Month: June 2016

This was inevitable

by digby

Of course he is: 

The Capitol Hill-based newspaper The Hill has dropped laughingstock Dick Morris as a columnist after he signed on with the National Enquirer as its chief political correspondent.

In a statement to Media Matters, a spokesperson for The Hill wrote: “In light of Dick Morris’ new position at the National Enquirer The Hill has decided to discontinue his column at The Hill. We wish him well.”

Morris’ dismissal from the paper is long overdue. In December 2012, several Hill staffers told Media Matters that the columnist lacked credibility in light of his faulty predictions, with one saying: “I think everyone at The Hill views him the way that people outside The Hill do. He is a laughingstock, especially the way he acted in this last election.”

Morris, an ethically challenged pundit best known for his erroneous political forecasts, will become the chief political correspondent for the publication that helped bring him down in the 1990s.

National Enquirer touted the former Clinton adviser turned Clinton foe’s hiring in a press release, claiming it “underscores our commitment to investigative journalism. … He greatly values our commitment to delivering the kind of quality content that our readers have come to trust us for.” Morris said that the publication is “one of the few journalistic outlets that has the courage to publish the truth.”

Keep in mind that Trump is very close with the publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker.

Yes, it’s going to be that kind of election.

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How do you if they’re a Trump voter? #birthers


by digby

I wrote about Trump’s followers for Salon today:

It has become a matter of conventional wisdom that the reason Donald Trump has captured the imagination of so many people is because he is speaking to the anxieties and anger of the white working class in America. Every day it seems we get another long dissertation about how these folks have born the brunt of unfair trade agreements and the fallout from globalization even as other demographic groups are thriving in their diverse liberal enclaves inflicting political correctness on every white person they see, lording their new-found superiority over them with unabashed glee. In other words, their troubles all stem from snooty liberals and it’s snooty liberals who are responsible for Donald Trump.

It is certainly true that there has been tremendous economic dislocation over the past 30 years as manufacturing moved overseas and the once thriving white American working class fell behind. The consequences of this shift came into very sharp focus this winter with the publication of a shocking study by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton and Anne Case:

Between 1978 to 1998, the mortality rate for U.S. whites aged 45 to 54 fell by 2 percent per year on average, which matched the average rate of decline in the six countries shown, and the average over all other industrialized countries. After 1998, other rich countries’ mortality rates continued to decline by 2 percent a year. In contrast, U.S. white non-Hispanic mortality rose by half a percent a year. No other rich country saw a similar turnaround…

The reason these people are dying is because of alcohol, drugs and suicide and most of them are people with only a high school degree or less. The Washington Post found that the most pronounced increase in death among this cohort was “among white women ages 25 to 54 in small cities, small towns and the most rural parts of the country.” There is a serious problem of despair and depression among white, middle aged people without a college degree in some parts of this country.  And it’s certainly at least partially attributable to the shifting economic tides of globalization. These are people who were not always so lost. They had jobs and lives and hope. They have none of those things today and it’s a problem that our society must deal with if we have any empathy at all.

Bill Clinton addressed this at a rally in New Jersey yesterday:

We all need to recognize that white, non-college-educated Americans have seen great drops in their income, have seen great increases in their unemployment rate, have seen drops in their life expectancy, and they need to be brought along to the future. But they can’t live under the illusion that you can reclaim a past which is just that — past. This country is always about the future,”

I suspect those people would be grateful for any help they can get to go into the future. But according to Nate Silver at 538 they aren’t Trump voters.  His voters are white but they are not members of the working class, at least not if you define class as relating to how much money someone has.  Silver wrote a piece called “The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support” about a month ago in which he examined all the exit poll data and discovered that Trump voters are actually better off than most Americans. He wrote:

