Month: August 2017

Just how stupid is he?

by digby

From Robin Wright at The New Yorker:

I asked top Republican and intelligence officials from eight Administrations what they thought was the one thing the President needs to grasp to succeed on the world stage. Their various replies: embrace the fact that the Russians are not America’s friends. Don’t further alienate the Europeans, who are our friends. Encourage human rights—a founding principle of American identity—and don’t make priority visits to governments that curtail them, such as Poland and Saudi Arabia. Understand that North Korea’s nuclear program can’t be outsourced to China, which can’t or won’t singlehandedly fix the problem anyway, and realize that military options are limited. Pulling out of innovative trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will boost China’s economy and secure its global influence—to America’s disadvantage. Stop bullying his counterparts. And put the Russia case behind him by coöperating with the investigation rather than trying to discredit it.

Trump’s latest blunder was made during an appearance in the Rose Garden with Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, on July 25th. “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against isis, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah,” Trump pronounced. He got the basics really wrong. Hezbollah is actually part of the Lebanese government—and has been for a quarter century—with seats in parliament and Cabinet posts. Lebanon’s Christian President, Michel Aoun, has been allied with Hezbollah for a decade. As Trump spoke, Hezbollah’s militia and the Lebanese Army were fighting isis and an Al Qaeda affiliate occupying a chunk of eastern Lebanon along its border with Syria. They won.

The list of other Trump blunders is long. In March, he charged that Germany owed “vast sums” to the United States for nato. It doesn’t. No nato member pays the United States—and never has—so none is in arrears. In an interviewwith the Wall Street Journal, in April, Trump claimed that Korea “actually used to be part of China.” Not true. After he arrived in Israel from Saudi Arabia, in May, Trump said that he had just come from the Middle East. (Did he even look at a map?) During his trip to France, in July, the President confused Napoleon Bonaparte, the diminutive emperor who invaded Russia and Egypt, with Napoleon III, who was France’s first popularly elected President, oversaw the design of modern Paris, and is still the longest-serving head of state since the French Revolution (albeit partly as an emperor, too). And that’s before delving into his demeaning tweets about other world leaders and flashpoints.

“The sheer scale of his lack of knowledge is what has astounded me—and I had low expectations to begin with,” David Gordon, the director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff under Condoleezza Rice, during the Bush Administration, told me.

Yeah. His performance on the campaign trail left no doubt about his ignorance. What we didn’t know was if he had the capacity to learn. He doesn’t.

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Maybe they are laughing at us
by Tom Sullivan

People wanted a businessman running the White House. They wanted government to work more like a business. So far the live experiment with the last superpower has been unnerving. Despite possessing some awareness that businessmen can be venal, shady and dishonest, people somehow think those traits mixed with business acumen would make them leaders superior to typical politicians. In fact, what we’ve seen from the Donald Trump’s presidency is a team of grifters with no idea what they have gotten into. Toonces the cat is behind the wheel of the ship of state and it’s headed for an iceberg.

Sophia McClennen writes at Salon:

Our nation has long held the notion that businessmen are more skilled and trustworthy than politicians. Public trust in government is at a historic low of 20 percent. Even more shocking, a 2015 Gallup poll showed that the public trusted stockbrokers more than senators.

We can track the legend of the businessman back to the Gilded Age or to Ayn Rand or to Ross Perot, but regardless of its historic origin, the key question is whether the complete and utter disaster that is the Donald Trump administration will finally put an end to the delusion that a business background naturally prepares one to hold public office.

Days before the inauguration, Trump stated, “I could actually run my business and run government at the same time.” On the campaign trail we heard repeatedly that he had skills and training that would help him do a better job as president than our nation had ever seen before. In fact his entire campaign was centered on the idea that his business background would not only be adequate, but would actually be better suited to a successful presidency than political experience.

Perhaps the reason there is so much myth-making surrounding business is the size of the egos that go with the soaring incomes. McClennan writes that Trump’s short-lived White House communications director, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, dropped $100,000 to buy his way into 15 seconds worth of cameo in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” sequel. Trump’s cameo got cut. No doubt because he hadn’t paid for it.

