Former President Donald J. Trump has told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s deliberations.
Mr. Trump has studiously avoided taking a clear position on restrictions to abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the middle of 2022, galvanizing Democrats ahead of the midterm elections that year. He has said in private that he wants to wait until the Republican presidential primary contest is over to publicly discuss his views, because he doesn’t want to risk alienating social conservatives before he has secured the nomination, the two people said.
Mr. Trump has approached abortion transactionally since becoming a candidate in 2015, and his current private discussions reflect that same approach.
One thing Mr. Trump likes about a 16-week federal ban on abortions is that it’s a round number. “Know what I like about 16?” Mr. Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. “It’s even. It’s four months.”
He tries to twist himself into a pretzel on this but there’s no way out. He did it and he wants to take credit for it but he doesn’t want the blame for the political fallout. But there’s nothing he can do.
Let me offer some advice when you’re talking to Republican friends, family & neighbors about not voting for Trump. This is how you can tell who is and isn’t voting for Trump.
If someone says “I really don’t like the way he handles himself and his offensive tweets but I like his policies” that person is a Trump voter.
This person knows what they’re doing is wrong but they’re rationalizing the behavior they know is wrong.
If someone says “I don’t like Trump or his policies but no way I’d ever vote for Biden” this person is a Trump voter.
This person doesn’t care, even enjoys doing the wrong thing and won’t be bothered by being forced to answer for it or think about it.
If someone says “January 6th was the breaking point for me” or “Trump is mentally unfit” or “He’s dangerous”
This voter has broken the fever swamp. Expect 1 in 10 Republicans to respond this way.
They’re there but don’t be fooled by the first two. They’re Trumpers.
Among the first two are virtually all GOP officials. Well, except for most of Trump’s former cabinet. The people who know him best. They’re in the third category.
One can only hope. North Carolina’s MAGAfied GOP is turning off once-faithful Republicans and turning them into once-Republicans (USAToday):
Ex-Republican Phebe Roberson, 75, said she “can’t stand” former President Donald Trump and voted against him in North Carolina’s GOP primary earlier this month.
She also cast a ballot against Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the incendiary Republican gubernatorial candidate who received Trump’s endorsement ahead of the primary.
The right fringe, she says, has “stolen my Republican party.” She cast her primary ballot for Nikki Haley.
Justin Bradford, 47, of Pinehurst, once voted a straight Republican ticket, but began moving away from the GOP a dozen years ago when he switched his registration to unaffiliated and voted for Barack Obama.
Still, he said the Republican party “hadn’t really turned the corner yet.”
“I really feel like 2016 was the year that the mask came off,” Bradford said.
North Carolina’s fall election will be consequential not only for Joe Biden but for the state’s Democrats.
The “road to the presidency” goes through North Carolina, term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper (D) tells reporters. Except for Obama’s win in 2008, Republicans have won the state’s electoral votes for nearly half a century.
Then, of course, there is Michele Morrow, the NC GOP’s home-schooling candidate for superintendent of the state’s schools. She’s the Witch of the East to Robinson’s “worse than the other one” Witch of the West. Robinson advocates a total ban on abortion.
Bradford said he’s thinking about his 18-year-old daughter in both the gubernatorial and presidential election.
“I have some genuine concerns for my daughter for the kind of world, you know, she’s going to operate in now as an adult,” Bradford said.
“I don’t want to be super dire about things. But I’m a little bit freaked out right now.”
Listen to those feelings, Justin.
There are just 99 Republicans in my very blue precinct, 627 unaffiliateds (80% vote blue) , and 727 Democrats. In North Carolina’s March 5, semi-closed primary, Nikki Haley received 77 votes, Trump 36, Chris Christie 2 and 2 No preferences. The voter history files are not updated yet to indicate how many UNAs voted a GOP ballot. Obviously, some voted in the GOP primary, likely for Nikki Haley. In the large, heavily red county to the south, Haley received 31%. I’ll take that as a good sign for November.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. See you at the brew pub later.