 The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

Now it’s possible that these people define class in cultural rather than economic terms. The Republicans have been  doing this for decades although they liked to define it as “country” vs “urban” but the idea is the same. It wasn’t about how much money you had it was whether you had “downhome” tastes — listened to country music, killed animals, liked to wear cowboy hats — that kind of thing.  This was how blue bloods like the Bushes and Hollywood royalty like the Reagans indicated they were jus’ plain folks who understood the plight of the working man. Sarah Palin came closest to speaking to the actual blue collar working class in 2008 with her references to “Carhartts  and  steel toed boots”. (That campaign also fetishized an odd fellow whose name was Sam but was called “Joe the plumber” even though he wasn’t one.) So it’s possible that many Trump voters identify as working class on an aesthetic basis even though they are comfortably middle class.

Still,  if they are currently making more than the median wage they cannot be said to be among those poor suicidal, addicted lost souls from that study. And neither can they be suffering terribly from the economic dislocation brought about by globalization. Perhaps they or one of their relatives once lost a good job in the mill or the mine or the plant and they’re angry and resentful about it, which is their privilege. But again, if this is a group of which at least half are making more than the median, it’s more likely their anger and resentment is coming from something other than economic stress.

But that doesn’t really answer the question about why they would choose Trump. It’s not as if the other Republican candidates were touting diversity and political correctness.  What is it that most of these people do have in common that would draw them to Donald Trump?  Philip Klinkner, professor of government at Hamilton College set out to find out and the answer isn’t pretty. Via Vox:

You can ask just one simple question to find out whether someone likes Donald Trump more than Hillary Clinton: Is Barack Obama a Muslim? If they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton. 

That’s more accurate than asking people if it’s harder to move up the income ladder than it was for their parents (54 percent), whether they oppose trade deals (66 percent), or if they think the economy is worse now than last year (81 percent). It’s even more accurate than asking them if they are Republican (87 percent). 

Those results come from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) pilot survey. My analysis indicates that economic status and attitudes do little to explain support for Donald Trump.

Recall that Donald Trump was the King of the “Birthers”, the man who mainstreamed that inane conspiracy theory and continued to push it as recently as 2014:

Always remember, I was the one who got Obama to release his birth certificate, or whatever that was! Hilary couldn’t, McCain couldn’t.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2014

“@futureicon: @pinksugar61 Obama also fabricated his own birth certificate after being pressured to produce one by @realDonaldTrump“
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2014

How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2013

People should be proud of the fact that I got Obama to release his birth certificate, which in a recent book he “miraculously” found.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2013

This was his introduction to politics among the group of white voters who now revere him. It wasn’t economics or trade or even American pride that drew them. It was his cynical “othering” of the first black president and all that that culturally represented.

Professor Klinkner did a series of elaborate regressions with a lot of data about these Trump voters. And after all is said and done, the analysis showed that these voters are primarily motivated by racial and ethnic animosity and resentment of social change. There’s just no way around it.

I’ve written a bit about this before, in which I cited Ron Brownstein’s incisive analysis of these folks and what they are seeking from Donald Trump. Essentially they want to recapture an America that no longer exists, one that has white people at the center of the culture, on top of the world, secure in their place as the highest caste. That’s what they hear when he says he will “Make America Great Again”. And that’s just not something that anyone deliver for them, not even Donald Trump.

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The perfect Trump spokesperson
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons.

Reacting to yesterday’s Hillary Clinton speech in which she called Donald Trump’s ideas “dangerously incoherent,” this comment from former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Fox News made me laugh out loud:

Perry, who backed Trump in May, said Clinton is not used to taking criticism and called out the Democratic front-runner for not holding a press conference in months. He said she does not “want to take hard questions from the media” or in a debate setting.

Not used to taking criticism except for that time Clinton got savaged by the health insurance lobby over her health care reform plan, and the eleven hours of questioning in the House Benghazi hearings where she “never lost her cool,” and that third time Perry couldn’t remember.

