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Month: September 2016

QOTD: A couple of seasoned campaigned operatives

QOTD: A couple of seasoned campaigned operatives

by digby

On Anderson Cooper last night:

Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer: In every campaign I’ve worked on, I’m trying to think back if I can even imagine a world in which we worked for President Obama or other candidates that you would go out and tell the press that you had pneumonia. I don’t think you would ever do that.

It is fair, and they’ve acknowledged that they should have gotten the information out more quickly on Sunday. But if she was not going to change her schedule I don’t see any reason why it would have made sense to disclose that in advance.

Obviously hindsight’s 20/20, given what happened on Sunday, but it’s pretty standard. Candidates are sick all the time and if they disclose at every moment for something that is a very treatable common illness like pneumonia, I don’t think that’s that big a deal.

Anderson Cooper: Stuart Stevens do you agree with that? Especially since it’s playing into criticisms by Donald Trump that she doesn’t have stamina?

Former Romney adviser Stuart Stevens: You I think presidential candidates are like pro-athletes. They don’t ever like to talk about anything that reveals a weakness. I think it’s perfectly natural. If Hillary Clinton thought that she was going to get over pneumonia then it wouldn’t be a big deal.

I suppose they could have told the press, I’d leave that up to the press handlers to decide that. But in the larger context I really don’t understand this as a campaign issue that if you thought that Hillary Clinton had an ailment like this, why would you then want to vote for Donald Trump?

Gloria Borger then chimed in that it was about Clinton’s lack of transparency and unwillingness give access to the press. This isn’t a story about Clinton’s health it’s yet another story about the press.

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The deplorable Mike Pence

The deplorable Mike Pence

by digby

I wrote about him for Salon this morning:

It’s hard to remember now but there was once a time in the not too distant past when presidential and vice presidential candidates of both parties did not hesitate to denounce a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Generally, when asked about the Klan even conservative dogwhistlers were careful to distance themselves from the violent racists.

A century ago politicians openly backed the Klan of course. In the early 1920s candidates of both parties were endorsed by the KKK in a number of states around the country. In 1924, the Democratic convention was held in New York City and popularly called the “Klanbake” This was because the frontrunner, William McAdoo the Klan’s chosen candidate, was challenged by New York Governor Al Smith a Catholic running on an anti-Klan platform. (In those days, the Klan hated Catholics just as much as they hated blacks and Jews.)

It took 103 ballots to beat McAdoo and the floor fight was legendary. One of the more memorable moments of the convention was when 20,000 Klansmen gathered in New Jersey to burn crosses and hang effigies of Smith. (It may even be the case that Donald Trump’s father Fred was among them. He was a Klansman living in New York at the time and was arrested at a violent Klan rally in 1927 so it’s certainly possible.)

Senator Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats in the late 1940s were certainly sympatico with the Klan and while Alabama Governor George Wallace distanced himself he benefited from their support in his run for president in 1968. They had always been brutal and violent but that period ended whatever was left of public tolerance for the group. Today the most mainstream politician to be associated with the Klan is Trump adviser Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions whose bid for a federal judgeship was rejected by the Senate for saying he thought “the Klan was O.K. until I learned they smoked pot.” Obviously the good people of Alabama didn’t see that as a deal breaker.

So we have not seen a candidate inspire the Klan the way Trump inspires them in many a year. Indeed, he’s inspiring white supremacist groups of all kinds and is actually creating new ones. There is ample documentation to support this starting with the fact that white supremacist groups ran robo-calls for Trump throughout the GOP primaries and the Trump campaign certified a number of white supremacists as official delegates to the Republican convention. Former Imperial Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, endorsed him enthusiastically and is so inspired he’s running for office again himself.  And as everyone knows Trump named Steve Bannon, a card carrying member of the white nationalist alt-right as his campaign CEO.

These are the people Hillary Clinton said were in a “basket of deplorables.” And yes, she said that half of Trump’s voters fit the description although she later clarified that “half” was an exaggeration. But if what we’re talking about are people with deplorable racist views it really wasn’t.

This piece by Jamelle Bouie in Slate spells out the deplorable reality:

Half” wasn’t a gross generalization at all. “Half” was by all indications close to the truth… 

Perhaps the best data on questions of race and Trump comes from political scientist Jason McDaniel of San Francisco State University and Sean McElwee, a research associate at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. Using the 2016 pilot of the American National Election Study, conducted in January, they drill down on racial attitudes among Trump supporters. Given what we already know, their results shouldn’t come as a shock. More than 40 percent of all Republicans and more than 60 percent of Trump supporters say that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Compared with those who backed other candidates in the GOP primary, Trump supporters have cooler feelings toward blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and LGBTQ Americans, and warmer feelings toward whites. By sizable margins, according to McElwee’s analysis of ANES, Trump supporters are more likely than non-Trump supporters to believe that blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims are lazier and more violent than whites. More than 60 percent of Trump supporters believe black people are more violent than whites; nearly 50 percent of non-Trump Republicans say this. More than 70 percent of Trump supporters believe Muslim people are more violent than whites; roughly 60 percent of non-Trump Republicans say this. These are deplorable views, and they represent the consensus opinion not just of Trump supporters but of all Republicans in the survey. If the study is at all reflective of the population at large on this score, we’re going to need a bigger basket.