Protect Election Integrity sign at Turning Point Action rally, Phoenix, Arizona.. Photo (2021) by Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED).
That’s the thing about democracy. When it’s working smoothly no one notices. Public officials derided as the Deep State do their jobs, underpaid compared to the private sector, and deliver your mail, take away your trash, deposit your Social Security checks, run your police department. A small army of them administer elections in your state, unseen save for the handful of retirees you see every two years at your polling station.
“Nobody knew who we were, what we did,” [Arizona Secretary of State Adrian] Fontes said ruefully. “It’s a little bit different now.”
“It’s very sad,” Fontes said. “It’s a sad state of affairs that in a civil society, in one of the most advanced civilizations that anybody could have imagined, we have to worry about physical violence.”
These are troubled times in Arizona. Until 2020, election officials were the largely anonymous folk who did the important yet unseen work of making democracy run smoothly.
The MAGA cult changed all that, although it’s not as if election conspiracy theories were new on the right. Donald “91 Counts” Trump just supercharged them when he refused to accept defeat in the 2020 election. Arizona became “ground zero for election denial in America.”
In 2020, the Republican-controlled state legislature sponsored a widely discredited “audit” of votes in Maricopa county, the largest constituency, which contain Phoenix. Republican leaders put themselves forward as fake electors in a possibly criminal attempt to flip Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona to Trump’s.
Two years later, in the midterms, armed vigilantes dressed in tactical gear stalked drop boxes in a vain hunt for “mules” stuffing fraudulent ballots into them. Amid the furore, election officials found themselves assailed by online harassment and death threats.
No longer faceless bureaucrats, they had become public enemy No 1.
So the marine veteran and his state elections team are war-gaming out worst-case scenarios for election mishaps this fall. Truthfully, that’s not unique to Fontesand Arizona. Our local elections team does the same, just with less threat of bomb scares and armed vigilantes stalking polling and vote counting stations.
“Tiger teams” have been assembled to be quickly dispatched across the state to fix software or other voting problems. To anticipate bad actors using artificial intelligence to create malicious deepfakes of candidates, his office has done its own AI manipulations, making videos in which individuals speak fluently in languages they do not know such as German and Mandarin. “They were very, very believable,” Fontes noted.
The election threat index reports that 53% of Arizonans are represented by Republicans in the legislature “with a proven track record of election denial.”
The strain is taking a toll on election workers who have dedicated their careers to fair and accurate administration of elections. Now the once-clerical work may include more security cameras, armed guards, and PTSD.
Arizona is suffering one of the severest brain drains of electoral knowhow in the country. Of its 15 counties, 12 have lost a top election administrator since the last presidential cycle, prised out by a constant barrage of bile.
Most of those quitting are women, a reflection of the predominance of female election officials and the often sexually charged nature of the threats.
Of the five members of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, two have announced they are not standing for re-election. [Clint] Hickman, recipient of the lynching threat, said recently that “it’s gotten worse and worse … I thought I was looking way too much in the rearview mirror”.
It’s a lengthy bit of reporting, but the indepependent state legislature theory cranks haven’t gone away, nor demands for hand counts. COVID-19 is not the pandemic it was in 2020, but there is no vaccine yet for MAGA fever. The people complaining that people are losing faith in elections are the very ones spreading conspiracy theories that undemine that faith.
Rather than reassuring his constituents that local elections are free, fair, and secure, Ron Gould, a Mohave county supervisor, demands hand counts:
Wouldn’t it be easier than moving to costly and cumbersome hand counts simply to tell his constituents that voting machines work?
“They’re hearing that from everybody, and that doesn’t make them believe it’s true. So if hand counts are what they want, I’m going to give them what they want,” he said.
Where does he think this could end?
“In a revolution, actually,” he said. “People are ginned up. They feel disenfranchised, disgusted, that they have no control over their lives or the political direction of their country. If they can’t solve it at the ballot box, then they’re going to do it in other ways.”
