Month: January 2019

North Carolina: State of Confusion
by Tom Sullivan

Moral Monday Protesters, Raleigh, NC. Movement is over five years old. Photo by twbuckner via Flickr/Creative Commons.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi takes up her gavel as House Speaker once again at noon (presumably). On her plate, a pair of bills to ending the government shutdown and end the partial government shutdown without funding the border wall the president wants. Somewhere down the list: what to do about North Carolina’s unresolved 9th Congressional District race.

The results of a race in which Republican Mark Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes after vote-counting remains uncertified by the State Board of Elections. As of now, and by court order, there is no board to certify them until a new one assembles on January 31. Central are allegations that election fraud engineered by a Harris employee accused (not yet formally) of illegally “harvesting” absentee ballots from voters, destroying some, completing others, and selectively returning those supporting Harris to county elections officials.

With the State Board charged with investigating that dissolved (in another court dispute), the outcome remains in “no man’s land,” says WSOC-TV reporter Joe Bruno. The evidentiary hearing originally scheduled for January 11 is cancelled. Incoming U.S. House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said over the weekend the House would not seat Harris when it opens Thursday.

After investigating the fraud allegations, a reconstituted state elections board might call for a new election and primary. Outgoing Republican 9th District Congressman Robert Pittenger, defeated by Harris in the GOP primary last year, announced he would not compete again. In the meantime, state staff gathers evidence.

The Washington Post reports Harris plans to sue to have a court declare him the victor.

But with the House, not the state, the final arbiter of its own elections, now what?

Michael Stern writes at Point of Order, a blog on congressional legal issues, that the House must first formally declare the seat vacant. But for now, it has examined no evidence the election was so tainted that it is impossible to determine which candidate won and a new election is necessary:

So what then should the House do? It could choose to seat Harris without prejudice to its ultimate determination of the election outcome. Normally this is what the House does when one candidate is certified as the winner but there appears to be a serious challenge to the certified election results. Even then, the House sometimes declines to seat anyone. I am not aware of any precedent for what the House should do when the state authorities have not certified anyone as the winner, but it seems logical that no one would be seated in that situation. On the other hand, that intensifies the need for a speedy resolution of the matter.

The House could also choose to wait upon the outcome of the state election investigation. There are both pragmatic and constitutional considerations against such an approach, however. The former include the fact that it would significantly extend the period in which the people of the district would be unrepresented, particularly because the process in North Carolina appears to be bogged down with its own problems. The latter include the question whether it is proper for state election authorities or courts to make the types of difficult factual and legal decisions inherent in a fraud case (as opposed to the administrative nature of a recount). See Kristen R. Lisk, The Resolution of Contested Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives: Why State Courts Should Not Help with the House Work, 83 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1213, 1217-18 (2008) (arguing for “exclusive congressional jurisdiction over all election contests seeking more than administrative recounts, because these contests involve substantive claims that require decision makers to engage directly with election results and make difficult policy decisions.”).

There is a separate and even more serious question whether state officials have the authority to order a new election on the grounds that the original election was tainted by fraud. A new election is fundamentally different than recounts or other post-election remedies. Under federal law, North Carolina was required to conduct its congressional elections for the 116th Congress on the first Monday in November 2018. See 2 U.S.C. 7. If a vacancy then happens in North Carolina’s representation, the governor must then issue a writ of election to fill the vacancy, but I am not aware of any authority for the proposition that the governor or other state officials can declare a vacancy because they believe the initial election to be defective in some way.

Could things be worse for North Carolina Republicans? You knew they could.

Within weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court could rule in the matter of League of Women Voters of North Carolina v. Rucho and Rucho v. Common Cause. At issue is whether to let stand an August ruling by a three-judge district court panel that found North Carolina’s 2016 congressional redistricting plan a product of “invidious partisanship” and an unconstitutional political gerrymander. It was the second ruling against the NCGOP-drawn 2011 maps. The Supreme Court has been reluctant to address whether partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional and must decide whether to hear arguments in its current session. Justices met behind closed doors to review the case in early December. Whatever action the high court takes, North Carolina Republicans have succeeded in imposing districts twice ruled unconstitutional for almost an entire ten-year redistricting cycle. Leaving the district court ruling in place would mean new court-ordered districts in 2020.

The constitutionality of North Carolina’s state legislative districts remains in dispute as well:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Litigation challenging North Carolina legislative districts on arguments they excessively favor Republicans to the point of violating the state constitution will remain in state court.

