Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The new Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Hannity last night and made it clear that the impeachment inquiry onto Joe Biden is all systems go. Or is it? Philip Bump writes:

The Hannity interview was useful in one sense. Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), had approved the impeachment inquiry driven largely by Comer and Jordan. When McCarthy was ousted, it wasn’t clear what would happen. Johnson confirmed that it will move forward.

Or perhaps it won’t. In late September, the impeachment inquiry held a hearing involving a handful of witnesses, none of whom could provide any evidence impugning Joe Biden or his son, by their own admissions. The 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump — probably the target of Johnson’s sniffy disparagement of “the other team” — had released its final report about three weeks after its first hearing (which was followed by four more days of hearings). The Biden “impeachment inquiry” has held no more hearings in the month since the first one. And, by his own admission, Comer doesn’t want to.

“I don’t know that I want to hold any more hearings, to be honest with you,” Comer said while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill last week. He complained that it was hard to keep members present for hours on end, given that so many had other commitments. Instead, he said, he preferred depositions, which “you can do more with.”

There’s a truth buried in that, of course. You can do more with cherry-picked transcripts when your goal is to coat Joe Biden with insinuations and unproved allegations.

[…]

One would think that at some point, Comer would need to present evidence that withstands objective scrutiny — including by non-right-wing media outlets. The value of adjudicating these things in public hearings is that they are tested and challenged, making the surviving evidence stronger. We can be more confident that Biden’s role in the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor was not corrupt because the assertion was evaluated during the 2019 impeachment.

But we know this isn’t really necessary. Johnson and Comer can remain surrounded by their allies, including Hannity, and pluck stuff out of depositions that hops over the low evidentiary bar they’ve all agreed to. After all, it’s what they’ve done so far.

This will not be surprising in the least. They will move forward with an impeachment vote based upon cherry picked, incomprehensible gobbldygook with a lot of shrill speeches that prove nothing and they will impeach Joe Biden. They know it will fail in the Senate and indeed, it may not even be taken up, depending on how long this whole process takes. But they will have it on the record that Joe Biden was impeached and that’s what Dear Leader wants. If Johnson can also get Trump’s impeachments “expunged” he will be the MAGA hero of all heroes.

The circus is still in town.

They are in short supply in discussions of the war in Israel but they do exist

I’m trying to feature commentary that I think adds to the conversation about this horrible situation. This piece is by two British politicians with skin in the game:

Much has been said in the past three weeks about the tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians, not least in the Houses of Parliament. For us, it is deeply personal. We are the only two British MPs with parents who grew up in Israel and Palestine. Though we represent different political parties, this is not the first time we’ve worked together on this conflict. However, we feel this is the most urgent, and most important, intervention we have had to make. Israelis and Palestinians need support from their friends abroad, and our own communities here in the UK that are affected by the conflict need reassurance as the Middle East conflict spreads to the streets of the UK.

We are concerned by how little space there is for nuance in parliament and in wider society on this issue. We feel compelled to lead by example, and to build consensus around clear calls to action in the short term, as well as longer-term plans – which we think can be supported across the spectrum.

We know, from images and personal accounts, the horrors that Israelis and Palestinians have faced this month. Israelis are traumatised from the unimaginable crimes that Hamas terrorists committed when they entered Israeli towns, torturing and massacring men, women and children, murdering more than 1,400 people, and taking more than 220 people hostage. Israel’s military response has resulted in the displacement of more than a million Palestinians from northern Gaza and the death of more than 6,000 people in aerial bombardments. The situation on the ground is dire, and adequate aid isn’t being allowed into Gaza.

We put these narratives side by side not to compare, or excuse, but so people understand the raw pain that both Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing, rather than choosing one side and ignoring the other. One dead child killed in war is one too many. Showing sympathy for what Israelis have experienced does not equal supporting Israel’s government, and standing in solidarity with Palestinians does not signal support of Hamas. It must be possible to show empathy with both peoples, so that we can find a way through this darkness.

Right now, we must work to minimise further civilian casualties – the numbers of which are already too high. International pressure is needed to ensure that other regional actors are not drawn into the war. Calls for a humanitarian pause in fighting must be enacted – on both sides – to allow proper aid into Gaza to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding, as well as facilitate the release of the hostages. While eyes are all turned to Gaza, we cannot ignore the West Bank where settler violence, demolitions and evictions, which were already at an all-time high, now risk spiralling out of control.

It is both the responsibility of Israel and the international community to prevent a humanitarian disaster. Palestinians in Gaza – more than half of whom are children – must have access to clean water, fuel, medical supplies, electricity and food. It is not reasonable or moral to prevent children from accessing basic survival needs. All Israeli hostages in Gaza must be released immediately, unharmed. We have been touched by the pleas of families we have met, who are living a nightmare as they beg for their loved ones to be returned home. This is an urgent priority.

