Month: May 2016

by digby

For all that he’s a terrible threat to the Republic, Trump is bringing out some really interesting stuff among the punditocrisy.  Frank Bruni in the New York Times has an interesting take:

[A] Democratic version of Trump is hard to imagine: He would play too neatly into caricatures of Democrats as godless assassins of family values. The party’s leaders and voters would be too self-conscious and defensive to go down a road as unabashedly randy as Trump’s. That Republicans are the ones traveling it is as inevitable as it is hypocritical. It’s a Nixon-in-China dynamic, but with less Communism and more cleavage. 

And Trump, crucially, isn’t just any libertine. He’s a retro rascal, a throwback to an era and ethic of big suits, paneled boardrooms, thick billfolds and buxom arm candy. In the context of the pansexual, gender-fluid, Molly-popping millennials who make conservatives shudder, he’s a musky whiff of nostalgia, a stubborn ember of patriarchy, a vintage stripe of sybarite. He’s promiscuity steeped in chauvinism and misogyny: more old-fashioned, and more comforting.

Once again, he’s running to restore an America that is literally disappearing and won’t be coming back.

Misogyny rising

by digby

How can it be that America in 2016, when the country is finally on the verge of nominating the first woman for president on one of the two major party tickets, has produced an unreconstructed misogynist pig out of some 1950s nightmare to run against her?

What does this say about our country? Our culture?

STEPHANOPOULOS (voice-over): While Trump swats away critics in his own party, Hillary Clinton is focused on locking in her base by playing that women’s card.[No George, she’s not “focused” on playing the women’s card. But thanks for helping Trump out on that. — d]

HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He doesn’t think much of equal pay for women because, of course, he doesn’t think much of women, it turns out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Trump digging in with this remarkable statement.

TRUMP: I mean all of the men, we’re petrified to speak to women anymore. We may raise our voice.

You know what?

The women get it better than we do, folks, all right?

They get it better than we do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he’s also up against the president.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Republican women voters are going to have to decide is that the guy I feel comfortable with in representing me and what I care about.

TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what my reaction is. I won in massive doses and massive — by a massive number, New York, Pennsylvania, everything. I won overall. But I won with women. I won with men. I won with older. I won with soldiers. I won with highly educated and not so highly educated. I won with everybody.

STEPHANOPOULOS (on camera): So you’re not worried about Obama…

TRUMP: I won with…

STEPHANOPOULOS: — out there campaigning against you?

TRUMP: Look, you know what?

Once we start, I think it’s going to be good.

You know, Hillary Clinton, the only thing she’s got going, she plays the woman card 100 percent. I saw her in a speech, well Donald Trump spoke a little bit harshly to Megyn Kelly. Well, Megyn Kelly was really terrific. She called me and came up to my office. She wanted to make peace. And we did. We did. I mean, it was very nice.

Some of the stuff is said as, you know, an entertainer, because I have The Apprentice, or some of it was said in fun with certain shows like Howard Stern, who is a friend of mine…

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you’re not worried about the tapes of that coming back?

TRUMP: It comes back.

I mean, look, what am I going to do? Everyone else thinks it. You know, these politicians, I watch the politicians, what they say behind the scenes makes whatever I said jokingly to Howard and other people like baby stuff.

What they tell me behind the scenes talking about everything is far worse than anything that you’ve seen or you ever will see about me. And then they act like, oh, that’s so terrible. That’s so terrible.

I mean, you know when it’s called? Give me a break. And I watch Hillary Clinton like she’s a baby. I mean, just look at what happens with her family. I watch Hillary Clinton like, oh, the way he talks to women, the way he talks to women, well — you know, take a look at her husband and what do you think he talks to women?

So, when I watch her and she’s playing the women card so much and so loud. And frankly I think it’s her only chance of getting elected. You know what, listen, she’s going to get hit for it, because it’s not appropriate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, there was an article in GQ about your wife Melania this week. And you said that spouses should be off the table, but you are willing to talk about Bill Clinton. Should he be off the table as well?

TRUMP: It depends on if he’s involved in the campaign. I think if he’s involved in the campaign, he shouldn’t be. And he probably will be involved.

I think he gets involved when she plays the women card. When she said Donald Trump was nasty to a woman, number one I’ve worked so well with women for so many years. I broke — you know, you talk about the glass ceiling, what I’ve done in terms of jobs for women and I’ve gotten so much credit, and to this day I have so many women in my company that are doing so well, making so much money, I mean, in many cases making more money than men in comparable positions.

But, no, if he’s involved in the campaign, he should absolutely, you know, he could be brought into it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, not — fair game.

