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Month: May 2018

The Right’s new propaganda push should be taken very seriously

The Right’s new propaganda push should be taken very seriously


by digby

This Axios note should scare the hell out of anyone who is concerned about Trumpism and the emergence of a strong white nationalist faction:

Pro-Trump media is spreading across the U.S., disseminating Trumpian rhetoric about fake news and mainstream media bias through every medium. 

The big picture, from Rodney Benson, chair of NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication: “Many of the media moving toward subscriptions have disproportionately left-liberal audiences. … While liberal media draw their circles ever tighter around themselves (via paywalls, high-level content, etc.), conservatives are fighting to extend their mass reach.” 

The latest: “Bill O’Reilly is in talks to head back to cable news in his old 8 p.m. slot, but this time at Newsmax TV,” according to N.Y. Post’s “Page Six.” 

Newsmax owner Chris Ruddy is close friends with President Trump, and O’Reilly’s return to the spotlight would give the President another media ally to disseminate his talking points. 

We see this trend in every medium: 

Radio: Executives at Salem Radio, the parent company of some of the most popular conservative talk shows, pressured radio hosts to cover Trump more positively, according to emails obtained by CNNMoney

Broadcast: Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of local TV stations, has drawn criticism for its “must-run” editorials and scripts — peppering local newscasts with pro-Trump talking points — but continues the practice. 

Cable: Very few people were surprised by this week’s New York mag story about Fox’s Sean Hannity speaking regularly at night with Trump. The network’s pro-Trump, prime time coverage in focuses heavily on stories that highlight the supposed dishonesty of mainstream media. 

Digital: A handful of local news sites, like “Tennessee Star” and the “Arizona Monitor,” are popping up, with headlines supporting GOP candidates that are then sometimes featured for GOP election ads, Politico reports. These sites are intentionally framed to look like real news websites, as outwardly conservative sites, like The Daily Caller and Breitbart, see traffic dips.

Liberal and mainstream media are “drawing ever tighter circles” while the conservative media are all over the place with a propaganda model that looks like mainstream news. What could go wrong?

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Kabuki featuring fools and madmen

Kabuki featuring fools and madmen

by digby


Think Progress:

In a statement released by a state-run North Korean news agency, North Korea’s First Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, threatened to pull out of a summit with President Trump scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.

North Korea’s threat to cancel the summit puts Trump in a very awkward position, after he’s spent weeks portraying it as a key part of his historic legacy.

Kim Kye Gwan wrote that the United States’ offer of extending “economic compensation and benefit” to North Korea in exchange for getting rid of its nuclear weapons is insufficient, and criticized National Security Adviser’s John Bolton’s comments about Libya serving as a model for North Korean denuclearization.

“[I]f they try to push us into a corner and force only unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in that kind of talks and will have to reconsider… the upcoming summit,” Kim Kye Gwan wrote, adding that Bolton’s comments represent “an awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.”

Just last week, Trump — alluding to the mere fact that he had scheduled a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, who he recently described as “very honorable” despite his record of flagrant, brutal human rights abuses — floated himself as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate.

At a rally late last month, Trump encouraged the crowd to chant “NO-BEL! NO-BEL” during a portion of his speech about the North Korean summit.

[…]
While speaking to reporters following the return of three American hostages from North Korea last week, Trump said, “My proudest achievement will be – this is part of it – when we denuclearize that entire peninsula.”

With that goal suddenly in jeopardy, White House officials responded to North Korea’s statement on Wednesday by pretending they never actually expected the Kim-Trump summit to take place after all.

But by raising expectations about the meeting, and characterizing it as reflective of his superior deal-making skills, Trump has put himself in a position where he might need the summit to happen more than Kim does.

The president did himself no favors by violating the Iran nuclear agreement last week — a move that signaled to the North Korean regime that the U.S. government’s word can’t be trusted, even if North Korea lives up to the terms of a deal.

It’s possible that North Korea’s statement is just part of an attempt to extract added concessions from the Trump administration if a Trump-Kim summit does eventually happen. Trump officials have already signaled they might accept something short of full denuclearization, with new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo telling Fox News on Sunday that “America’s interest here is preventing the risk that North Korea will launch a nuclear weapon into [Los Angeles] or Denver or into the very place we’re sitting here this morning… that’s our objective” — a position different than calling for North Korea to denuclearize altogether.

As long as they don’t incinerate Americans we’re fine with it?