Last week’s leaked transcripts of Donald Trump’s telephone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia probably didn’t get the myth-shattering press they deserved. Trump admitted to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto that he could not make Mexico pay for his border wall as he boasted for two years but, Enrique, instead of just saying you won’t do it, couldn’t we both just say “we will work it out”? Trump pleads with him not to say “we will not pay” publicly.

Jorge Guajardo, a veteran Mexican foreign policy expert, told McClatchy, “Everyone I’ve spoken to around the world is laughing.” Another diplomat told Guajardo in a text message, “He’s the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt. He speaks loudly and carries a small stick.”

In Australia too, the head scratching and bemusement was televised after the transcript of Trump’s February phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull leaked to the Washington Post. Trump, fixated on the danger he believes immigrants pose, wanted to kill an Obama administration deal to take in refugees Australia housed offshore on the islands of Manus and Nauru. He could not grasp that Australia prohibits the entry of any refugees or economic migrants arriving by boat to disincentivize “people smugglers” and prevent drownings at sea. After Turnbull explained that, Trump asked, “What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats?”

Bess Levin of Vanity Fair responds to the exchange:

Holy mother of God. Yes, after all that, after the slow talking and the handhold and what might as well have been Turnbull saying things like “Okay, so there’s this place called Australia…” Trump didn’t actually “get it” at all. Turnbull, amazingly, did not lose his patience and ask Trump if he was regularly dropped on his head as a child.

Trump is a unique psychological and developmental case, but the hubris is not unique at all. Calling themselves “job creators” is no accident, billionaire Nick Hanauer famously said in a “controversial” TED talk. “It’s a small jump from ‘job creator’ to ‘The Creator’.” The notion that people like Trump and his band of “big heads” would make the best political leaders should die as ignominious a death as “job creators” has yet to.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies




Happy end of the world: Top 15 Nuke Films

By Dennis Hartley

“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

Sunday marks the 72nd anniversary of mankind’s entry into that “different country”. So what have we learned since 8:15am, August 6, 1945-if anything? Well, we’ve tried to harness the power of the atom for “good”, however, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, that’s not working out so well (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al) Also, there are enough stockpiled weapons of mass destruction to knock Planet Earth off its axis, and we have no guarantees that some nut job, whether enabled by the powers vested in him by the state, or the voices in his head (doesn’t really matter-end result’s the same) won’t be in a position at some point in the future to let one or two or a hundred rip. Hopefully, cool heads and diplomacy will continue to keep us above ground and rad-free.

Yes, one can always hope. Yet…this happened earlier this week:

There will be war between the United States and North Korea over the rogue nation’s missile program if it continues to aim intercontinental ballistic missiles at America, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said President Donald Trump has told him.

“He has told me that. I believe him,” the lawmaker said Tuesday on TODAY. “If I were China, I would believe him, too, and do something about it.”

Graham said that Trump won’t allow the regime of Kim Jong Un to have an ICBM with a nuclear weapon capability to “hit America.”

“If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And He has told me that to my face,” Graham said. […]

Graham said military experts are “wrong” that no good options exist.

“There is a military option to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself,” he added.

The senator’s not saying we won’t get our hair mussed, but hey…I feel safe. You?

Every January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists gives the human race its annual physical, to determine the official time on the Doomsday Clock (with midnight representing Armageddon). This past January, they moved the hands 30 seconds closer:

This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a US presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. […]

It is [now] two and a half minutes to midnight. The board’s decision to move the clock less than a full minute—something it has never before done—reflects a simple reality: As this statement is issued, Donald Trump has been the US president only a matter of days.

I needn’t remind you that 6 months on, Donald J. Trump continues to be President of the United States. Like the scientists said: The clock ticks. Global danger looms. And the Master of 3am Tweets has those nuclear codes. With that happy thought in mind, here are my picks for the top 15 cautionary films to watch before we all go together (when we go).