No, the Trump voters who hold those views are not all members of the KKK. But like those Dixiecrats of yore they seem to be pretty comfortable in their company. Add in the cretinous yahoos who scream”Lock her up!” and  “Trump that bitch” and wear t-shirts that say “Hillary sucks but not like Monica” and deplorable starts to sound like too mild a term.

That’s why it was so disconcerting to see Mike Pence, the allegedly normal Republican on the GOP ticket refuse to say if he thinks David Duke is deplorable. I think everyone assumed Pence, being a doctrinaire  was in the other basket, the one that wasn’t deplorable.  Sure, he’s a hard core conservative with antediluvian views about abortion and LGBT rights but he is also someone who stood up to Donald Trump before he joined the ticket saying “I think comments that suggest that Muslims should be banned from the United States are offensive and unconstitutional.”

But when Wolf Blitzer asked him, while he said that he didn’t want Duke’s vote, he did refuse to say Duke is deplorable, instead fatuously insisting, “I’m not in the name-calling business.”  But he most certainly is. He may not personally be a name-caller but his business is the ticket with a man who calls Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and just yesterday, after demanding Clinton apologize for the deplorables comment, went out and called Senator Warren “Pocahontas” again.

David Duke appreciated Pence’s refusal to call him deplorable and helpfully explained that, “the truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature.”

Then he tweeted this:

He was right about one thing. The Republican party is a big tent. And it’s half full of deplorables. The other half ought to do something about that.

Deplorables unmasked by @BloggersRUs

Deplorables unmasked
by Tom Sullivan


Trump supporter in Asheville, NC. Photo by Paul Choi.

Joan Walsh sums up media coverage of Clinton’s awkward “basket of deplorables” comment: “One of the nation’s two major political parties is morphing into a white-nationalist party, but Clinton is the boor for talking about it.” She writes at The Nation:

Journalists like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jamelle Bouie, and Judd Legum have shown that Clinton was right. Two-thirds of Trump supporters believe President Obama isn’t an American (Trump’s first political crusade, you’ll recall.) Sixty percent have “unfavorable views” of Islam, while more than 40 percent believe blacks are “more violent” and “more criminal” than whites. My personal favorite data point: Twenty percent of Trump backers think Lincoln was wrong to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank thinks, if anything, Clinton may have low-balled the number of Trump’s racist supporters:

Research by Washington Post pollsters and by University of California at Irvine political scientist Michael Tesler, among others, have found that Trump does best among Americans who express racial animus. Evidence indicates fear that white people are losing ground was the single greatest predictor of support for Trump — more, even, than economic anxiety.

Few people embrace the “racist” label, so let’s help them. If you are “very enthusiastic” about a candidate who has based his campaign on scapegoating immigrants, Latinos and African Americans, talked of banning Muslims from the country, hesitated to disown the Ku Klux Klan and employed anti-Semitic imagery — well, you might be a racist. But if you are holding your nose and supporting Trump only because you think him better than Clinton, that doesn’t put you in the basket.

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the two groups roughly equal: Forty-six percent of Trump supporters say they are “very enthusiastic” about his candidacy. The rest were “somewhat” or not terribly enthusiastic.

Trump supporters “in the basket” may not wear white hoods to his rallies. But what’s upsetting to them about Clinton’s comments is being publicly unmasked. They prefer to “pass” as decent people in public and to see themselves that way. Even those few who keep pointed, white hoodies in their closets wear them to other rallies because they don’t like being publicly identified as members of a racist gang with violent tendencies. It’s who they are, but they’re not beyond being somewhat ashamed of it in mixed company. They simply prefer unmixed company.

Speaking of violent tendencies, those came out at a Trump rally yesterday in Asheville, North Carolina (where apparently the taco trucks couldn’t get near the venue for the media trucks). Some guy inside the rally, standing with his right fist clenched and ready, punched one protester and took swipes at several others (video). Outside (per Facebook comments and cell phone photos), a Trump supporter who looked to be in his seventies punched an old lady wearing an oxygen bottle, knocking her to the ground.

A friend who was outside the arena posted to Facebook:

The entire rally was a downright terrifying window into the vision of America Trump supporters have. Many responded “fuck yes” when asked “do you support racism”, which really threw me off. It isn’t just liberal media making it seem like these rallies are angry and hate fueled… It’s true.

The Deplorables just dislike being publicly reminded of it, the way NC Republican legislators dislike being reminded that their HB2 bigotry towards transgender residents caused the NCAA to pull seven championships out of the state for this academic year. How dare those unmannerly carpetbaggers wave the bloody shirt!