A federal judge Wednesday ordered the case stay in Wake County Superior Court, where Democrats and election reform advocates filed their partisan gerrymandering lawsuit in November. U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan wrote she’d explain her reasoning later.

Last month, Republican lawmakers sought to move the lawsuit to federal court because they said the way plaintiffs wanted House and Senate maps redrawn conflict with federal laws. The plaintiffs said no such conflict exists and seek a state trial in April.

“Legislative Defendants’ notice of removal is an egregious and transparent attempt to delay and derail state court proceedings in this case of extraordinary public importance,” the plaintiffs’ motion states. “There is no plausible, good-faith basis for federal subject matter jurisdiction here, and the attempted removal is procedurally defective on its face.” Flanagan appears to have agreed.

Civil rights attorney Anita Earls takes office as the newest state Supreme Court associate justice on Thursday. Earls, a Democrat, won a seat on the court in November, giving the court a 5-2 progressive lean. Hence, Republicans’ attempt to move the question out of the state’s hands.

Election law in North Carolina is nothing if not action-packed.

Using the word that others fear to utter. (Starts with “M” and ends with “oginy”)

by digby

That happened yesterday. It was infuriating for the obvious reasons I’m sure you all see.
Peter Beinert at the Atlantic uses that word to explain it:

Read enough news reports about Elizabeth Warren’s declaration that she is running for president, and you notice certain common features. In its story on her announcement, The New York Times noted that Warren has “become a favorite target of conservatives” and that, in a recent national poll, “only about 30 percent [of respondents] viewed her favorably, with 37 percent holding an unfavorable view.” The Washington Post observed that Warren’s claim “that she was Native American” has “come under relentless attack from Republican opponents.” It also quoted a Boston Globe editorial that called Warren “a divisive figure.” On CNN, the election analyst Harry Enten suggested that Warren’s “very liberal record, combined with the fact that Donald Trump has already gone after her” has made her a—you guessed it—“divisive figure” whose “favorable ratings are not that high.”

These observations are factually correct. But they also help create a false narrative. Mentioning the right’s attacks on Warren plus her low approval ratings while citing her “very liberal record” and the controversy surrounding her alleged Native American heritage implies a causal relationship between these facts. Warren is a lefty who has made controversial ancestral claims. Ergo, Republicans attack her, and many Americans don’t like her very much.

The New Authoritarians Are Waging War on WomenPETER BEINART

But that equation is misleading. The better explanation for why Warren attracts disproportionate conservative criticism, and has disproportionately high disapproval ratings, has nothing to do with her progressive economic views or her dalliance with DNA testing. It’s that she’s a woman.

As I’ve noted before, women’s ambition provokes a far more negative reaction than men’s. For a 2010 article in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, two Yale professors, Victoria Brescoll and Tyler Okimoto, showed identical fictional biographies of two state senators—one male and one female—to participants in a study. When they added quotations to the biographies that characterized each as “ambitious” and possessing “a strong will to power,” the male state senator grew more popular. But the female state senator not only lost support among both women and men, but also provoked “moral outrage.”

The past decade of American politics has illustrated Brescoll and Okimoto’s findings again and again. During the 2012 campaign, Republicans attacked Nancy Pelosi in television commercials seven times as frequently as they attacked her Democratic Senate counterpart, Harry Reid. In 2016, the disparity was three to one. Pelosi’s detractors sometimes chalk up her unpopularity to her liberalism and her hometown of San Francisco. But Reid’s successor as the Democratic Senate leader, Charles Schumer, a liberal from Brooklyn, is far less unpopular than Pelosi—and far less targeted by the GOP.

Or compare Hillary Clinton with the men who preceded her as Democratic presidential nominees. In a spring 2016 study, fivethirtyeight.com subtractedthe percentage of Americans who felt “strongly unfavorable” toward Democratic nominees from the percentage who felt “strongly favorable” at the same time in the presidential cycle. For almost every nominee from 1980 to 2012, the result was roughly zero. In other words, the percentage of Americans who really liked them equaled the percentage of Americans who really disliked them, which makes sense, given the roughly even nature of America’s partisan split. (The one exception was Michael Dukakis, who, as a little-known governor in the spring of 1988, enjoyed a net positive score of more than 10 points.)

Then, in 2016, everything changed. The percentage of Americans who felt “strongly unfavorable” toward Hillary Clinton exceeded the percentage that felt “strongly favorable” by 20 points. Was Clinton uniquely liberal or uniquely dishonest or uniquely inauthentic enough—compared with the seven male Democratic nominees who preceded her—to explain such a large disparity? Probably not. Gender likely played a key role.