It’s interesting that they picked up on Bolton’s Libya comments. He’s been a lot more explicit in the very recent past:

As the nuclear crisis with North Korea enters a critical period, Trump’s choice of Bolton as national security advisor dims the prospect of reaching a peaceful solution. Bolton, like McMaster, sees Kim Jong Un as fundamentally irrational and undeterrable — a view that seems to justify launching a preventive war if North Korea refuses to denuclearize. But McMaster supported diplomacy and, as a military man with extensive combat experience, understood the costs of war. Bolton, on the other hand, has spent his entire career sabotaging diplomacy with Pyongyang and seems downright giddy about a possible military confrontation. 

A little history is helpful here. Bolton was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security when President George W. Bush’s administration made the fateful decision in 2002 to kill the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea. The Bill Clinton-era accord froze North Korea’s plutonium program under effective verification. But when it was discovered that Pyongyang was pursuing a separate uranium enrichment program with the help of Pakistan, a key decision had to be made: re-engage in diplomacy to expand the agreement to prohibit uranium enrichment or tear it up, isolate a member of the “Axis of Evil,” and push for regime change. Bush, guided in part by Bolton, chose the latter approach. And once the Agreed Framework collapsed, North Korea took the secured plutonium under its control and built about half a dozen additional nuclear weapons, testing its first in 2006. For many arms control and nonproliferation experts, this case represents a cautionary tale about the risks of foreclosing diplomatic engagement. In Bolton’s mind, however, North Korea’s actions simply prove that diplomacy doesn’t work with rogue states and that the only solution is to end these regimes all together, through U.S. military might if necessary. 

More than a decade later, Bolton continues to cling to this dark worldview. In a Sept. 3, 2017, Fox News interview, Bolton declared that the only option left to address the North Korean nuclear challenge is “to end the regime in North Korea” and strike first. “Anybody who thinks that more diplomacy with North Korea, more sanctions, whether against North Korea or an effort to apply sanctions against China, is just giving North Korea more time to increase its nuclear arsenal,” Bolton warned. “We have fooled around with North Korea for 25 years, and fooling around some more is just going to make matters worse.”
In an echo of the rationale that drove the United States to topple Saddam’s regime, Bolton painted an apocalyptic picture of the gathering danger posed by Kim’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The North Koreans “are very close to being able to hit targets all across the United States … with thermonuclear weapons,” Bolton said. “Moreover, this regime will sell anything to anybody for hard currency. They could sell these weapons, ballistic missiles and the nuclear devices themselves, to Iran in a heartbeat.… The metaphor of the Axis of Evil is not really a metaphor — it is a reality. North Korea can sell these devices to terrorist groups around the world. They can be used as electromagnetic pulse weapons … destroying our electrical grid’s capabilities. They can be used for nuclear blackmail.” If we fail to act, “it would be a lesson to every would-be nuclear state in the world that if you just have patience enough, you can wear the United States down.” Instead, “we should heed Franklin Roosevelt’s advice.… When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you don’t wait until it has struck before you crush it.… I would argue that today North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and Iran’s while we’re on the subject, are the rattlesnakes of the 21st century.” 

To further lay the groundwork for taking military action, Bolton penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal just last month titled “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First.” Recalling the Bush administration’s flawed analysis in the run-up to the Iraq War, Bolton argued that “the threat is imminent” and that the United States has every right to take launch a preventive war before it is too late.

They’re not idiots. They know what Bolton thinks. And they also know that Trump is a fucking moron who cannot be trusted while they themselves have broken every agreement they’ve ever made.

I think hopes are a little bit high for this summit.

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A little perspective

A little perspective

by digby

… on the “long” Russia investigation from Natasha Bertrand at the Atlantic:

To the president, the investigation may seem like it has dragged on. But the longest special-counsel probe—Iran-Contra under former President Ronald Reagan—lasted nearly seven years. The Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky inquiry involving former President Bill Clinton, which ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment in the House, lasted four years. And the investigation of the Valerie Plame affair under former President George W. Bush lasted three-and-a-half years. Mueller’s pace has been breakneck, legal experts tell me—especially for a complicated counterintelligence investigation that involves foreign nationals and the Kremlin, an adversarial government.

Considering that we’re looking at a president who is suspected of conspiring with the Kremlin, you’s think that everyone would want the investigation to be thorough, whether you support Trump or not. After all, unless he is exonerated by this probe he and his blind followers will forever be suspected of being traitors.

Bertrand’s story is an excellent overview of what we know about the investigation at the one year mark. It’s quite a lot. And this is important enough that he should take the time he needs to figure out what happened.

