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Month: October 2016

U.S. can unilaterally withdraw from TPP and NAFTA as soon as the President chooses to, by @Gaius_Publius

U.S. can unilaterally withdraw from TPP and NAFTA as soon as the President chooses to

by Gaius Publius

I mentioned something in passing, on the way to make another point in this piece, that deserves to be a point on its own. Neither NAFTA nor TPP are “set in stone.” Each so-called “treaty” (in fact, these are executive or congressional-executive agreements) has a Withdrawal clause that allows for any signing nation to unilaterally exit the agreement at any time.

Senator Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 promising to use the threat of presidential unilateral withdrawal to force renegotiation of NAFTA

And if I hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama correctly in the clip above, the president has that unilateral authority. Neither talks about “going to Congress to get authorization.” Clinton would certainly know, as would Al Gore, who was quoted by the moderator, since NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton with Gore at his side as vice-president.

From the NAFTA text:

Article 2205: Withdrawal
A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

From the TPP text:

Article 30.6: Withdrawal
1. Any Party may withdraw from this Agreement by providing written notice of withdrawal to the Depositary. A withdrawing Party shall simultaneously notify the other Parties of its withdrawal through the overall contact points designated under Article 27.5 (Contact Points).

2. A withdrawal shall take effect six months after a Party provides written notice to the Depositary under paragraph 1, unless the Parties agree on a different period. If a Party withdraws, this Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

This means that even if President Obama gets Congress to pass TPP and then signs it, the next president, whoever she or he is, can unilaterally exit each agreement.

Just because these deals are signed, doesn’t mean they can’t be unsigned at any moment. Something to keep in mind, both during the lame duck session and during the next administration. After all, both major-party candidates now say they oppose TPP.

We aren’t chained to these things, folks, except by our leaders. The president who wishes to withdraw can withdraw at any time.

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

GP
 

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No more boomer pipe dreams by @BloggersRUs

No more boomer pipe dreams
by Tom Sullivan


Aerial photo of the California Aqueduct at the Interstate 205 crossing. Photo by Ian Kluft GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The rump fraction of “real America” that still supports Generalissimo Trump for president had best turn in its flags and lapel pins and burn its Lee Greenwood records. After Sunday night’s debate and taking nothing for granted, Donald Trump’s egomaniacal visions of glory will be consigned on November 8 to the ash heap of history. With extreme prejudice. Then what?

After the Berlin Wall fell, boomer friends talked about what America could do with the “peace dividend.” There was no peace dividend. That was a progressive pipe dream. America spends deficit dollars like there’s no tomorrow to blow up things. Or even to build the potential to. America wrings its hands and grouses about cost and the national debt and whether they are deserving when the talk is about spending to build up people.

Yet after November 8, half a century after passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare, progressives face the opportunity to again make America great in the same way we never imagined possible when President Lyndon Johnson of Texas took office. If the spirit of America rises to crush the Trump faction at the polls, Hillary Clinton will have a chance again to be the “change maker” her husband tells stories about. If we push her to make it so.

Mike Lux pointed yesterday to surveys sponsored by Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women’s Vote. From the report:

Millennials are poised to give Hillary Clinton and Democrats a big margin in November’s election if they are engaged to vote and if progressives are smart in dealing with the third party vote. Millennial voters are in a very different place than they were two weeks ago, according to a new web survey of likely millennial voters in the eleven most competitive battleground states…

Democratic millennials have started to consolidate for Clinton, but their Republican contemporaries have not done the same for Trump. Gary Johnson’s millennial vote is now a repository for most of those anti-Trump Republicans. The biggest, genuine problem is whether millennials will vote. The emerging battle over the economy – centered on taxes, trickle down and corporate responsibility – is getting their attention. Millennials are in an anti-corporate mood and desperate for change, and this new focus may move them to the polls on Election Day.

Lux writes:

It is clear that the voters we need to turn out — especially young people — are populist and progressive to the max. They want millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes. They want to end the destructive cycle of student debt. They want good jobs and good wages and dignity in the workplace. They want Wall Street to be held accountable. And that is exactly what Democrats have said they will do, in our party platform, in speeches all over the country, in the legislation our elected officials have introduced in Congress.

If Democrats and progressive movement leaders alike give those voters a reason to turn out, the data tells us they will respond. With Republicans in open and ugly civil war, a lot of their voters either won’t vote for Trump; won’t vote for the GOP candidates who aren’t supporting Trump; or won’t vote at all. Given that circumstance, a big turnout by young and progressive constituencies will give us a big wave election for Democrats, meaning not only that Hillary wins, but that we win the Senate and, yes, the House too.

Then what?

A sweeping Democratic win, for example, will increase the clout of both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders. A Clinton win will be worth it just for the looks on the faces of John Stumpf and Lloyd Blankfein on November 9. As I point out to my Sanders friends in North Carolina, if they help Deborah Ross defeat Richard Burr and Democrats take back the Senate, Bernie Sanders will likely chair the Senate Budget Committee. (Sanders is sending out fundraising letters for Ross.)

Sanders’ team fought tirelessly to write his vision into the Democratic platform. Affordable education. Economic fairness. Combating climate change. Rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Those still doubting Clinton’s commitment will get to hold her to those goals.

There is still much work ahead before Election Day. But Lux is right. We need to start thinking now about how to enact a new, progressive agenda. If Democrats win and win big, young voters in an anti-corporate mood will have new clout for changing their future from one in which people serve the economy into one in which the economy serves people. Twenty-five years ago, progressives had pipe dreams about what they might build again in this country. Their kids and grandkids might have a real chance to do it starting in 2017.

Lux’s advice to focus more on that than on Trump is sound. Besides, ignoring Trump will piss him off even more.

Alt-right from the get

Alt-right from the get

by digby



Bannon on board from the very beginning: 

A year before he became campaign CEO, the alt-right media master boasted he was calling the shots and turning his news site into a platform for his candidate.

A year before Donald Trump hired Breitbart News’ executive chairman to be his presidential campaign’s CEO, Stephen K. Bannon boasted, “I’m Trump’s campaign manager” via email.

Breitbart’s ties to Trump were long suspected before Bannon was brought aboard the campaign following the ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort in August 2016. Breitbart News, a website beloved by the so-called “alt-right”, had been a Trump’s staunchest ally in the media. Breitbart was so loyal to Trump that it even took the campaign’s side when then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski lied about bruising Michelle Fields, then a Breitbart reporter.

Bannon’s emails to his former Hollywood writing partner Julia Jones show he at least had reason to believe he had Trump’s ear. In emails reviewed by The Daily Beast, Bannon brags about his political influence.

“I’m Trump’s campaign manager,” Bannon wrote in an email sent on August 30, 2015 to Jones, who provided the email to The Daily Beast.

“OMG! Is that confidential or can I tweet it :)),” Jones replied later that day. “I am soooo impressed. Really! He couldn’t have picked a better person. OMG!”

“Confidential,” Bannon responded. “Don’t u ever read breitbart–its trump central.”

“Confidential it is,” she wrote. “I thought [Rick] Santorum was your buddy. Isn’t Trump a little far left for you?”

“Santorum, [Ted] Cruz , [Jindal], Dr. [Ben] Carson, Carly [Fiorina] all great,” he wrote back. “Trump is a nationalist who embraces [Sen. Jeff Sessions’s] immigration plan.”

He’s such a great guy:

While Kellyanne Conway is the campaign’s manager, Bannon is an an extremely close adviser to Trump. Bannon was in the same room as Trump when he rolled out four women who accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of attacking them just before the second presidential debate on Sunday. 

And it’s believed Bannon is rooting on Trump’s new antagonism of Republican leaders who have dropped him, a scorched-earth strategy that threatens a full-blown GOP civil war. Bannon previously called Republican Party’s congressional leaders, a bunch of “cunts” in 2014. 

Before officially jumping aboard the Trump train, Bannon was a key figure in helping to mainstream racists who call themselves alt-right. “[Breitbart News is] the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon once boasted.

The lovely family

The lovely family

by digby

One of them spends a lot of time on the Alt-Right sites:

[A]t a campaign appearance on Monday, Eric Trump defended his father’s tarnished reputation by dismissing the importance of the remarks altogether and using a little dash of men’s-rights-approved logic to excuse them. 

“I think it’s locker room banter,” he said, according to the Colorado Gazette. “I think sometimes when guys are together they get carried away, and sometimes that’s what happens when alpha personalities are in the same presence. At the same time, I’m not saying it’s right. It’s not the person that he is.” 

FYI: The  “alpha” talk is right out of the alt-right vocabulary — men who don’t “grab “em by the pussy” are called “cucks.”

Professional celebrity fail

Professional celebrity fail

by digby

Does everyone remember when the entire press corps lost its collective mind over Al Gore sighing during the presidential debate in 2000? And they complained that his make-up was too dark? Remember how George Bush Sr was widely declared to have lost  re-election because he looked at his watch during a townhall?

Well, standards have changed. This is the guy they’re all saying stopped the bleeding and turned in a solid performance on Sunday night:

Very solid.

Men are for him and women are for her

Men are for him and women are for her

by digby

Well, the white men are for him, anyway.

Compared to last week, Trump’s support among female voters has dropped five points to 28%, while Trump’s support among male voters is down only one point to 48%.

The gender divide among whites is pronounced and crosses class boundaries. Among all white female voters, Clinton leads Trump by 17 points (52% vs. 35%, respectively). More than two-thirds (68%) of white female voters with a college education are supporting Clinton, compared to only 29% who say they are voting for Trump. White female voters without a college education are divided, with equal numbers supporting Trump (40%) and Clinton (40%). Notably, 16% of white female voters without a college degree report being uncertain of who they will support in the election.

In contrast, among all white male voters, Trump leads Clinton by 28 points (57% vs. 29%, respectively). Trump holds an advantage over Clinton among white male voters with a college education (46% vs. 39%, respectively), and he retains an even more considerable lead over Clinton among white male voters with no college degree (65% vs. 22%, respectively).

White have been running the world for a very long time. They are choosing this orange-faced imbecile for president. We may have isolated the source of many of our problems in this country. This group of people has extremely bad judgment and has no business running anything.

Conway’s hail Mary

Conway’s hail Mary

by digby

I wrote about the Trump campaign’s desperate attempt to drive young voters to vote third party for Salon today.

Throughout this campaign the beltway conventional wisdom has been that the Republicans would never bring up Bill Clinton’s scandals from the 90s because they had been burned so badly in the past by them. And they were. Clinton’s job approval ratings went through the roof during the Starr investigation and subsequent impeachment trial and it was only Republicans who lost their seats over it. Some of them, like congressmen Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde and Bob Livingston, were brought low by revelations of their own indiscretions. It turned out that many of those who claimed to be of superior character  had their own skeletons in the closet.

Furthermore, everyone also understood that if there were any ongoing recriminations, they would not be against Hillary Clinton, the woman who had been humiliated in front of the whole world. When she ran for the senate in 2000, facing down the press and her opponent as they cornered her publicly, her strength and dignity impressed people and she won. The lesson was that this was not a fruitful avenue to pursue against her and for the most part, that was the end of it in subsequent campaigns. All the political pros assumed this line of attack was off the table.

And then along came Trump and his posse of character assassins led by the most notorious dirty trickster in American politics, Roger Stone. He’s been a close pal of Trump’s for decades and wrote a book for the occasion called “The Clintons’ War on Women” with the very specific intention of creating a brand new narrative about Hillary Clinton destroying her husband’s accusers.

Over the Christmas holiday last year, Trump made it clear that he would not put up with any talk from Clinton about his sexism. His veiled threat was anything but subtle.


He carried on like that for several days. This led to Clinton’s famous “If equal pay for equal work is playing the women’s card, then deal me in!” line, but she didn’t level the charge of sexism directly again until recently.  Trump may have thought that he’d shut it down permanently since her campaign had been hitting him hard for months in commercials for his hateful rhetoric against the disabled and veterans and coarse language. It turns out that she was lying in wait and in the first debate she took the gloves off by bringing up the story of the former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, followed by a Spanish language video telling the story and a moving ad called “Mirrors” with a voice over of Trump making crude and insulting remarks about women’s  looks. It was a powerful combination that put him off balance for the next week with late night twitter storms talking about sex tapes and more  threats to use Roger Stone’s “Hillary enabler” strategy.

The polls going into that first debate had the race very close and about that time campaign manager KellyAnne Conway and some of the surrogates started circling around what appeared to be an interesting electoral strategy.  They seemed to be trying to reinforce negative impressions of Hillary Clinton among Bernie Sanders voters without trying to appeal to them directly. They obviously knew they could not be persuaded to vote for Trump but perhaps thought there was a chance they could  push them to vote for one of the third party candidates and give Trump a chance to sneak in under the wire with a plurality win.

It’s tricky but it could theoretically work. After all there was some precedent for it. In 2000 Ralph Nader had taken enough votes to shift the election to George W Bush in Florida even though Gore won the national popular vote. And there were those who argued that Ross Perot denied George H.W Bush re-election in 1992 although the exit polls suggested that he took from both parties equally. If what Conway saw in the polls showed Trump had hit his ceiling, it may be she felt she could leverage Trump’s desire to hit Clinton with Bill’s scandals for an electoral advantage. After all, the world looks at these issues differently today than they did 20 years ago and younger voters could take a different view of those scandals when viewed out of the context of  the partisan wars in which they were fought.