The News & Observer’s Andrew Carter received this response to the NCAA via the NCGOP’s official email account:

QOTD: A reporter

QOTD: A reporter

by digby

GQ surveyed some undecided voters for what they’re thinking today. Here’s one of them:

Politics reporter, 42, Washington, D.C.

I’ve struggled with this the entire election season. Some days I’m really tortured by it, and some days it’s, like, laughable. But I’ve never really felt this way as an adult human. And it’s really—it’s messing with me.

I cannot stomach Hillary Clinton. I just can’t get with her. Maybe because I know too much. I find so much of her world hypocritical, reprehensible. I think the rest of the country sort of gives her a pass, like, “Oh, she’s always been attacked by Republicans, it’s not that big a deal, email shmemail!” But I’m like, “WHAT! This is a huge deal.”
And then I also obviously struggle with Donald Trump. The things I like about him are: I believe that sometimes you just have to blow shit up to build it again, and I think that a Trump presidency would do that. But just when I sort of get there with him, like, Ohhhhhhkayyyy, he says or does something and I’m like, “No, I can’t!” Like saying, “What do you have to lose?” to African-Americans. Like, WHAT? What?
I think I would just have to sort of give in to my chaos theory of Trump and just hope that he surrounds himself with the right people enough that it’s not a total disaster? Or Hillary would have to do a really convincing and honest come-to-Jesus with the media. A real press conference.

I cover this stuff every day. So for me, four years of Trump, selfishly, sounds a lot more enticing, just because it’s going to be a dumpster fire. And a Clinton administration would be more of what we’re seeing now, which is carefully orchestrated speeches, behind-the-scenes Wealthy McWealthysons going in and out of the White House, and really horrible transparency with the press.

Gun to my head, I would probably vote Trump because of my feelings about Hillary, and my—I just want to see what happens. But if I were to talk to you tomorrow, I’d be like, “Ugh! I’ve gotta vote for Hillary!”

I can think of at least half dozen people I know who might have said that. Let’s just say it’s not an unfamiliar rap. They aren’t conservatives.

The good news is that if Clinton just does a “real, honest to goodness press conference” (which I’m pretty sure includes a blowjob), he might deign to throw his vote her way. Because it’s really about how “hypocritical” he finds “her world.” And his feelings which are very, very intense. Because he cares so much. And worst case it’s going to be a fun game for him to cover Trump so it’s all good!

Well, until Trump decides to shut down the press. I’ll bet he’s be incensed then! Because that’s important! But until then, whatever. He’s can pat himself on the back every morning smugly telling his reflection that he’s a progressive reporter with integrity. And that’s just so awesome.

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A Tale of two Hillarys? by Dennis Hartley

A Tale of two Hillarys?

by Dennis Hartley

I knew it! I knew it was a plot:

Yes, of course. They only want us to think that Hillary “recovered” after obviously dropping dead yesterday. Besides, the evidence that Hillary has a kagemusha is overwhelming. In fact, I saw it on TV once:

And there have been other precedents:

It all seems reasonable to me. WAKE UP, sheeple!

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Deplorable

Deplorable

by digby

Yes, they actually are:

For 15 years, my ethnic last name has appeared above all of my stories. Which means, for 15 years, some readers have judged me only by that ethnic last name.

I have heard their voice mails and read their emails. Smirked at their keyboard courage in the comments section. Told myself not to take the Twitter mentions too personally.

Call it bigotry. Call it racism. Call it xenophobia. As a writer – especially one who covers national politics – you chalk it up as coming with the territory, as hurtful and as menacing as it can be. This year, though, it is coming far more frequently. There is no mystery why.

Maybe you don’t believe Donald Trump is a bigot. Or a racist. Or a xenophobe. But the Republican nominee for president certainly has won the support of people who are.

Forget for a moment Hillary Clinton’s remark the other day that “half” of Trump’s supporters belong to a “basket of deplorables.” The Democrat later expressed regret for the broad generalization but stuck to her assertion that Trump offers a safe haven for the hateful.

There is no perfect way to quantify how many Trump fans fit the description.

The point is, these voters are out there. I know because I hear from them.
[…]
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, recently, readers have told me I should be “on the other side of the wall” and that my background should “disqualify” me from covering this election. Some observers have suggested the Trump candidacy is like an online comments section come to life. But this was different. These came via email. From people using their real names.

I realize I am far from the only person whose ethnicity or race has become a focal point for a few critics. I don’t want to trivialize the reprehensible prejudice many other minorities endure.

It strikes me, though, that Trump, whether he means to or not, has fostered a hostile moment in our politics when his supporters feel entitled to racially denigrate others.

Sadly, simply being a Gomez is enough to make you a target.