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“It’s a nice thing to have no conflict of interest provision”

“It’s a nice thing to have no conflict of interest provision”

by digby

My Salon column today is about that strange couple of tweets about China and the ZTE company:

Back in January of 2017, President-elect Trump gave a wide-ranging press conference (one of very few, to date) to announce that he would turn over management of the Trump Organization to his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.

He revealed that he had just been offered $2 billion to do a deal in Dubai with a man named Hussain Sajwani of DAMAC Properties but hadn’t taken it:

I didn’t have to turn it down, because as you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president, which is — I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have. But I don’t want to take advantage of something. I have something that others don’t have, Vice President Pence also has it. I don’t think he’ll need it, I have a feeling he’s not going to need it. But I have a “no conflict of interest” provision as president. It was many, many years old, this is for presidents. Because they don’t want presidents getting — I understand they don’t want presidents getting tangled up in minutia; they want a president to run the country. So I could actually run my business, I could actually run my business and run government at the same time.
I don’t like the way that looks, but I would be able to do that if I wanted to. I would be the only one to be able to do that. You can’t do that in any other capacity. But as president, I could run the Trump Organization, great, great company, and I could run the company — the country. I’d do a very good job, but I don’t want to do that.

In the words of Richard Nixon, he believes that if the president does it, it’s not illegal. Or more specifically, he believes that if he does a business deal for personal profit it cannot be a conflict.

Trump didn’t divest himself of his businesses, but there was an understanding that his sons would not enter into any new foreign deals. In fact, the boys have been all over the world touting foreign projects, from a recent high-profile sales trip and/or government mission to India to the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Dubai and Canada. The company recently was reported to have appealed to the government of Panama to interject itself on its behalf in a business dispute with the Trump-branded resort.

Donald Trump himself has made a fetish of making personal appearances at his foreign properties and commonly promotes them in his speeches overseas. He’s planning yet another promotional visit to one of his golf courses in Scotland when he visits the U.K. in July.

There is, in other words, every reason to be concerned that Trump and his family might be selling favors to foreign governments for personal gain. They certainly have made almost no attempt to reassure the public that they won’t do it. Trump said in that very first press conference that foreign interests were offering him large sums of money as president-elect, which he believed he was legally entitled to take.

Among the cascade of news stories about the Russia investigation over the past year, there have been intermittent questions about Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner seeking loans from various players in the Middle East. There have also been some bizarre turns in foreign policy associated with them that have not been adequately explained. Just this week, Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, pushed out a story implicating Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen in some sort of pay-to-play arrangement with representatives of the government of Qatar, which has long been on the radar as a possible intermediary between Russian money and the Trumps and Kushner. (Law professor Jed Shugerman has created a helpful timeline showing all the Qatari events that lead to this speculation.)

It is assumed the Mueller team is following that thread, since it has a possible direct connection to Russia. But this past weekend we got evidence of something else that may be a blatant conflict of interest relating to China.

As Bob Cesca wrote for Salon on Monday, that was an extremely strange tweet. First of all, Trump spent the entire presidential campaign bashing China for stealing American jobs. So this sudden concern for Chinese workers is inconsistent, to say the least. Nobody knew what to make of it. It seemed to come out of the blue, and experts from across the political spectrum were puzzled as to what Trump’s motives might be.

On Monday, Trump followed up with this:

That tweet doesn’t sound as if Trump personally wrote it. If it is “reflective” of his own thinking, it’s a big change. Trump has shown almost no concern for American exporters in all of his bellicose trade talk. The most he has ever said to the farmers who voted for him is that he assumes they are patriots who are willing to make sacrifices for the good of the country.

Moreover, while the Chinese government may want this to be part of the larger “trade deal” Trump is allegedly negotiating, the issue with ZTE wasn’t unfair trading practices. It was punished for violating sanctions against North Korea and Iran, and was accused by the intelligence community of using its technology to spy on Americans on behalf of the Chinese government. What possible reason could Trump have for deciding to unilaterally reverse this decision without explaining it to anyone?

Well, there may be an obvious explanation. It turns out that three days before Trump sent that tweet, a Chinese company with strong ties to the government had agreed to invest $500 million in a major Trump-branded development in Indonesia. The deal is a big one, with a high up side for Trump and his Indonesian partners, whom he invited to the inauguration and met with at Trump Tower during the presidential transition.

