You’ve never seen this before because nobody has ever been this daft
by digby
I think this says it all about what the Republican Party has become:
Apparently, they don’t remember that Obama took over in 2009 — after 8 years of GOP rule. Neither do they remember that Trump took over just two years ago and has been riding the crest of the economy that he inherited.
I guess they figure their followers won’t remember it either.
I had to give up coffee anyway
by digby
… due to anxiety. This might send me to the ER:
Before there was Jill Stein, there was Ralph Nader. Before there was Nader, there was Ross Perot.
None won. All argued that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were basically the same, and the only way to make real change was to ditch them both. Each was blamed for siphoning off enough votes to throw the presidential elections.
These days, the difference between the parties is starker than it’s ever been in modern times. Yet here comes Howard Schultz, a billionaire who feels that he might be the answer to American politics, and that he’d run for president as an independent.
Read: Is Starbucks’s Howard Schultz the liberal Donald Trump?
Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, says in a 60 Minutes interview already recorded but airing on Sunday that he is thinking very seriously about a presidential run—but he stops short of a full announcement.
He makes clear, however, that if he moves forward, he will do so as an independent.
Already top Democratic operatives working for presidential candidates and beyond say they’re worried that the only thing he’ll accomplish is making sure Donald Trump gets re-elected. It’s more than just sniping at a prospective opponent; word that he might invest in an independent run has many of them clearly worried about how he’d split votes in a general election.
Schultz has seemed to be moving toward a run for months, with interviews and speeches around the country about the inclusive policies that he says he pioneered while in charge of the company in two stints, totaling 24 years. He also talks about his vision of America, much of it informed by a trip he took to Auschwitz, which he discusses in an emotional story.
In a conversation with Scott Pelley, Schultz called this “a most fragile time.”
“Not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics,” he says, according to CBS promotional material, which did not include the part of the interview in which Pelley asks Schultz about running himself. Other people familiar with the interview relayed his answers about those questions.
Aides to Schultz did not respond to requests for comment.
“Trump’s strategy has always been divide and conquer, and this plays directly into his hands,” said one Democratic strategist, who was wary of taking on Schultz openly ahead of any announcement. “He’s Ralph Nader without any of Nader’s redeeming qualities. What’s his value proposition for America? Make America like a corporate chain?”
Democrats aren’t the only ones who see Schultz as potentially helping Trump win a second term. Bill Kristol, the Never Trump Republican who is most active both in media appearances and private conversations representing the GOP resistance to the president, said he wouldn’t support an independent run either.
“One reason my colleagues and I are focused on a Republican primary challenge to Trump—apart from the fact that we’re Republicans—is that it doesn’t present any of the problems of inadvertently helping him by being a spoiler,” Kristol wrote in an email.
Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, would run under the theory that the answer to the political division in the country right now is moving away from party politics. There’s little evidence to support that, as people report being more polarized and partisan, devoted to their own party and demonizing the other. For all the prominent Republicans who say they don’t like Trump, the president’s overall approval numbers among voters within his party remain sky high, according to polls. Schultz would have to persuade millions of them to abandon the party to vote for him, while drawing enough Democratic votes away from a party that is energized and excited about taking out the president.
And at 65, he’d have to do that as an older white man who’s never run for office before and has zero national name recognition. There is, however, Schultz’s fortune, estimated at $3.3 billion.
I’m not sure what Schultz’s constituency is or from which party he would pull. I guess it depends on who the Democrats nominate. But he certainly could be a spoiler.
Also, why? Has the country not learned the lesson that having a business background has fuck-all to do with being a good political leader or governing in a democracy?
This is the stuff that keeps me up at night. Trump got in on a hummer the last time. It could happen again if people are stupid.
.
Cave Man
by tristero
He caved. Did he ever.
But you have to hand it to him. First he united Democrats — something that’s been all but impossible since the heyday of Will Rogers.— in their eager willingness to oppose him And now, he’s united Americans across the political spectrum, left and right, who agree:
Donald Trump, Cave Man.
It has a certain ring to it…
The sum of their fears, Part 2
by Tom Sullivan
What keeps aging, white Republicans up at night. Image: National Geographic, October 2013.
The episode a week ago involving Covington Catholic High School, MAGA-gear-wearing students, a drumming Native American elder, and shouting Black Israelite cultists at the Lincoln Memorial is already history, and should be. It is another minor culture-war skirmish fueled by the accelerant of social media. There were competing commentaries over whether or not the student mocked, smirked at, etc., activist Nathan Phillips, and over who did what to whom first. The deeper divide got lost in the gaslighting by defenders of the students who insisted videos posted online did not show what they showed.