The Atomic Café- Whoopee, we’re all gonna die! But along the way, we might as well have a few laughs. That seems to be the impetus behind this 1982 collection of cleverly reassembled footage culled from U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era (Mk 1), originally designed to educate the public about how to “survive” a nuclear attack (all you need to do is get under a desk…everyone knows that!). In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (which include the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers have also drawn from a rich vein of military training films, which reduce the possible effects of a nuclear strike to something akin to a barrage from, oh I don’t know- a really big field howitzer. Harrowing, yet perversely entertaining. Written and directed by Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty and Kevin Rafferty (Kevin went on to co-direct the similarly constructed 1999 doc, The Last Cigarette, a takedown of the tobacco industry).

Black Rain– For obvious reasons, there have been a fair amount of postwar Japanese films dealing with the subject of nuclear destruction and its aftermath. Some take an oblique approach, like Gojira or Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear. Others deal directly with survivors (known in Japan as hibakusha films). One of the top hibakusha films is this overlooked 1989 drama from Shomei Imamura, a relatively simple tale of three Hiroshima survivors: an elderly couple and their niece, whose scars run much deeper than physical. The narrative is sparse, yet contains more layers than an onion (especially when one takes the deep complexities of Japanese society under consideration). Interestingly, Imamura injects a polemic which points an accusatory finger in an unexpected direction.

The Day after Trinity– This absorbing film about the Manhattan Project and its subsequent fallout (historical, political and existential) is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. At its center, it is a profile of project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose moment of professional triumph (the successful test of the world’s first atomic bomb, three weeks before Hiroshima) also brought him an unnerving precognition about the horror that he and his fellow physicists had enabled the military machine to unleash.

Oppenheimer’s journey from “father of the atomic bomb” to anti-nuke activist (and having his life destroyed by the post-war Red hysteria) is a tragic tale of Shakespearean proportion. Two recommended companion pieces: Roland Joffe’s 1989 drama Fat Man and Little Boy, about the working relationship between Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) and military director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman); and an outstanding 1980 BBC miniseries called Oppenheimer (starring Sam Waterston).

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb– “Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic masterpiece about the tendency for those in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that you wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to make it all up. It’s the one about an American military base commander who goes a little funny in the head (you know…”funny”) and sort of launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity and oblivion ensues. And what a cast: Peter Sellers (as three characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones and Peter Bull. There are so many great quotes, that you might as well bracket the entire screenplay (by Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George) with quotation marks.

Fail-Safe– Dr. Strangelove…without the laughs. This no-nonsense 1964 thriller from the late great director Sidney Lumet takes a more clinical look at how a wild card scenario (in this case, a simple hardware malfunction) could ultimately trigger a nuclear showdown between the Americans and the Russians. Talky and a bit stagey; but riveting nonetheless thanks to Lumet’s skillful pacing (and trademark knack for bringing out the best in his actors), Walter Bernstein’s intelligent screenplay (with uncredited assistance from Peter George, who also co-scripted Dr. Strangelove) and a superb cast that includes Henry Fonda (a commanding performance, literally and figuratively), Walter Matthau, Fritz Weaver, and Larry Hagman. There’s no fighting in this war room (aside from one minor scuffle), but lots of suspense. The film’s final scene is chilling and unforgettable.

I Live in Fear-This 1955 Akira Kurosawa film is one of the great director’s most overlooked efforts. It’s a melodrama concerning an aging foundry owner (Toshiro Mifune, unrecognizable in Coke-bottle glasses and silver-frosted pomade) who literally “lives in fear” of the H-bomb. Convinced that South America would be the “safest” place on Earth from radioactive fallout, he tries to sway his wife and grown children to pull up stakes and resettle on a farm in Brazil. His children, who have families of their own and rely on their father’s factory for income, are not so hot on that idea. In fact, they take him to family court and have him declared incompetent. This sends Mifune’s character spiraling into madness. Or are his fears really so “crazy”? It is one of Mifune’s most powerful and moving performances. Kurosawa instills shades of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” into the narrative (a well he drew from again 30 years later, in his 1985 film Ran).

