Month: September 2018

Another massive storm on the other side of the world

by digby

How weird that these are happening everywhere. Whatever could be the cause?

Super Typhoon Manghut slammed into the Philippines early Saturday after thousands of people evacuated their homes to dodge the 550-mile wide storm, roaring across the Pacific with maximum sustained winds of 170 miles per hour.

The ferocity of the storm in some ways eclipsed Hurricane Florence on the other side of the world, pummeling the Mid-Atlantic Coast of the United States with life-threatening rains.

The eye of Mangkhut, known as Ompong in the Philippines, made landfall on the northern island of Luzon, the country’s rice and corn growing heartland, where more than four million people are at risk, early Saturday around 1:40 a.m.

The storm, gusting at speeds equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane, passed the American territory of Guam on Thursday, knocking out 80 percent of the island’s electricity and downing trees and power lines. Catch up on the rest of our storm coverage.
Wind, rain batter Luzon as storm makes landfall

By Friday evening, the northern and central portions of Luzon were already feeling the strength of Mangkhut, even as the eye of the hurricane was hours away from making landfall. When it slammed into the coast at around 1:40 a.m., with the eye making landfall over Baggao in Cagayan Province.

The maximum sustained wind speed of the typhoon had slowed to about 120 miles per hour as it reached Luzon’s shores, according to the national weather service, but gusts still reached up to 170 miles per hour.

Heavy rain and battering winds were reported in that province, with Manuel Mamba, the provincial governor, describing the capital as being “pummeled” during an telephone interview with the ABS-CBN News Channel.

Meanwhile, this storm isn’t finished:

After the Philippines, the storm is predicted to pass Hong Kong on Sunday before slamming into the Chinese mainland on Monday morning.

The Hong Kong Observatory warned residents of the territory to “take suitable precautions and pay close attention to the latest information” on the storm.

In mainland China, the southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan have ordered residents to seek shelter away from the coast.

The State Department in Washington issued a travel alert for Guangdong and Hainan, warning of “extremely high winds, dangerous storm tides, heavy rainfall, and possible flooding.”

Much of the planning for Mangkhut has been informed by Typhoon Haiyan, the devastating 2013 storm that led to the deaths of thousands of people and left more than four million people homeless.

That storm taught many lessons. Food and fresh water must be in position before a storm hits, as roads and airports may be closed for a week or more afterward because of fallen trees and other damage. Soldiers and police officers need to fan out to restore order as soon as the typhoon passes so civil society does not collapse in storm-ravaged areas. Evacuation centers need to be built on higher ground with stronger roofs.

Good lord.

As we watch this endless footage of Hurricane Florence, keep some good thoughts for our fellow humans going through the same thing over the next few days on the other side of the world.

Just boys bein’ boys

by digby

I guess the Republicans just can’t find men who aren’t accused of sexual harassment these days to run for office or go on the Supreme Court.

Far from the “hail Mary pass” conservatives are claiming, Democrats were reluctant to air the woman’s complaint against Kavanaugh, that he’d forced himself on her sexually, and covered her mouth to stop her screaming in high school. https://t.co/zY8ZDdlVrj

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) September 14, 2018

This is the upshot of the article in case you don’t have a New Yorker sub:

The woman, who has asked not to be identified, first approached Democratic lawmakers in July, shortly after Trump nominated Kavanaugh. The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.

In a statement, Kavanaugh said, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

Kavanaugh’s classmate said of the woman’s allegation, “I have no recollection of that.”

The woman declined a request for an interview.

In recent months, the woman had told friends that Kavanaugh’s nomination had revived the pain of the memory, and that she was grappling with whether to go public with her story. She contacted her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, a Democrat, sending her a letter describing her allegation. (When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Eshoo’s office cited a confidentiality policy regarding constituent services and declined to comment further on the matter.)

The Republicans obviously knew about this too. They had at the ready a letter with a bunch of Kavanaugh’s female high school classmates saying that he never tried to rape them, which really isn’t responsive.

I don’t know if this will do anything to derail the perjuring, torture-loving right-wing hitman’s ascension to the highest court in the land. He’s the perfect representation of the Trump movement. And the Republicans are desperately afraid of them.