Now the same dynamic is playing out with Elizabeth Warren. Pollsters keep recording her unusually high unfavorability ratings. Last September, CNN found that Joe Biden’s net approval rating among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents was 30 points. Bernie Sanders’s was 18 points. Warren’s was two points. In December, when Quinnipiac University surveyed Democrats, Republicans, and independents, Biden’s net approval rating was 20 points. Sanders’s was two points. Warren’s was negative seven points. Warren’s relatively low numbers appear driven by her unpopularity among men. When the University of Massachusetts asked state residents whom they support in the 2020 Democratic primary, Warren tied with Biden among women. Among men, she trailed him by 16 points.

These polls often find their way into newspaper articles. The New York Times cited the Quinnipiac survey in its article about Warren’s presidential announcement. On CNN, Harry Enten discussed her polling ratings at length. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with journalists discussing public perceptions of a candidate.

The problem is that when journalists ignore what academic research and recent history teach us about gender’s role in shaping those perceptions, they imply—whether they mean to or not—that Warren’s unpopularity can be explained by factors unique to her. They start with the puzzle of her low approval ratings and then, working backward, end up suggesting that her policy views or (pseudo) scandals explain them. Reporters dwell on issues such as Warren’s alleged Native American ancestry not necessarily because they think those issues matter, but because they assume that voters think they matter. If voters didn’t, why would Warren be so unpopular?

What all this ignores is the harsh truth that when women politicians—especially women politicians who embrace a feminist agenda—overtly seek power, many American men, and some American women, react with “moral outrage.” They may not express that outrage in explicitly gendered terms, just as they may not express their anxiety about a black candidate in explicitly racial terms. They may instead cite DNA testing or hidden emails or San Francisco’s cultural liberalism. Or they may simply say they find the candidate’s mannerisms off-putting.

The media’s role is to dig deeper: to interpret these specific discomforts in light of the deeper discomfort that Americans again and again express with ambitious women.

Obviously, I agree with him. I’m not sure Warren can win but the media pulling this tired crapola again is maddening. They have done zero self-reflection on their behavior during 2016 and remain defensive and obnoxious about any criticism. They are already showing they’re prepared to do exactly the same thing to other female candidates.

Warren and Clinton are both highly accomplished Democratic lawyers and Senators — much like many of the men running for the job — but that is where the similarities end. Warren’s life’s work has been in the economic sphere and Clinton concentrated early on feminism, children’s issues and health care and then became a foreign policy professional. They are both on liberal side of the fence but their personalities, experience and approach to politics are very different.

Beinert is right about what this is about and it will apply to the other women who are thinking of running as well, in different ways. I know that nobody wants to think about this but it’s reality.

For a tart take on this issue, read this from McSweeney’s called “I  don’t hate women candidates — I just hated Hillary and coincidentally I’m starting to hate Elizabeth Warren”

I have no problem with women. My wife is a woman and I have daughters who will likely be wives and mothers of daughters one day. I only had a problem with Hillary Clinton, and my problem with her is completely separated from her gender, and is solely based on the fact that she was so dishonest when compared to other prominent politicians who ran for president. How could anyone vote for such a liar?

My hatred for Hillary wasn’t diabolical. I never bought into the whole pizzagate thing, or the whole Uranium One thing, or the whole spirit-cooking-she-drinks-blood-infused-Podesta-rice thing, and I never once believed she was the devil. I would see those posts and just be like, Huh, if people believe that stuff about her, she must be really terrible.
And I never chanted LOCK HER UP or created memes showing her in prison, but I did laugh a little at those memes, because the thought of this accomplished women behind bars with all her agency stripped away from her was funny to me. 

So I’m a perfectly reasonable, women-friendly fellow who is completely open to the idea of a woman president. And I never thought I’d hate anyone as much as I hate Hillary Clinton. But to my surprise, I’m actually starting to hate Elizabeth Warren. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve heard that Elizabeth Warren is a champion of consumers and the middle class who battled the big banks and advocates for economic reform. Nonetheless, she rubs me the wrong way. 

I hate the way she dealt with Donald Trump’s incessant attacks against her, for example. Why did Elizabeth Warren have to take that DNA test? Why couldn’t she have handled his abuse the exact right way? If I were being libeled by the President at his toxic mob rallies of hate, by golly, I would know just how to turn that into a moment of pure perfection.
And you know the DNA test is a huge deal, because Breitbart published five different stories about it over the course of 24 hours. Though I have never once in my life given a thought about the welfare of Native Americans, I am totally offended on their behalf. The fact they have criticized Elizabeth Warren just bolsters my claim that she’s the worst person ever, besides Hillary Clinton, and thus endeth my Native American advocacy until the day I die. 