Giving them hand counts will not change a thing if Trump does not win, and maybe even if he does. First, because these are people who have rejected democracy except as window dressing for authoritarianism. And second, during a drawn-out, hand-count process, they’ll spread rumors that results are taking so long because dark forces are working to “steal” the election anyway. Feeding the delusion will not cure it. The reasoning is circular.
What happens here is that when MAGA types show up at regular Board of Elections meetings skeptical and intent on finding cheating, they find instead meticulous checks and balances, scrupulously followed that soften their opinions in time. It’s what they don’t know and think they do where conspiracy theories breed.
With Saint Patrick’s celebrations in full swing this weekend, I thought I’d help you get your Irish up and drive those snakes from your media room with 15 grand film recommendations.
Sláinte!
The Commitments – Casting talented yet unknown actor/musicians to portray a group of talented yet unknown musicians was a stroke of genius by director Alan Parker. This “life imitating art imitating life” trick works wonders. The Commitments can be seen as a riff on Parker’s 1980 film Fame; swapping the locale from New York City to Dublin (there’s a bit of a wink in a scene where one of the band members breaks into a parody of the Fame theme).
However, these working-class kids don’t have the luxury of attending a performing arts academy; there’s an undercurrent referencing the economic downturn in the British Isles. The acting chemistry is superb, but it’s the musical performances that shine, especially from (then) 16-year old Andrew Strong. In 2007, cast member Glen Hansard co-starred in John Carney’s surprise low-budget hit, Once, a lovely character study that would make a perfect double bill with The Commitments.
Darby O’Gill and the Little People – Sean Connery…in a film about leprechauns?! Well, stranger things have happened. Albert Sharpe gives a delightful performance as lead character Darby O’Gill in this 1959 fantasy from perennially family-friendly director Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins, The Love Bug, The Absent-Minded Professor, ThatDarn Cat!).
Darby is a crusty yet benign b.s. artist who finds himself embroiled in the kind of tale no one would believe if he told them it were true-matching wits with the King of the Leprechauns (Jimmy O’Dea), who has offered to play matchmaker between Darby’s daughter (Janet Munro) and the strapping pre-Bond Connery. The special effects hold up surprisingly well (considering the limitations of the time). The scenes between Sharpe and O’Dea are especially amusing. “Careful what you say…I speak Gaelic too!”.
A Date for Mad Mary – Seana Kerslake makes a remarkable debut in Darren Thornton’s 2017 dramedy (co-written by the director with his brother Colin) about a troubled young woman being dragged kicking and screaming (and swearing like a sailor) into adulthood. Fresh from 6 months in a Dublin jail for instigating a drunken altercation, 20-year-old “mad” Mary (Kerslake) is asked to be maid of honor by her BFF Charlene. Assuming that her volatile friend won’t find a date, Charlene refuses her a “plus one”. Ever the contrarian, Mary insists she will; leading to an unexpected relationship.
Garage – At once heartbreaking and uplifting, this 2007 character study by director Leonard Abrahamson and writer Mark O’Halloran is an underappreciated gem. It’s a deceptively simple story about an emotionally stunted yet affable thirty-something bachelor named Josie (Pat Shortt), who tends a gas station in a small country village (he bunks in the garage). When he befriends a teenager (Conor Ryan) who takes a summer job at the gas station, it unexpectedly sets off a chain of life-shaking events for Josie. Shortt (a popular comic in his home country) gives an astonishing performance. I like the way the film continually challenges expectations. An insightful and affecting glimpse at the human condition.