I am reminded of this:

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, as it is officially known, has played a crucial role in putting conservative jurists on the bench. As White House counsel, McGahn is responsible for helping Trump select his judicial nominees. And, as he explained in his speech that November afternoon, he had drawn up two lists of potential judicial appointments.

The first list consisted of “mainstream folks, not a big paper trail, the kind of folks that will get through the Senate and will make us feel good that we put some pragmatic folks on the bench.”

The second list was made up of “some folks that are kind of too hot a for prime time, the kind that would be really hot in the Senate, probably people who have written a lot, we really get a sense of their views — the kind of people that make some people nervous.”

The first list, McGahn said, Trump decided to “throw in the trash.” The second list Trump resolved “to put before the U.S. Senate” for a confirmation vote. The president, McGahn assured his audience, was “very committed to what we are committed to here, which is nominating and appointing judges that are committed originalists and textualists.”

Kavanaugh clerked for Judge Kosinski who has recently been revealed to have been a disgusting sexual harasser of the highest order. Kavanaugh says he knew nothing about it. Just as he knows nothing about all the horrifying wingnut ratfucking he’s been involved in for the past 25 years. He’s a thoroughly horrible person. I have no trouble believing that a man who would gravitate toward this kind of dark political guerilla warfare would have a violent streak. In any case, he clearly has no morals about anything else. Not that it matters. At this point being a sexual predator is a requirement for Republican high office.

Here’s Laura Ingraham on the subject last night:

INGRAHAM: But with Brett, here he is 17 years old, is a Georgetown Prep kid at Washington Catholic School, is 17 with a friend, locks some woman when in a room and then she was able to leave. That is what is being reported this night as a story. But if someone you don’t know who heard it from someone else, who’s at Stanford.

What’s a little attempted rape, amirite? No biggie. Just boys bein’ boys.

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Bernie throws down

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

I wrote earlier in the week about Steve Bannon’s ties to far-right politicians in Europe. In fact, Bannon is in Italy right now schmoozing with his newest political ally, Matteo Salvini, who’s the interior minister and leads the country’s nationalist, anti-immigrant party. The New York Times describes Salvini as “the most powerful figure in Italy’s new populist government.” He’s an emerging far-right superstar known for his puckish habit of owning the libs by quoting Benito Mussolini.

According to the Times, Salvini has signed on to Bannon’s new so-called organization, “The Movement” in order to “help bring about a continent-wide populist takeover during European Parliamentary elections next spring.” Bannon will offer a meeting space and supposed expertise in various aspects of campaigning for far-right populist leaders. (Apparently, his three months of experience working for Donald Trump in the flukiest presidential election in U.S. history qualifies him as a political guru.)

Salvini has other things in common with Trump and the Republicans besides Steve Bannon. He and his party are being investigated by government prosecutors for allegedly stealing tens of millions of euros. (Funny how all these “populists” are always stealing money with both hands.) Just to make things even more interesting, Buzzfeed report that Salvini’s close aide, Gianluca Savoini, “has links to mercenaries fighting alongside pro-Russian and neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine.” Savoini himself is the leader of a pro-Russia “cultural organization” which Buzzfeed’s research showed has disseminated pro-Kremlin propaganda. He has been pushing hard to remove Italian sanctions against Russia. What a small world.

Evidently, Salvini has recently met with Hungary’s nationalist anti-immigrant prime minister Viktor Orbán, who is also interested in joining up with Bannon’s new movement. Banding together to defeat liberals across the continent is a curious form of nationalism but that seems to be the plan.

Zack Beauchamp of Vox got a first-hand look at this new movement when he went to Hungary to check out the Orbán government. His report is chilling. He describes an authoritarian state with border fences, byzantine bureaucracy designed to thwart democratic governance, a stifled press overwhelmed with government propaganda and a kleptocratic economy. He dubs it “soft fascism,” which sounds better than it actually is:

[A] political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state.

He observes how this provides a model for the U.S., not by dramatically imposing dictatorial rule but rather through “a series of changes to electoral rules and laws imposed over time that might individually be defensible but in combination with corruption and demagogic populism creates a new system — one that appears democratic but functionally is not.”

Bannon has said that Orbán, who has been in office since 2010, was “Trump before Trump.”

Bannon thinks he’s smarter than everybody else and often tries to co-opt the populist left into his warped vision. He told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last June that he believes he can peel off at least 25 percent of Bernie Sanders’ followers to form a nationalist governing majority. Just last week, he warnedprogressives that the establishment would obstruct their agenda if a Democrat won the White House, just as he believes it is staging a “coup” against Donald Trump.