Another thing about Elizabeth Warren: She claims she advocates for the poor, yet she isn’t a poor herself. She lives in a fancy house with her fancy Harvard salary. I’m no fan of Trump, but that Elizabeth Warren is such a phony. That’s a thought, and thoughts are true, and I will never examine how that thought got into my head…

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All the President’s hallucinations and lies

by digby

Yes, he actually had this sitting on the conference table in the Cabinet Room for some obscure reason

Your batshit lunatic of a president was really pumped today. Way, way, way too many “diet cokes” (if you know what I mean) this morning. Some highlights:

TRUMP, brandishing a letter, says: “I just got a great letter from Kim Jong Un. The few people that I’ve showed this letter to – they’ve never written letters like that. This letter is a great letter”

Adds that if he hadn’t won in 16, “You’d be having a nice big fat war in Asia” pic.twitter.com/XMXZYoYCid

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

“Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight.” 😳
https://t.co/0NFDde59Xz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

TRUMP can’t specify a timetable for Syria withdrawal, then says this about the country: “Look, we don’t want Syria… we’re talking about sand and death. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about vast wealth. We’re talking about sand and death.” pic.twitter.com/W2NgJsDCQi

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

Trump argues DOD inspector general reports should be kept private & claims that releasing them is “insane”: “The enemy reads those reports. They study every line. Those reports should be private reports. Let them to do a report, but they should be private reports & be locked up.” pic.twitter.com/M6XSh1iXJF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

TRUMP: “When they say the wall is immoral, then you better do something about the Vatican. The Vatican has the biggest wall of them all…They work 100%. Never going to change. A wall is a wall… I think the people of the country think I’m right.” pic.twitter.com/spBtcDm3Bk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

Asked about Mitt Romney’s op-ed, Trump claims that “I don’t think anybody would have been able to do the tax cuts like I did. We got the greatest tax cuts ever.”

He then goes on a bizarre rant about Obamacare — including criticizing the late John McCain by name. pic.twitter.com/BXcL4oiqbp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

Trump, fabricating figures out of thin air, claims “I’ve heard numbers as high as $275 billion we lose on illegal immigration.”

(Trump’s made-up numbers about the cost of immigration have more than doubled since 2015 and have no basis in reality https://t.co/DmzlMfYFjn) pic.twitter.com/KbwPmx0R29

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

Trump said he gave U.S. generals “all the money they wanted” for Afghanistan, but they did a bad job. Of Mattis, he says, “What’s he done for me? How has he done in Afghanistan? Not too good. Not too good.”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 2, 2019

Trump lies again that he has the highest approval rating in the history of the Republican Party. He’s near the top, but post-9/11 George W. Bush was in the mid-to-high-90s; Trump has been around the high-80s.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 2, 2019

Trump says that if the courts say Obama had the right to do DACA unilaterally, he can do whatever he wants on lots of other stuff. He adds: “Can you imagine me having this power? Wouldn’t that be scary?”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 2, 2019

To all who think this moron is an isolationist, just wait to see what he does if there’s a major terrorist attack during his misbegotten reign…

The potted plants sitting next to him to the table all dutifully licked his boots and agreed that Trump’s stupid 4th century wall is the only answer to the non-crisis that Trump is ginning up to please his Mistress of the Dark, Ann Coulter.

It’s only the first day back and it’s already surreal. Drink up.

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The West Coast offers another candidate

by digby

A Green New Deal from the Evergreen State

I’ve been asking people what they think about Washington Governor Jay Inslee for president for the last two years and mostly they say, “who?” Personally, I think that’s a selling point. A well-known national profile isn’t always such a good thing in presidential politics. (Ask Hillary Clinton …)

I’ve followed his career with interest and people I know from the state admire his leadership. So, I’m glad to see that he’s decided to enter the presidential fray and he’s doing it in an interesting and important way:

What if a meteor were hurtling toward the Earth, about to kill millions and reshape life on the planet as we know it?

And what if the president, instead of doing anything to help, made it worse in just about every way, and called it a hoax (and any solutions a scam) instead of the very real, very clear disaster taking shape?