Perry went on:

“Donald Trump understands what the American people are really tuned into today, and all of these attacks that we saw or we heard her talk about today — I think it’s just off the skin of the duck, off the back of the duck,” Perry said on Fox News.

“This is just water that’s flowing out of her that’s not having any impact.”

Mr. Dangerously Incoherent may have found the perfect spokesperson. Move over, Sarah Palin.

He’s so smart he doesn’t need to know anything

by digby

It’s about time:

The backstory is here. Here’s Trump saying it back in April to Chris Wallace, who was pretty shocked:

TRUMP: It’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them. So, North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea.

WALLACE: With nukes?

TRUMP: Including with nukes, yes, including with nukes.

I heard it in real time and couldn’t believe it. He also said Saudi Arabia should have nukes. He wants to pull out of South Korea and let them have them too if they don’t start paying a very large tribute to Uncle Sam. What could go wrong? I mean, “it’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them.”

No matter how tiresome and boring it is, the media simply has to point this stuff out and they need to do it bluntly. Trump contradicts himself every day. He says whatever he wants and then says he never said it and then says it again. People need to see Trump make these contradictions and they need to see it repeatedly so that hey understand that there is something very wrong with this guy that has nothing to do with his hair or his “political incorrectness.”

Whether you believe that Hillary Clinton lied about whatever it is you think she lied about, Trump’s dishonesty is of a completely different character. It comes from him shooting his mouth off, having no clue what he’s talking about but arrogantly believing that he’s so gifted and special that he doesn’t need to. He is that macho idiot at the end of the bar spouting whatever comes into his head. Except he’s the GOP nominee for president of the United States.

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Picture this

by digby

Clinton’s speech today came as something of a surprise to a lot of people because it was billed as a foreign policy speech but was actually a bill of indictment against Donald Trump’s incoherent worldview. If you didn’t see it, it’s worth watching.

I think this comment from a Republican foreign policy analyst sums it up quite nicely:

Trump tried a preemptive strike on Clinton’s speech this morning, saying that “Crooked Hillary, who I would love to call Lyin’ Hillary, is getting ready to totally misrepresent my foreign policy positions.”

What he meant, of course, was that all Clinton or anyone else has to do at this point is repeat his positions accurately.

Clinton listed most of them, including Trump’s casual approach to nuclear weapons; his utter ignorance about the role of U.S. alliances; his creepy man-crush on Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his insistence that he would respond to ISIS either by handing over Syria, using nuclear bombs, or murdering the families of terrorists in the outright use of war crimes.

Trump’s policies, as Clinton said, are not even policies. They are just a series of “bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.”

None of this will matter to Trump’s supporters, who think that sweaty-faced bellowing into a microphone is the same thing as a policy. But Clinton raised the one image that should give everyone else outside the Trump Cult serious pause: the idea of Trump in the White House Situation Room, “making life or death decisions on behalf of the United States.”

If you can get that image out of your head, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am. I worked in Washington in 1991 during a war. My boss, a senior U.S. senator, met on several occasions, often privately, with the President. Their conversations were the serious discussions of serious people who knew what was at stake.

Donald Trump would have had no business being in those rooms with any of those people.

This man loathes Clinton and especially bemoans her ridiculous insistence on squishy lefty issues like caring about LGBT rights overseas. But at least he knows Trump is a fatuous blowhard who has no business being anywhere near real power and responsibility. I don’t know how many of them are out there — it doesn’t appear that there are very many. But let’s hope there are enough to ensure he never gets anywhere near the White House. I wish I was more sanguine about that.

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Give ’em hell Harry

by digby

He’s going out with a bang:

Harry Reid says the public knows plenty about Donald Trump, and there’s nothing he could do to make the presumptive GOP nominee more unpopular than he already is.

So rather than becoming the Trump attack dog, as he was against Mitt Romney four years ago, Reid sees his charge as something different this time: to make Mitch McConnell and Senate GOP incumbents eat Trump’s endless stream of divisive statements.