In order to maintain the international community’s commitment to a future Palestinian state, there must be a cast-iron guarantee from the Israeli government that Palestinians who were forced to evacuate northern Gaza will be allowed to return when the war is over. Permanent displacement isn’t an option. Furthermore, the international community will need to work, yet again, to reconstruct Gaza, much of which has been turned to dust.

Israel has the right to defend its citizens from the very real threat of Hamas. We are not naive to the challenges of fighting a terror organisation embedded in a densely populated civilian area that pays no regard to the rules of war. However, international law has to guide us and ensure restraint so that damage to infrastructure in Gaza is minimised to prevent further loss of life.

The calls we make aren’t “choosing a side”. Israelis and Palestinians have been failed by the international community. How many rounds of violence must they live through? How many times has the human rights community and peace camp warned us things will get worse? How many condemnations and statements have been issued by governments worldwide?

This has been a terrible lesson – but it must be a lesson. When this war is over, and casualties are counted, the only choice for the international community is to not only call for, but urgently work for a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The terrible status quo that has left millions of Palestinians stateless, living without their basic rights under Israeli occupation, and Israel without secure borders, must end. That will require us to harness the energies of the US, the EU, UK and the Arab world. We cannot raise our hands in despair and give up when things get hard. We have to put every ounce of energy into making it happen.

We must promise that, out of this nightmare, we will build a future for Israelis and Palestinians so everyone can live in peace, dignity and security. There must be two states for two peoples. It may look impossible right now, but there is no other choice.

Layla Moran is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs and international development. Alex Sobel is the Labour MP for Leeds North West

Easier said than done. But still it must be said.

For a dimmer, realistic view of whether these things will happen, this piece by Eric Alterman in TNR fits the bill. In that one, everybody loses. including the Democratic president. Have a drink before you read it.

How many of these richie-rich narcissists are there anyway?

This unknown egomaniac who’s decided to make a name for himself as a Democratic Biden critic at a time of great peril for the country and the world is also a straight up kook:

About two years before he launched a campaign to unseat President Joe Biden, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) was anxious to win something else from his future opponent: his attention.

In November 2021, Biden traveled to the town of Rosemount, Minnesota—just south of St. Paul—for one of his first events touting the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law he had just signed.

Traveling with Biden were Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), who represents Rosemount, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), who represents St. Paul, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was also on board.

Phillips, who represents the western Minneapolis suburbs, did not travel to Minnesota with Biden, but was insistent on flying back to Washington with the president.

Given how precious and tightly allocated seats are on Air Force One, Phillips’ demand was brazen enough, considering he had no formal role in the Minnesota event. But it was nothing compared to what transpired on board, according to three sources who were present and were granted anonymity to describe the scene to The Daily Beast.

“We got on the plane and it was some of the worst behavior I have ever seen,” said one person. “It was horrendous.”

For one, the Minnesota congressman spent much of the flight in the guest cabin snapping selfies—a major faux pas on the presidential plane. Due to security concerns, passengers’ ability to take photos is strictly regulated to certain parts of the cabin at certain times.

It was not long before Phillips discovered how to use the in-flight phones on the plane. According to these sources, he began dialing relatives so he could put them on the phone with the commander-in-chief—not just once, but multiple times—even interrupting Biden during his conversations with other passengers to ask if he would speak with so-and-so.

“Everyone was mortified,” said a passenger. “You know, people are giving each other looks—‘What the hell was that?’”

Ultimately, that passenger texted someone else to see if they could get the president out of the guest cabin and back to his own cabin, worried that Phillips was going to keep Biden stuck taking calls.

A spokesperson for Phillips did not respond to a request for comment.

To those who witnessed or heard about Phillips’ antics, it was clear he was excited to be with the president—perhaps too excited. During his time in Congress, the Minnesotan had been a staunch supporter of the president and his agenda, which mirrored Phillips’ center-left politics and those of Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District.

But the episode is stark in retrospect, as Phillips prepares to officially kick off his primary challenge to Biden on Friday in New Hampshire, where he will formally sign the paperwork to compete in the state’s primary election.

For months, Phillips has been teasing the possibility of a primary challenge, arguing that the 80-year-old incumbent is too old, too unpopular, to win a rematch with former President Donald Trump in 2024. He has said “American democracy is made stronger by competition” and expressed his belief that the country and party need new leaders. (No Democratic president has faced a serious primary challenge since Jimmy Carter in 1980.)

The scion of a Minnesota liquor-distilling fortune who launched the successful Talenti gelato brand, Phillips blew out a Republican incumbent in 2018 after running a savvy and sophisticated campaign. Worth many millions of dollars, Phillips could easily self-fund his campaign for at least some amount of time.