One observation that went by too fast this week came from Chris Hayes, one of those “I wish I’d written that” commentaries. Watch it below, but read it as well, so it sinks in:
The defining conservative experience of this era is the palpable terror and rage at a social hierarchy that is threatening to tip over and land on its head, one in which those who enjoy a certain basic kind of American privilege — the right to due process and second chances and charitable readings of their actions and even mistakes — find themselves, seemingly without warning, tossed instead onto the unforgiving bonfire of snap judgment and harsh punishment.
And I understand why they are scared of that, why they want to fight it.
Because America is already the most punitive developed nation on Earth — for poor people, for people of color, for those who don’t have Brett Kavanaugh’s pedigree, or the authority of the badge, or $10,000 a year to spend on private school tuition, or money to hire a PR firm.
We throw millions of lives onto that bonfire every year. They just don’t normally look like the teenagers in MAGA hats.
The answer isn’t a society that is more punitive or social media mobs doxxing children, one that permanently marks for life teenagers of all social strata, but rather a society of empathy, compassion and accountability, evenly, equitably and justly applied.
But, funnily enough, it is hard to get the modern conservative grassroots mobilized on behalf of that goal when the kids being stamped and judged and locked away don’t make them think, that could be my son.
The same network of conservative activists mobilized to defend the white Covington kids was outraged after the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin when President Barack Obama remarked, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
No video of that incident. No audio. But an immediate assumption on their part that a black kid walking down the sidewalk carrying Skittles and iced tea deserved what happened to him, well, for being a black teenager and a threat by definition. No charitable readings for him.
The election of Donald Trump is not an existential crisis for America so much as an expression of it. The threat to traditional white, Christian dominance of the culture has been simmering in the back of white minds for decades. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act shifted the ground under them. The once solidly Democratic, Jim-Crow South went Republican. But even then, change was slow in coming. The Reagan years and the growth of the religious right signaled that “a certain basic kind of American privilege” remained intact. The election of Bill Clinton and the assault-weapons ban annoyed movement conservatives and the NRA and fed the growth of right-wing talk radio. But whatever else, Clinton was a pudgy white guy from Arkansas. He still looked like one of them.
The September 11, 2001 attacks were seismic. The underlying sense of American military supremacy that held through most of the Cold War was shattered. The threats to the cultural dominance to which many Americans felt entitled became palpable. Mark Steyn warned in the Wall Street Journal in 2006 that Middle Eastern immigration to Europe and their Muslim high-birthrates versus the West’s threatened to end western civilization through a kind of cultural suicide. For people who view their dominant position in the social hierarchy in zero-sum term, demands by marginalized groups empowered through social media that America live up to its created-equal advertising could only come at conservatives’ expense. They characterized equality demands by non-white, non-Christian, and LGBT Americans as a form of persecution against Christians. This has always been a straight, white, Christian-male country, founded to be a straight, white, Christian-male country by God Himself, a straight, white, Christian male. To think otherwise is to believe the world is round.
Then a black man moved into the White House in 2009.
Efforts at suppressing the vote by non-whites via voting law changes as well as locking in Republican power in the states through gerrymandering accelerated in 2010. By 2019, two years into the Trump presidency, conspiracy theories with origins in the 1990s about white genocide had become mainstream as well as fears of diseased, brown-skinned immigrant-criminals. The president of the United States now promotes them.
His MAGA hats are cultural signifiers of nudge-and-wink bigotry and existential fears of a coming America that no longer looks majority white.
Friday night soother
by digby
On the morning of January 4, Brevard Zoo welcomed another baby in the form of a Linnaeus’s Two-toed Sloth. According to keepers, the infant’s 13- year-old mother, Sammy, is taking great care of her newborn.
“Sammy is not a first-time mom, so she has experience in raising babies,” said Michelle Smurl, Director of Animal Programs at the Zoo. “We’re glad to be able to take a hands-off approach and see the newborn thriving in a more natural setting.”
The newborn’s sex is currently unknown, as testing is needed to determine this information in sloths. The new baby will remain with mom for around six months before becoming independent.
Sammy and her baby are located in the La Selva exhibit but are not viewable to the public due to construction. However, guests may have the opportunity to spot the pair, from above, on “Treetop Trek”.
The Linnaeus’s Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus didactylus) is from South America. The species is found in Venezuela, the Guyanas, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil north of the Amazon River. There is now evidence suggesting the species’ range expands into Bolivia. They are currently classified as “Least Concern” on the IUCN Red List.