And what if all the Democrats running to beat him in the next election went on and on about how concerned they were and how it’s our most pressing problem—but none had ever done much more than talk about the problem, and for the most part only started doing that in just the past few years?

That’s where Jay Inslee thinks America is when it comes to climate change. And that’s why he’s going to run for president. The question is whether he can convince anyone else that he’s a big-enough player to be a serious candidate.

“When you’ve been working on something for over a decade, and now seeing people awakening to that, it’s just really gratifying and heartening,” the Washington governor recently told me, sitting in his private study on the top floor of the governor’s mansion. When it comes to climate change, there now appears to be “an appetite for someone who has credibility and a long track record and, most importantly, a vision statement. It’s changed to show an opening in a Democratic primary, I believe.”

Inslee has been on the expansive list of would-be Democratic presidential contenders since the 2016 election, mostly because he was then one of the few Democratic governors left in the country. He didn’t take the talk seriously at first, nor did anyone else, and he certainly wasn’t doing anything to help it along. But as the 2018 midterm campaigns came to an end, he read through searing international and federal climate-change assessments, took a trip to view the wildfire damage in California, and thought through the larger moment for the country—and he shifted.

Now “we’re laying the groundwork that would make this a feasible thing in the relatively short term,” Inslee told me.

If there is a new Democratic president come 2021, he or she will get pulled in all sorts of policy directions. Inslee says he has one priority: global warming. It’s not theoretical, or a cause just for tree huggers anymore. Putting off dealing with it for a year or two or kicking it to some new bipartisan commission won’t work, he says. He plans to focus on the threat that climate change poses to the environment and national security—the mega-storms and fires causing millions in damages, the weather changes that will cause mass migrations, the droughts that will devastate farmers in America and around the world.

Even more so, he wants to talk about the risk to American opportunity. “We have two existential threats right now: one is to our natural systems, and one is to our economic systems,” he said.

As he did in Washington State, Inslee would propose a mix of government investments and incentives to spur other investment, restrictions on power plants and emissions, and programs to promote R&D and job growth. An endless number of jobs can be created in the climate arena, Inslee says. It’s the way to make a real dent in income inequality and have the Democratic Party bring tangible solutions to communities in rural America that have been left behind. With his inaction, President Donald Trump—Inslee calls him “the commander in chief of delusion”—is engaged in a “disgusting selling-out of the country,” a “crime” against the aspirational optimism of America.

I don’t know if this issue can win the presidency, but I know that it should — and I know that having someone on the presidential trail talking about it obsessively is a very, very good thing. The west coast has been leading on this issue and candidates running from these states have some ideas worth listening to.

Inslee is very popular in Washington and his record is good. Everyone should take a look at him.

*standard disclaimer: I don’t intend to endorse anyone in the primary. I’m happy to see a big field and I’ll post about all of them if there’s something about their candidacy or agenda that appeals to me.

Harry Reid in full-effect

by digby

Reid is suffering from cancer. And he’s letting it all hang out. Although, when you think about it he always did:

The former F.B.I. director James Comey, after he was fired by Trump, compared Trump to the head of a mafia family, with its codes of silence and loyalty, its fear-based leadership style and fealty to a single godfather. “It’s not about anything else except the boss,” Comey said in a recent interview at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Others have drawn the same parallel, and I asked Reid if, given his unusually relevant professional experience in this area, it rang true. Reid expelled a quick and dismissive chuckle. “Organized crime is a business,” he told me, “and they are really good with what they do. But they are better off when things are predictable. In my opinion, they do not do well with chaos. And that’s what we have going with Trump.”

Still, Reid added: “Trump is an interesting person. He is not immoral but is amoral. Amoral is when you shoot someone in the head, it doesn’t make a difference. No conscience.” There was a hint of grudging respect in Reid’s tone, which he seemed to catch and correct. “I think he is without question the worst president we’ve ever had,” he said. “We’ve had some bad ones, and there’s not even a close second to him.” He added: “He’ll lie. He’ll cheat. You can’t reason with him.” Once more, a hint of wonder crept into his voice, as if he was describing a rogue beast on the loose in a jungle that Reid knows well.

The Trump era and Reid’s illness have occasioned an inevitable reconsideration of Reid’s legacy and all its contradictions. The Affordable Care Act, which Reid managed to navigate past the oppositional tactics of his persistent nemesis, the Republican Senate leader (and now majority leader), Mitch McConnell, has so far withstood McConnell and Trump’s efforts to dismantle the legislation. Reid was also prescient in urging the Obama administration and congressional Republicans to go public about the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election; the letter that Republican leaders agreed to co-sign weeks after they were briefed on the investigation did not identify Russia by name. “They did nothing — or nothing that I’m aware of,” Reid said.