Still, Phillips isn’t expected to be a serious obstacle for Biden to win the party nomination. In New Hampshire, he is competing in an unsanctioned primary, which offers no delegate prize and is taking place as a protest to the national party’s decision to shuffle the traditional order of early primary states. He also missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in Nevada, a key early state with actual delegates at stake.

Even if Phillips’ path to actually beating Biden is slim or non-existent, his ability to damage the incumbent ahead of the general election is very real. It’s just one of the reasons why the resounding reaction to Phillips’ bid, from allies in Minnesota to colleagues on Capitol Hill, has been disbelief, disappointment, and a touch of derision.

“He’s decided to spend all his political capital on this fool’s errand, wild goose chase—it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” said Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, who is a friend of Phillips and recruited him to run in 2018.

“As far as I can tell, there’s no one in Minnesota, including in his own district, that’s excited about the prospect of him running for president,” said Martin. “If it’s someone having a midlife crisis—most people having a midlife crisis would go buy a new sports car.”

Some believe Phillips is genuine in his belief that Biden would lose to Trump and that the party needs new leaders. While there is very little appetite among Democratic officials, activists, and many voters for a bruising primary, public polling has shown clear concerns among the party’s voters over Biden’s age. Indeed, as a candidate in 2020, Biden framed himself as a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders.

At this point, however, very few Democrats see Phillips’ primary challenge as the answer to those concerns. In some corners, even among former allies, his bid is seen as a vanity project or a bid for media attention and national recognition.

Even for a politician, Phillips is considered by some to be unusually hungry for the spotlight, sometimes at the expense of his party’s broader priorities.

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections—in which Democrats were tasked with defending a five-seat majority under daunting conditions—Phillips often spoke to the press to criticize the party’s tone and tactics.

Tim Persico, who was the DCCC’s executive director in 2022, told The Daily Beast that Phillips never shared his criticism privately with the organization.

“We had everything you could imagine—retirements, all this crazy shit—going against us, and this guy was not only never helpful, but always one of the first people, if not the first, to shit on us publicly, not privately,” said Persico.

Adding to the frustration for the DCCC, Phillips delayed paying the customary member dues to the organization—$200,000 per election cycle—until it was in his personal interest to do so.

According to Persico, Phillips only wrote the check a month before election day, after several of his colleagues—depending on DCCC cash to win difficult races—said they would not support Phillips’ bid for a junior Democratic leadership post unless he paid his dues. Ultimately, Phillips won that leadership office, though Democrats narrowly lost the House. Last month, he resigned the position amid internal backlash to his Biden criticism.

In another recent instance of no-chill, Phillips’ thirst for the spotlight rubbed Minnesota colleagues the wrong way.

In May, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party held its annual Humphrey-Mondale Dinner in Minneapolis, its most important event and fundraiser of the year. The keynote speaker was Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and several members of the Minnesota congressional delegation expressed interest in giving the speech introducing Jeffries at the dinner.

According to a source familiar with the event, Phillips had worked ahead of time to secure that prime speaking slot—before others were aware Jeffries was coming—and it was understood that Phillips’ hosting of a Democratic fundraiser with Jeffries the next day was a big reason why. “It’s indicative of Dean being, like, Dean first,” said the source. (Like every other major Democrat, Jeffries has endorsed Biden.)

If Phillips wasn’t always a team player with fellow Democrats, he at least was understood to be one for Biden in Congress. Although he has been a member of the bipartisan, centrist Problem Solvers Caucus, Phillips has never been among the lawmakers in his party who have threatened to take down key bills during their run in the majority.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s vote tracker, Phillips has voted with Biden’s agenda 100 percent of the time.

Even if the congressman had not elbowed for space on Air Force One and spent his flight trying to snap photos with Biden and get relatives on the phone with him, Democrats like Martin, the DFL chairman, believe that Phillips’ challenge to the president is built on a suspect foundation.

“I never heard him critique the president, which I think makes it a harder job,” Martin said. “If you’re running against someone—what’s the rap on Joe Biden? His age? He can’t change his age. And he has a record, President Biden and Vice President Harris have a remarkable record.”

“It’s still surprising to a number of folks, myself included,” Martin said, “that he’s decided to embark on this.”

I’m sorry to say that Steve Schmidt, the former McCain strategist and eloquent Trump critic is running his campaign. It’s hard for me to believe he needs money that badly but apparently he does. The whole thing smacks of ego and grift and it’s pathetic.

Good lord:

No matter your view on whether a primary to Biden is useful, the particular strategy laid about by Schmidt to @TimAlberta of relentlessly attacking Biden is insane.