For three generations we have been proud Mexican-American U.S. citizens. […] 

Lately I have struggled with how to cover Trump. Not because I’m a Gomez, but because I’m a journalist who knows the difference between right and wrong. Judging by my emails – even those from the readers who don’t resort to bigotry to defend their candidate – many of you disagree. But when a candidate says things that are, at best, offensive to minorities and, at worst, racist, we have a duty to report precisely that. There are not two sides to racism.


Reporters have the tendency to credit Trump for “pivoting” when he uses milder language about immigration or when he visits a black neighborhood. It can be tough to pin down what, exactly, he believes. Just last week he refused to disavow his discredited suggestions that President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, is not a natural-born U.S. citizen.

I have wondered how I can objectively point out that Trump encourages hate. I find myself searching for the best response when a friend at a party or a person in politics excuses Trump by arguing that he is “saying important things” or “tapping into something that is real.”

Perhaps I could show them messages like these …


I have shared the Twitter handle since he chose to hurl these derogatory insults in a public fashion. Hard to say what offended this particular reader. The reply came to my tweet linking to a colleague’s cleveland.com piece on where Trump might do well in the Ohio primary.

June 30, 2016: “just another liberal a_ _!!!!! u people should all be on the other side of the wall” 

This one came from a reader who appeared to send it from an email account bearing his name. It followed my story on Michael Symon telling a local sports talk radio station that Trump would not be welcome in his Cleveland restaurants during the Republican National Convention.

July 13, 2016: “You have been always been [sic] a biased reporter IMO [in my opinion], but now you are an obvious and clear bigot that is inflaming the political situation. Your obvious latino background (dark, short, fat) should preclude/disqualify you from the political scene in this presidential election. … FYI, I have studied some journalism, did a lot of professional writing in industry. Also have graduate degree from a top university.” 

This came via email from a Bay Village reader who signed his name. He was upset about my pre-convention analysis that highlighted Trump’s inflammatory and racially charged rhetoric and how that ran counter to the rebranding the Republican Party went through after 2012.

July 23, 2016: “Also, just so you know, I have two daughters-in-law and they are both Hispanic. My grandchildren are half Hispanic. So I am not picking on you. I am not the biased one.” 

Another email, this one from a Hinckley reader who signed her name. She was unhappy about my post-convention analysis that focused on white supremacist David Duke’s Senate candidacy and how it was inspired, in part, by the message that helped Trump win the GOP nomination.

This is just a sampling of what comes my way after writing about Trump. There are plenty more that have been purged from my inbox over time. And this doesn’t account for the many anonymous comments that sprout like weeds in cleveland.com’s comments section.

One online reader recently accused me of allowing my “enthicity” to cloud my judgment. Another asked if I was here legally. A third asked, tauntingly: “What makes you the expert, Enrique?”

I confess I feel a little uncomfortable sharing all of this. My cultural identity is a source of pride, just like I’m sure yours is. But it shouldn’t be the only thing that defines us.

In this unusual election year, it’s worth pointing out that some people think it should. And those people are responding to the message that is being pushed by Donald Trump.

Of course it is.  But at the moment he’s successfully pressuring the press to say this obvious truth is not true — or at least that it’s wrong to say it. It’s disorienting.

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The country we deserve

The country we deserve

by digby

If this is true, we are just screwed:

Clinton’s campaign points to several pieces of evidence. She has put forth a 9,000-word plan for defeating ISIS, for example, while Trump says only that he has a plan but it must keep secret. Brooklyn argues that the media has spent more than a year producing critical coverage of Clinton’s use of a private email server and Clinton Foundation donations despite several official investigations turning up no hard evidence of corruption; meanwhile, news organizations are under-covering Trump’s $25,000 donation to Florida’s attorney general and the AG’s subsequent closing of an investigation into fraud claims against Trump University, for which he was fined by the IRS. Over the weekend, Clinton found herself under fire for describing half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” even as charges of racism and misogyny among some Trump supporters have been substantiated by video and print coverage of his rallies. And on Sunday, Clinton appearing weak in the heat while leaving the 9/11 Memorial drew alarmed responses about her health, building on one of Trump’s favorite attacks on her fitness for office, while his own health and comparable age have received far less scrutiny even though he has produced only a single doctor’s letter attesting to his vigor that was dashed off by a gastroenterologist in five minutes, (not to mention his diet of meatloaf and McDonald’s).

Such a double-standard wouldn’t exist with any candidate but Trump, whose persistent mendacity and eagerness to bulldoze political norms makes him both challenging for media to hold to account and endearing to supporters who are excited to see someone taking an axe to a system they no longer trust.

“When he’s confronted with an inconsistency or contradiction in his own past, he glosses over it, denies it or jumps past it,” said Frank Sesno, the former CNN Washington bureau chief and now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. “We’ve not seen a candidate that’s not held accountable by the public for the kinds of things he has done.”

Lauer’s gentle questioning of Trump—after grilling Clinton over her use of a private email server and her 2003 vote on the Iraq war—is but one example of television journalists treating the GOP nominee with kid gloves. Indeed, the media industry as a whole has become addicted to the television ratings and higher click-rates generated by Trump. And among media executives, the treatment of Trump by some networks and reporters is directly related to the leverage he holds, and he knows it.

“[Trump] is personally more involved in the process than most candidates are or at least admit to be,” said one network news executive, granted anonymity to speak privately. “His team is very keen on making sure he’s comfortable with who the interviewer is and the placement of the news cycle. He understands news very well. He’s more involved directly in booking than a typical candidate has been. They say yes a lot more, that’s not a surprise, a lot more than Hillary.”

While that executive said Trump asks for specific anchors or moderators less than others, the GOP nominee is clear about which ones he prefers. It’s hard to envision Trump agreeing to last week’s NBC forum were Rachel Maddow or Chuck Todd asking the questions. And there is wide speculation among media executives that NBC’s Lester Holt, who Trump is comfortable with, was chosen to moderate the first debate with Clinton later this month in order to appease the GOP nominee. Similarly, some also believe that Fox News’ Chris Wallace was tapped to moderate the third and final debate to lessen the likelihood that Trump skips it.

In February, CBS News president Les Moonves’ admission that Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS” laid bare the motivation behind many networks non-stop Trump coverage and the imperative of keeping him reasonably happy.

But as much as the networks and even print news organizations face criticism for giving Trump a pass, the GOP nominee has arguably been subjected to more constant and devastating journalistic scrutiny than any presidential candidate in recent memory—his many bankruptcies, misogynistic treatment of women and false claims of charitable giving have all been the subject of deeply reported and normally devastating print coverage. Trump has seemingly withstood the onslaught because so many voters appear wiling to forgive his insulting rhetoric and policy ignorance. That’s certainly been borne out by public and private focus groups.

“We’d show voters stupid things he’s said, and they’d just shrug and say, ‘That’s just Trump being Trump,’” said one Democratic operative who has observed Clinton campaign focus groups. “It was a fairly common response, and it was horrifying.”

“People are willing to give him a pass because he doesn’t have a career in service. I think it’s the wrong approach because you should be assessing the candidate’s readiness to do the job,” said Lanhee Chen, an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign who recalls how Romney was excoriated for “gaffes” during his Europe trip that, by comparison to Trump’s behavior on an almost daily basis, would now be considered as minor mistakes. “People have such low expectations because his campaign has been so dysfunctional that when they run like a normal campaign should run, people tend to give them a lot of credit. There’s a relativism there.”

The race is close. I think the media is going to have to do some soul searching about how they’re covering this. Yes, I’m sure the voters are giving him a pass for things they don’t give anyone else a pass on. But the media has normalized him in a hundred different ways and just shrugging it off as something “the voters” don’t care about is insufficient. They worked very hard to balance the coverage with excessive attention to Clinton’s mush less threatening flaws and that has had a pernicious effect on the coverage.

It’s obvious they are in denial about this. Indeed, they are now in full-fledged “blame the victim” mode — Hillary Clinton and the voters. This is all Clinton’s fault for failing to give them the “access” they want and the country’s for not being able to put together the pieces of the puzzle about Donald Trump. Punishing Clinton is one thing — she’s just a politician. But punishing the country by enabling this authoritarian freak show to become president just isn’t right. Their kids have to live here to and I cannot imagine that all of their rationalizing on November 8th about what a flawed candidate Clinton was will make up for what comes after. This isn’t politics as usual.

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The health issue

The health issue

by digby

I wrote about Clinton’s “health” issue for Salon this morning:

After 24 hours of fulminating over Friday night’s commentary from Hillary Clinton about “baskets of deplorables” and Donald Trump’s stated willingness to start a war if someone flips an American the bird, everyone seemed more than ready for a day of national unity to commemorate 9/11. Then Clinton had a fainting spell and all hell broke loose.

The press went into full blown breaking news mode and when tape emerged of Clinton wobbling and appearing to faint as she got into her car the cable networks and journalists on social media went with wall to wall with breathless medical speculation. They showed the video in slow motion over and over again like it was an outtake from the Zapruder film scene in Oliver Stone’s JFK  (“back and to the left, back and to the left.”) She emerged from her daughters home smiling and waving a few hours later (prompting hilarious right wing conspiracy theories that it must have been a body double.) But when her doctor released a statement saying she had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday the press became hysterical.

At that moment they could have chosen to analyse Clinton’s pressing on with the campaign in spite of having pneumonia as an indication of her grit and dedication to the campaign. And in fairness some did. For instance, contrary to widely assumed rumor that she’d been taking it easy all month, Jeff Zeleny of CNN said that he’d covered five presidential campaign and had never seen a more brutal schedule than Clinton’s. Or the media could have taken Clinton’s doctor at her word that she is being treated and will recover nicely. Instead they settled on their tedious narrative of righteous indignation about Clinton’s supposed pathological secretiveness in failing to inform them of her diagnosis the minute she got it. It’s all about them.

They also know very well that this febrile coverage plays into an ongoing theme of the presidential campaign:  Donald Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have “the strength or the stamina” to be president. On one level, it’s a simple sexist charge against a woman candidate from a man who believes that all of life is a game of primitive dominance. But it’s more than that.  Trump made the same charge against Jeb Bush during the primaries, in that case the taunt of a schoolyard bully.

And there has been yet another layer to his “strength and stamina” charge in recent weeks, leveled first by surrogates like Alex Jones, Breitbart and Drudge and taken up recently by the campaign itself, which implied that Clinton was suffering from brain damage and possibly Parkinsons disease. I wrote about this elaborate conspiracy theory a couple of weeks ago here on Salon.

Despite it being a right wing smear, “the health issue” worked its way into the mainstream press leading to coverage of a couple of coughing fits as if they were obvious signs that she’s on death’s door and today’s events as if they show something is seriously wrong. (How pneumonia relates to the brain damage has yet to be explained.) But the truth is that coughs and throat problems are probably the most common problem a politician has. And when one personally hugs, shakes hands and gets breathed on by thousands of people in a week, getting pneumonia isn’t really all that surprising either. It’s obvious that if the Drudge smear wasn’t in full bloom, this story would have been covered differently. Instead, unable to resist the lure of the sexy tabloid lede, Politico just let it all hang out: Clinton scare shakes up the race Physical weakness caught on camera turns health conspiracy into a legitimate campaign concern.

The fact is that politicians get sick. Indeed,  presidents get sick. George W. Bush fainted in the white house just sitting on a couch eating pretzels. His father famously caught the flu while he was travelling, grew faint and vomited on the Prime Minister of Japan‘s lap. Ronald Reagan was shot and had cancerous polyps removed from his colon while in office. Lyndon Johnson had gall bladder surgery and proudly showed his scar to the press corps. President Eisenhower had a heart attack and emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction. There’s no need to reiterate all of Franklin Roosevelt’s health problems, but it’s pretty clear that the right wing and the press today would find him unfit for office.

And the list of macho men who’ve fainted in public is a lot longer than you might think. This is just a sample:

General Petraeus faints at congressional hearing.
Major General James Martin fainting at a press conference back in February
Attorney General Michael Mukasy  fainting in the middle of a speech in 2008.
 GE CEO Jim Campbell at a Joe Biden speech in 2010.
Silvio Berlosconi, Italy’s prime minister at the time, collapsing in 2006.
Bill Daley passing out at his Commerce Secretary appointment ceremony in 1996
A 23 year old soccer player collapsing during a live interview
A soldier fainting waiting for dignitaries to arrive

To put it simply, if you discard the inane right wing conspiracy theories about Clinton’s alleged brain damage and Parkinsons disease, you’ll realize that mundane ailments like coughing, fainting, pneumonia, flu etc are common among politicians and other leaders because they’re common among humans. 

Despite some truly ridiculous speculation from members of the press this is unlikely to be more than a slight blip on the campaign. It’s pneumonia not a brain tumor and she will recover. But it’s almost sure that the drumbeat for her to release her full medical records for the press to paw through for juicy tidbits is going to get louder and she’ll undoubtedly end up complying. Medical privacy is not allowed for presidential candidates.

Well, unless they are named Donald Trump. While everyone is breathlessly speculating about what Clinton is hiding in her records you’d think the press would be equally curious as to why a 70 year old billionaire’s doctor is a cartoon character who wrote the most ridiculous letter attesting to a presidential candidates fitness in American history. Does he not have a real doctor? Will the hysteria this week-end force the media to ask that question at long last? It’s actually much more suspicious than Clinton’s  mundane fainting spell and bout with pneumonia.

Trade update — TTIP dying; TTP possible, perhaps likely, in Lame Duck Session, by @Gaius_Publius

Trade update — TTIP dying; TTP possible, perhaps likely, in Lame Duck Session

by Gaius Publius

While the big U.S–European Union trade deal (TTIP) is starting to die, the U.S.–Asian trade deal (TTP) still looks likely to get a vote in the lame duck Congress at the end of this year. TTIP first, then TPP.

France calls for end of TTIP talks

France has joined a growing list of EU nations increasingly dissatisfied by the heavy balance of TTIP benefits to the U.S. One French trade minister said the treaty contains “nothing but crumbs” for France and cites growing popular dissatisfaction with the proposed deal.

So France wants out. John Queally, writing at Common Dreams:

‘Another Day, Another Death Knell’ for TTIP as France Calls for End of Talks

Describing ongoing negotiations as producing “nothing or just crumbs,” French Junior Trade Minister Matthias Fekl says there is “no more political support in France” for the corporate-friendly deal

Though the office of the U.S Trade Representative on Monday said efforts to seal a trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union were still “making steady progress,” the attempt to put an optimistic spin on the struggling negotiations was undermined once again on Tuesday as France’s financial minister called for the outright suspension of talks.