Hear My Song – This charming, quirky comedy-drama from writer-director Peter Chelsom (Funny Bones) concerns an Irish club-owner in England (Adrian Dunbar) who’s having a streak of bad luck. He’s not only on the outs with his lovely fiancée (Tara Fitzgerald), but is forced to shut down his venue after a series of dud bookings (like “Franc Cinatra”) puts him seriously in the red. Determined to win back his ladylove and get his club back in the black, he stows away on a freighter headed for his native Dublin. He enlists an old pal to help him hunt down and book a legendary tenor (Ned Beatty, in one of his best roles) who has hasn’t performed publicly in decades. Fabulous script, direction, and acting. Funny, touching and guaranteed to lift your spirits.
I Am Belfast -I try not to use “visual tone poem” as a descriptive if I can avoid it…but sometimes, there is no avoiding it. As in this case, with Irish director Mark Cousins’ meditation on his beloved home city. Part documentary and part (here it comes) visual tone poem, Cousins ponders the past, present and possible future of Belfast’s people, legacy and spirit.
I’m fairly sure Cousins is going for the vibe of the 1988 Terence Davies film Distant Voices, Still Lives, a similar mélange of sense memory, fluid timelines and painterly visuals (he waxes poetically about the aforementioned film in his epic 15-hour documentary, The Story of Film). Lovely cinematography by Christopher Doyle. A rewarding experience for patient viewers.
In Bruges – OK, full disclosure. In my original review, I gave this 2008 Sundance hit a somewhat lukewarm appraisal. But upon a second viewing, then a third… I realized that I like this film quite a lot (happens sometimes…nobody’s perfect!).
A pair of Irish hit men (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell) botch a job in London and are exiled to the Belgian city of Bruges, where they are ordered to lay low until their piqued Cockney employer (an over the top Ray Fiennes) dictates their next move. What ensues can be best described as a tragicomic Boschian nightmare (which will make more sense once you’ve seen it).
Writer-director Martin McDonagh (who deftly juggles “fook” as a noun, adverb, super adverb and adjective) re-enlisted In Bruges stars Gleeson and Farrell as the leads for his Oscar-nominated 2022 dramedy The Banshees of Inisherin (also recommended!).
Into the West – A gem from one of the more underappreciated “all-purpose” directors, Mike Newell (DanceWith a Stranger, Enchanted April, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco, Pushing Tin). At first glance, it falls into the “magical family film” category, but it carries a subtly dark undercurrent with it throughout, which keeps it interesting for the adults in the room. Lovely performances, a magic horse, and one pretty pair o’ humans (Ellen Barkin and Gabriel Byrne, real-life spouses at the time).
Miller’s Crossing– This 1990 gangster flick could only come from the unique mind-meld of Joel and Ethan Coen (with shades of Dasheill Hammet). The late Albert Finney is excellent as an Irish mob boss engaging in a power struggle with the local Italian mob during the Prohibition era. Gabriel Byrne (the central character of the film) portrays his advisor, who attempts to broker peace.
You do have to pay attention in order to keep up with the constantly shifting alliances and betrayals and such; but as with most Coen Brothers movies, if you lose track of the narrative you always have plenty of great supporting performances (particularly from Marcia Gay Harden and John Torturro), stylish flourishes, and mordant humor to chew on until you catch up again.
My Left Foot – The first (and best) of three collaborations between writer-director Jim Sheridan and actor Daniel Day-Lewis (1993’s In the Name of theFather and 1997’s The Boxer were to follow). This moving 1989 biopic concerns Christy Brown, a severely palsied man who became a renowned author, poet and painter despite daunting physical challenges.
Thankfully, the film makers avoid the audience-pandering shtick of turning its protagonist into the cinematic equivalent of a lovable puppy (see Rainman, I Am Sam); Brown is fearlessly portrayed by Day-Lewis “warts and all” with peccadilloes laid bare. As a result, you acclimate to Day-Lewis’ physical tics, allowing Brown to emerge as a complex human being, not merely an object of pity.
Day-Lewis deservedly picked up an Oscar, as did Brenda Fricker, who snagged Best Supporting Actress as Brown’s mother. Don’t let Day-Lewis’ presence overshadow 13-year old Hugh O’Conor’s work as young Christy; he gives an equally impressive performance.