Could this be a coincidence? Sure. Maybe Trump has just developed a sense of solidarity with manufacturing workers in China and wanted to help them out. Perhaps he’s just a terrible negotiator and precipitously gave China something it badly wanted — without getting any assurances in return — because he really likes Xi Jinping.

But the fact is that the Trump and Kushner families are so steeped in conflicts of interest that selling out the national interest to line their pockets is the most logical explanation for any situation where their business interests are involved. There can be no benefit of the doubt for a president who says out loud that “it’s a nice thing to have” a “‘no conflict of interest’ provision.”

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Another Democratic pickup by @BloggersRUs

Another Democratic pickup
by Tom Sullivan

If only Democrats could pack all their big-idea eggs into one super-attractive basket, then, oh boy, they’d really have themselves a 2020 presidential candidate, Dana Milbank snarks in the Washington Post. Milbank covered the Center for American Progress’s Ideas Conference in Washington, D.C. yesterday while voters in four states across three time zones selected candidates for races more immediate and more local.

While the national press is already spending its presidential-year ad revenue, Pennsylvanians picked up Democrats’ 41st state legislative seat since the election of Donald Trump. Helen Tai defeated Republican Republican Wendi Thomas for the Pennsylvania House District 178 seat in Bucks County.

Daily Beast reports:

In a sign of the growing importance of these local races to national Democrats, former vice president Joe Biden weighed in with his endorsement for Tai this month. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, whose PAC Win Back Your State is focusing on these down-ballot races, also endorsed Tai and he recently made an in-person appearance at her campaign office.

Carolyn Fiddler adds at Daily Kos:

HD-178 is exactly the sort of seat Republicans are most worried about, and with good reason. While this suburban Philadelphia district voted 56-43 for Mitt Romney, it gave Donald Trump only a narrow 50-47 win. This trend toward Democrats continued tonight with Tai’s victory, which represents a four-point swing from the 2016 presidential results, in a district where the Republican ran unopposed in two of his past three elections.

Another signal that times, they are a-changin’ (at least for the Democratic establishment) came last night in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District primary. Kara Eastman, pro-choice president of a local nonprofit, upset former Rep. Brad Ashford in the Democratic primary. Ashford was backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the campaign arm of House Democrats and reflecting its preference for safe, moderate candidates. Eastman drew the endorsement of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Working Families Party, and Blue America (of which Hullabaloo is a partner blog).

Eastman lagged behind Ashford through most of the ballot count. As the last few precincts reported, Eastman pulled ahead 51.4% to Ashford’s 48.6%.

Ashford is a former Republican who had supported abortion restrictions, yet major pro-choice advocacy groups UltraViolet Action, EMILY’s List, and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund stayed out of the race. Eastman told Newsweek:

“If we had the support of the DCCC, those groups would probably be more likely to support my campaign; I think that’s a shame,” Eastman told Newsweek in March. “I think there are people who are disappointed and tired of this establishment that seems to be supporting certain candidates over others. The district is craving someone who is a lifelong Democrat—someone who’s running on a platform like I am.”

[…]

“This is a huge win for progressives, and I think it signals that the base doesn’t want milquetoast centrist candidates,” Sean McElwee, a researcher and co-founder at Data for Progress, a progressive polling and analysis firm, told Newsweek Tuesday night. “They want real progressives.”

In Idaho, state Rep. Paulette Jordan, 38 and a member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, won the Democratic nomination for governor over A.J. Balukoff, a better-known businessman backed by the party establishment. If she were to pull off the upset in November, Jordan would the first Native American governor in U.S. history. Vox observes that Jordan’s win sends a signal that even in Idaho, party progressives are flexing muscles:

Idaho is unquestionably conservative, so much so that it is often considered to be a one-party state — Republican. That said, Jordan, at 38 years old, represents a young, fresh face for the Democratic Party in Idaho, compared to Balukoff, the 72-year-old former school board member.

Jordan’s progressive platform has gained a lot of national attention in recent weeks. She has won the endorsements of progressive national groups like Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, Democracy for America, Indivisible, and People for Bernie Sanders. She’s even won Cher’s endorsement. But state lawmakers and local Democrats are jumping on the Balukoff’s older, familiar name. (He was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014.)

To be sure, Jordan’s chances of actually winning the governorship are slim. The state is dominated by the conservative rural and suburban districts. Meanwhile, she’s championing raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, expanding health care, and fighting climate change.

It was a good night for women running under the Democrat brand. Three in Pennsylvania are favored to win U.S. House seats in November, diversifying “the nation’s largest all-male congressional delegation,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

Even in Idaho where Democrats struggle to find a foothold, a younger, progressive base is poised to make its presence felt.

* * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

by digby

When I was a kid, I was told that you had to earn respect. But today it’s a Republican entitlement. They, on the other hand are allowed to insult the Mexican rapists and the lazy blacks  and the feminazis and the coastal elites because well, they are the Real Americans. I am so, so tired of this BS. It’s not new. It’s just that the media and the political class seems to think it has to be litigated over and over and over again.

Paul Waldman wrote a great piece about this “respect” meme for the Washington Post today:

In the endless search for the magic key that Democrats can use to unlock the hearts of white people who vote Republican, the hot new candidate is “respect.” If only they cast off their snooty liberal elitism and show respect to people who voted for Donald Trump, Democrats can win them over and take back Congress and the White House.

The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive. It ignores decades of history and everything about our current political environment. There’s almost nothing more foolish Democrats could do than follow that advice.

Before we proceed, let me be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that the desire for respect isn’t real. As a voter says in “The Great Revolt,” a new book by conservative journalist Salena Zito and Republican operative Brad Todd, “One of the things I really don’t get about the Democratic Party or the news media is the lack of respect they give to people who work hard all of their lives to get themselves out of the hole.”

Nor am I saying there aren’t some liberals who express elitist ideas, because there are.

But the mistake is to ignore where the belief in Democratic disrespect actually comes from and to assume that Democrats have it in their power to banish it.

It doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them.

Opinion writers Ruth Marcus and Stephen Stromberg analyze the results of the Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and North Carolina primary election. (The Washington Post)

It’s more than an industry, actually; it’s an industry, plus a political movement. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.

If you doubt this, I’d encourage you to tune in to Fox News or listen to conservative talk radio for a week. When you do, you’ll find that again and again you’re told stories of some excess of campus political correctness, some obscure liberal professor who said something offensive, some liberal celebrity who said something crude about rednecks or some Democratic politician who displayed a lack of knowledge of a conservative cultural marker. The message is pounded home over and over: They hate you and everything you stand for.

This machine is extraordinarily powerful. It may not be able to guarantee Republican victory at the polls, but it absolutely can determine how conservatives — including those Trump voters — view what happens on a day-to-day basis in the political world, including efforts by Democrats to reach out to them.

Let’s take, for instance, Barack Obama. Can you think of another president who spent more time reaching out to the other side and showing respect for them? You might or might not like his policies, but nobody tried harder to be respectful than Obama. And Republican voters had eight years to watch him. Let’s take, as just one example, the speech he gave about race during the 2008 campaign. Here’s one small part:

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.

That is extremely respectful. But it’s not what Republicans think of when they think of Obama. “I despise Barack Obama. I think primarily because I don’t think he thinks very much of people like me,” one Republican told The Post’s Dan Balz. “One of the places I would agree with the hard-core Trump people, they’re tired of being treated as the enemy by Barack Obama,” he went on. “His comment, the whole thing, it’s been worn out to death, that clinging to God and guns, God and guns and afraid of people who don’t look like them, blah, blah, blah. Just quit talking down to me.”

Ah yes, the “clinging to guns and religion” quote. One thing Obama said in 2008, taken out of context and repeated a million times until it was all any Republican voter needed to know about his entire presidency. But if you look at what Obama actually said, you’ll see that it’s different from the way it has been characterized. He was asked how Democrats could appeal to working-class whites in the Rust Belt, and he replied that people have watched their communities struggle for decades, through Republican and Democratic presidencies alike, so they wind up forming their political identities and channeling their frustrations through non-economic issues. Which few would actually dispute, but such controversies are rarely created out of what a Democratic politician actually said. They flow from whether it can be twisted around and repeated endlessly to make them look disrespectful.

The same is true of Hillary Clinton. At a town-hall meeting in March 2016, she was talking about how to revitalize communities that had been dependent on coal but had been devastated by a loss of jobs driven mostly by automation and the fracking boom that made natural gas cheaper than coal. Here’s what she said:

And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce energy that we relied on.

Wow, that’s pretty respectful! It acknowledges the people’s hard work, their sacrifices, their contribution to the rest of the country. And yet because she also acknowledged that all those millions of coal jobs aren’t coming back, but said it in a way she would surely have liked to rephrase — “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” — the only thing anyone remembers is that one half-sentence, which was immediately turned into “Hillary hates coal miners! She wants to destroy their lives!” All the respect-offering she tried to do was meaningless once it was chewed through the gears of the conservative outrage machine.

We see this again and again: Democrats bend over backward to show conservative white voters respect, only to see some remark taken out of context and their entire agenda characterized as stealing from hard-working white people to give undeserved benefits to shiftless minorities. And then pundits demand, “Why aren’t you showing those whites more respect?”

So when we say that, what exactly are we asking Democrats to do? It can only be one of two things. Either Democrats are supposed to abandon their values and change their policies, despite the fact that many of those policies provide enormous help to the very people who say Democrats look down on them, or they’re supposed to take symbolic steps to demonstrate their respect, which always fail anyway. How many times have we seen Democrats try to show respect by going to a NASCAR event or on a hunting trip, only to be mocked for their insincerity?

In the world Republicans have constructed, a Democrat who wants to give you health care and a higher wage is disrespectful, while a Republican who opposes those things but engages in a vigorous round of campaign race-baiting is respectful. The person who’s holding you back isn’t the politician who just voted to give a trillion-dollar tax break to the wealthy and corporations, it’s an East Coast college professor who said something condescending on Twitter.

So what are Democrats to do? The answer is simple: This is a game they cannot win, so they have to stop playing. Know at the outset that no matter what you say or do, Republicans will cry that you’re disrespecting good heartland voters. There is no bit of PR razzle-dazzle that will stop them. Remember that white Republicans are not going to vote for you anyway, and their votes are no more valuable or virtuous than the votes of any other American. Don’t try to come up with photo ops showing you genuflecting before the totems of the white working class, because that won’t work. Advocate for what you believe in, and explain why it actually helps people.

Finally — and this is critical — never stop telling voters how Republicans are screwing them over. The two successful Democratic presidents of recent years were both called liberal elitists, and they countered by relentlessly hammering the GOP over its advocacy for the wealthy. And it worked

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I posted the whole thing up there because it’s important. It says it all.

Democrats have an obligation to do whatever they can to help people who need help economically or socially. Unlike Trump their policies aren’t only aimed at the people who vote for them. But they should not expect the people who are brainwashed because they watch too much Fox News or listen to too much Rush Limbaugh and are upset that they have to share this country with people who do not look like them to vote for them. They will not. That’s just the way it is.

They should try to get as many people who agree with them to the polls as humanly possible and persuade the persuadable. But they will not be loved by everyone, ever. This country isn’t built that way.

Right now the most important thing Democratic candidates can do is show respect to their own voters and let them know they hear them and will fight for them.

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Reality Bites: Trump screws his own voters

Reality Bites: Trump screws his own voters

by digby




The Washington Post reports:

Several recent developments have highlighted the unintended — though often foreseeable — consequences the president’s policies are having on his own supporters.

In many cases, he’s following through on campaign promises — like cutting the flow of immigrants, renegotiating trade deals and rolling back regulations put in place by Barack Obama. But in the deeply interconnected global economy, the devil is always in the details and the implementation of some policies may do more to hurt than help the people who put their faith in him to fix their problems.

Here are four examples:

— Small business owners who voted for Trump might be forced to shut down because the president is making it harder for them to hire guest workers. Here’s a story that appeared over the weekend in the Herald Leader of Lexington, Ky.:

“Eddie Devine voted for [Trump] because he thought he would be good for American business. Now, he says, the Trump administration’s restrictions on seasonal foreign labor may put him out of business. ‘I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,’ said Devine, owner of … Devine Creations Landscaping. ‘I feel so stupid.’ Devine says it has been years since he could find enough dependable, drug-free American workers for his $12-an-hour jobs mowing and tending landscapes for cemeteries, shopping centers and apartment complexes across Central Kentucky. So for years he has hired 20 seasonal workers, mostly from Guatemala, through the U.S. Labor Department’s H2-B ‘guest worker’ program. Importing these workers for a few months cost him an additional $18,000 in fees and expenses beyond their wages, which must be the same as he pays American workers. But that’s the only way he could serve his customers.

“Restrictions on guest-worker visas, which began during President Barack Obama’s second term as immigration became a hot issue for conservatives, have gotten worse under Trump. And it’s even more of a problem now that the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in years. Devine says he lost a $100,000 account because he didn’t have enough men to do the job. …

“He isn’t alone. Cuts in H-2B visas are hurting small businesses across the country that can’t find Americans willing to do hard, manual labor: Maryland crab processors, Texas shrimp fishermen, and Kentucky landscapers and construction companies. Devine said he believed Trump’s America-first promises. But cutting off a good supply of seasonal foreign labor when Americans won’t take those jobs is only hurting American business owners and the U.S. workers they employ, he said. These workers aren’t immigrants, and there is no path to U.S. citizenship. When their seasonal work is done, they return home. That’s why Devine thinks the Trump administration’s stifling of guest-worker programs has more to do with racism than economics. ‘I think there’s a war on brown people,’ he said.

“But what makes him most angry is that Trump’s properties in Florida and New York have used 144 H-2B workers since 2016. ‘I want to know why it’s OK for him to get his workers, but supporters like me don’t get theirs,’ Devine said.”

— General Motors is cutting its second shift at the Lordstown Assembly plant outside of Youngtown, Ohio, next month. The move could cost 1,500 jobs at the 3,000-employee plant that builds the Chevrolet Cruze. This is in the heart of the Mahoning Valley, long a Democratic stronghold that broke toward Trump in 2016 because of his popularity with the kinds of blue-collar workers who are about to lose their jobs or reluctantly take buyouts.

GM says it’s downsizing because there is “lower customer demand for compact cars.” The plant already downsized last year, moving from three shifts to two, partly because consumers are buying more crossovers, SUVs and trucks at the expense of smaller vehicles.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who represents the plant, blames reduced demand, and the pending layoffs, on Trump’s decision to scrap fuel efficiency standards — which the auto companies did not want. “While low gas prices paved the way for the decline of compact cars … Trump’s April announcement to weaken fuel economy standards put his thumb on the scale in favor of the larger cars and SUV’s made elsewhere, hurting our community specifically,” the congressman said in a statement last Friday. “The truth is, the fuel economy standards help sell more Chevy Cruzes.”

President Trump speaks at an event in North Charleston, S.C., last year to celebrate the construction of the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

— Ironically, gas prices might go up because Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear agreement last week. (Iran is the world’s fifth-biggest oil producer.)

— The president’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal, and reimpose sanctions, will cost Boeing contracts worth as much as $20 billion to replenish Iran’s aging fleet of commercial planes. The Chicago-based aerospace giant downplayed the impact last week, noting that there’s already a backlog of orders for 737 aircraft so production won’t slow. But $20 billion in planes represents quite a lot of manufacturing work.

Those jobs will now go to other countries — specifically Russia. “Russian aircraft makers, who can skirt the U.S. sanctions, are already working on deals,” the Puget Sound Business Journal reports. “A Russian aircraft maker is exploring plans to make a modified version of its Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional airliner so Iranian airlines can buy the jet.”

— The trade war with China is increasing uncertainty for farmers and may still lead to punishing retaliatory tariffs.

China buys 60 percent of all U.S. soybean exports, and growers of the crop could be pressed hard if the administration cannot cut a deal with Beijing. Soybean-producing counties went for Trump by a margin of more than 12 percent in 2016.

Dave Walton, who voted for Trump and tends soybeans, corn and livestock in eastern Iowa, is not sure his farm could take the added stress. “If this turns into a longer-term thing, we’re going to see friends and neighbors go out of business,” he told Caitlin Dewey last month. “If this stretches into years, we ourselves won’t be able to sustain it.”

Walton’s 800-acre farm, in his family for 118 years, has already been struggling to stay above water with falling crop prices, and tariffs could make profitability difficult. “Right now, soybean growers in Iowa and across the nation are encouraging the administration to engage positively with China,” he said. And if that doesn’t happen, he added: “Iowa leads the nation in many things. The presidential election is one of them.”

Trump said that his voters are patriots who are happy to sacrifice for their Dear Leader. It sounds like some of them might not be so excited to be thrown over the cliff for the greater good.

The good news is that they are going to allow rural white voters to continue to get access to Medicaid while denying it to urban voters of color. So they can’t say he never gave them anything.

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The 2020 campaign stories are already beginning

The 2020 campaign stories are already beginning

by digby

Gird your loins. We’re about to embark on a two year obsession with Trump’s brilliant campaign:

As President Trump’s campaign aides quietly launch his reelection campaign, they’re eyeing two states as possible pickups for 2020: Minnesota, where Trump came close in 2016 without even trying; and Colorado, where his hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement is a possible selling point.

What’s happening: The addition of those states is part of a plan that’s coming together in a basement suite at the Republican National Committee, where the Trump campaign has moved from Trump Tower. The campaign, now fewer than 10 people, eventually will number hundreds.