I suspect many members of the American left have been looking for their leaders to speak out on this. On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders came through with a searing op-ed in the Guardian condemning this far-right movement and calling it out for the serious threat it is. He calls it “a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet – economically, socially and environmentally – is at stake … we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis.”

Sanders didn’t use the term “axis” by accident. He writes:

While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests. … This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.

It is extremely important that one of the most important leaders of the American left puts this is such stark and evocative terms. He calls out the corrupt, authoritarian leadership of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, China and more and makes the connections among them clear, calling them part of a “common front” sharing tactics and even some of the same mega-rich funders.

Sanders doesn’t offer specific policies to combat this threat, beyond his social-democratic economic agenda and standard non-interventionist philosophy but that’s not the important part. He is issuing a wake-up call to the American left:

In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power. 

Such a movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we would like to see. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now. 

We must look honestly at how that order has failed to deliver on many of its promises, and how authoritarians have adeptly exploited those failures in order to build support for their agenda. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace.

Neither the American left nor the international left is buying into Bannon and company’s cramped, ugly, Hobbesian worldview and it never will. The right-wing racists and nationalists are on their own.

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They call him Flipper

by digby

lol:

NEW: White House @PressSec Sarah Sanders on Paul Manafort’s plea deal: “This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign. It is totally unrelated.”https://t.co/I07uCEa5JX

— ABC News (@ABC) September 14, 2018

In New York state, six incumbents go down
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Sam valadi via Creative Commons, CC by 2.0.

Democratic “insurgents” defeated six New York Senate incumbents last night in New York’s state primary contests. Actress and activist Cynthia Nixon, however, was unsuccessful in her bid to oust Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Nixon lost in a 2-to-1 landslide. Cuomo is heavily favored to win a third term in November.

Veteran New York City politician Letitia James won the nomination for New York attorney general in a four-way race that included Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout. Nixon, progressive groups, and the New York Times had endorsed Teachout. But James built strong margins in New York City that propelled her to victory. If she wins in November, James becomes New York’s first black woman to hold a statewide elected office.

But take in what the Washington Post describes as “an unalloyed victory” for liberals, the defeat of six of eight former members of a state senate caucus that had become a cause célèbre for progressives. Energized by resistance to Donald Trump and the congressional primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over incumbent Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley in June, progressives set their sights on ousting Albany Democrats reviled for blocking progressive reforms.

I.D.C. is short for the Independent Democratic Conference, known in progressive circles as a fake liberal, faux populist klatch of state legislators who caucus with Republicans. Essentially, Empire State Blue Dogs.

Formed in 2011, the New York Times explains, by Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx and three other state senators, Republicans rewarded the splinter faction with key committee posts. When Democrats regained control in 2012, the I.D.C.’s alliance with Republicans held back progressive reforms: single-payer health care, voting reforms, and more.

“The conventional wisdom,” wrote Alan Chartock, professor emeritus at the State University of New York, “is that both Andrew and his father Mario actually liked having the Republicans serve as the ‘brake’ on the free spending Assembly Democrats.” They say no so Andrew doesn’t have to.

Facing Cuomo’s tack left to thwart Nixon and a growing progressive insurgency, the I.D.C. formally disbanded in April. The move did not have the desired effect. If anything, the anti-I.D.C. movement gained strength. But, the Times notes, many officials who endorsed anti-I.D.C. candidates hedged their bets by also endorsing Cuomo.

I.D.C. members, including former I.D.C. chair, Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, dramatically outspent their challengers:

But on Thursday, he was defeated by Alessandra Biaggi, a lawyer and former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, after a campaign in which Ms. Biaggi cornered Mr. Klein into spending nearly $2 million — more than 10 times what she spent — since January, an astonishing sum for a state legislative race. (Cynthia Nixon, in her bid against Mr. Cuomo, spent less.)

“If this doesn’t prove that political currency is people over money, I do not know what does,” Ms. Biaggi said at her victory party. “We have now cut the head of the I.D.C. snake.”

Indeed, boots on the ground can trump money in the bank. Working Families Party endorsed Biaggi and the other challengers, providing both training and staff.

Also noteworthy is how the challengers spent their more-limited funds:

Each challenger outspent his or her opponent on Facebook advertisements, sometimes by a huge margin. Ms. Biaggi and her allies spent between $14,500 and $93,800 on Facebook ads since the website’s online archive launched in May, while Mr. Klein and his supporters spent between $2,400 and $14,796. The challengers also recruited volunteers to fan out across their districts and knock on doors.

Julia Salazar, 27, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, defeated eight-term incumbent Sen. Martin Dilan in New York’s 18th District. Although not a member of the I.D.C., Dilan bore the label of being too Republican-friendly in a changing district suffering rising rents and gentrification.

Endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Salazar had been dogged by accusations she misled reporters about her biography and her conversion to Reform Judaism. But with no Republican challenger in her race, Salazar is virtually guaranteed a senate seat in Albany.

“Tonight’s victory is about New Yorkers coming together and choosing to fight against rising rents and homelessness in our communities,” Salazar told supporters. “Together, we will build a better New York.”

Salazar, Biaggi, and their allies will still have to contend with Andrew Cuomo to make that happen.

* * * * * * * * *

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

His whole presidency is his “Katrina”

by digby

Apparently, Trump is obsessed with not having a “Katrina.”

Lol.

That obsession became painfully evident this week as Trump, in the midst of preparing for Hurricane Florence’s landfall, took time on Thursday morning to trumpet post-facto justifications of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island of Puerto Rico last year. In a series of tweets, he claimed—without any evidence—that the 3,000 or so deaths tied to that storm were an exaggerated count used by Democrats to make him look bad.

It read like a shocking bit of insensitivity from the White House just at the moment that it was preparing for another potentially deadly storm. But those familiar with Trump’s approach say he does in fact care about the widespread devastation and loss of life that resulted from Maria and could potentially result from Florence—if for no other reason than he also has an intense fixation on managing public perception of his performance in these moments.

“Multiple times I’ve heard him talk about how you don’t want a Katrina moment,” recalled a former senior Trump White House official. “You can’t do anything about what weather is going to do, but you can certainly manage the response and the optics of what you’re doing in addition to the substance of what you’re doing.”

All presidents are aware of how their responses to natural disasters are perceived, in large part because history is littered with politicians whose careers were crippled by perceived inadequate responses. The most cautionary tale is that of George W. Bush, who infamously looked out the window of Air Force One as it flew over a ravaged New Orleans following Katrina’s landfall in 2005—a moment of perceived indifference that dogged the rest of his presidency.

But no president has taken image-obsession to the level of Trump. The famously cable news-addicted president closely followed how his administration’s response to the past storms was graded and he’s taken steps to make sure he scores high on the upcoming one.
[…]
But for Trump, sources say, the briefings are rooted in large measure in fear over public perception. “He always wants to be able to say FEMA’s doing this and that.”

That concern isn’t unspoken in the White House—he makes his determination to avoid a “heckuva job” moment known to staffers in the West Wing. Trump himself noted at the time that the Bush administration’s response to Katrina, and in particular FEMA’s handling of it under then-director Michael Brown, dealt a major hit to the administration’s public standing.

“The credibility of the Bush administration now is at an all-time low. And when you look at what’s happened in New Orleans, when you look at the head of FEMA, who I guess was thrown out of a horse association, it was sort of interesting,” he said in a Fox News interview weeks after the storm hit.

By contrast, he felt that Hurricane Sandy, in October 2012, gave Obama the type of political showcase he needed boost his electoral bid—much to Trump’s chagrin.

Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars.

But for all his fretting over the optics of a hurricane response, Trump’s handling of the aftermath of Maria received universally horrid reviews. Large swaths of Puerto Rico remained without electricity for months. Hundreds of thousands of water bottles went undistributed. Celebrity chefs were forced to prepare meals for hungry Puerto Ricans because the government couldn’t. And the one time Trump did touch down on the island, the most indelible image he left was of him tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd.

In late August, a study commissioned and accepted by the government of Puerto Rico put a grim data point on the aftermath, estimating that 2,975 deaths could be properly attributed to the storm and the failures in response. But instead of acknowledging mistakes, Trump, on Thursday morning, questioned the legitimacy of the findings.

Sources close to the president say that his tweets were the product of a growing anger over media coverage in recent weeks spotlighting the Maria-related body count. In private, these sources say, Trump has insisted that he and his administration did a superb job in relief efforts responding to the hurricanes, and that his enemies are simply trying to humiliate him.

To accommodate that insistence, White House officials scrambled Thursday morning to hash out an explanation that would supposedly “clarify” —but not correct—Trump’s allegations over death tolls. But even one West Wing official acknowledged that the president had been “tone deaf,” at least.

Ya think?

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GOP worthless from top to bottom

by digby

Trump’s Puerto Rico tweets this morning are a perfect representation of his unique pathology:

3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018

…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018

It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Zack Beauchamp at Vox perfectly describes what he’s doing there.

It starts with saying blatantly untrue things that make Trump look better. It continues by claiming any disagreement with his version of reality is politically motivated. And all throughout, the argument involves coded or not-so-coded racial appeals, giving license for white Americans to ignore the suffering of people of color and allowing them to dismiss allegations of racial injustice as political correctness run amok.

But as odious as that is, I think Paul Ryan’s comments were even worse:

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Pres. Trump disputing a report on the Puerto Rico death toll: "There is no reason to dispute these numbers and it's a function of this was a devastating storm that hit an isolated island and that's really no one's fault" https://t.co/PvHxJMGqmq pic.twitter.com/AdxLhiXNRc— Deena Zeina Zaru 👩🏻‍💻 (@Deena_Zaru) September 13, 2018

First of all, as Colbert pointed out, it’s not King Kong island it’s Puerto Rico fergawdsakes.

Yes, it’s nice that he didn’t find any reason to “dispute” the numbers but the point is that the vast majority of those deaths happened because the government was so slow off the mark! It wasn’t the hurricane that killed them it was the Trump administration’s inability to perform the most basic function of the federal government.

The president made excuses, he lied, he whined, he blamed everyone but his own people for this failure. Now he’s just saying it didn’t happen, the whole thing was a conspiracy and his government’s miserable failure was actually a big success.

And Ryan helped him evade responsibility. They have not had one hearing or investigation about what happened or even the slightest attempt to figure out how to prevent it in the future. This is on the GOP congress just as much as Trump which explains why the Speaker of the House is also whining and blaming and saying that failing to get needed supplies and power to these Americans in a timely manner was an act of God instead of an act of extreme government malfeasance.

Update: Here’s the story of just one victim out of thousands that died because the richest most technologically advanced superpower on the planet couldn’t be bothered to put everything it had into restoring power properly to its own territory populated by its own citizens. It’s horrific.

Remember what he said?

“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you threw our budget a little out of whack.” They needed every penny for those tax cuts for billionaires.

And you’ll notice he didn’t complain about Texas and Florida busting the budget with their hurricanes.

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Coup, Coup c’joob

by digby

Let’s check in on the baby, shall we?

According to sources, Trump has been furious at former economic adviser Gary Cohn and staff secretary Rob Porter for their apparent cooperation with Woodward’s book. “Trump thinks he took Gary in and gave him a job when he was going nowhere at Goldman,” a Trump adviser told me. According to the adviser, Trump let it be known to Cohn and Porter that he would attack them publicly if they didn’t disavow the book. (On Tuesday, they both did.) “The president has had it,” a former West Wing official said. “When books like this come out, he tends to shut down and calls up people he sees on TV saying good things about him.”

But Trump’s anger over Woodward’s book is dwarfed by his continuing fixation on the anonymous New York Times op-ed. Sources told me Trump is “obsessed,” “lathered,” and “freaked out” that the leaker is still in his midst. His son Don Jr. has told people he’s worried Trump isn’t sleeping because of it, a source said. Meetings have been derailed by Trump’s suspicion. “If you look at him the wrong way, he’ll spend the next hour thinking you wrote it,” a Republican close to the White House said. Much of what’s fueling Trump’s paranoia is that he has no clear way to identify the author. One adviser said Trump has instructed aides to call the anonymous author a “coward” in public to shame him or her. “He’s going to continue to shame this person,” a person close to Trump said. “The author will break under pressure or will eventually say, ‘fuck it, it’s me.’” Plans to administer polygraph tests to staff have seemingly died. “Nobody knows who it is,” a former official said.

Besides family, one of the only people Trump continues to trust is Stephen Miller. “The op-ed has validated Miller’s view, which was also Steve Bannon’s, that there’s an ‘administrative state’ out to get Trump,” a Republican close to the White House said. “There is a coup, and it’s not slow-rolling or concealed,” Bannon told me. “Trump believes there’s a coup,” a person familiar with his thinking said. Trump’s relationship with Secretary of Defense James Mattis, which was already strained, has become almost nonexistent, a former official said.

So Stephen Miller is one of the only people Trump trusts? Gret.

On the other hand, it appears that Miller may be the source of many of Trump’s problems:

In @MajorCBS's book "Mr. Trump's Wild Ride" (out next week), Ty Cobb says Stephen Miller is a key figure in Comey firing.

Cobb says Mueller has "all the handwriting" — lots of back and forth notes between Trump and Miller. pic.twitter.com/5fhGI6ODQl— Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) September 13, 2018

He really can’t trust anyone. They are all either craven opportunists or cowards who will jump ship the minute they are personally in danger. Even Javanka. (Read about Kushner’s family saga and you’ll see that it wouldn’t be the first time.) Miller is a worm who will save himself without question.

But they are all a reflection of the man at the top — fools, con artists, traitors and back-stabbers. Of course they will betray him.

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Beto rising

by digby

He’s good. And doggone it, people like him. He’s young, he’s smart and he’s idealistic. He’s one of the Democrats who represents the new generation of lefty leaders outside the big blue states. They aren’t as combative or aggressively progressive as the new lefties in the blue enclaves. But they are far to the left of the old conservadems.

Considering all that, perhaps this story won’t surprise you:

Meet the ‘new’ Texas Democrats fueling Beto O’Rourke’s race
BY ANDREA DRUSCH

Beto O’Rourke is awakening a grassroots movement in Texas — one that’s led by gray-haired, once-loyal Democrats who are aggressively working to end decades of their own political dormancy in Texas.

It’s not the sleeping Latino base that Democrats have long believed would help them flip Texas blue — and whose engagement remains a critical question for the party’s prospects of a full-blown comeback in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976 — or elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.

Yet O’Rourke’s energetic trek through rural parts of the state has electrified a different piece of the base that’s also been missing for his party in recent years: Older supporters with the time to organize the nuts and bolts of a grassroots campaign.

O’Rourke’s army of retirees has spent the last year and a half knocking on doors, filling much-hyped campaign rallies and wallpapering the state with his campaign swag.

While Democrats concede their party is still struggling to reach other critical elements of their base — in particular voters of color — public polling now shows the El Paso congressman tailing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by single digits.

National Republicans are now considering shifting resources to help an incumbent they’ve believed was safe, while liberal groups are eyeing the Texas Senate race to give O’Rourke more help.

“For a Democrat to win in Texas you have to build a coalition that’s a racial coalition, an ideological coalition, and also a generational coalition,” said Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist whose political action committee, Lone Star Project, works to elect Democrats in Texas.

“[But] you also need people to make the phone calls, knock on the doors, talk to their friends and their neighbors and to express enthusiasm,” added Angle. “People who actually put time in to go to events… have to have the time to do it.”

Packed into Hill Country Veterans Center in Kerrville, Texas, earlier that month, a crowd of roughly 400 people — mostly retirees — endured grueling heat to hear O’Rourke speak on a Sunday morning.

When the event ended, gray-haired O’Rourke supporters piled into their cars to hear him speak at the next rally in Johnson City, 50 miles away. Their caravan stopped to add cars waiting along the route at a parking lot in Gillespie County, which gave Trump roughly 80 percent of its vote in 2016.

A supporter at that pitstop distributed “Fredericksburg Democrat” bumper stickers to a crowd already decked out in O’Rourke swag, down to the dog dressed in homemade “Beto” sign.

“I guess I had my antenna on looking for people to get behind [after Trump’s election] because of situations [in my personal life],” said Sherman Hartley Moore, a retired engineer from Gainesville, Texas, who first heard about O’Rourke when the congressman livestreamed a road trip to Washington, D.C. with Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas.

“When he [announced his Senate bid] I thought, well let me learn more about him,” said Moore, who has voted for Democrats in the past, but not previously been active in a campaign. “The next thing I heard he was in a pickup driving to all of the places I grew up [in rural North Central Texas],” added Moore, who followed O’Rourke’s early travel on Facebook Live.