Ladybug, Ladybug– I only recently caught this 1963 sleeper for the first time, when Turner Classic Movies presented their premiere airing several weeks ago (to my knowledge, it has never been available in a home video format), and it really knocked my socks off. The film marked the second collaboration between husband-and-wife creative team of writer Eleanor Perry and director Frank Perry (The Swimmer, Last Summer, Diary of a Mad Housewife). Based on an incident that occurred during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the story centers on how students and staff of a rural school react to a Civil Defense alert indicating an imminent nuclear strike. While there are indications that it could be a false alarm, the principal sends the children home early. As teachers and students stroll through the relatively peaceful countryside, fears and anxieties come to the fore. Naturalistic performances bring the film’s cautionary message all too close to home.

Miracle Mile– Depending on your worldview, this is either an “end of the world” film for romantics, or the perfect date movie for fatalists. Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham give winning performances as a musician and a waitress who Meet Cute at L.A.’s La Brea Tar Pits museum. But before they can hook up for their first date, Edwards stumbles onto a fairly reliable tip that L.A. is about to get hosed…in a major way. The resulting “countdown” scenario is a genuine, edge-of-your seat nail-biter. In fact, this modestly budgeted, 90-minute sleeper offers more heart-pounding excitement (and much more believable characters) than any bloated Hollywood disaster epic from the likes of a Michael Bay or a Roland Emmerich. Writer-director Steve De Jarnatt stopped doing feature films after this 1988 gem (his only other feature was Cherry 2000).

One Night Stand – An early effort from eclectic filmmaker John Duigan (Winter of Our Dreams, The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting, Sirens, etc.). This 1984 sleeper is a worthwhile entry amidst the flurry of nuclear paranoia-themed movies that proliferated throughout the Reagan era. Through circumstance, four young people (three Australians and an American sailor who has jumped ship) get holed up in an otherwise empty Sydney Opera House on the eve of escalating nuclear tension between the superpowers in Eastern Europe. In a concerted effort to deflect their collective anxiety over increasingly ominous news bulletins droning on from the radio, they find creative ways to keep their spirits up.

The film is uneven at times, but for the most part Duigan capably juggles the busy mashup of romantic comedy, apocalyptic thriller and anti-war statement. There are several striking set pieces; particularly an eerily affecting scene where the quartet watch Fritz Langs’s Metropolis as the Easybeats hit “Friday on My Mind” is juxtaposed over its orchestral score. Midnight Oil performs in a scene where the two women attend a concert. The bittersweet denouement (in an underground tube station) is quite powerful.

Special Bulletin- This outstanding 1983 made-for-TV movie has been overshadowed by the nuclear nightmare-themed TV movie The Day After, which aired the same year (I’m sure I will be lambasted by some readers for not including the former on this list, but I find it overly melodramatic and vastly overrated). Directed by Edward Zwick and written by Marshall Herskovitz (the same creative team behind thirtysomething), the drama is framed like an actual “live” television broadcast, with local news anchors and reporters interrupting regular programming to cover a breaking story. A domestic terrorist group has seized a docked tugboat in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. A reporter relays their demand: If every nuclear triggering device stored at the nearby U.S. Naval base isn’t delivered to them by a specified time, they will detonate their own homemade nuclear device (equal in power to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki). The original airing apparently created a panic for some viewers in Charleston (a la Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938). Riveting and chilling. Nominated for 6 Emmys, it took home 4.

Testament– Originally an American Playhouse presentation, this film was released to theatres and garnered a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Jane Alexander. Director Lynne Littman takes a low key, deliberate approach, but pulls no punches. Alexander, her husband (William DeVane) and three kids live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike.

There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; this is a wise decision, as it puts the focus on the humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the histrionics and melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it very difficult to shake off.

As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film… “Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”

Thirteen Days– I confess that I had a block against seeing this 2000 release about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis for years, for several reasons. For one, director Roger Donaldson’s uneven output (for every Smash Palace or No Way Out, he’s got a Species or a Cocktail). I also couldn’t get past “Kevin Costner? In another movie about JFK?” Also, I felt the outstanding 1974 made-for-TV film, The Missiles of October would be hard to top. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be one of Donaldson’s better films.

Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp make a very credible JFK and RFK, respectively. The film works as a political thriller, yet it is also intimate and moving at times (especially in the Oval Office scenes between the brothers). Costner provides the “fly on the wall” perspective as Kennedy insider Kenny O’Donnell. Costner gives a compassionate performance; on the downside he demonstrates a tin ear for dialects (that Hahvad Yahd brogue comes and goes of its own free will). According to a tidbit posted on the Internet Movie Database, this was the first film screened at the White House by George and Laura Bush in 2001. Knowing this now…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry myself to sleep.

The War Game / Threads– Out of all of the selections on this list, these two British TV productions are the grimmest and most sobering “nuclear nightmare” films of them all.

Writer-director Peter Watkins’ 1965 docudrama, The War Game was initially produced for television, but was deemed too shocking and disconcerting for the small screen by the BBC. It was mothballed until picked up for theatrical distribution, which snagged it an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1967. Watkins envisions the aftermath of a nuke attack on London, and pulls no punches. Very ahead of its time, and it still packs quite a wallop.

The similar Threads debuted on the BBC in 1984, later airing in the U.S. on TBS. Mick Jackson directs with an uncompromising realism that makes The Day After (the U.S. TV film from the previous year that tackled the same scenario) look like a Teletubbies episode. The story takes a medium sized city (Sheffield) and depicts what would happen to its populace during and after a nuclear strike, in graphic detail. It’s stark and affecting.

Both of these productions make it very clear that, while they are dramatizations, the intent is not to “entertain” you in any sense of the word. The message is simple and direct-nothing good comes out of a nuclear conflict. It’s a living, breathing Hell for all concerned-and anyone “lucky” enough to survive will soon wish they were fucking dead.

When the Wind Blows– This animated 1986 U.K. film was adapted by director Jimmy Murakami from Raymond Brigg’s eponymous graphic novel. It is a simple yet affecting story about an aging couple (wonderfully voiced by venerable British thespians Sir John Mills and Dame Peggy Ashcroft) who live in a cozy cottage nestled in the bucolic English countryside. Unfortunately, an escalating conflict in another part of the world is about to go global and shatter their quiet lives. Very similar in tone to Testament (another film on this list), in its sense of intimacy amidst slowly unfolding mass horror. Haunting, moving, and beautifully animated, with a combination of tradition cell and stop-motion techniques. The soundtrack features music by David Bowie, Roger Waters, and Squeeze.

Previous posts with related themes:

Don’t know where, don’t know when
Criterion reissues Dr. Strangelove

More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

–Dennis Hartley

QOTD: Dershowitz

by digby

Famed defense attorney and Harvard University Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told a talk radio host on Friday that the large African American population in the District of Columbia could prove problematic to the Trump administration as special counsel Robert Mueller moves forward with his investigation of potential coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

In an interview with WABC Radio host Rita Cosby, Dershowitz said Washington has always been solidly Democratic and “has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump administration.” Mueller has reportedly impaneled grand juries in Washington and Northern Virginia as part of his ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“I think it’s a tactical move designed to send a message that if the prosecutor decides to prosecute, he will have a real advantage with the jury pool where the case will be held.”

Good lord. I guess he must have agreed that Judge Curiel couldn’t fairly judge Trump University fraud too.

Ugh.

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Since Zombie Goebbels turned them down

by digby

They’re turning to someone less honest:

Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to President Trump, is reportedly under consideration to succeed Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director.

Miller isn’t the frontrunner for the job, Axios reported Saturday. But White House chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly likes the idea.

Miller, a former staffer to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), received praise from his colleagues after sparring with CNN reporter Jim Acosta during a press briefing Wednesday.

In that exchange, Miller fiercely defended a White House-backed bill that would establish a merit-based immigration system and accused Acosta of having a “cosmopolitan bias.”

Trump applauded Miller’s performance at the press briefing, according to Axios. The president was also pleased with Miller’s combative performance during a series of appearances on the Sunday news show circuit earlier this year.

Trump is in the process of finding a replacement for Scaramucci, who was named communications director last month before being removed from the role 10 days later.

Yeah, that’s going to work out well. He’s a charmer.

Also a lunatic. But why not?