But McConnell’s and Trump’s own most substantial accomplishment to date, the appointment to the federal bench of an unprecedented number of conservative judges, including two Supreme Court justices who might well end up hearing a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, was made vastly easier by Reid’s decision, in 2013, to get rid of the filibuster for judicial appointments. Reid remains unrepentant about this. “They can say what they want,” he told me. “We had over 100 judges that we couldn’t get approved, so I had no choice. Either Obama’s presidency would be a joke or Obama’s presidency would be one of fruition.”
[…]
Reid’s successor is Chuck Schumer, his former caucus deputy who engineered much of the Senate Democrats’ communications and campaign strategy during Reid’s tenure. They had been close during Reid’s 12 years as Democratic leader, Reid serving as the arid desert yin to Schumer’s bombastic Brooklyn yang. When we spoke, Reid told me he did not wish to be seen as second-guessing Schumer. “My personal feeling should have nothing to do with it,” he said. But clearly Reid has more than a few of those personal feelings. He has told confidants that he felt Schumer was too eager to assume his job before Reid was ready to leave. Reid has also criticized, privately, Schumer’s instinct for accommodation with both McConnell and Trump.

In our conversation, Reid seemed incapable of not constantly reminding me that he did not wish to talk about Schumer, as if this itself was something he wanted me to emphasize. “I do not call Schumer,” he told me. Then: “I call him once in a while — not weekly. Let’s say monthly I may call him.” This sounded straightforward enough until he added: “I talk to Nancy often. I love Nancy Pelosi. We did so many good things, and we still talk about that.” And just the day before, he said, he called Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who, along with Schumer, was Reid’s top lieutenant in the Senate and is now Schumer’s Democratic whip. “We came to the House together in 1982,” Reid said of Durbin. “We had wonderful conversations.” (Schumer declined to be interviewed; his spokesman said in a statement that Schumer and Reid “have different styles but they complemented each other well. They are still good friends and talk regularly.”)

In fairness, there’s little that any Democratic leader can do at a time when the opposing party controls the presidency and both houses of Congress, as Republicans did until this month. Durbin told me that he has sat with Schumer and Trump together at the White House. “They are discussing things at a New York level that most of us on the outside don’t understand,” Durbin said. “With Chuck, it’s his grandfather who had some business with Trump’s father or some darned thing. It’s a totally different ballgame.”

I asked Durbin whether this approach had yielded any results. “The obvious answer,” he conceded, “is it hasn’t worked very well so far.”

Ooh, thats harsh. But true. Schumer is a weak point for a lot of reasons.

His assessment of Trump is correct. He is amoral (I would add stupid and crude.) Also this:

On the Friday afternoon before Christmas, just hours before the government shut down over Trump’s demands for more funding for a border wall, I called Reid to see how closely he was following this latest brinkmanship. “Landra and I have been watching the news; we have it on now,” Reid told me. The shutdown, he allowed, was “interesting.” Reid takes an anthropological interest in the changes that Trump has wrought on his old institution. “You can’t legislate when you have a chief executive who’s weird, for lack of a better description,” he told me. He said he could never understand how his former Senate colleague Jeff Sessions allowed himself to be so abused and humiliated by the president. “Why in the hell didn’t Sessions leave?” he said. “Same with Kelly,” referring to the departing chief of staff, John Kelly. “I’d say, ‘Go screw yourself.’ I could not look my children in the eye.”

I asked him if he could identify at all with Trump’s dark worldview. “I disagree that Trump is a pessimist,” Reid said, as if to allow him that mantle would be paying him an undeserved compliment. “I think he’s a person who is oblivious to the real world.”

So are his followers. Thank the right wing media for that.

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When in doubt, change the rules, cheat

by digby

You’ve undoubtedly heard about Mitt Romney’s op-ed  taking Trump to task for his bad manners and untoward behavior. (He didn’t seem to find much wrong with his policies.) The smart money says he’s positioning himself as the fallback in case Trump flames out. It’s a smart move for someone — I’ve been surprised more GOPers haven’t seen that possibility. Romney, of course, has his own constituency and donors so he is probably better placed to djump in late if necessary.

So naturally, the RNC is having a cow:

Mitt Romney’s scorching critique of President Trump in a New Year’s Day op-ed has sparked a call from within the Republican National Committee to change party rules to protect Trump from any long-shot primary challenge in 2020.