Will today’s cave boost Trump’s numbers?
by digby
 |
| 538 poll of polls |
Following the example of most other polls in the last week, a new Washington Post ABC poll shows a drop in Trump’s approval rating with a majority holding Trump responsible for the shut down:
The Post-ABC poll finds that Trump’s overall popularity has weakened, with 37 percent of the public approving of his job performance and 58 percent disapproving.
Here’s what has to has to be giving McConnell and company palpitations:
Among political independents, disapproval of Trump has grown from 53 percent at the start of November to 63 percent. Independents have also had a lopsided reaction to the shutdown, with 54 percent saying Trump and Republicans are more responsible for it, while 29 percent blame Pelosi and Democrats, a 25-point margin, slightly wider than the public as a whole.
And then there’s this:
Asked who they trust more to handle border security, 42 percent say they trust Pelosi and Democrats in Congress, while 40 percent trust Trump and Republicans. By comparison, a fall Post-ABC poll found Republicans overall held a 10-point advantage over Democrats in trust to handle border security among registered voters.
Let’s see what happens with the base. If I had to guess they will stick with him for now. But if these people continue to slag him that base may whittle away over the next little while.
I guess I hadn’t realized that the wingnuts had pegged the federal workers as lazy scofflaws who don’t deserve to be paid for the shutdown. Nice.
And meanwhile:
Donald Trump’s greatest achievement?
by digby
Adam Green points out that Trump has done something that nobody thought was possible. He’s united the Democrats:
By shutting down the government, Donald Trump unintentionally gave Democrats the biggest gift possible: Unity.
It could doom his presidency. Stunningly, it is a repeat of the exact mistake he made by choosing Obamacare repeal as his first legislative fight.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, a dozen shellshocked progressive groups gathered to predict where the national debate would go — and how we could prepare.
The answer was obvious: Donald Trump would push immediately for an infrastructure package.
It wouldn’t be a good package. It would likely entail selling off public roads and bridges to Wall Street and foreign investors. It would mostly be corporate tax giveaways and create very few jobs.
But we feared it could potentially seal Trump’s re-election. Some congressional Democrats would settle for crumbs — agreeing quickly to marginal benefit for their districts instead of holding out for something much bigger, impactful and popular.
With the stock market and job growth organically improving after President Obama’s presidency, Trump passing even a placebo “jobs package” would allow him to take credit. And this first fight could set a precedent of Democrats dividing amongst themselves, paving the way for more Trump policy victories.
Then came the giant unforced error. Trump’s push of Obamacare repeal achieved the remarkable task of unifying all Democrats from Joe Manchin and Elizabeth Warren in the Senate to corporate-aligned New Democrat leader Jim Himes and Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal in the House. Trump set a precedent by emboldening Democrats to unify against him in future fights.
He just did it again.
Want insight more often? Get Roll Call in your inbox
As the new Democratic House began, Democrats were ripe for division. Nancy Pelosi’s leadership was under siege in her own party, fracturing the Democratic Caucus.
Meanwhile, there were clear divisions among incoming House freshmen. Those who flipped districts “Red to Blue” were starting to organize as their own bloc. Those who advocated Medicare for All in their competitive primaries before winning competitive general elections — such as Katie Hill of California, Haley Stevens of Michigan, and Sharice Davids of Kansas — were at risk of being isolated from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and others who flipped blue districts to more vibrant progressive representation.
But as the Cook Reports’s Amy Walters pointed out on Twitter, “The fight over the wall and shutdown has done more to unify Dems that it has to ‘rally’ the Trump base.”
Democrats who wanted to stab Pelosi in the back are now watching her outmaneuver Trump and get national praise for it — creating no incentive other than to root her on.
Instead of being isolated, Ocasio-Cortez was seen leading many “Red to Blue” House freshman through the hallways of the Senate to tell Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to reopen the government. They knew that walking alongside her, and her millions of social media followers, was the best way to amplify their own message. And along the way, they built camaraderie and trust.
A similar collaborative letter to McConnell was signed by blue-district progressive powerhouses Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota; self-perceived moderates Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia; and those like Stevens, Hill and Davids, who campaigned progressively but were at risk of being isolated from the blue-district rockstars.
Hill even went on Chris Hayes’ progressive-leaning MSNBC show to announce a big “Shut down the wall, open the government” day of action in conjunction with MoveOn and other progressive groups on Jan. 29 — the day originally slated for Trump’s State Of The Union.
This partnership among House freshmen facing a common enemy in their first fight will be highly consequential for upcoming legislative debates.
Issues like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, expanding Social Security, making college debt free, challenging Big Pharma, strengthening voting rights, and combating corporate money in politics are all opportunities to showcase to voters the big, popular ideas Democrats will advance if given more power in 2020.