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Benedict Flynn

by digby

This NYT piece about the investigation into Michael Flynn is a must-read today. I thought this was a particularly interesting detail:

They have also asked about the White Canvas Group, a data-mining company that was reportedly paid $200,000 by the Trump campaign for unspecified services. The Flynn Intel Group shared office space with the White Canvas Group, which was founded by a former Special Operations officer who was a friend of Mr. Flynn’s.

Oh my. That looks like a fruitful direction for a collusion investigation, no?

I continue to be reminded of the Benedict Arnold story. He was resentful that he wasn’t appreciated and needed a lot of money.

And then there’s this:

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn in April told friends that he remains in contact with President Trump despite the ongoing investigation into Flynn’s contact with Russia, according to a new report.

“I just got a message from the president to stay strong,” Yahoo News reported Flynn told supporters following a meal in Virginia.

Sources familiar with the conversation did not tell Yahoo the medium Trump used to deliver the message that Flynn recounted during the discussion.

Yahoo’s sources added that Flynn has repeatedly dismissed the possibility of turning against Trump in exchange for leniency. He affirmed during the same conversation that he remains loyal.

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Catching up with the Trumpies

by digby

I know there are no more interesting or important people in the world than the vaunted Trump Voter, but I have long thought that the idea that there exists a substantial subset of Obama-Trump voters. My theory has always been that to the extent they existed, they were basically Republicans who may have voted for Obama because the world was going to hell in a hand-basket and they didn’t like Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney for personal reasons.

Ed Kilgore catches up with the latest on this alleged phenomenon:

The defection of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice yesterday from the Democratic to the Republican Party will inevitably fuel tired rhetoric about Reagan Democrats, or white-working-class Americans, or “heartland voters,” leaving the Donkey Party in hordes in protest against its radical bicoastal liberalism. Democrats obviously need to pay attention to voters they’ve recently lost or failed to energize, all over the place, and in various demographic categories.

But the “Trump Democrat” phenomenon may have been a bit oversold. Justice obviously was never much of a Democrat to begin with. And the broader category of “Obama-Trump voters”—those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, and then for the mogul in 2016—may have been misunderstood as well. Or so reports the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:

[N]ew data, and an analysis by AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer that he shared with me, puts all this into question. The number of Obama-to-Trump voters turns out to be smaller than thought. And those Obama voters who did switch to Trump were largely Republican voters to start with. The aberration wasn’t their votes for Trump but their votes for Obama.
One problem with the much-discussed idea that Obama-Trump voters swung the election is that voters notoriously over-report votes for the election winner after the election. So some Obama-Trump voter didn’t actually vote for Obama, and others didn’t actually vote for Trump. (Some may have even voted for everyone other than Obama and Trump). That reduces the magnitude of the “flip.”

To the extent that Obama-Trump voters were identified as those who voted for the 44th president in either 2008 or 2012, it is important to remember that Obama won pretty big the first time around: according to exit polls, he won 9 percent of self-identified Republicans and 20 percent of self-identified conservatives. He also won independents—a category that includes a lot of people who usually vote Republican—52/44.

But there’s more than incidental evidence that apparent Obama-Trump voters aren’t loyal Democrats who suddenly flipped because Trump was appealing to their material or cultural interests: they supported Republicans down-ballot, too:

The AFL-CIO’s Podhorzer analyzed raw data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, out in the spring, and found that Obama-Trump voters voted for Republican congressional candidates by a 31-point margin, Republican Senate candidates by a 15-point margin and Republican gubernatorial candidates by a 27-point margin. Their views on immigration and Obamacare also put them solidly in the GOP camp.
If these voters have been “lost” by the Democratic Party, many of them are probably lost for good.

Milbank concludes: “The party would do better to go after disaffected Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 or who voted for third parties.” A vote’s a vote, and in a competitive environment it makes no sense for Democrats to write anyone off. But the obsession with “Obama-Trump voters” may be myopic.

There are good philosophical and ideological reasons for figuring out how to address the economic woes of this group of voters. Even if you don’t care much for the way they think, they have kids who need a decent chance at a better life. But the idea that they are the electoral holy grail has always seemed to me to be a convenient way to prove some prior assumptions about the 2016 election.

