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Month: May 2016

The Democrats come out swinging

Published by digby on May 6, 2016

The Democrats come out swinging

by digby

All in his own words:

A lot of Republicans are balking right now. This may help them make up their minds. Whether they like it or not, this maniac is the putative leader of their party now. Are they going to remain loyal?

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Published by digby on May 5, 2016

QOTD: The Maverick

by digby

John McCain:

“If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, here in Arizona, with over 30 percent of the vote being the Hispanic vote, no doubt that this may be the race of my life. If you listen or watch Hispanic media in the state and in the country, you will see that it is all anti-Trump. The Hispanic community is roused and angry in a way that I’ve never seen in 30 years.”

Let’s hope so. They have every right to be.

But maybe McCain should have thought twice about approving this message:

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Words to the wise from E.J. Dionne

Published by digby on May 5, 2016

Words to the wise

by digby

E.J. Dionne says “Pplease don’t normalize Trump.”  He calls on the Republicans to do he right thing and reject this destructive force in their own party.  But he speaks to the left as well:

The fact that Trump draws opposition from the most ideological parts of the Republican Party heightens the temptation on the left to cheer his apparent victory. As someone who has argued that the right has long been on the wrong path, I understand this urge.

It’s certainly true that his feat vindicates much of what progressives have said about the conservative movement. Republican leaders have a lot to answer for, and not only the incompetence and timidity of their stop-Trump efforts.

They have spent years stoking the resentment and anger on the right end of their party that fueled Trump’s movement. They ignored the material interests of their struggling white working-class base and also popular exhaustion with foreign commitments fed by interventionist misadventures. Along with many Democrats, they underestimated the anger over trade agreements that accelerated the economic dislocation of the less well-off.

After this election, the GOP will need an extended period of self-examination. But no one on the left should applaud the rise of Trump as representing a friendly form of “populism” — let alone view him as the leader of a mass movement of the working class. He is no such thing. He is channeling the European far right, mixing intolerance, resentment and nationalism.

If anyone’s confused about this, they need to read this piece by Rick Perlstein. Right wing “populism” is a feature of fascism, not a bug. It’s certainly fair to look deeply into the conditions and circumstances that bring people to this point, but it’s important to separate those impulses from the other ones — and there are many — that are drawing people to Trump. It’s not all about economics. Not by a long shot.

The problem with Dionne’s plea is that Trump’s already being normalized and I don’t know if the media can help itself. He’s a slippery fellow. And frankly, I’m not sure they want to.  As Fox News’ Chris Wallace said yesterday, TV covers Trump excessively because ratings spike when they do. Are we really going to change that incentive?

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They just don’t understand the dark side

Published by digby on May 5, 2016

They just don’t understand the dark side


by digby

I wrote about why the media got Trump so wrong for Salon this morning:

What a difference a year makes. Last June when Donald Trump descended from that escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidency nearly everyone in the political world laughed and laughed. How could this pompadoured clown could possibly think he could get the Republican nomination for president of the United States? What a joke.  Some of us recognized Trump’s inherent appeal to the right wing and admonished political observers to pay attention. But for the most part the pundits dismissed his candidacy as some sort of comedic performance art.

Salon gathered some of them at the time:

The smart numbers crunchers like 538’s Nate Silver and the NY Times’, Nate Cohn dismissed Trump as a flash in the pan with Silver writing that “our emphatic prediction is simply that Trump will not win the nomination” and Cohn predicting that the comments about John McCain not being the kind of war hero Trump preferred was “the moment Trump’s campaign went from boom to bust.”  Perhaps most famously, The Huffington Post covered Trump in its entertainment section rather than its political section as a way of making  statement both about the media’s obsession with Trump and about Trump himself. They unceremoniously moved their Trump coverage to its rightful place some time ago and both Silver and Cohn issued their explanations yesterday.  And they were hardly alone.