Describing the ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as producing “nothing or just crumbs,” French Junior Trade Minister Matthias Fekl said on Tuesday there is “no more political support in France” for the deal at this point.

“France calls for an end to these negotiations,” Fekl said during an interview on RMC radio in France. He indicated there is no longer any hope that the countries involved could secure an agreement by year’s end. “France would rather see things as they are and not harbor the illusion that an agreement will be struck before the end of the U.S. president’s term in office.”

While backers of the corporate-friendly deal, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have vowed to push ahead, its critics see the wave of public declarations by top ministers as proof their campaigning against the deal is paying off.

It seems the Europeans too are wary of the loss of state sovereignty under ISDS provisions of the treaty, as well as the way it tilts the playing field on other corporate matters.

Just a few days earlier, Germany expressed similar sentiments, saying that the treaty had “de facto failed.”

“Negotiations with the U.S. have de facto failed, because of course as Europeans we couldn’t allow ourselves to submit to American demands,” Sigmar Gabriel told the German news station ZDF in an interview that will air at 7pm German time Sunday, according to Der Spiegel.

“Everything has stalled,” Gabriel said.

What does “de facto failed” mean in practice? According to The Independent, after 14 rounds of negotiation, three of those rounds in the previous six months, none of the 27 chapters being deliberated had been agreed to.

Your bottom line — If TTIP is to pass, the next U.S. president will have to take over the negotiations. Barring a drastic change, tt looks like the current one, President Obama, has failed.

TTP still viable in this year’s Lame Duck Session

The same is not true for TPP, the Pacific agreement, which is much further along. You’re probably hearing about how Paul Ryan in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate are saying TPP will not get a lame duck vote. According to Public Citizen’s trade expert, Lori Wallach, this is just a negotiating posture by the Republicans and their corporate backers to get Obama to sweeten the pro-corporate deal even further.

In other words, don’t count TPP dead until the lame duck fails to bring it up or to pass it. (And even then don’t count it dead, as I see it.)

The entire U.S. corporate universe, which finances both parties, wants
this deal to pass, as do most of the leaders of those parties. The fight’s not over.

Other things to keep in mind when contemplating the fate of TPP:

  • Fast Track is a one-use tool per trade agreement. If Obama tries to force a vote this year, and that vote fails, Fast Track rules no long apply to TPP. So the stakes are high.
  • Corporate donors to both parties, including the Republican Party, are desperate for TPP to pass. In Wallach’s estimation (and mine), Ryan and McConnell are stalling to get Obama to make the deal even more corporate-friendly — by extending patent and IP protections, for example, which drug companies consider to be inadequate in the current agreement (meaning, those new provisions are very lucrative, but still not lucrative enough).
  • Obama can’t force a vote; he can only “start the Fast Track clock.” The clock allows a window of 90 session-days within which a vote must be taken. But since there aren’t 90 session-days left in this Congress, the Republicans, if they wish, really can block the treaty by not bringing it up for a vote and letting time run out in this Congress. (Think of it like the shot clock and the game clock in basketball. The shot clock may show 20 seconds before they team with the ball has to shoot, but if there are only 10 seconds left in the game, the shot clock is moot.)
  • Obama might call the Republicans’ bluff and try to force a vote anyway by starting the clock without making changes. Remember, Fast Track can only be used once per treaty. If he does this, it then becomes a question of how much of the big-money pie do über-wealthy Republican donors want to settle for — all but the last small piece, or do they want that piece as well?
  • Finally, the votes may not be there this time, as Wallach explains. Still, you never know. Congressional Democrats always finds enough people on their team willing to do the dirty work so the rest of the team can pretend to be opposed (looking at you, Schumer and Pelosi). This will take constant vigilance.

Now over to Lori Wallach, who really is the tireless, go-to expert on all of these really bad trade deals and the reasons to oppose them. Writing in the Huffington Post, she says:

TPP Is Not Dead, Unfortunately

The reports of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s death have been greatly exaggerated, unfortunately.

It would great news if the pact, which would mean more power for corporations over our lives and government, and fewer good jobs for Americans, were ready to be boxed and buried.

But more urgently, if last week’s news stories convince the growing transpartisan movement fighting the TPP to stand down, the prospects that the pact’s powerful proponents can succeed in their plan to pass it after the election [i.e., in the lame duck session] will increase.

Last week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at the Kentucky Farm Bureau: “The current agreement…which has some serious flaws, will not be acted upon this year.” This generated a wave of press coverage declaring that there would be no lame duck vote on the TPP….

Note that McConnell said the “current agreement” would not get a vote. A few weeks ago House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said: “I see no point in bringing up an agreement only to defeat it…it is not ready, the president has to renegotiate some critical components of it.” Immediately after McConnell’s speech, a Ryan spokesman said: “As we have said for months, timing will be determined by progress on the substance – and the administration has a lot of work to do there.”