In any case, it’s worth wondering if Democrats should be so focused on this group of voters to the exclusion of some others who are at least equally important to mobilize for a 2018 victory. It’s not a zero sum game, but it does require that these Trump voters not be elevated to the level of all-important “super-voters.” Until the economy is completely falling apart as it was after the last GOP administration, they may not be gettable.

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Un-stirring the pot
by Tom Sullivan

It is hard enough for Democrats to get anything accomplished without having to respond to pot-stirring by people who enjoy watching the churn. (We already have a pot-stirrer in the White House.) Ryan Cooper’s piece at The Week spotlighting lefties giving side-eye to Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Deval Patrick added to the churn whether or not that was the point of it.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville objects to Cooper cleaving the Democratic baby into two, mutually exclusive halves: “big money elites on one side and Sanders Democrats on the other.”

Talk from Sanders supporters last year of overthrowing the establishment was unpersuasive “to lots of marginalized people in places across the country,” she writes, “where Democrats are often the only ones standing between Republican state majorities and the complete annihilation of marginalized people’s basic rights.” (Tar Heels can relate.)

McEwan goes on:

This is an idea with roots in Black anti-poverty activism, whose activists have detailed that, for many people living on the precipice, the idea of revolution can be nothing short of terrifying. People struggling to find money to keep themselves fed may be justifiably wary of the consequences of economic tumult for those already in financially precarious circumstances. People whose communities are under constant assault from police, corporations, and gentrifiers may be justifiably anxious about the prospect of further civil turmoil.

“Revolution is not always kind to the vulnerable people,” she writes. Futhermore:

Many marginalized people in red states depend on the Democratic Party in ways that privileged people in true blue states don’t need to. We don’t have the luxury of being contemptuous of the Democratic Party for not being as progressive as we might like them to be, because our basic rights are constantly under assault.

As others have pointed out, Hullabaloo alum David Atkins observes this morning that critiques originating with “predominantly white and male” writers and aimed at black and/or female Democrats is not a good look. Even if there are facts supporting the criticisms, they give oxygen to the intra-party gossip “that Sanders-aligned economic progressives have racist motivations–or at least that they are tone-deaf and poor allies on matters of identity and social justice.”

Atkins continues:

On the other hand, there is a substantial faction of establishment players who, rather than seeking to repair and mitigate the causes the conflict in the Sanders-Clinton primary, are eagerly hoping to perpetuate it. They see the young, insurgent, aggressively anti-Wall Street wing as illegitimate interlopers, easily propagandized dupes, and overprivileged “alt left” bigots. The large number of women and people of color who are part of the Sanders coalition are erased and dismissed in often ugly ways. The influential partisans in center-left think tanks and media organizations who take this position seem to believe that democratic socialists will simply disappear into the woodwork if they are aggressively dragged and marginalized, allowing them to resume conducting business as usual within the party. This would be a mistake: like the Dean and Obama waves before them, Sanders Democrats have been sweeping into leadership positions in state and local Democratic organizations all across the country, and have no intention of going away quietly.

As Atkins knows, there are party players from the county level up who oppose giving room for new activists. And yes, they will rumor-monger and stonewall hoping to get the noobs frustrated enough to take their balls and go home so they can get back to professional politics.

Atkins suggests the way to heal the divisions is mutual solidarity and respect. “Making an example of the top three African-American hopefuls in the 2020 field is a terrible mistake regardless of intent. Instead, seek “to educate and persuade candidates who have crossed red lines in the past, rather than dismiss them as impure and unacceptable out of hand.”

The focus on disagreements rather than on common goals has done enough damage, yet refuses to die. The Amazing Randi and members of the Skeptics Society have observed how even scientists are sometimes taken in by psychic hoaxers for two reasons. First, they are totally unprepared for experimental subjects actively trying to fool them. Second, they think they are too smart to be fooled. Many smart lefties (and friends) got well and truly ratfcked last year by a disinformation campaign aimed right at them with the purpose of inflaming intra-party divisions. Some of this ongoing churn is fallout left over from that attack to which, being as smart as we are, we won’t admit falling victim.