Plenty of others made the same prediction. It was conventional wisdom at the time and for some good reasons, perhaps the most important being that the 2012 GOP primary race had featured an epic assortment of weirdos and misfits, some of whom were number one in the polls for a time, including the likes of Michele Bachman and Herman Cain. Right wing religious extremist Rick Santorum was the runner up in that race, after all. Conventional wisdom held that presidential primaries tend to have a bit of a freakshow quality in the beginning that usually peters out as people begin to pay more attention.

In fact, Ben Carson proved the point. For a time he was the frontrunner, collecting tons of money from small donors and dominating the coverage. But when he stumbled badly answering questions about his past and generally sounding ignorant about American foreign policy, he quickly sank in the polls.  This had the effect of reinforcing the beltway conventional wisdom that this was the normal process and soon it would happen to Trump as well.

However, one needs only to go slightly further back to 2008 to recall the spectacle of Sarah Palin being chosen to be the Vice Presidential nominee to recognize that the modern Republican Party has not been afraid to put one of their sideshow acts on the main stage. That should have tipped off the intelligentsia that Trump’s act could catch on with GOP voters. The base loved Palin and her crypto- white nationalist paeans to Joe the Plumber. And they certainly didn’t mind that she was completely unprepared for the job. In fact it was a selling point. The similarities between her subsequent turn as a reality star and The Donald’s long stint on “The Apprentice” escaped the notice of most observers in the apparent belief that such an embarrassing career was a disqualifier when their fans saw it as a major plus.

And if people had been paying slightly closer attention they would have seen that despite all the breathless reporting about the GOP’s “deep bench” of astonishing political talent, the Republican race was already a clown car with the top tier candidates like Christie and Walker making fools of themselves overseas, Rubio making no impression whatsoever and Jeb Bush appearing to be sleepwalking. For all of their credentials and experience they were already bumbling their way through the primary by the time Trump threw his comb-over into the ring. But the PR push had been fierce going into 2016 with Republicans of all stripes convinced that between their young and vigorous candidates or their vastly experienced political hands their field was unbeatable. Even if the media had taken Trump more seriously the fact that the Republican establishment failed to do so would have tilted the coverage in another direction.

The story of the GOP leadership’s long list of mistakes in this primary will surely be the subject of several campaign books.  But the main error is the same as the media’s: they assumed that Trump would implode the same way the other “outsider” candidate, Ben Carson imploded. But Trump defied all such expectations at every step of the way, making shocking comments nearly every day, none which managed to take him down. Instead, they kept him in first place. Nobody could believe that they were actually helping him by proving to his followers that he was confident enough and tough enough to say what they are all thinking right out loud. The more politically incorrect he is, the more they love him.

But the main reason so many people failed to see Trump as a serious candidate is not just because he is a special candidate or because the electorate is still feeling the effects of a massive economic crisis and many years of stagnant wages. (The polls show that Trump does not actually have any special appeal to the working class over any other group in the GOP.  In fact, his voters are economically better off than most Americans. ) The problem is that many of the commentariat and the political establishment had fooled themselves into believing that the conservative movement has been inspired by ideological commitment to a set of constitutional principles, patriotic obligation and devotion to traditional values.

But it turns out that elaborate intellectual construct was never the primary motivation for many members of the GOP.  What attracted them were the dogwhistles, the under-the-radar signals to Americans who feel betrayed by the social changes that have rocked our culture for the past 40 years. And they are tired of listening to all that philosophical mumbo-jumbo as Republican politicians fail to deliver on their implicit promises to set things right. Trump is keeping it real.

The Republican establishment is starting to come to terms with this and it’s going to be a painful process. Ben Ginsburg, the powerful Republican lawyer and operative rather poignantly explained it yestrday on MSNBC:

There were certain precepts of the Republican Party that you had to be strong on national security, on certain economic policies, and on social issues. Donald Trump has taken a position that’s contrary to Republican doctrine and orthodoxy on each one of those three legs of the Republican stool. So all of a sudden Republicans have to be thinking, is there a new and better way to form a cohesive governing strategy than what we’ve been doing for he past couple of decades including losing two presidential elections?