The RNC committeeman representing the Virgin Islands late Tuesday emailed fellow elected members of the national party urging them to change the rules when they convene in New Mexico for their annual winter meeting later this month. Republicans are confident that Trump would hold off any primary challenger, but worry the campaign would derail his re-election.

“Look, the political history is clear. No Republican president opposed for re-nomination has ever won re-election,” RNC committeeman Jevon O.A. Williams said in a email obtained by the Washington Examiner. “Unfortunately, loopholes in the rules governing the 2020 re-nomination campaign are enabling these so-called Republicans to flirt with the possibility of contested primaries and caucuses.”

Romney, to be sworn in as Utah’s junior senator on Thursday, was the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee, and is seen as an acute threat to Trump in the wake of his op-ed in the Washington Post. Williams said Romney or someone like him would complicate Trump’s 2020 campaign.

“While President Trump would win re-nomination it wouldn’t come quick and it wouldn’t be inexpensive. Any contested re-nomination campaign—even a forlorn hope—would only help Democrats,” Williams wrote. “Accordingly, I am asking for your support to take the unprecedented step of amending the rules to close loopholes in the re-nomination campaign, including Rule 40.”

Trump would be the overwhelming favorite in any contested 2020 primary. But Republican National Committee rules make it relatively easy for a well-funded challenger to win enough votes to have his or her vote placed in nomination on the floor of the party’s nominating convention in Charlotte.

Under current rules, a primary challenger can get a vote on the convention floor if he or she wins a plurality of delegates in five states or territories (Washington, D.C. can also be one of the five).

Existing rules technically prohibit any changes to these regulations inside of a presidential cycle, which begins after the midterms. But as a private organization, the RNC could in fact make any changes it wants at any time.

Williams wants the RNC to change the rules, endorse Trump and declare him the de-facto nominee, heading off any primary challenge. But such a move, while possible, could be complicated and generate criticism that the president is engaging in the sort of establishment election-rigging he decried on the campaign trail in 2016.

Last month, a torrent of criticism followed after the Washington Examiner reported that the South Carolina Republican Party might cancel its 2020 primary for president to preserve Trump’s standing.

But given Romney’s national prominence and lingering concerns about how a primary challenge might affect Trump, RNC leaders might have no choice but to address the issue in some fashion — even if the committee ultimately chooses not to amend the rules.

One interesting dynamic to watch: RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is Romney’s niece, although she has never shared her uncle’s hesitation about Trump. One RNC official said McDaniel’s relationship to Romney and her position in the RNC will likely force her to make some decision one way or the other.

“I don’t see how RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel can avoid addressing this since the op-ed was written by her uncle and the White House will demand her loyalty if she wants to stay in her position,” a former RNC official said, on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. “It also created an issue where Trump World could take revenge on a number of RNC staff, consultants and vendors with Romney 2012 and 2008 ties.”

McDaniel responded to Romney in a tweet Wednesday morning, saying his criticism of the president is “disappointing and unproductive,” and “feeds” into what Democrats and some in the media want. The Trump campaign issued a sharp jab via Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, with Trump offering a relatively mild volley in which he asked Romney to be a team player.

“Here we go with Mitt Romney, but so fast! Question will be, is he a Flake? I hope not. Would much prefer that Mitt focus on Border Security and so many other things where he can be helpful. I won big, and he didn’t. He should be happy for all Republicans. Be a TEAM player & WIN!,” Trump tweeted.

For the record, he didn’t win big.

And, by the way, Romney got 47.2% of the vote while Trump only got 46.1%.

.

Even if Mueller Time doesn’t come soon, its still happy hour

The new Committee Chairs

Lord of the pit toilet flies
by Tom Sullivan

Modified image via RockyLIvingstone at DailyKos.

America’s worst idea is trashing America’s best one. In the second week of sitting president Donald Trump’s partial government shutdown, the country’s national parks have become a free-for-all: human feces, overflowing trash receptacles, congested roadways, and fights over camping spots. The shutdown has left Yosemite National Park in the California Sierras “a stinking mess,” reports CNN:

Kristen Brengel, vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the shutdown not only hurts the parks but also surrounding communities that rely on an estimated $18 million a day from tourism.

“It’s so heartbreaking. There is more trash and human waste and disregard for the rules than I’ve seen in my four years living here,” said Dakota Snider, 24, a resident worker in Yosemite Valley. Rules are so pre-Trump:

Unlike shutdowns in some previous administrations, the Trump administration was leaving parks open to visitors despite the staff furloughs, said John Garder, the senior budget director of the not-for-profit National Parks Conservation Association.