It’s the key, the outgoing Democratic leader said in an extensive interview with POLITICO here Wednesday, to returning the Senate to his party’s control — the final, legacy-making fight of his three-decade Senate career.

“It’s easy to do: The Senate leadership is enthralled by Trump. ‘He’s the guy. He’s going to carry on the standards of the Republican Party.’ Wow,” Reid said in the dingy campaign headquarters of House candidate Ruben Kihuen. “My job is to tell the people that Mitch McConnell is one of the reasons we have Trump. … Everything that Trump is, McConnell led the charge.”

McConnell and Trump are “cuddled up together,” Reid added, citing the Republican leader’s comment this week that Trump would be “just fine” as president.

Should be fun.

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Boo hoo hoo

by digby

This interview with a young Trump voter by Conor Friedersdorf  is really something.  This is just an excerpt:

Trump Voter: We are young, urban, and have a happy future planned. We seem molded to be perfect young Hillary supporters. But we’re not. Both of us voted Libertarian in 2012, and ideologically we remain so. But in 2016? We’re both going for Trump.

For me personally, it’s resistance against what San Francisco has been, and what I see the country becoming, in the form of ultra-PC culture. That’s where it’s almost impossible to have polite or constructive political discussion.  Disagreement gets you labeled fascist, racist, bigoted, etc. It can provoke a reaction so intense that you’re suddenly an unperson to an acquaintance or friend. There is no saying “Hey, I disagree with you,” it’s just instant shunning. Say things online, and they’ll try to find out who you are and potentially even get you fired for it. Being anti-PC is not about saying “I want you to agree with me on these issues.” It’s about saying, “Hey, I want to have a discussion and not get shouted down because I don’t agree with what is considered to be politically correct.”

In my first job, I mentioned that I enjoyed Hulk Hogan to a colleague who also liked the WWE. I was not aware at the time, but Hogan had recently made news for his use of some racial or homophobic slur. I was met with a horrified stare. By simply saying I liked his showmanship, I was lumped into saying I too was racist or homophobic.

I feel like I have to hide my beliefs.

I cannot say openly that I identify with Republicans, lest I see friendships and potential professional connections disappear with those words. When I see Hillary Clinton, I see the world becoming less and less tolerant of right-leaning views.When I see Facebook censoring conservative outlets and then see The Atlantic defending the practice, that worries me. When I see the fear that reddit users have about admins banning subreddits because of political beliefs, that worries me.

Normally, I would be very concerned with the throwing of the potentially false accusations of rape. I am in the camp of “comfort the accuser, but don’t get ready to hang the alleged criminal until we’ve had due process.” I am concerned with some of Trump’s reversals, but this is not one of them. Why? If false, Bill Clinton will not suffer any real consequences from this. There will be no risk of jail for Bill, which is what the biggest worry is for false accusations. If Trump knew that these allegations were true, I’m not going to defend his conduct. But I will accept it.

This is a war over how dialogue in America will be shaped. If Hillary wins, we’re going to see a further tightening of PC culture. But if Trump wins? If Trump wins, we will have a president that overwhelmingly rejects PC rhetoric. Even better, we will show that more than half the country rejects this insane PC regime. If Trump wins, I will personally feel a major burden relieved, and I will feel much more comfortable stating my more right-wing views without fearing total ostracism and shame. Because of this, no matter what Trump says or does, I will keep supporting him.

Conor Friedersdorf: If you’re willing to keep the conversation going, here’s the biggest question I have: Why do you think Trump being elected would have a salutary effect on political correctness? It isn’t as if the behavior of illiberal college students or workmates responding to a Hulk Hogan comment depends on who is in the White House. In fact, President Obama has repeatedly criticized political correctness. Through what mechanism would change come if Trump is elected? And for context, what are those “more right-wing views” you feel unable to share openly?