When Trump pulled his stunt at the debate bringing the four Clinton accusers before the cameras for a press avail on Sunday before the debate, his surrogates were on TV making a very specific point. Kayleigh McEneny of CNN put it this way:

[I]t’s important that these Millennials behind me, who care deeply about sexual assault, I’ve been on a college campus the last seven years of my life. And I can tell you this, sexual assault is a big issue. The three women on the left, Hillary hired private investigators to look after. The woman on the far right, Hillary Clinton has an audiotape laughing at the girl, bragging about how she got the innocent rapist off who raped her — 

Trump went on to evoke Sanders’ criticism of Clinton seven times during the debate, even saying he’d sold his soul to “the devil” by endorsing her. If you didn’t know better you’d think Trump had chosen him as a running mate.

If this really is a campaign strategy it is destined to fail. It’s certainly possible that younger Sanders voters could be repelled by Bill Clinton’s scandals and decide to vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson on that basis — if Bill Clinton were running for president. But as much as many of them may not care for Hillary Clinton they are highly unlikely to believe this lurid fantasy about her, particularly coming from the campaign of a disgusting misogynist like Donald Trump. They’re young, they’re not stupid.

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This is not a voting accident by @BloggersRUs

This is not a voting accident
by Tom Sullivan

“GOP tumbles toward anarchy as Ryan snubs Trump” reads the online front page of the Washington Post. Now finally, with Trump’s poll numbers sinking fast, the rats are abandoning ship:

The Republican Party tumbled toward anarchy Monday over its presidential nominee, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) cut Donald Trump loose in an emergency maneuver to preserve the party’s endangered congressional majorities.

Ryan’s announcement that he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump prompted biting condemnations from within his caucus and from Trump himself, who publicly lashed out at the speaker.

With the appearance of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recordings on Friday, many among the GOP leadership have discovered their candidate for president of the United States is a crude, adolescent, boorish misogynist. Having no past experience in government, nor any apparent knowledge about how it functions, nor respect for its democratic processes and institutions was not disqualifying. Being a racist con artist was not disqualifying. Expressing an affinity for dictators was not disqualifying for Republicans either, so long as it looked as if Trump had a shot at actually winning.

Then came the tape where Trump plainly treated half the electorate in the country like nothing more than objects “for the use of men with power,” as New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister said last night on “All In with Chris Hayes.”

After Trump’s Sunday debate performance, the Village press struggled to maintain its practiced equivalence. At Washington Monthly, Nancy LeTourneau lashed out (emphasis mine):

There have been times during this presidential campaign when I have suggested that the tools of normal political punditry are inadequate to capture what is happening. Last night’s debate was one of those times. The most egregious example of that failure comes from headlines like this one, at Politico: “UGLIEST DEBATE EVER: Clinton says Trump’s campaign is exploding. Trump calls Clinton the devil.” In other words, Clinton saying what everyone knows to be true is just like Trump calling his opponent “the devil.” That is the lowest form of both-sider-ism.

“He wanted to humiliate [Clinton] in the way he knows how to humiliate women,” Traister fumed:

In May, Traister had written of the sad irony of this trumpish obstacle to Clinton’s winning the presidency:

There is an Indiana Jones–style, “It had to be snakes” inevitability about the fact that Donald Trump is Clinton’s Republican rival. Of course Hillary Clinton is going to have to run against a man who seems both to embody and have attracted the support of everything male, white, and angry about the ascension of women and black people in America. Trump is the antithesis of Clinton’s pragmatism, her careful nature, her capacious understanding of American civic and government institutions and how to maneuver within them. Of course a woman who wants to land in the Oval Office is going to have to get past an aggressive reality-TV star who has literally talked about his penis in a debate.

Politico put down its both-sider-ism yesterday just long enough to report on the latest polls:

Donald Trump trailed Hillary Clinton on average by about 5 points prior to the leaked video of his sexually aggressive comments. Now, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out on Monday, he trails by 14.

It might not matter either way: No candidate in the modern era of polling has ever climbed back from more than 4 points behind over the final month of the campaign to win the presidency.

Cartoons featuring the Titanic, Trump, and the GOP elite are flying around the internet. But this was not a boating accident. This was the course set decades ago by a Republican Party that fed its primary electorate a steady diet of distrust and hatred for the Other because it brought the Republican base out to vote. It resulted from the collision between hundreds of years of unconscious, unsupported assumptions about what America represents and whom it is for. The United States of America may have been founded primarily by white, Christian men, but the American Idea was never exclusively for white, Christian men and their long-suffering wives. They are finding that out now. Post the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts. Post women entering the workforce. Post demographic shifts that threaten white dominance of American social institutions. Post Barack Obama, they are about to have their country led by a powerful, accomplished woman. They don’t like it one bit.