“We’re afraid that we’re going to start seeing significant damage to the natural resources in parks and potentially to historic and other cultural artifacts,” Garder said. “We’re concerned there’ll be impacts to visitors’ safety.”

Garder added: “It’s really a nightmare scenario.”

Hetch Hetchy and Mariposa Grove are now closed due to lack of restrooms and resulting impacts from human waste. People entering closed areas are being cited. https://t.co/OXlp1YQkGO— Yosemite National Park (@YosemiteNPS) December 30, 2018

Campgrounds at Joshua Tree National Park east of Los Angeles close at noon Wednesday (today) for the same reason: public health and safety. News agencies report volunteers, concessionaires, and local businesses near several parks are attempting to cope with the problem as best they can:

“Once those port-a-potties fill up, there’s no amount of cleaning that will save them,” said Sabra Purdy, who along with her husband, Seth, owns the rock-climbing guide service Cliffhanger Guides in the town of Joshua Tree. “At that point, I think I’m going to have to tap out.”

[…]

“It’s not quite ‘Lord of the Flies’ yet,” said Bryan Min, 30, who traveled to Joshua Tree with friends from Orange County and is camping outside the park. “Who knows how it’ll be tonight?”

Since most roads through Wyoming’s Yellowstone close in November, the shutdown’s impact there is less than in other parks. Nonetheless, businesses that rely on Yellowstone winter tourism are, in addition to hauling trash, bearing the costs of “grooming roads both within the Park and plowing the highway between the North Entrance and Cooke City,” reports Kevin Reichard at Yellowstone Insider.

The Trump Age was a nightmare scenario long before the shutdown. The man has never run a public institution, only a family business with a string of failures bailed out by his father and then by Russian oligarchs. The only thing Trump knows, sort of, is real estate development. His history in real estate is why the idea of building a border wall is an obsession. It is the only tool in his toolbox that allows him to create rather than demolish.

Also closing on Wednesday: Smithsonian Institution Museums and the National Zoo.

This post will stay pinned at the top of the page for a short while. Please scroll down. — thx d




Grateful for another year

by digby

Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens is celebrating a special Christmas present, which came early, with the birth of an Asian Small-clawed Otter pup

I want to thank all of you who contributed to the annual Hullabaloo fundraiser this year. I am sincerely grateful for your support. It’s an amazing affirmation of the work we do here on this old blog and makes me more motivated than ever to keep doing it.

I also want to give a shout-out to my wonderful regular contributors. Tom Sullivan writes the morning piece seven days a week (and has never missed a day!) getting the day started with smart observations from an activist perspective. Progressives from all over the country regularly seek his advice and wise counsel. His post is the first thing I read every morning and I know I’m not alone. I can’t express how much I appreciate what he writes here at Hullabaloo and the work he does in North Carolina to make this country a better place. It is a privilege to have him on this humble little blog.

I must thank Dennis Hartley, our Seattle based writer of Saturday Night at the Movies. His thoughtful and informed music and film reviews, lists, and other cultural recommendations make the weekends a little bit lighter around here. He sits through hundreds of hours of movies and TV shows each year and I thank him for his service.

I am also grateful for my irregular contributors tristero, Spocko and Batoccio, who pop up with timely observations, exhortations and historical perspectives. I am always thrilled when they have the time to write for us here at Hullabaloo.

This is going to be an epic year. It’s already starting out with a bang. The government is shut-down, half the cabinet is empty, the presidential race has officially started and the Democrats are about to take over the House. And that’s not even counting Mueller-time and whatever atrocity Trump decides to commit every day before the cameras and on twitter. We are going to have our hands full.

Tom, Dennis and the others will be here with me, posting seven days a week, trying to unravel the crazy and provide a little analysis in this tumultuous era. I hope you will continue to stop by from time to time.

Thanks again for your kind generosity. It means the world to me.

cheers,

digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

NPR Shenanigans 

by tristero

NPR just broadcast a report on a new daycare center in Congress. Five different congress critters were mentioned. Not one was a Democrat.

If anyone thinks this kind of one-sidedness will change or that it’s trivial, think again. This has been going on for a very long time, not only in “light” stories like this one but in substantive ones, too. Bloggers like Atrios have been documenting this since the early 2000’s. It’s part of a pattern that says the Republicans are the norm,  even if only 24% of all Americans identify as Republican.

And even when the party has gone completely off the rails.