But what is lost in the squabbling over ideological disagreements is focus on the meaning and purpose of the work. We are engaged here in the biennial search for judges and poll workers to help administer elections. It takes an army division worth of workers to put on an Election Day in this state alone. They (Democrats anyway) don’t do it to win ideological supremacy in the party. They do it out of a sense of civic duty to ensure their neighbors’ rights are defended, as McEwan said.

Atkins is right that mutual solidarity and respect are needed, but greater focus on mutual organizing would help put ideological differences into perspective and iron them out at the same time. It’s harder to argue over ideology when you’re working together painting walls or handing out literature. We still remember how distrustful “legacy Democrats” here were of “those progressives” until they saw progressives standing in the snow, greeting voters at polling places and trying to help get elected not just the progressive rock star at the top of the ticket, but the more traditional county commissioner Democrats further down-ticket. I think that’s when the opposition collapsed. They moved on and we moved up.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Friday night soother: Hamlet the cat

by digby

The NY Post:

About a month ago, a 1-year-old orange tabby was found scrounging for food in a feral colony near Hempstead, LI. Now, he’s chasing toy mice, cuddling with an array of adoring humans and exploring his posh surroundings at one of Manhattan’s most elegant establishments: Midtown’s historic Algonquin Hotel. That’s because this feline, as has been exclusively revealed to The Post, is Hamlet, the newest Algonquin Cat.

“He’s a real rags-to-riches story,” hotel marketing manager Nicholas Sciammarella said.

Hamlet is the 12th Algonquin cat and its first male mascot in more than 40 years. He is replacing current beloved kitty Matilda III, a regal long-haired ragdoll, who is retiring after seven years of service. For the past few weeks, Hamlet’s been hiding upstairs, away from the public, but he’ll make his debut on Thursday evening at the hotel’s annual Cat Fashion Show, which raises money for the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals.

“We’re really excited,” said Alice de Almeida, chief cat officer, whose duties include managing feline social media, handling vet appointments and making sure Matilda (and now Hamlet) is well-fed, groomed and spoiled.

“I think the guests are going to eat him up,” she said, adding that one of the hotel’s associates who is close to Matilda will be adopting her.

The Algonquin, which opened in 1902, has had a cat in residence since the 1920s, when Billy the stray wandered in and never left. But the hotel’s first Hamlet arrived in 1933. Initially named Rusty, he was re-christened when frequent guest and actor John Barrymore said the kitten needed a more dignified moniker.

The Algonquin had seven Hamlets — in honor of Barrymore’s greatest role — before going on to adopt three Matildas. The current Matilda arrived in 2010 from the North Shore Animal League, and she’s been the hotel’s busiest ambassador yet, with international TV appearances and even her own book, published in October 2016.

But de Almeida noted that the 11-year-old grand dame was getting tired. “Everybody ages differently, but she is not as friendly [with visitors],” she said. Matilda III’s daily afternoon visits with children and fans have gotten shorter. “She’ll let them take a couple photos and then she’ll turn her head so you can’t get the photo, like ‘I’m here, but I’m done.’ ”

“We want to make sure that she has a couple of good golden years, where she can just have a private life instead of being in the public spotlight,” said Sciammarella.Hamlet the cat in an office at the Algonquin Hotel.Annie Wermiel

The Algonquin put out feelers to a few shelters saying they were looking for an orange short-haired cat, like the hotel’s original Hamlet. And that’s when Bideawee animal rescue in Wantagh called to say an adorable tabby had showed up at its door, with a clipped ear to signal he had already been neutered.

“We absolutely fell in love,” said de Almeida of their first meeting with Hamlet. “There’s not a shy bone in his body.”

De Almeida and Sciammarella are worried that it will be an adjustment for the public, who had gotten used to Matilda’s glamorous hauteur.

“Because so many people think Matilda is so beautiful, I’m sure there’s going to be some comments, like ‘What’s this street kid doing up here?’ ” said de Almeida. But even the most fiercely loyal staff members — such as the chef who cooks crab cakes especially for Matilda — can’t help but be enchanted by Hamlet’s sweetness. “Look at him. How can you not love him?” she said.

Funny guys

by digby

Apparently there are some funny people in the Senate. Al Franken knows who they are: