Month: May 2018

The GOP Ahabs and their Great White Whale

by digby

Paul Krugman’s column today about the effects of the Trump tax cuts is a must read:

So far, Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have achieved one and only one major legislative victory: passing a large tax cut, mainly aimed at corporations and business owners. The tax cut’s proponents promised that it would lead to a dramatic acceleration of economic growth and produce big gains in wages; they hoped that it would also yield big political dividends for the midterm elections.
So how’s it going? Politically, the tax cut is a damp squib: Most voters say they haven’t seen any boost to their paychecks, and Republicans are barely talking about the law in their political campaigns. But what about the economics? 

You might be tempted to say that it’s too early to tell. After all, the law has been in effect for only a few months, and we got our first look at post-tax-cut economic growth only last week. But here’s the thing: To deliver on its backers’ promises, the tax cut would have to produce a huge surge in business investment — not in the long run, not five or 10 years from now, but more or less right away. And there’s no sign that anything like that is happening.

There’s more at the link.

Even some Republicans are accidentally telling the truth about their corrupt tax bill. Seth Hanlon helpfully supplies us with a list, via twitter.

Bibi’s bust

It’s pretty obvious that this was a coordinated information drop to give Trump an excuse to tear up the Iran deal. (Again, why they would want to do this at the same time they are trying to get North Korea to agree to sign a similar deal is beyond me. Clearly, a US guarantee isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.)

But that may be giving them too much credit. The White House might actually have bought Netanyahu’s spin — or thought they could get away with pretending that Iran still has a nuclear program. You will not believe this one:

A one-letter mistake on an official White House statement led to consternation and questions about official US policy toward Iran on Monday, and a quiet correction did little to quell the matter.

In the written statement sent to reporters around 7:30 p.m. ET, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declared that newly unveiled Israeli intelligence proved “Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program.”

The declaration flew in the face of American intelligence determinations, which found Tehran froze its program following the Obama-era agreement to lift sanctions in exchange for curtailing its nuclear ambitions.

“Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program,” the online version read, reiterating a long-established US position.

The White House did not issue a formal correction, but did offer an explanation.

“The original White House statement included a clerical error, which we quickly detected and fixed,” a National Security Council spokesman told CNN Tuesday. “To be clear, the United States has long known that Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program.”

The snafu came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dramatically presented on Monday a hoard of Iranian documents that he said proved the regime lied about its pursuit of nuclear weapons.’

But analysts shrugged, saying Netanyahu’s hour-long presentation in English offered little new information about Iran’s program.

On Tuesday, the White House sought to bolster Netanyahu’s position, saying the information “adds new and compelling details about these efforts.”

Yeah, whatever.

Obviously, it was not a typo. They either believed, or were trying to clumsily suggest,that Iran has an ongoing nuclear program. I’d guess with Trump it was the first and Bolton it was the second. Either way, it is completely appalling. Wars start over stuff like this.

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Kelly and the idiot King

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

President Donald Trump is running out of brass. He axed former national security advisers Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster, two of his “generals.” Despite Trump’s energetic defense of Dr. Ronny Jackson, the Navy rear admiral has now been relieved of duty as the presidential physician. We’ve been hearing for months that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is on the outs with Trump, and new reporting makes it seem likely he won’t be there much longer.

Ever since Kelly said that Trump was “uninformed” about policy issues and then mishandled the Rob Porter scandal by stabbing former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks in the back and letting her take the blame, the rumblings have gotten louder. Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported in March that the relationship with Kelly was on the skids:

With the departures of Hope Hicks and Gary Cohn, the Trump presidency is entering a new phase — one in which Trump is feeling liberated to act on his impulses. “Trump is in command. He’s been in the job more than a year now. He knows how the levers of power work. He doesn’t give a fuck,” the Republican [source] said. Trump’s decision to circumvent the policy process and impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum reflects his emboldened desire to follow his impulses and defy his advisers. “It was like a fuck-you to Kelly,” a Trump friend said. “Trump is red-hot about Kelly trying to control him.”

It was obvious at the time that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were among those pushing this storyline. Ivanka was quoted complaining to a friend that Kelly had embarrassed Kushner with the security clearance issue. (Apparently she was unaware that her father can clear anyone he chooses to.)

After attorney John Dowd left the president’s legal team, stories circulated that Trump was feeling so liberated that he was planning to eliminate the position of chief of staff altogether. That certainly didn’t give the impression Kelly had much job security. Kelly seemed to know he was short for the White House at the time. At a Department of Homeland Security event in Texas, Kelly said that he had loved running that department and that his move to the White House must have meant, “I did something wrong and God punished me.” One imagines Trump was not pleased to hear that one.

Recently we learned that Trump is no longer allowing Kelly to be on all his calls, including the one in which he congratulated Vladimir Putin on his recent re-election, despite the unanimous warning from his advisers not to do it. There has been a lot of talk that Fox News host Sean Hannity is a de facto chief of staff, advising the president with private talks by cell phone. One wonders why Kelly has stuck around this long. In answer to that, NBC News reported this week that the infighting and back-stabbing has risen to new heights and that members of the White House staff have now turned on Kelly, leaking that he arrogantly takes credit for saving the world from Donald Trump.

In one heated exchange between the two men before February’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, Kelly strongly — and successfully — dissuaded Trump from ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, according to two officials.

For Kelly, the exchange underscored the reasoning behind one of his common refrains, which multiple officials described as some version of “I’m the one saving the country.”

“The strong implication being ‘if I weren’t here we would’ve entered WWIII or the president would have been impeached,'” one former senior White House official said.

He also apparently frequently refers to Trump as an “idiot.”

CNN further reported that when Trump abruptly announced in public, and without any discussion with advisers, that he would pull U.S. troops from Syria, Kelly referred to the president as “unhinged” in a meeting with national security officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Kelly is not, of course, the first of Trump’s close advisers to call him an idiot. McMaster reportedly said that too, also calling the president a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartener.” Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson famously called Trump a “fucking moron.” Now-disgraced Senior Adviser Steve Bannon, a true believer, said that Trump was like an 11-year old. Perhaps worst of all was an email “purporting to represent the views of former economic adviser Gary Cohn” which, according to Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” read in part:

It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored . . . Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.

You will note that none of those people still work in the White House. It stands to reason that John Kelly must be getting close to his final exit as well.

The NBC News report went to great lengths to also point out that Kelly is widely disliked for his antediluvian sexist views, absurdly suggesting that the Trump White House has zero tolerance for such behavior within its august halls. Kelly reportedly defended accused domestic abuser Rob Portman by saying that women are more emotional than men, which is rich considering that Porter allegedly got so angry at his former wife that he dragged her out of the shower to scream abuse at her. Then there’s Kelly himself, who reportedly blows off steam with “salty language” and constantly insults his boss in meetings with other White House staff. Obviously, Trump himself is no study in grace under pressure. He watches TV for hours, works himself into a frenzy and then blurts out:

A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018

While Kelly’s sexism may sound creepy, it’s a bit much for staffers to put this out there as the reason for his demise. They are working for Donald Trump, the man who bragged about groping women’s private parts and getting away with it because he’s a star. It’s obvious they have no standards in that regard.

Clearly, Kelly is being shoved out because everyone understands Trump is an idiot, and it’s only a matter of time before he finds out they are saying it out loud. He won’t have that:

….Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018

….to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018

Beltway pundits are all bemoaning the fact that Kelly’s impending departure will mean there is only one “grown-up” left, Defense Secretary Mattis. No one knows how long he will last either; he may be next in line.

Donald Trump thinks he’s got this now, and he doesn’t need anyone advising him to do things he doesn’t want to do. Anyway, he’s got John Bolton, Larry Kudlow and Sean Hannity to lean on. What could go wrong?

Early voting opens in Georgia
by Tom Sullivan

Georgia State Capitol. Photo by Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Any candidate running a campaign based on conventional wisdom in the Trump era might want to have her/his head examined. Yet many professional Democrats still bet their political fortunes on it.

Four states hold primaries a week from now: Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia. Early voting for Georgia’s primary begins today. The primary itself falls on May 22, the same day as Texas’s Seventh Congressional District runoff between DCCC-backed Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and Democratic opponent Laura Moser.

Democrats at the highest levels have written the book on failed campaign strategies, and this Texas race follows in that tradition. Both are, writes Charlie Pierce, “perfectly fine candidates, both women, and the DCCC somehow has turned this into a problem.” Ahead of the primary, the DCCC released an opposition report on Moser, the progressive activist behind Daily Action. The tactic backfired and Moser forced Fletcher into a runoff.

Stacey Abrams, former minority leader of the Georgia House, leads her Democratic opponent in the race for governor, Stacey Evans, by nearly 20 points. On a string of issues, Evans and Abrams share similar positions. But Evans, a white attorney from the Atlanta suburbs and current member of the Georgia House of Representatives, believes “you are going to have to persuade some moderate Republicans to vote for you, if you are going to win in Georgia.”

Pursuing Republican crossover votes was not a winning strategy for Jon Ossoff in the GA-6 special election. But Ossoff, another DCCC advisee, contested a smaller slice of Georgia than Abrams and Evans will. Abrams is following a strategy counter to conventional Democratic wisdom.

Aimee Allison, president of Democracy in Color, explains in a New York Times op-ed:

From the beginning of the race, the state Democratic Party had its eyes fixed on winning white swing voters, including those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Some are arguing that white voters are the best way to close the roughly 215,000-vote gap that has kept Democrats out of the governor’s mansion for the last decade. Perhaps that’s the reason that party leaders recruited the millionaire Democrat Stacey Evans to run against Ms. Abrams. The Evans effort is focused on appealing to white voters as necessary and sufficient to win. Georgia Democrats have drawn from this playbook many times, including the failed candidacies of Michelle Nunn for Senate and Jason Carter’s own failure at a run for governor.

The numbers and the history show the folly of that approach. By insisting on the strategy of appealing to white Republican and moderate voters, Democrats have lost over and over again with a population that is nearly a majority of people of color — specifically, voters of color who make up nearly half of the Democratic Party membership in Georgia and nationally. Even casual observations of these numbers and trends would indicate that Democrats do not need to persuade a single Trump voter to win.

Abrams is working to activate 1.2 million unregistered voters in Georgia, 700,000 outside metro Atlanta, and black women, reliable Democratic voters, drive the effort. If she succeeds, Allison writes, Abrams’s strategy could become a template for Democrats winning in other Republican strongholds. Abrams would be the first African-American woman in the nation to become governor.

Not without critics, Abrams is accused of being too quick to compromise with Republicans. Lee Fang writes at The Intercept that Abrams as minority leader in 2015 signed off on Republican redistricting maps that diluted black voting strength. Lacking detailed information about the bill, every House Democrat (including Evans) voted for the maps following Abrams’s lead. Now Democrats are fighting those same maps in court and Republicans are using her support as a defense.

But what may matter in the end is whose electoral strategy delivers.

FiveThirtyEight sees weaknesses in both:

It’s unclear who has the right theory, but both approaches have clear challenges. No Democrat has won a gubernatorial, U.S. Senate or presidential contest in Georgia since Zell Miller was elected senator there in 2000. So it’s hard to see Evans wooing enough Republicans to win — no other Democrat running for a major office has in almost 20 years. At the same time, Georgia has enough minorities and urbanites for Democrats to almost win there but not enough to get over the hump, so Abrams’s path looks perilous as well.

But Abrams is running a nontraditional campaign. That in itself may provide more opportunity than peril in the age of Trump. She invested heavily and early in on-the-ground organizing rather than in TV ads. She has saved that for the sprint. Her polling lead may indicate her approach has more advantages than downsides.

Allison writes, “The Abrams idea — that black women leading a multiracial bloc of voters will establish a new base — may also revolutionize American electoral politics.”

First she has to win.

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

QOTD: Li’l Marco

by digby

“There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” the Florida senator told the Economist in a recent interview. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

Maybe he wants to run as Bernie Sanders running mate in 2020? If so, he should have thought about not voting for that insane tax bill then.

He also said he thinks we need more programs to help people, which is really sweet of him. I suspect he’ll want to cut social security and health care to pay for them. Because we don’t have money due to that grotesque tax bill he voted for.

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Rand Paul thinks we were all born yesterday

by digby

The good news for all of us is that the president says what he means and he means what he says. So this is very reassuring:

In the days leading up to a key vote last week over the fate of his nominee for secretary of state, President Trump found a way to win over one of the biggest skeptics in the Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), a rare isolationist Republican, was signaling that he would oppose Trump’s pick, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a hawkish former congressman who had backed the Iraq War.

But the more Trump and Paul spoke, including three calls last Monday, the more assured Paul became that the president was moving back toward the non-interventionist world view that Trump had championed on the campaign trail. The conversations left Paul with a particularly enticing notion: that Trump was prepared to end the war in Afghanistan.

“The president told me over and over again in general we’re getting the hell out of there,” Paul said in an interview Thursday in his Senate office. “I think the president’s instincts and inclination are to resolve the Afghan conflict.”

Sure, right. And his word is like oak.

Count on it.

But look at this inane headline:

Uhm no. He told Rand what he needed to hear so that he would have something to say when he voted for Pompeo. He knows that they are all a bunch of warmongers slavering for the chance to bomb the shit out of someone.

I’m sure Rand will be very disappointed when Trump doesn’t actually withdraw from Afghanistn which has never been his plan. He wasn’t to “win” in Afghanistan which means “taking the oil” or in this case minerals. To the victor belongs the spoils. And Rand knows that very well. It’s just that his “brand” is being the libertarian isolationist hero so everyone has to do this dance to allow him some way to be an unreconstructed wingnut while still collecting all that cash.

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