Not all Democrats will start off on the same page in these debates, and it may take years to push these ideas into law.
But Pelosi and other House leaders will look at whether there is critical mass within the Democratic Caucus when deciding whether to even kick off these debates with hearings, votes and focus. After fighting alongside each other, it is now way more probable that swing-district House freshman will trust their progressive colleagues and give critical mass to bills they may have been on the fence about supporting otherwise.
And impeachment? If any House freshmen were under the illusion that Trump was a rational actor they could deal with — if only there were more rhetoric about “problem solving” — that illusion is fading. Now that Trump has poisoned the well for side deals, there is little down side to following the facts on his law breaking.
As Donald Trump faces increased accountability and sees 2020 voters inspired by increased congressional consensus for big progressive ideas, he will have himself to thank.
This is an optimistic take and I’m glad to see it. I’m one who still sufferes from a little bit of PTSD from the years of Democratic infighting so I’m not quite so sanguine. But I really do hope it’s the case. The stakes are very high. Trump is an existential thret in a dozen different ways.
.
A violation of the oath of office
by digby
This is how Emptywheel characterizes what Stone’s indictment says today in nice plain English:
The indictment shows that Stone was asked to figure out what emails on Hillary Julian Assange had, and using at least Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico as go-betweens, Stone did so, providing information (most explicitly) to Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon. When Congress asked Stone about all this, he lied, first hiding any of his go-betweens, and then seemingly using Randy Credico to hide Jerome Corsi. Mueller provides a lot of the communications between Stone and his go-betweens and the communications from October 2016, as well as some of the ones from the cover-up period.
But she says that what’s most interesting is what Mueller doesn’t say. Click over and read the whole thing. There are a ton of mysteries.
It doesn’t say with whom — besides Steve Bannon in October — at the Trump campaign Roger Stone spoke. But it’s this passage that has gotten the most attention:
After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.
We don’t know who that senior campaign official was. There weren’t very many in the Trump campaign, especially during that period, while Manafort was still running the show and before Bannon and Conway came on board. It’s hard to imagine who might be in a position to “direct” such a person aside from Trump himself. Of course, it could be “John Barron” or one of Trump’s other alter egos so who knows?
We all know that Trump reveled in the Wikileaks disclosures. That’s not a crime although it’s mightly sleazy. And if they coordinated the releases for maximum damage to the Clinton campaign it’s unclear just what statutes Trump would have violated. It’s possible he’s just a garden variety GOP scumbag in this instance.
But there is something more to this story which I think was well described by Jeremy Bash on MSNBC:
Asking whether the president broke the law isn’t the right question. The right question is whether there is conduct by the president and the presidential candidate that violates his oath of office. Because at the end of all of these deals, these financial deals about Trump tower Moscow, these political deals about Wikileaks, was conduct by the president in which his end of the bargain was to enact the most pro-Russia, pro-Putin, obsequious deferential policy we’ve ever seen. If that’s not a violation of his oath of office, I don’t know what is.
Presidents of the United States are held to a higher standard than just not breaking the law. During much of the period that Trump was banging the drum for Wikileaks and even publicly exhorting the Russians to release hacked emails, he was receiving national security briefings telling him that the Russians were interfering in the election:
Remember:
In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.
The briefings were led by counterintelligence specialists from the FBI, the sources said. They were timed to occur around the period when the candidates began receiving classified intelligence, the officials said, which put them at greater risk for being targeted by foreign spies. Trump’s first intelligence briefing as Republican nominee was Aug. 17, 2016, sources told NBC News at the time.
Trump was “briefed and warned” at the session about potential espionage threats from Russia, two former law enforcement officials familiar with the sessions told NBC News. A source close to the White House said their position is that Trump was unaware of the contacts between his campaign and Russians.
Here’s what we’ve known about what was happening in that period:
June 12, 2016 – During an interview on British television, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that the website has obtained and will publish a batch of Clinton emails.
June 14, 2016 – The Washington Post reports hackers working for the Russian government accessed the DNC’s computer system, stealing oppositional research on Donald Trump and viewing staffers’ emails and chat exchanges. The Kremlin, however, denies that the government was linked to the hack, and a US official tells CNN that investigators have not yet concluded that the cyberattack was directed by the Russian government.June 15, 2016 – A cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC posts a public notice on its website describing an attack on the political committee’s computer network by two groups associated with Russian intelligence. According to the post, two Russian-backed groups called “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear” tunneled into the committee’s computer system. In response, a blogger called Guccifer 2.0 claims that he alone conducted the hack, not the Russians. As proof, he posts internal DNC memos and opposition research on Trump. Furthermore, Guccifer 2.0 claims to have passed along thousands of files to WikiLeaks. Trump offers his own theory on the origins of the attack: suggesting in a statement that the DNC hacked itself to distract from Clinton’s email scandal.
