted to go over the cliff,” said Reid, the Senate majority leader at the time. “I thought that would have been the best thing to do because the conversation would not have been about raising taxes, which it became, it would have been about lowering taxes.”

In other words, let all the rates go up, and then bargain with Republicans to reduce taxes just for the middle class and the poor. Then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell similarly knew the difficult position going over the cliff would put him in, and in preliminary talks with Reid, he agreed to let rates on people making more than $250,000 per year go back up, if to slightly lower levels to pre-Bush. (McConnell aides would later say that McConnell had not firmly conceded anything, and that negotiations weren’t finalized.)

McConnell had a strong sense that Reid intended to go over the cliff and put Republicans up against a wall. Told that Reid had since confirmed that he indeed wanted to go over, a Republican operative said he found the admission unsurprising. “That’s consistent with his body language at the time,” said the operative, who wasn’t authorized to talk on the record about the negotiations. “He knew he could blame it successfully on the hard right in the Republican Party. Negotiations had reached an impasse. It wasn’t just spin, Reid was ready to go over.”

Reid felt like he had successfully pushed McConnell to the brink, buoyed by House Speaker John Boehner’s inability to get his unruly conference to agree to anything. It was now Sunday, December 30, and Democrats only had to hold out until Tuesday to find themselves in a dramatically improved political position, as the dawning of the new year would mean the tax cuts expired and automatically reverted to pre-Bush levels. At that point, it would be Republicans left pleading for rate cuts.

In desperation, McConnell reached out directly to Biden, calling him on the phone and explaining that Reid was refusing to be reasonable. Over the course of the day, McConnell and Biden struck a deal. “Biden gave Republicans everything they wanted in exchange for fixing the fiscal cliff problem,” the GOP operative recalled.

It was a perfect twofer- selling out your own Party and the middle classes in one fell swoop, thus becoming the ideal presidential candidate for Democratic primary voters of South Carolina less than eight years later.

Now slightly more than eight years later, it is clear that the Republican Party has only been emboldened by timorousness of the kind characterizing the Obama-Biden Administration.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 31, 2020

Evidently filling the Vice President-elect with optimism are Republicans in one swing state, wherein

Eight of Pennsylvania’s nine Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives have released a joint statement saying they will oppose the certification of Pennsylvania’s electors when Congress meets to count electoral votes on Jan. 6....

Seven of the eight lawmakers also were among the 126 signatories an amicus brief to a lawsuit, filed by Texas’ attorney general, that sought to throw out election results in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro slammed the lawsuit as “seditious abuse"....

There has been no proof of voter fraud.

No proof, and not even any evidence. But Kamala Harris is filled with optimism and Joe Biden is reportedly "convinced we (Democrats and Republicans) can work together for the good of the nation," however he might define "good of the nation." As the post-election maneuvering to maneuver Joe Biden out of a victory continues, the incoming President may need a telescope to find more than a few Republicans who care about the national interest.

 

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