Trump Voter: Having Trump in the White House would both give me more confidence to speak my own opinion and more of a shield from instantly being dismissed as a racist/xenophobe/Nazi (all three things I have been called personally).

Under President Obama, our national dialogue has steadily moved towards political correctness (despite his denunciations), but with President Trump, I think our national dialogue will likely move away from being blanketly PC. Even though, as you pointed out, Obama has criticized PC speech, he doesn’t exactly engage in un-PC speech like Trump does. I don’t expect a President Trump to instantly convert people, but when you have someone in the Oval Office giving decidedly un-PC speeches and announcements, I think that would change the discourse, don’t you?

As for mechanisms, I think Trump would likely do what he can to protect free speech. That could include vetoing bills, instituting laws preventing social media posts from costing people jobs (I never post on Facebook for fear of even a neutral post being interpreted negatively), overruling university speech policies. I’m unsure of whether or not Trump would pursue these policies, but I don’t think he’d oppose them if a Congressional rep or Senator proposed them and got the votes.

For context, my right wing views include:

Lower taxes for all, and with it a reduction of various benefits.
Reduction or an end to affirmative action in favor of a pure merit-based system.
Support for law and order, and an intense dislike of disruptive protests.
A temporary ban on Muslim immigration.
In favor of “melting pot” culture instead of multiculturalism.
Isolationist war policy and anti-NATO, in favor of improving relations with Russia.
For further context, I have left-wing views that precluded Rubio and Cruz from getting my vote:

Pro access to birth control
Pro universal healthcare (despite the taxes this requires, it’s the only realistic way to combat rising prices)
Pro LGBT rights
I favor the absolute separation of church and state. (I’m a Christian who believes very strongly that my religion should not be pushed onto public policy.)

One thing I fear is that if Trump loses, it may be seen as the reverse of what I just said: that America rejected a non-PC candidate (especially if he loses overwhelmingly). Clinton’s victory could be seen as a further vindication for the PC crowd that there is no tolerance for Trump’s type of views, and I fear it will hit other right-wing views.

You want to see what it’s really like to have your views belittled and denigrated? Try being a woman writing on line or in a business meeting full of men for one hour you spoiled, entitled little fuck.  Or being a black person in a room full of white people.  You can’t even imagine.

It’s all about him having to defend the fact that he’s a raving asshole. Yep. I can see why he loves Trump so much. Having to show good manners in public is just too much. 

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Trump’s kitchen cabinet is full of nuts

by digby

You can buy this t-shirt here

So Trump said a lot of really dumb stuff last night in Sacramento.  (I know. Stop the presses, right?) First he said that the crowd was 11,000 and officials said it was more like 2500. But whatever. He has huge hands.

He also issued a threat to the president that if he campaigns for the Democrats he’s going to hit him too, just like “hit Bill Clinton”. He called Obama a lightweight who doesn’t have a clue.  Which is funny coming from him. It’s unclear if he repeated the nonsense he said a couple of days ago about there being no drought but perhaps someone warned him that he was likely to encounter some skepticism from people who are dripping in sweat in an airplane hanger in Sacramento.

It reminded me, however, of this piece by Rick Perlstein about where he got that information:

Donald Trump wrapped things up by telling Alex Jones “Your reputation is amazing.”

Trump keeps on upping the ante. Consider what he said at a rally last week in Fresno, on the subject of California’s apocalyptic drought. 

Make that “drought,” for according to Donald J. Trump, there isn’t one. Never mind that the years between late 2001 and 2014 have been the driest in California history since record-keeping began; nor the 12 million trees that have died from “drought” in Southern California; nor predictions that the 2015 El Nino would bring relief, though the amount of rainfall actually decreased. 

In Fresno, Donald approached the podium. He led off with a customary boast. (“What a crowd . . . I saw on television this morning, five o’clock in the morning, people were lining up. This is crazy, crazy!”) He referred to some real estate transaction he was working “probably 10 or 12 years ago” in their fair city: “They had a problem. You remember the problem, right? They had a problem, I think it was Running Horse, and I was going to take it over and do a beautiful job.” Then, in mid-thought, he pivoted incoherently into the subject on everyone’s minds in that parched agricultural region: “Fortunately, I didn’t do it, because there isn’t any water, because they send all the water out to the ocean, right?” 

“I made a fortune by not doing it,” he said. The crowd cheered. Only in Trumplandia do the citizens cheer when they’re not afforded the benefactions of their orange-haired overlord. (I looked it up. His proposal to take over the foundering Running Horse golf course development apparently fell apart because the city refused his demand to dispossess homeowners over a nine-square-mile area through eminent domain.) 

He commented that it was too bad he didn’t go through with the deal. Because: “I would have changed the water. . . . You have a water problem that is so insane, that is so ridiculous. Where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.” Loud cheers.
He continued. “It’s not the drought. They have plenty of water. No, they shove it out to sea. Now, why? Because they’re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.” 

“If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive.” Then he moved on. 

It made the news: “Donald Trump Tells Californians There Is No Drought.” 

Then, however, reporters moved on to the next story, with no time to Google from whence Trump derived this crackpot notion about water taken from farmers and “shoved out to the sea.” The answer, apparently: InfoWars, the website of lunatic conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Who believes, for instance, that the school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, was staged by the government, using actors, in order to force gun control down the American people’s throats.

Perlstein goes on the discuss the deep ties between Trump and Jones as exposed by Rachel Maddow over the last few months as well as his own reporting.


Alex Jones.

This guy:

“The elite hate Trump, let me tell you. And if he is a psy-op, let me tell you, he’s the most sophisticated one I ever saw. And even if he is, he’s a revelation of the awakening . . . Humanity’s gotta get off-world, we’ve got to get access to the life-extension technologies . . . I want the advanced life extension! I want to go to space! I want to see inter-dimensional travel! I WANT WHAT GOD PROMISED US! AND I’M NOT GOING TO SIT HERE AND LET SATAN STEAL IT!

“@NeilTurner_: @realDonaldTrump Cruz & Rubio are scared! WATCH -> https://t.co/pWjLW1QBKo pic.twitter.com/W2r6mOzgkb“

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2016

His close confidant Roger Stone appears on the show regularly.

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The  religious right isn’t done yet


by digby

I wrote about the latest nefarious plans from the conservative Christians for Salon this morning:

A surprising consequence of the Trump phenomenon has been what seems to be the collapse of a number of major conservative movement institutions which have for decades been assumed to be vitally important power players in presidential elections. Trump has shown that he can dominate the influential right wing media simply by playing them off against the mainstream in ways that nobody has ever before even tried. The vast donor network has been completely flummoxed by a man who has found a way to win elections without spending any money and the big social conservative groups have been left sitting by the sidelines as a crude vulgarian lures their followers out of the pews and into ecstatic mass rallies where they rapturously cheer his incoherent promises to make America great again. This challenge to the conservative movement status quo is every bit as destabilizing as the challenge to the political establishment itself.

I noted a few days ago that the Koch brothers had made a momentous decision to pull back from presidential politics, having been disappointed that their support in the last few years didn’t result in the full enactment of their agenda. But just because they are taking their ball and going home it doesn’t mean they aren’t playing anymore. They’re just lowering their profile and concentrating on down ballot races and the state legislatures where they have had remarkable success in the past. And they aren’t the only ones.

Yesterday, People for the American Way released a report showing that rather than leaving worldly politics behind in reaction to the rise of the boorish and profane Donald Trump, as many people have been predicting, the religious right is gathering their forces for more assaults on the state houses around the country in pursuit of what they have duplicitously labeled “religious liberty” (when it is, in fact, a form of religious oppression.) Whatever disappointments they may be experiencing in national politics, their zeal to force people who have different (or no) religious beliefs to conform to theirs continues apace.

These people do not appear to have gotten the memo that once marriage equality was affirmed by the Supreme Court the issue was settled. In fact, that ruling sparked a coordinated effort among conservative religious organizations to  roll back gay rights wherever they can. The report says that in 2016 over 100 anti- LGBT equality bills have already been introduced in statehouses around the country. And there is every indication that these activities are picking up speed.

You may recall this piece about the “Manhattan Declaration” the 2009 anti-gay, anti-abortion manifesto which made a novel legal argument that not being allowed to inflict your religious beliefs on others is a denial of your religious freedom. They declared:

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded

Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of. Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.s

Oddly, not many leaders of the Christian Right are speaking out against the crude incivility and authoritarianism of Donald Trump, so apparently it’s only gay people wanting to buy some flowers that threatens the republic.   Be that as it may, these folks have developed an elaborate strategy to enshrine in the law and the culture the idea that laws which ban discrimination are an unconstitutional infringement on a religious person’s freedom to discriminate.

This is now a fully formed national crusade. The People for the American Way report, entitled Who Is Weaponizing Religious Liberty?, lays out the alarming details:

Included in the recent anti-equality wave are various types of legislation, including state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs), modeled to different degrees on the federal law of the same name; so-called Government Nondiscrimination Acts (GNDAs), which do away with the federal RFRA’s balancing tests to give special legal protection to discrimination based on anti-equality religious beliefs; and anti-LGBT laws that don’t explicitly fly under the religious liberty banner, like bills barring transgender people from using the public bathrooms appropriate for their gender identity.

Some of those bills have been defeated, thanks to mobilization by equality advocates and their allies in progressive, religious, and business communities. Others have been approved by state legislatures but vetoed by governors, including Republican Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia and Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. Still others have been signed into law, including Mississippi’s “religious liberty” law and North Carolina’s now notorious HB2, a law overturning local nondiscrimination ordinances and banning transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity. Inflammatory rhetoric about transgender people has fed an increasingly ugly climate in which states and localities are literally making it a crime for a transgender person to go to the bathroom.

All of these approaches are being promoted by a network of national Religious Right organizations that oppose legal recognition for the rights of LGBT people. These organizations are part of a larger infrastructure of colleges and law schools, think tanks, media outlets, and advocacy groups that has been built over the last few decades. They work together to promote the false and destructive idea that legal equality for LGBT Americans is incompatible with religious freedom for those who oppose it — just as early civil rights opponents claimed that eliminating enforced racial segregation was an attack on southern white Christians’ religious beliefs.

This network of anti-equality groups is engaged in a high-stakes effort to convince Americans that preserving religious liberty requires giving individuals and corporations the power to disobey laws that promote the common good and protect other constitutional principles like equal treatment under the law.

The report lists all the groups involved in this undertaking which include the Family Research Council and FRC Action, Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action, the National Organization for Marriage, the Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, the American Family Association, the Becket Fund, and the American Principles Project. They have a highly organized, coordinated legal, legislative and public relations strategy to embed this concept into American law and civic life. And they do not care one whit if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is in the White House, their plans will remain the same.

The report concludes with this:

The groups reviewed in this report represent the tip of the iceberg of a much larger movement that is trying to eliminate legal access to abortion and roll back legal protections for LGBT people, couples, and families — and trying to do so in the name of religious liberty. Anti-equality and anti-choice forces have made religious liberty their rallying cry precisely because genuine religious liberty is such a broadly cherished American ideal.

The lesson here is that even as the Trump craziness dominates the conversation and our civic life seems to be morphing into something unrecognizable, more familiar political activity carries on at all levels of society. I recall the feeling of euphoria when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality being tempered by the knowledge that reproductive rights had been under siege for decades despite Roe vs Wade.  We’re already seeing the battle lines expand on LGBT rights from marriage to bathrooms.