Last night on All In, Chris Hayes speculated about what the Republican base wants it to be:

“We’re going to give it a go as the party of essentially white identity resentment politics. That is going to be the new iteration of the Republican Party of the next six months looks like and let’s see if it works.”

This dark side of American politics has always been with us and it’s often wielded substantial power. But in recent years it was forced to stay on the down low. Now we’re about to find out if it’s coming fully out in the open again, declaring its intentions and daring the world to stop it. And considering the terrible track record of the last 10 months of punditry, it would be very foolish to predict how it’s going to come out. We’ll know soon enough.

Why did the prognosticators get it so wrong?

Because they never believed the dogwhistles were real. After all, none of the Republicans they know are racist throwbacks who want America to be start kicking ass and taking names.

http://washingtonspectator.org/mitt-vs-trump/ Perlstein’s insight that the establishment had always held back the meatheads and then found they couldn’t do it.

There were certain precepts of the Republican Party that you had to be strong on national security, on certain economic policies, and on social issues. Donald Trump has taken a position that’s contrary to Republican doctrine and orthodoxy on each one of those three legs of the Republican stool. So all of a sudden Republicans have to be thinking, is there a new and better way to form a cohesive governing strategy than what we’ve been doing for he past couple of decades including losing two presidential elections. —  Ben Ginsberg on MSNBC

The Village misread Real America. They were never voting for the elaborate ideological construct of the modern conservative movement. They were voting for the dogwhistles. Trump is the first guy with enough charisma and clout to make it real. He’s the man on the white horse they’ve been waiting for. A TV celebrity who says what they re thinking.

http://prospect.org/article/trump%E2%80%99s-nomination-will-shake-confidence-american-democracy

Chris Hayes called it @chrislhayes

Published by digby on May 5, 2016

Chris Hayes called it

by digby

Hayes had it right indeed. The book is well worth a re-read in this moment.

I wish I could say that I ever believed that the “reform” reaction would automatically prevail and a peaceful revolution would fix our problems. I’m not that romantic. These things tend to play out in non-linear fashion with feints in different directions before it settles in and I have no idea where that will be. It could be that Trump will work the strongman impulse out of the system and leave us with a renewed commitment to reform our democracy. But it’s playing with fire. Let’s hope it burns out quickly.

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Don’t depend on the kindness of strangers

Published by digby on May 5, 2016

Don’t depend on the kindness of strangers

by digby

They might disapprove of your politics.

When 25-year-old Cassandra McWade got in a car accident on a highway in Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday, Ken Shupe drove his tow truck to the scene. But when he saw that McWade, who has disabilities, had Bernie Sanders signs on her Toyota Camry, he decided he wouldn’t help.

“He said, ‘I can’t tow you … you’re a Bernie supporter,’” McWade recalled. “I was like, ‘Wait, are you serious? You’re kidding me.’”

Ken Shupe, a 51-year-old from Travelers Rest, South Carolina, was very serious. “I’m a conservative Christian, I’ve just drawn a line in the sand,” he said. “I’m not going to associate or conduct business with them.” (The incident was first reported by FOX Carolina 21.)

McWade was heading home to Travelers Rest on I-26 when a tractor trailer hit the front of her car, she said. Afterward, her car wouldn’t start, and a first responder moved it to the side of the interstate. The driver’s door was approximately two feet from the highway line, she recalled.

McWade said she collects disability payments and has psoriatic arthritis, impaired mobility, early stage Crohn’s disease, severe fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. (She sent HuffPost a picture of the disability tag, as well as a photo of her many medications.)

“I was in a little bit of a shock, and definitely a little scared,” she said.

Shupe showed up, saw the Sanders signs, and drove back to South Carolina without sticking around. McWade was “sitting there in a very safe area … with her air conditioning on and her car locked, she was perfectly fine,” he said. He didn’t know she had disabilities, he said, but noted, “there’s a huge difference between being disabled and drawing disability.”

This tow truck driver decided to teach this Bernie supporter a lesson by refusing to help her. He told her this to her face and left her sitting on the side of the road. Apparently he doubts that she’s really disabled.

Oh, and he calls himself a Christian. It’s unlikely that’s what Jesus would do. In fact, we know it’s the opposite. Helping people was his big thing.

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Trump wins GOP nomination. Village says “Thanks Obama!”

Published by digby on May 5, 2016

Trump wins GOP nomination. Village says “Thanks Obama!”

by digby

Get a load of this one:

It’s the hippies fault you see. The Republicans were ever so willing to negotiate in good faith when Obama came into office and he just spit in their faces and did it his way. And now look at the result: Donald Trump. I hope he can live with himself.

Basically, the Villager logic is this: because Republicans represent Real America, when they win Democrats should enact the GOP agenda. When Democrats win, they have won with “coastal elites” who are out of touch with Real America so they should enact the GOP agenda.

*Needless to say, anyone over 5 years old remembers that Obama went out of his way to work with Republicans  throughout his first term, short selling the stimulus, offering up Social Security and Medicare and extending most of the Bush tax cuts. They would have none of it and even said up front their primary goal was to make him a one term president by obstructing everything he did no matter what it was.  Unfortunately for them, Democrats decided it was important to pass some health care reforms so that millions of Americans could stop going bankrupt and dying for lack of health insurance. What  a bunch of assholes. Now we have Trump. Thanks Obama!

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A sternly worded letter by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 5, 2016

A sternly worded letter
by Tom Sullivan

Just weeks before North Carolina Republicans enacted their insta-infamous HB2 transgender discrimination law, I wrote that the M.O. of the extremist Republican Party is this: find the lines, cross them, dare people to push them back. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Justice pushed back:

RALEIGH — U.S. Justice Department officials repudiated North Carolina’s House Bill 2 on Wednesday, telling Gov. Pat McCrory that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX – a finding that could jeopardize billions in federal education funding.

The department gave state officials until Monday to respond “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.”

This was not unexpected. When Republican legislators placed an anti-marriage equality amendment to the North Carolina state constitution on the 2012 primary ballot, then N.C. House Speaker (now U.S. Senator) Thom Tillis told the NCSU newspaper, “If it passes, I think it will be repealed within 20 years.” That assessment did not stop them. Amendment 1 did pass. A federal court declared it unconstitutional in two.

HB2 has been in place less than two months.

Knowing they could not stop it, Democratic legislators (IIRC) made a deal to move the divisive Amendment 1 to the 2012 primary ballot instead of the fall ballot. Rumor has it that the NCGOP has been kicking around the idea of placing some version of HB2 on the fall ballot this year to help get out the conservative vote. (Republican politicians do nothing that isn’t at least a twofer.) The Department of Justice may have just put the brakes on that.

The DOJ letter to Pat McCrory says (via TPM):

“The State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees and both you, in your official capacity, and the State are engaging in a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of Title VII rights by transgender employees of public agencies,” Principal Deputy Assistant General Vanita Gupta wrote in the letter to McCrory obtained by local Raleigh TV station WRAL.

The Justice Department letter was focused specifically on transgender state employees.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits an employer from discriminating against an individual based on sex. The DOJ alleged that HB2 also violates Title IX, which prohibits education discrimination based on sex.

“HB 2, which took effect on March 23, 2016, is facially discriminatory against transgender employees on the basis of sex because it treats transgender employees, whose gender identity does not match their biological sex, as defined by HB2, differently from similarly situated non transgender employees,” the letter reads.

McCrory’s Democratic challenger this fall, Attorney General Roy Cooper, said, “Enough is enough. It’s time for the Governor to put our schools and economy first and work to repeal this devastating law.”

A new poll has McCrory trailing Cooper by five points.

What I wrote when Trump announced

Published by digby on May 5, 2016

What I wrote when Trump announced

by digby



This seems like a good day to re-run it since everyone’s looking back at all the punditry that gave him no chance:

The GOP race for the presidency has been upgraded from a clown car to a three-ring circus with the official entry of Donald Trump into the race. After daughter Ivanka delivered a stirring introduction worthy of Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill, the audience waited expectantly for the great man to appear. And it waited. And waited. Finally after several long moments, the great man finally emerged above the crowd on the mezzanine level of the glittering Trump Tower building waving as if he were Juan Peron (or the Queen of England). As Neil Young’s “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” continued to play over and over again, he then descended to the stage on an excruciatingly slow-motion escalator and began his speech by insulting his fellow Republican candidates for failing to know how to put on a competent political event.

It was a perfect beginning to what is going to be an astonishing political spectacle.

Right out of the gate he began to free-associate like a drunken Tea Partyer on 2 Shots For A Buck night, insulting Mexican immigrants by calling them rapists and drug dealers, asking when we’ve ever beaten China or Japan (!) at anything, declaring himself to be potentially the greatest jobs president God has ever created and more. Oh, and he also told us that he’s worth $8,737,540,000 — more or less. It was the best presidential campaign announcement ever, even better than Lindsey Graham’s.

The media seemed a little bit shell-shocked in the early going — perhaps they’ve never actually heard what the average right-winger believes. They seemed to find it noteworthy that he was incoherent and contradictory, with promises of totally free trade even as he said he would make Mexico pay a tariff to construct the Great Wall he envisions building on the border.

And they didn’t seem to know what to think about his endless gobbledygook about “making” the world do what he wants it to do. They are clearly unaware that members of the far right don’t follow the philosophy of Edmund Burke. They follow the philosophy of Glenn Beck, Joe McCarthy and P.T. Barnum. Not even Roger Ailes can control the way their minds work.

Donald Trump may not make sense to the average journalist — but to the average Tea Partyer, he’s telling it like it is, with a sort of free-floating grievance about everyone who doesn’t agree with them mixed with simplistic patriotic boosterism and faith in the fact that low taxes makes everybody rich. It’s not about policy or even politics. It’s about following your instincts. (“In your heart you know he’s right.”)

But it wasn’t long before Twitter lit up with insider jokes and insults among the Village press. Salon chronicled some of them here. The only one to take Trump seriously was Bloomberg News’ Mark Halperin, whose first impression was quite a bit less derisive than anyone else’s, giving him a solid B- on his tiresome political report card:

Substance: Made a concerted and admirable effort to laundry-list his presidential plans before the speech was finished, calling for the replacement of Obamacare, cautioning foreign adversaries about messing with the U.S., expressing opposition to the current trade bill, promising to build a southern border wall and sticking Mexico with the bill, terminating Obama’s executive order on immigration, supporting the Second Amendment, ending Common Core, rebuilding infrastructure, resisting cuts in entitlement programs. Still, left open too many questions about the hows and wherefores, given that he has never run for nor held office. 

Best moment: Protracted run-up to formal declaration of candidacy was spirited and engaging. 

Worst moment: Lost his rhythm a bit whenever cheerful supporters in the crowd tossed out helpful prompts or encouraging chants. 

Overall: A madcap production–garrulous, grandiose, and intense—that displayed his abundant strengths and acute weaknesses. For the first time in decades, Trump is a true underdog, but his ability to shape the contours of the nomination fight should not be ignored. On the debate stage, through TV advertising (positive and negative), in earned media, and by drawing crowds, Trump has the potential to be a big 2016 player. He staged an announcement event like no other, and now he will deliver a candidacy the likes of which the country has never seen.

What is it they say about a stopped clock? Well, even Mark Halperin is right twice a day. The Villagers in general may not be able to see it — but for reasons about which we can’t even speculate, Mark Halperin is on to something when it comes to Donald Trump.

First, let’s dispense with the fact that his ideas are more bizarre than anyone else in the field. They are not. Say what you will about the Donald, but nobody can bring the wingnut cha-cha-cha like Tea Party fave Dr. Ben Carson:

“I mean, [our society is] very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

This week’s latest poll actually shows him in first place.

Lindsey Graham often appears on television and breathlessly proclaims that we must stop ISIS “before we all get killed here at home!” Presumed top-tier Scott Walker makes so many gaffes you can’t count them anymore, including some doozies like musing publicly with Glenn Beck about shutting down legal immigration.

Compared to that, building a wall on the border is standard boilerplate on the right and it certainly isn’t hard to find candidates who are willing to demagogue China or Japan and claim that liberals have destroyed the American way of life. Trump’s style is colorful, to be sure. His ideas are disjoined and irrational. But they are hardly unique. In fact, he represents a very common strain in American political life: the right-wing blowhard.

Trump actually has something that none of these other candidates have and they’re pretty important. First, of course, is the money. Trump says he’s worth 9 billion. Let’s assume he’s exaggerating by 50 percent. That’s still a whole lot of money, more than enough to finance a presidential campaign for as long as he wants to do it. The Beltway wags seem to believe that he’s only announcing so that he can get himself into the debates but it seems more likely that he’s finally so wealthy that the cost of a campaign is so negligible he figures he’s got nothing to lose. After all, if he were to spend even a hundred million on the primary it wouldn’t make a serious dent in his bottom line. What else has he got to do?

But there is something else he has that may be even more valuable than money: stardom. I don’t think it’s possible to place a political value on the fact that Trump has had a prime-time network TV show for over 10 years with “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice.”

“The Apprentice” averaged 6 to 7 million viewers a show with finales sometimes getting between 10 and 20 million viewers. Last year’s “Celebrity Apprentice” averaged 7.6 million a show. Fox News’ highest rated shows rarely get more than a couple of million viewers and they are all elderly hardcore Republicans. The Donald has a wider reach and might even appeal to the most sought-after people in the land: non-voters.

It’s impossible to know if that’s a serious possibility. But it’s fair to say that many more people in the country know the name of Donald Trump than know anyone else in the race (with the possible exception of Jeb Bush). It’s hard to quantify that kind of name recognition but it’s certainly not worthless in our celebrity-obsessed culture. And remember, Trump would not be the first show business celebrity who everyone assumed was too way out there to ever make a successful run for president. The other guy’s name was Ronald Reagan.

Obviously, Trump is no Reagan. But he does bear a passing resemblance to another wealthy presidential gadfly who wasn’t taken seriously by the political cognoscenti: Ross Perot. 1992 featured a Republican incumbent who was widely considered a shoo-in for reelection and a Democratic Party offering up a long list of people who were trying out for what was assumed to be the next opening in 1996. When Perot appeared on the scene with his quirky style and his facile prescriptions for the nation’s intractable problems (“I’ll get under the hood and fix it”) nobody thought he was more than a flash in the pan. But he ended up getting 20 percent of the vote in the general election — and that was after a couple of epic implosions that had undoubtedly eroded much greater support.

So far, Trump is running as a Republican and there’s no reason to think he would go third party as Perot did. But if he had the slightest encouragement, can anyone think he wouldn’t? After what he said about his fellow Republicans today, it certainly doesn’t appear that he cares what they think.

Sure, Trump is a clown. But he’s a very rich and a very famous clown. And he’s really not much more clownish than many of the current contenders or some serious contenders in the past. It’s interesting that the one time Mark Halperin deviates from the conventional wisdom he may actually have seen something more interesting than the rest of his cohort: the fact that Donald Trump has the potential to be a serious 2016 player. And that says everything you need to know about the Republican presidential field and the state of our politics today.