The reelection campaign will mostly work under the radar until after midterms, providing Trump assets (volunteers, fundraising, rallies) to other campaigns.
But we got a first look at campaign manager Brad Parscale’s plans to build what amounts to a massive marketing machine, selling the world’s most prominent product.

Why it matters: In 2016, Trump Tower campaign staffers were proud of their pirate-ship ambush of the Republican establishment, then of the U.S.S. Clinton. But this time they won’t have the advantage of surprise.

So the Trump team has to build a longer range, more systematic plan, without suffocating Trump’s improvisational essence.

Parscale, who considers past presidential campaigns archaic, is emphasizing digital innovation, technological streamlining and corporate efficiency.

Parscale told us: “We’re crushing it in prospecting.”

What’s new: It’s a sign of the times — and a reflection of what worked for Trump — that the digital director of the 2016 campaign will be the boss of the whole 2020 campaign.
It’s a fresh way of flouting campaign orthodoxy, and gives Trump the comfort of elevating one of his originals.

Why he matters: Parscale, 42, is a completely unconventional choice for campaign manager and one that has raised eyebrows inside the White House and among Republican campaign veterans.

Some inside the White House have told us they believe he “got lucky” by hitching his wagon to a candidate who won despite his campaign, not because of it.

Parscale had no history in politics before the 2016 campaign, and doesn’t plan to work in politics beyond the 2020 campaign.

His connection is to the Trump family — and especially to Jared Kushner and Eric Trump.

Parscale launched the digital side of the Trump campaign from the San Antonio office of his firm Giles-Parscale, which grew to over 100 people as the campaign peaked, with revenues of $79 million for the cycle (much of which went to Facebook).

Some alumni of the last campaign say Parscale’s role exceeded his title as digital director: In late August 2016, after the departure of Paul Manafort, Parscale moved to Trump Tower, with a hand in various parts of the operation, including finances and events.
Parscale sold his interest in Giles-Parscale in August, and moved to the Washington area about eight weeks ago. (He now works through a new firm, Parscale Strategy.)

Stable geniuses, all of ’em.

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Mass Deportation as a campaign slogan

Mass Deportation as a campaign slogan

by digby

He isn’t calling for extermination of the vermin so that’s a relief. At least not yet:

A Republican candidate in Georgia’s gubernatorial race is bringing what he calls a “Deportation Bus Tour’ to the state’s “sanctuary cities” to tout his support for expediting deportation for immigrants in the United States illegally.

State Sen. Michael Williams’s campaign said in a press release that the tour will “expose how dangerous illegal aliens ruin local economies, cost American jobs, increase healthcare costs and lower education standards.”

Williams says in a commercial for the tour that his deportation plan will “fill this bus with illegals to send them back to where they came from.”

“We’re not just going to track them and watch them roam around our state,” Williams says. “We’re going to put them on this bus and send ‘em home.”

Williams, a former co-chair of President Trump’s campaign in Georgia, is a staunch supporter of the federal 287(g) immigration program, in which state and local law-enforcement agencies work closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to hand over immigrants without legal status who were arrested on crimes unrelated to immigration.

In the press release, Williams’s campaign praises him as “the most outspoken anti-illegal candidate in Georgia’s history.”

Does everyone remember when commentators erupted in horror when Hillary Clinton dared to observe that Trump and the Republicans were threatening to “go and literally pull [illegal immigrants] out of their homes and their workplaces . . . Round them up, put them, I don’t know, in buses, boxcars, in order to take them across our border?”

Yes, she was way out of line for even suggesting such a thing.

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Flint water for all America

Flint water for all America

by digby

Scott Pruitt is a swine scarfing at the government trough, we know this (although that is an insult to swine.) But you should know that he and Trump are also trying to kill you and your kids:

Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a “public relations nightmare,” newly disclosed emails reveal.

The intervention early this year — not previously disclosed — came as HHS’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia.

The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails.

“The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” one unidentified White House aide said in an email forwarded on Jan. 30 by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the OMB. The email added: “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.”

More than three months later, the draft study remains unpublished, and the HHS unit says it has no scheduled date to release it for public comment. Critics say the delay shows the Trump administration is placing politics ahead of an urgent public health concern — something they had feared would happen after agency leaders like Pruitt started placing industry advocates in charge of issues like chemical safety.

The Trump administration won’t stand for bad press. It might shake the confidence the nation has in his leadership.

Also, they are incompetent and corrupt.

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