Wallach’s reason for Ryan and McConnell’s opposition is mine as well — “progress on the substance,” or sweetness, of the deal itself (my emphasis):

Those statements need to be understood for what they are: negotiating for changes to obtain even more corporate goodies – longer monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms’ high medicine prices, elimination of an exception protecting some tobacco regulations from TPP attack, and more. So far the corporate “we-want-more-or-else” tactic has pushed the White House into caving on Wall Street firms’ demands to “fix” TPP rules allowing governments to limit movement of financial data across borders. Since the administration has made no parallel moves to address criticisms coming from its own party, a very bad deal is getting even worse.

About the game of “chicken” Obama is playing with the money people pulling the GOP leaders’ strings:

It’s also possible congressional Republicans will jump into gear to pass the deal in the lame duck session even if they do not achieve that last one percent of corporate goodies for the one percent.
Thanks to Fast Track, President Obama gets to decide if the TPP vote clock is started – not the Republican leadership. It is risky, but Obama could call the GOP leaders’ negotiating bluff.

Fast Track is a one use tool. Failure to pass the TPP once a president starts the clock means that Fast Track for the TPP is “used up.” Knowing that corporations that fund the Republicans want the TPP, Obama could gamble that the GOP leaders would fold on their demands and start pressuring their members to vote “yes” if he submits the implementing legislation….

Because there would not be the required 90 congressional session days to force floor votes under Fast Track, the Republican congressional leaders would have to bring the TPP to a vote quickly or run out of time. (That is why Sen. Bernie Sander’s statement last week, praising McConnell for announcing he would “block” the TPP was so very sly, because of course McConnell said no such thing.)

Make no mistake, though. The entire U.S. corporate universe, which finances both parties, wants this deal to pass, as do most of the leaders of those parties, even while, as Wallach says elsewhere in the article, congressional votes for it are starting to disappear — or starting to appear to disappear ahead of the election.

Your bottom line — TPP is very likely not dead in the lame duck session. I consider it highly likely to come up for a vote.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP
 

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You can’t cure stupid by @BloggersRUs

You can’t cure stupid
by Tom Sullivan


The Reagans wave from a hospital window after President Reagan’s
cancer surgery in 1985. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Hillary Clinton is on antibiotics for a case of pneumonia. Kevin Drum laments:

Even during a presidential campaign it’s a fairly ordinary kind of story. But the talking heads need more than that to talk about. We need some kind of morality play. We need the “real questions this raises.” We need analysis. We need daily updates, accompanied by slo-mo analysis of Clinton’s latest walk to her car. So we’ll get them. Sigh.

David Atkins calls it right at Washington Monthly: Hillary Clinton should have gotten ahead of the story by admitting she has a touch of pneumonia.

Conservative media had been noticing that Clinton appeared under the weather recently, most notably due to mild coughing. Whether it’s a simple scratchy throat, or allergies, or a mild cold, or even pneumonia still isn’t very important, and it’s not an issue on which voters should be judging candidates. Health only becomes an issue if there’s a serious chronic condition that might endanger the president’s life or impact their ability to do their job. So far there has been no evidence that Clinton has such a condition. That hasn’t stopped conservative media organizations from speculating that Clinton might be too ill to be president, however. But then, these are the same people who speculate the Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and the mainstream press shouldn’t be feeding the conspiracy trolls.

Sadly, Clinton’s dogged determination to fight through an illness will absolve the media from “raising questions” about whether Donald Trump is too inexperienced, too incompetent, and too much of a pathological liar to be president. How big a news story would getting sick on the campaign trail be if it were a man? Say, Donald Trump with a urinary tract infection? Okay, a Y-U-G-E — tremendous — urinary tract infection. Not as big a story as Trump’s brag about the size of it, you can safely bet.

Let’s see now, the sainted President Ronald Reagan had a bowel resection in 1985. He had more polyps removed from his colon, skin cancer removed from his nose, and surgery on his prostate. All in 1987.

During his 1992 reelection campaign, President George H.W. Bush famously got ill and threw up on the Japanese prime minister:

His son, President George W. Bush, passed out after choking on a pretzel in 2002:

Then he temporarily ceded presidential power to unindicted war criminal Dick Cheney during his 2007 colonoscopy:

Not that that has any bearing on a woman getting a little ill. Pneumonia is an ordinary kind of story, as Drum suggests. A statewide candidate told me Saturday that it’s important to pace yourself and maintain your health between now and the election. With so many hands to shake and “babies to kiss,” that’s a challenge. It’s campaign SOP to plan on being sick the day after Election Day once the adrenaline subsides, just not before. And neither of us have a presidential candidate’s schedule. Clinton is lucky to be getting this out of the way now.

Trump’s staff must have hidden his cell phone, because there are no @realDonaldTrump tweets (Sunday night) mocking Clinton’s illness. For her, antibiotics and a little rest should do the trick. For her opponent? They say you can’t cure stupid.

Trump is scheduled to appear in Asheville, NC tonight. Expect taco trucks on every corner near the arena.