This year Moore has planned eight town halls, phone banks and field organizing events for O’Rourke. He became a delegate for his state party at the convention in Fort Worth this past June, and last week a Democratic party office opened last week in his hometown of Gainesville, Texas.

Though Moore calls Trump’s plans for health care and immigration his top issue concerns this year — it’s the 45-year-old O’Rourke who’s convinced him to rededicate his life to the cause.

“Besides charisma and star-power… he has a willingness to say I might not be the person you want to vote for, and not all of us are going to agree on everything,” said Moore. Sizing up O’Rourke’s appeal to voters of his age and demographic, Moore said: “They see the divisiveness and fear [under Trump] and they want more civil discourse in government.”

Texas Democrats cast roughly 1 million primary votes this March, more than in any non-presidential election since 1994, and about twice as many as in the 2014 primary, when Davis was on the ballot.

Operatives from both parties attribute the increase primarily to former Democrats coming out of hibernation — the folks now filling O’Rourke’s rallies — and not the new voters they need to make up for Republicans’ traditional turnout advantage in a midterm.

“In the primary [Democrats] had a million voters, their second largest turnout in a long time,” said Dave Carney, the architect of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaigns and President George H. W. Bush’s White House political adviser.

“But their new voters, the 400,000 people who voted this time that didn’t vote in 2014, and very rarely in [previous recent election cycles]… were registered Democrats who had just given up on the party,” added Carney. “They’re coming back to kick the tires, but that’s not new voters.”

O’Rourke faced that reality head-on last month at Americado taco bar in Fort Worth.

Despite calling in help from Fort Worth School Board member Jacinto Ramos Jr. and local Spanish-language band Latin Express to lure members of the community to the “Musica con Beto” event, Democratic organizers conceded most of the venue’s packed courtyard didn’t fit their target demographic.

“The more we educate Latinos on the importance of their vote, the more that we’ll get them to come out and be confident [about] voting,” said Valerie Ramos, vice president of El Voto es Latino, a Fort Worth-based political action committee that’s endorsed O’Rourke and is trying to turn out Latino voters on his behalf.

“Any Republican candidate in Texas getting 40 percent or better [of the Hispanic vote] is going to be coasting to re-election,” said Albert Morales, a Fort Worth-native who serves as Senior Political Director for the left-leaning polling firm Latino Decisions.

Yet pointing to the same primary statistics Republicans disparaged, Angle, the Democratic strategist, said the missing grassroots element has been equally devastating to the party in recent years.

“Getting people who support you in general elections to become activists in primaries and start working on campaigns is important, and that’s progress,” said Angle. “The last Democrat that created that enthusiasm was [former Gov.] Ann Richards, and that was a generation ago.”

It may not be enough. We’ll see in November. But whatever happens, it’s a start.

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Smart organizational move by the Democrats

by digby

This is good:

Today, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), alongside Representatives John Larson (D-CT), and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) joined seniors and activists for a press conference introducing the new Expand Social Security Caucus.

The Expand Social Security Caucus is bicameral, chaired by Sanders and Warren in the Senate and by Larson, Dingell, Terri A. Sewell (D-AL), Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), and Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) in the House.

Currently, the caucus has over 150 members, including 18 Senators. It will provide the leadership to ensure that expanding Social Security is a key part of the Democratic agenda next year and beyond. Over a dozen bills have already been introduced in the Senate and House to expand Social Security.

Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, emceed the press conference and co-authored an opinion piece in The Hill celebrating the caucus launch. He has been a leader in the movement to protect and expand Social Security for years, and is available for radio, print, and television interviews to discuss the caucus.

Video of the event, including the lawmakers’ remarks, is available here.

“Social Security is a lifeline for seniors and Americans with disabilities. We won’t let it be cut by one cent – and instead we will fight to expand it,” Warren said. “The rich and powerful have rigged our economy to make themselves richer, while working families face a massive retirement crisis. If this government really works for the people, it should protect and expand Social Security.” – Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Note that this is a cross-section of the Party, not just progressives. Conor Lamb is running in Pennsylvania as a moderate.

The center is shifting to the left. And focusing on expanding Social Security as that happens is smart. It’s not only the right thing to do, old people vote. And if you look at the latest polling, Trump is not as popular among old people as people think:

Note that only 38% of people over 60 approve compared to 43% of the 30-59 year olds. And they vote.