TRUMP: I think fair game, yeah. No, I think fair game.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As Trump make clear Friday night.

TRUMP: Nobody in this country, and maybe in the history of the country politically, was worse than Bill Clinton with women. He was a disaster.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And Saturday.

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton’s husband abused women more than any man that we know of in the history of politics, right. She’s married to a man who was the worst abuser of women in the history of politics. She’s married to a man who hurt many women. And Hillary, if you look and you study, Hillary hurt many women.

STEPHANOPOULOS: To Trump, the rules of the game are clear — if you’re on the field, you get hit.

This is what the Republicans came up with to run against a woman who is the former Secretary of State, a US Senator, former first lady of the United States and Arkansas and long time activist on behalf of women and children? This is how America reacts to the first woman nominee from one of the major parties?

And yes, Trump has been disgusting on virtually every level, with his attacks on immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, across the board. But choosing Donald Trump to run against the first woman nominee for president on a major ticket is a very specific slap in the face. Imagine how African Americans would have felt if the GOP had nominated David Duke to run against Barack Obama in 2008?

I have never felt more alienated from my own country than when I hear that Donald Trump has received more votes than any Republican candidate in American history. All those millions of people are basically saying that rank sexism is still a-ok.

I hope that women turn out to vote against this monster and he is soundly defeated on that basis. But he’s turned over an ugly rock and I don’t think I can ever unsee what’s underneath it.

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Politics and Reality Radio

by Joshua Holland

Rick Perlstein on Trump: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Independents

This week, Stan Collender, AKA The Budget Guy, recalls his experience going up to Capitol Hill to give the Senate Budget committee a piece of his mind.

Then we’ll speak with Rick Perlstein, who’s devoted a career to studying the American conservative movement and thinks we need to rethink some of our assumptions in the era of Donald Trump conservatism.

Finally, we’ll be joined by Michigan State University political scientist Corwin Smidt, who has studied independent voters and says that they’re a lot less independent than most people believe.

Playlist:
Max Sedgley: “Slowly”
P Diddy and Faith Hill: “I’ll Be Missing You”
Regina Spektor: “Summer in the City:
Talking Heads: “The Cowboy Mambo”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or Podbean.

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Wise words from the prez

by digby

What climate change looks like

Tom posted the whole Obama commencement speech below but I just wanted to highlight this especially:

You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that’s never been the source of our progress. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress.

You have to go through life with more than just a passion for change – you have to have strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes. Change requires more than righteous anger. To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in customs.

That’s not sexy but it’s true. He didn’t go into it specifically but I think this is especially great advice as applied to the most important issue of our time and the greatest challenge any young generation has ever faced: climate change. It’s so overwhelming a problem that I think the younger generation of activists will become more and more focused on this singular problem as time goes on and the president’s advice will become even more salient. It couldn’t be more difficult in terms of organization and strategy, requiring not just the cooperation of domestic political rivals but actors and interests all over the planet. And it’s almost certainly going to require a lifetime of focus and commitment. Several lifetimes actually.  I wish them well.

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“It’s not that complicated”
by Tom Sullivan

“Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness,” President Obama told student during his commencement address yesterday at Howard University. He reminded students at the historically black college, “One of the great changes that’s occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there’s no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of debate about whether I’m black enough.”

It was an upbeat speech worth listening to in its entirety. Obama urged students foremost to engage politically as their parents and grandparents did. There are enough people working at disenfranchising the most vulnerable without students giving away their power by not voting (emphasis mine):

You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.

You see, change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer — all five-feet-four-inches tall — gave a fiery speech on the national stage. But then she went back home to Mississippi and organized cotton pickers. And she didn’t have the tools and technology where you can whip up a movement in minutes. She had to go door to door. And I’m so proud of the new guard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. It’s thanks in large part to the activism of young people like many of you, from Black Twitter to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened — white, black, Democrat, Republican — to the real problems, for example, in our criminal justice system.

But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? (Applause.) If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state’s attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you’ve got to have a strategy.

And your plan better include voting — not just some of the time, but all the time. (Applause.) It is absolutely true that 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still too many barriers in this country to vote. There are too many people trying to erect new barriers to voting. This is the only advanced democracy on Earth that goes out of its way to make it difficult for people to vote. And there’s a reason for that. There’s a legacy to that.

But let me say this: Even if we dismantled every barrier to voting, that alone would not change the fact that America has some of the lowest voting rates in the free world. In 2014, only 36 percent of Americans turned out to vote in the midterms — the second lowest participation rate on record. Youth turnout — that would be you — was less than 20 percent. Less than 20 percent. Four out of five did not vote. In 2012, nearly two in three African Americans turned out. And then, in 2014, only two in five turned out. You don’t think that made a difference in terms of the Congress I’ve got to deal with? And then people are wondering, well, how come Obama hasn’t gotten this done? How come he didn’t get that done? You don’t think that made a difference? What would have happened if you had turned out at 50, 60, 70 percent, all across this country? People try to make this political thing really complicated. Like, what kind of reforms do we need? And how do we need to do that? You know what, just vote. It’s math. If you have more votes than the other guy, you get to do what you want. (Laughter.) It’s not that complicated.

And you don’t have excuses. You don’t have to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap to register to vote. You don’t have to risk your life to cast a ballot. Other people already did that for you. (Applause.) Your grandparents, your great grandparents might be here today if they were working on it. What’s your excuse? When we don’t vote, we give away our power, disenfranchise ourselves — right when we need to use the power that we have; right when we need your power to stop others from taking away the vote and rights of those more vulnerable than you are — the elderly and the poor, the formerly incarcerated trying to earn their second chance.

So you got to vote all the time, not just when it’s cool, not just when it’s time to elect a President, not just when you’re inspired. It’s your duty. When it’s time to elect a member of Congress or a city councilman, or a school board member, or a sheriff. That’s how we change our politics — by electing people at every level who are representative of and accountable to us. It is not that complicated. Don’t make it complicated.

It was a speech you knew Obama wrote himself, or most of it. He brought to it the real experience of working in government, the reality stripped of illusions:

And finally, change requires more than just speaking out — it requires listening, as well. In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise. When I was a state senator, I helped pass Illinois’s first racial profiling law, and one of the first laws in the nation requiring the videotaping of confessions in capital cases. And we were successful because, early on, I engaged law enforcement. I didn’t say to them, oh, you guys are so racist, you need to do something. I understood, as many of you do, that the overwhelming majority of police officers are good, and honest, and courageous, and fair, and love the communities they serve.

And we knew there were some bad apples, and that even the good cops with the best of intentions — including, by the way, African American police officers — might have unconscious biases, as we all do. So we engaged and we listened, and we kept working until we built consensus. And because we took the time to listen, we crafted legislation that was good for the police — because it improved the trust and cooperation of the community — and it was good for the communities, who were less likely to be treated unfairly. And I can say this unequivocally: Without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those bills passed. Very simple. They would have blocked them.

The point is, you need allies in a democracy. That’s just the way it is. It can be frustrating and it can be slow. But history teaches us that the alternative to democracy is always worse. That’s not just true in this country. It’s not a black or white thing. Go to any country where the give and take of democracy has been repealed by one-party rule, and I will show you a country that does not work.

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that’s never been the source of our progress. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress.

We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. And those two seminal bills were not perfect — just like the Emancipation Proclamation was a war document as much as it was some clarion call for freedom. Those mileposts of our progress were not perfect. They did not make up for centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or provide for 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better. And you know what, I will take better every time. I always tell my staff — better is good, because you consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position.

Brittany Packnett, a member of the Black Lives Matter movement and Campaign Zero, one of the Ferguson protest organizers, she joined our Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Some of her fellow activists questioned whether she should participate. She rolled up her sleeves and sat at the same table with big city police chiefs and prosecutors. And because she did, she ended up shaping many of the recommendations of that task force. And those recommendations are now being adopted across the country — changes that many of the protesters called for. If young activists like Brittany had refused to participate out of some sense of ideological purity, then those great ideas would have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that’s how change happens.

The passage was an oblique reference to the passions and frustrations of the last few months, of Ferguson and Baltimore, and of the primary campaigns. If I had anything to add about affecting real change, it would be this: show up. Not once. Not twice. But as a habit. Hillary Clinton did. Bernie Sanders did. There is power in showing up and not giving up. It is how you build street cred and break the power of the “old boy” networks. Show them you are not going to take your ball and go home the first, second, and third times they stymie your efforts and they’ll realize they are stuck with having to deal with you. Give them no other option. Soon enough, they’ll wonder if they should take their ball and go home.

Now is no time to back off. Bernie Sanders has been a public official for 35 years. He was an activist for 20 before that. Are you going to throw in the towel after a few months?

It’s not that complicated.

Oh Alabama

by digby

It’s about time:

For the second time in his career, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore faces charges before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and potential removal from office.

Until that court hears and rules on those charges, Moore will be suspended with pay from his position atop the state’s highest court.

On Friday, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission forwarded charges to the commission, accusing the chief justice of violating judicial ethics in his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Despite a ruling by a federal judge in Mobile making same-sex marriage legal in Alabama last year, and in the face of a United States Supreme Court ruling last year making its legality the law of the land, Moore instructed probate judges throughout Alabama to ignore those higher courts and to refuse to issue licenses to same-sex couples.

Moore’s actions led the Southern Poverty Law Center to file complaints with the commission, which acts much in the same way as a grand jury. When it receives a complaint, the commission investigates and decides whether to forward charges to the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.

The process remains secret unless charges are made, as happened Friday evening. Unless Moore reaches a settlement, he will be tried before that court.

On Friday evening, SPLC President Richard Cohen said that Moore has disgraced his office and should be removed.

“He is such an egomaniac and such a religious zealot that he thinks he can ignore court orders with impunity,” Cohen said. “For the sake of our state, he should be kicked out of office.”

He claims it’s a political hit job.

And in Alabama they know from political hit jobs: this man is in solitary confinement.

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by digby

Kevin notes Trump’s wild misogyny over the past couple of days and then makes a comic prediction:

Next up: Trump claims that Chelsea Clinton knew all about Benghazi. Huma Abedin is disgusting for sticking with her husband. Beyoncé wouldn’t have any fans if she were a man. Shonda Rimes is an affirmative-action hire who has ruined ABC’s Thursday-night TV lineup. Malia Obama is going to Harvard on the taxpayer’s dime. Kim Kardashian is a total slut. Laura Bush is a loser. Amal Clooney defends terrorists. Gloria Steinem sure hasn’t aged well. Natalie Portman was terrible in Star Wars. 

Keep it up, Donald. You’re doing great so far.

It’s a good thing women can’t vote …

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It’s not all about the squeeze

by digby

… at least, not all about the economic squeeze. There are a lot of reasons why people are obsessed with the idea that Trump is speaking to the economic concerns of the white people who’ve been left behind in a changing economy. And there’s obviously some truth to it. But it isn’t true in a literal sense that his voters are unusually strapped financially. This is from Nate Silver:

Class in America is a complicated concept, and it may be that Trump supporters see themselves as having been left behind in other respects. Since almost all of Trump’s voters so far in the primaries have been non-Hispanic whites, we can ask whether they make lower incomes than other white Americans, for instance. The answer is “no.” The median household income for non-Hispanic whites is about $62,000,4 still a fair bit lower than the $72,000 median for Trump voters.

Likewise, although about 44 percent of Trump supporters have college degrees, according to exit polls — lower than the 50 percent for Cruz supporters or 64 percent for Kasich supporters — that’s still higher than the 33 percent of non-Hispanic white adults, or the 29 percent of American adults overall, who have at least a bachelor’s degree.

This is not to say that Trump voters are happy about the condition of the economy. Substantial majorities of Republicans in every state so far have said they’re “very worried” about the condition of the U.S. economy, according to exit polls, and these voters have been more likely to vote for Trump. But that anxiety doesn’t necessarily reflect their personal economic circumstances, which for many Trump voters, at least in a relative sense, are reasonably good.

Silver is just crunching numbers in this piece and only makes a passing reference to the fact that they are really motivated by the idea that they are being “left behind” in other ways. I think those “other ways” are just as significant as economics.

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Torture fans have to stick together

by digby

I’m surprised that anyone would have assumed Dick Cheney wouldn’t back Trump.  Trump is his kind of guy. They have a lot in common. They both believe in American military dominance although Trump wants to turn it into a protection racket to pay for his yuuuuge military build-up. But where they really agree is on the issue of fighting terrorism by any means necessary which means torture, mass surveillance, targeted assassination of family members, whatever it takes.

Trump is almost certainly a proponent of Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine even though he has likely never heard of it which is defined as  “”Even if there’s just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty. It’s not about ‘our analysis,’ as Cheney said. It’s about ‘our response.’ ” And let’s just say that when it comes to “evidence” Cheney wasn’t exactly demanding. And when it comes to “analysis” Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

Nobody sane takes that position except Cheney. But I  feel quite sure that Trump would agree with it. Trump would define it differently. He thinks this is all about “respect” and that you have to hit hard and without warning so enemies and allies alike understand who’s boss. Cheney probably wouldn’t say it that way, but it amounts to the same thing.

I’m sure Cheney doesn’t like Trump’s slagging the Iraq war. But I’m not sure he cares much either. He’s a very confident man. I would guess that he sees in Trump someone who could be put to good use, just as he put the callow “W” to good use.

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