Odd Man Out – An absorbing film noir from the great director Carol Reed (The ThirdMan, The Fallen Idol). James Mason is excellent as a gravely wounded Irish rebel who is on the run from the authorities through the shadowy backstreets of Belfast. Interestingly, the I.R.A. is never referred to directly, but the turmoil borne of Northern Ireland’s “troubles” is definitely implied by word and action throughout F.L. Green and R.C. Sherriff’s intelligent screenplay (adapted from Green’s original novel). Unique for its time, it still holds up well as a “heist gone wrong”/chase thriller with political undercurrents. The top-notch cast includes Robert Newton and Cyril Cusack.
Older Than Ireland – With age, comes wisdom. Just don’t ask a centenarian to impart any, because they might smack you. Not that there is violence in Alex Fegan and Garry Walsh’s doc, but there is consensus among interviewees (aged 100-113) that the question they find most irksome is: “What’s your secret to living so long?” Once that hurdle is cleared, Fegan and Walsh’s subjects have much to impart in this moving and entertaining pastiche of the human experience. Do yourself a favor: turn off your personal devices, watch this wondrous film and plug yourself into humankind’s forgotten backup system: the Oral Tradition. (Full review)
The Quiet Man – I’ll admit to never having been a huge John Wayne fan, but he’s perfect in this John Ford classic as a down-on-his-luck boxer who leaves America to get in touch with his roots in his native Ireland. The most entertaining (and purloined) donnybrook of all time, plus a fiery performance from gorgeous Maureen O’Hara round things off nicely. Although tame by modern standards, romantic scenes between Wayne and O’Hara are quite fervid for the era. The pastoral valleys and rolling hills of the Irish countryside have never looked lovelier, thanks to Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout’s Oscar-winning cinematography.
The Secret of Roan Inish – John Sayles delivers an engaging fairy tale, devoid of the usual genre clichés. Wistful, haunting and beautifully shot by the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who captures the misty desolation of County Donegal’s rugged coastline in a way that frequently recalls Michael Powell’s similarly effective utilization of Scotland’s Shetland Islands for his 1937 classic, The Edge of the World. The seals should have received a special Oscar for Best Performance by a Sea Mammal. Ork, ork!
Song of the Sea – This 2014 animated fantasy from writer-director Tomm Moore centers on a melancholic lighthouse keeper named Conor (voiced by Brendan Gleeson), who is raising his young son and daughter following the tragic loss of his wife, who died in childbirth.
After his daughter is nearly swept out to sea one night, Conor decides the children would be better off staying with their grandmother in the city. The kids aren’t so crazy about this plan; after a few days with grandma they make a run for it. Before they can wend their way back home, they are waylaid by a succession of characters that seem to have popped out of one of the traditional Irish fairy tales that Conor’s mother used to tell him as a child.
Moore’s film has a timeless quality and a visual aesthetic on par with the best of Studio Ghibli. There is something in Moore’s hand-drawn animation that I find sorely lacking in the computer-generated “product” glutting multiplexes these days: genuine heart.
These are troubled times in Arizona. Until 2020, election officials were the largely anonymous folk who did the important yet unseen work of making democracy run smoothly.
“Nobody knew who we were, what we did,” Fontes said ruefully. “It’s a little bit different now.”
All changed with Donald Trump’s unprecedented refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. His conspiracy to subvert the election has had an explosive impact in Arizona, a battleground state which has become arguably the ground zero of election denial in America.
In 2020, the Republican-controlled state legislature sponsored a widely discredited “audit” of votes in Maricopa county, the largest constituency containing Phoenix. Republican leaders put themselves forward as fake electors in a possibly criminal attempt to flip Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona to Trump’s.
Two years later, in the midterms, armed vigilantes dressed in tactical gear stalked drop boxes in a vain hunt for “mules” stuffing fraudulent ballots into them. Amid the furore, election officials found themselves assailed by online harassment and death threats.