July 22, 2016 – Days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks publishes nearly 20,000 emails hacked from the DNC server. The documents include notes in which DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insults staffers from the Bernie Sanders campaign and messages that suggest the organization was favoring Clinton rather than remaining neutral. Wasserman Schultz resigns in the aftermath of the leak.July 25, 2016 – The FBI announces it has launched an investigation into the DNC hack. Although the statement doesn’t indicate that the agency has a particular suspect or suspects in mind, US officials tell CNN they think the cyberattack is linked to Russia.July 27, 2016 – During a press conference, Trump talks about Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and calls on hackers to find deleted emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” says Trump. Newt Gingrich, a Trump surrogate, defends Trump in a Tweet, dismissing the comment as a “joke.”August 12, 2016 – Hackers publish cell phone numbers and personal email addresses for Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
September 1, 2016 – During an interview with Bloomberg News, President Vladimir Putin says that he and the Russian government have no ties to the hackers. He says that the identity of the culprit or culprits is not as important as the content of the leaks, and ultimately the hackers revealed important information for voters.September 22, 2016 – Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff, ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, issue a joint statement declaring that based on information they received during congressional briefings, they believe that Russian intelligence agencies are carrying out a plan to interfere with the election. They call on Putin to order a halt to the activities.September 26, 2016 – During a presidential debate with Clinton, Trump questions whether the DNC cyberattack was carried out by a state-sponsored group or a lone hacker. “It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”October-November 2016 – Over the course of a month, WikiLeaks publishes more than 58,000 messages hacked from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.October 6, 2016 – DCLeaks, a self-described collective of “hacktivists” seeking to expose the influence of special interests on elected officials, publishes a batch of documents stolen from Clinton ally Capricia Marshall. DCLeaks is later identified as a front for Russian military intelligence.October 7, 2016 – The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of National Intelligence on Election Security issues a statement declaring that the intelligence community is “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions.” According to the statement, document releases on websites WikiLeaks and DCLeaks mirror the methods and motivations of past Russian-directed cyberattacks.
.
Trump’s crumbling wall
by digby
Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 25, 2019
Politico’s Jonathan Allen said on MSNBC, “I don’t want to embrace her words there but the president did promise a wall and what he got was a legislative death trap.”
They’re going to a conference committee, something Trump has never heard of. They’re not going to get a wall. They’ve made that very clear. So Trump either shuts down the government again in three weeks or there will be no wall funding.
right wing editor Bob Cusack of The Hill said this was even more devastating than the health care defeat.
Trump shut down the government for five weeks, causing untold pain and creating danger to the country, for nothing.
And by the way:
Dear @realDonaldTrump: Here's a friendly reminder from @VicenteFoxQue that Mexico will not pay for your wall. pic.twitter.com/Osg8ZUYLlG— Super Deluxe (@superdeluxe) June 7, 2017
.
Meanwhile in Venezuela
by digby
This podcast with UN Dispatch’s Mark Leon Goldberg and about the Venezuela crisis is the most illuminating analysis I’ve come across. This is a very unstable situation. Goldberg tweeted this summary:
Was a mistake for the Trump administration to so quickly recognize Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela? I keep thinking about how @itbriscoe’s answered my question.
If the US had some guarantees that the military establishment was about to abandon Maduro, then the move makes sense.
On the other hand, if the US thought it could create facts-on-the-ground by backing Guaido then the Trump administration may have severely miscalculated
So far, it looks like the latter. The military has not abandoned Maduro.
To be sure, this is a fast moving situation. But two days later, the Trump administration’s decision seems reckless. Maduro does not seem significantly weaker than he was on Wednesday.
To further complicate things, Pompeo is going to the Security Council tomorrow. He’ll presumably double down on US support for Maduro’s ouster. Meanwhile, we’re likely to see a hardening of pro-Maduro positions by Russia+China, among others. A diplomatic stalemate is coming.
I don’t know where this is going. The situation on the ground in Venezuela is obviously unsustainable. People are starving. But having Trump raging around in the china shop is almost always dangerous since he is both corrupt and clueless.
Oh, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Pence pledged that the U.S. would back Guaidó if he seized the reins of government from Nicolás Maduro by invoking a clause in the South American country’s constitution, a senior administration official said.
Surely no one could have a problem with that, right?
.