A lot of people’s paychecks depend upon insuring these crusades continue in spite of public opinion or legal acceptance. The Religious Right is an industry as much as a cause and they have plenty of money and staying power. They’re not going anywhere.

Is it pitchforks yet?
by Tom Sullivan

The economics of despair: The economy writ large may be improving, but the rewards are not getting to many people. Via the Boston Globe, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday:

WASHINGTON — The death rate in the United States rose last year for the first time in a decade, preliminary federal data show, a rare increase that was driven in part by more people dying from drug overdoses, suicide and Alzheimer’s disease. The death rate from heart disease, long in decline, edged up slightly.

Death rates — measured as the number of deaths per 100,000 people — have been declining for years, an effect of improvements in health, disease management and medical technology.

Mortality rates are declining in many European countries, and it is rare to see a decline across the whole population rather than specific groups, the Globe continues:

[T]he finding seemed to fit the broader pattern of rising mortality among working-class whites, a trend that has drawn significant attention recently. Last year, a paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented rising death rates among middle-age white Americans, particularly those with no more than a high school education. Other research has found rising rates among younger whites.

“This is probably heavily influenced by whites,” said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. “It does sort of fit together.”

This result coincides with earlier reports of a spike in suicides among white, middle-aged Americans, “double the combined suicides total for all blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska Natives,” according to the BBC:

“This is part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health,” Robert D Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, told the New York Times.

Examining the relationship between poverty and life expectancy for the BBC, Laudy Aron, a senior fellow researching health and mortality at the Urban Institute explained:

“Raj Chetty and colleagues came out with a very big study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April looking at the association between income and life expectancy in the US between 2001 and 2014.

“They showed rich women outlive poor women by ten years. They also showed that these gaps between the rich and poor in terms of survival have been growing over time. So over the period that they looked at, the richest Americans gained about three years of life expectancy, while the poorest had no increase.

“The importance of place in terms of life expectancy and survival is one of the most interesting features of this study. It really shows that even at the same level of low income, you’re better off in a more affluent, better-resourced community.

“That really points to the value of the other kinds of resources and opportunities that are available to you in these communities, in terms of the quality of the schools, the financial base, the tax base on which so many of our shared resources depend.

Syracuse University’s Jennifer Karas Montez told the BBC, “between 1990 and 2010, life expectancy of low-educated white women declined by 1.2 years. That 1.2 years is about 13 years of progress washed away, so what seems to be minor changes in life expectancy signal really big problems going on underneath the surface.”

Vanderbilt economist Melinda Buntin tells Marketplace:

“It’s what Case and Deaton are calling the economics of despair, the health effects of despair, which is caused by economic dislocation and other forces that are really coming to bear on less-advantaged parts of society.”

Two years ago, venture capitalist Nick Hanauer warned “My Fellow Zillionaires”:

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

Well, campers, there is at least one candidate for president this fall running on the police state ticket, and another whose supporters are poised to bring pitchforks to a national convention. Is anybody finally listening? Well, maybe one guy. At Crooks and Liars, Karoli Kuns writes:

In a barn-burner of a speech, President Obama previewed his campaign for the eventual Democratic nominee today in Elkhart, Indiana.

The theme of the speech was the economy, and how it’s not as terrible as the naysayers (cough- HairDrumpf – cough) say it is. And in usual Obama rhetorical style, he mixed mythbusting with sharp criticism of Republicans, Fox News, hate radio, and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

But for progressives, the newsmaking item came late in the speech, when he discussed five policy ideas for helping the economy even more and making Americans more secure.

Channeling Bernie Sanders, Obama said, “We can’t afford to weaken Social Security, we should be strengthening Social Security. And not only do we need to strengthen its long term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous and increased its benefits so today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they have earned.“

How far we’ve come from the days of the Grand Bargain, where chained CPI was on the table.

But then Obama segued into promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Don’t unload your pitchfork futures quite yet.