No longer faceless bureaucrats, they had become public enemy No 1.
With the likely presidential rematch between Trump and Biden just eight months away, Fontes, as top elections administrator, is facing a formidable challenge. He is preparing for itlike the marine veteran that he is.
The secretary of stateis staging tabletop exercises in which officials wargame how to react to worst-case scenarios. What would they do if a fire broke out at the ballot printing warehouse, or if a cargo train spilled its toxic load on to the facility storing voting equipment?
“Tiger teams” have been assembled that can be quickly dispatched across the state to fix software or other voting problems. To anticipate bad actors using artificial intelligence to create malicious deepfakes of candidates, his office has done its own AI manipulations, making videos in which individuals speak fluently languages they do not know such as German and Mandarin. “They were very, very believable,” he noted.
Specialists from the Department of Homeland Security have been deployed to advise counties on physical and cybersecurity. Active shooter drills have been rehearsed at polling stations.
As the Washington Post reported, kits containing tourniquets to staunch bloodletting, hammers for breaking glass windows and door-blocking devices have been distributed to county election offices. “These are not things we would ever want to train anybody on,” Fontes said. “But given the environment …”
With all this under way, Fontes insists he’s ready for anything. “We will prepare as best we can for any contingencies,” he said. “And then we have no choice but to march forward, hopefully.”
The MAGA cult is out of its mind. This bureaucrat has to have a bodyguard because of all the threats. And they are totally preparing for violence in November.
Read the whole article in the Guardian. It will make your hair stand on end. I don’t know if any of this is going to come to pass — I fervently hope not. But the fact that they have to prepare for it because that orange imbecile couldn’t admit that he lost is simply stunning. My God.
Please pass this on to any jackass who claims that Trump did a good job with the pandemic. Aside from the inability to even get masks and gowns to NY City in the early days and his insistence that people take snake oil or inject disinfectant, there was his desire to stop testing people because it made him look bad that we had so many case. It is one of the most important low points no one should be allowed to forget it. Ever.
Jamelle Bouie on Kellyanne Conway’s lame attempt to paper over the GOP’s problem on reproductive rights:
Republican strategists are well aware that abortion is an albatross around the party’s neck. Their advice? Find new language.
“If it took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade, it’s going to take more than 50 minutes, 50 hours or 50 weeks to explain to people what that means, and more importantly, what it doesn’t mean, and to move hearts and minds,” said Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to Donald Trump, at Politico’s Health Care Summit on Wednesday. During the conversation, she advised Republican candidates to focus on “concession” and “consensus” and to turn the conversation toward exceptions. She also urged Republicans to avoid ballot initiatives on abortion, for fear that they could mobilize voters against them.
I have no doubt that Republicans will take this advice; they are desperate to neutralize the issue. But the Republican abortion problem isn’t an issue of language, it’s an issue of material reality. The reason voters are turned off by the Republican position on abortion has less to do with language and more to do with the actual consequences of putting tight restrictions on reproductive rights. Countless Americans have direct experience with difficult and complicated pregnancies; countless Americans have direct experience with abortion care; and countless Americans are rightfully horrified by the stories of injury and cruelty coming out of anti-abortion states.
No amount of rhetorical moderation on abortion will diminish the impact of stories like that of K Monica Kelly, who had to travel from Tennessee to Florida to end a potentially life-threatening pregnancy, thanks to Tennessee’s strict post-Dobbs abortion ban. Nor will it obscure the extent to which the most conservative Republicans are gunning for other reproductive health services, from hormonal birth control to in vitro fertilization.
Good luck Kellyanne. I don’t think this one’s going to fly. What do you plan to do about zealots like Speaker Mike Johnson who wasn’t exactly helpful:
“We need to look at the ethics surrounding that issue, but it’s an important one,” Johnson told “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil on Thursday. “If you do believe that life begins at conception, it’s a really important question to wrestle with.”
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, made clear his support for the “sanctity of life” as well as IVF. But he then said there’s an “ethical handling” of the issue that must be considered by states.
“In some states, like in Louisiana, there’s a limit on the number of embryos that can be created because they’re sensitive to that issue,” he said. “But it’s something that every state has to wrestle with and I think Alabama has done a good job of it.”
Michael Tomasky runs down all the roadblocks, delays, ratfucks and manipulations being used by the Trump team (which is a D-List team at best, which says something) to ensure that Trump does not go to trial on any of his criminal cases before the election. It’s depressing, but it’s true and you should read the whole thing if you haven’t seen it all put together.
When we talk about what’s wrong with our democracy, we talk about our political structures and processes. We talk about the Senate. We talk about the Electoral College. We talk about gerrymandering. And of course all these problems are real.
We don’t talk about our legal system. We should. The American legal system doesn’t uphold the values of democratic rule like equality. It far more often corrupts and perverts them. Rich people like Trump twist the system into a pretzel and win delay after delay after delay. Corporations pay fines, usually not that large when considered against their bottom line, and they admit no wrongdoing, even after their practices have killed people. Poor people, meanwhile, get pushed around by the system constantly.
There is no such thing in this country as equality before the law, and everyone knows it. And I would argue that this legal inequality does more damage to democracy than all the political inequities for the simple reason that they’re more visible. And they’ve never been more visible than they are now with Trump. If he is able to push all these cases back past November, or at least three of them (the Bragg case should proceed this summer), and then especially if he wins the White House and pardons himself, that will constitute the biggest failure of the rule of law in the history of the country.
When we talk about what’s wrong with our democracy, we talk about our political structures and processes. We talk about the Senate. We talk about the Electoral College. We talk about gerrymandering. And of course all these problems are real.
We don’t talk about our legal system. We should. The American legal system doesn’t uphold the values of democratic rule like equality. It far more often corrupts and perverts them. Rich people like Trump twist the system into a pretzel and win delay after delay after delay. Corporations pay fines, usually not that large when considered against their bottom line, and they admit no wrongdoing, even after their practices have killed people. Poor people, meanwhile, get pushed around by the system constantly.
There is no such thing in this country as equality before the law, and everyone knows it. And I would argue that this legal inequality does more damage to democracy than all the political inequities for the simple reason that they’re more visible. And they’ve never been more visible than they are now with Trump. If he is able to push all these cases back past November, or at least three of them (the Bragg case should proceed this summer), and then especially if he wins the White House and pardons himself, that will constitute the biggest failure of the rule of law in the history of the country.
None of that takes into consideration that after what we’ve seen happen with the Fanni Willis case it’s entirely possible the whole thing could blow up into a mistrial or even a dismissal or an acquittal. There are no guarantees on any of this.
As Tomasky says:
The lesson? We can’t count on the legal system to stop Trump. We have to stop him ourselves. One conviction would be nice; two would probably be quite helpful. But we can’t count on the broken legal system to do a job that we ourselves have to do at the polls.
Honestly, I don’t even think this is such a bad thing. I believe Trump should be held accountable for his crimes. It would be a travesty if they didn’t at least try. But at the end of the day this is a political problem and to the extent we still have a democracy politics is the only way to stop him. This isn’t just about Trump it’s about a political party that has become an authoritarian movement because it’s losing popular support. The only way to stop it is to defeat it, otherwise they’re just going to keep going, with Trump or without him.
Four years ago today, as Americans lost their jobs and died in hospitals, Trump went on national TV to praise himself: I’d rate my response a 10 out of 10 pic.twitter.com/M1uonozYSi
So Quinnipiac is doing swing-state polls that among other things ask people both about the state of the economy and their personal finances. Here’s Michigan, but you see the same disconnect elsewhere
I keep seeing claims that never mind the macro data, people’s lived experience is of a bad economy. But consumer sentiment isn’t a lived experience; it’s a narrative, and one that is actually at odds with people’s personal lives