This can only be described as a pro-Trump effort disguised as a primary campaign. https://t.co/DPtpmn3Nfs pic.twitter.com/0lyObncR7h

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) October 27, 2023

WTF?????

He’s an anti-immigrant zealot too

Greg Sargent writes about the new Speaker’s extreme views on immigration:

Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power.

“This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing in May 2022, gesturing at Democrats. “That’s why the border’s open.”

The “open borders” trope is a lie, and while a few municipalities allow voting for noncitizens in local elections, in no sense do national Democrats have any such “plan” for “all the illegals.” As far as I can determine, no House speaker in recent memory has been quite as reckless and incendiary with this kind of language.

Johnson employs it regularly. He reiterated the claim in an interview this year with the right-wing outlet Newsmax, accusing President Biden of “intentionally” encouraging undocumented migration to “turn all these illegals into voters for their side.” On numerous other occasions, he has made similar charges, even declaring that Democrats’ express goal is the “destruction of our country at the expense of our own people.”

On immigration, as well as on abortion and gay rights, Johnson’s elevation is a triumph for the far right. It has been widely noted that Johnson doesn’t come across as a MAGA bomb-thrower, despite his extreme views. That’s true on immigration, too: He voices high-minded platitudes about how providing asylum to the persecuted is a noble ideal, but he’s a big booster of the wildly radical House GOP border bill that would functionally gut asylum entirely.

The pro-immigrant group America’s Voice, which tracks lawmakers’ positions on the issue, has not documented any comparable rhetoric in Johnson’s predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. “Johnson has gone farther than most of his Republican colleagues in elevating alarmist and dangerous rhetoric,” says Vanessa Cardenas, the group’s executive director.

Other predecessors, such as John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, were supporters — nominally, at least — of reforms that would legalize large numbers of undocumented immigrants, though they ultimately failed to deliver. Not even Newt Gingrich, the most extreme House speaker of the modern era, went as far as Johnson, says Nicole Hemmer, author of a history of conservatism in the 1990s.

“Even at his most anti-immigrant, he spoke largely in fiscal and law-and-order terms,” Hemmer told me, while eschewing the “eliminationist rhetoric” at the core of great replacement theory.

Yet little by little, those more extreme ideas have penetrated GOP leadership circles. In 2021, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a top House Republican, charged Democrats with scheming to replace conservative voters with Democratic-leaning immigrants.

Stefanik, like Johnson and other Republicans who make such claims, did not explicitly allege a plot to replace Whites with non-Whites. But those playing this game know exactly what they’re implying. Indeed, former president Donald Trump recently made the racist implications behind the great replacement theory explicit by claiming that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

All this echoes the 1920s, when prominent lawmakers depicted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as a threat to “our genius” and to “the foundations of society,” says historian Joshua Zeitz. “White nationalists have been reintroducing these ideas gradually over the past several decades, and they are now thoroughly ingrained in the Republican establishment,” he told me.

That someone with these views now controls the House’s agenda bodes badly. Johnson has already declared that a top priority is fixing our “broken” border. Julián Castro, a former member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, anticipates Republican efforts to shut down the government to force Democrats to “remake the asylum system in the MAGA cult’s image.”

Congressional Republicans have long been split between establishment figures who favor compromise reforms (legalization of many undocumented immigrants in exchange for border security) and those who see migration as a wholly destructive force, an invasion to be rebuffed via mass deportations, an effective end to asylum and maximal border militarization. As Johnson’s new — and very powerful — leadership position reveals, the latter forces have decisively won.

You don’t have to be a loud mouth to be a demagogue. You can do it even more successfully in a quit soothing voice while mouthing Christian platitudes.

Or they pretend not to anyway

It may seem obvious that everyone in the country knows that Donald Trump tried to overturn the election results in 2020 because we all watched him do it live as it was happening. His campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits in various states, as was his right, none of which were found to be meritorious. His minions and accomplices in the Republicans party both in Washington and around the country actively tried to help him do that by pressuring election officials, persuading local officials to sign on as “alternate electors” etc. And I think you’d have to have been in a coma not to know that he aggressively tried to bully Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to count the electoral votes on January 6th.

Trump’s famous January 2nd phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was all over the news the very next day in which he very pointedly said:

 “What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than [the 11,779-vote margin of defeat] we have, because we won the state.”

The state had already certified its results showing the Joe Biden won after several recounts, both by machine and by hand. There is simply no doubt that Donald Trump was attempting to overturn the election. They didn’t try to hide it.

Moreover, 139 Republican House members explicitly voted to overturn the results of the electoral college on January 6th at the behest and direction of Donald Trump, even after the violent mob stormed the capitol in an attempt to stop the counting of the certified electoral votes. The new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been called “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” that day aimed at keeping Trump in office even after he lost. In fact, his status as an influential election denier for filing a widely derided amicus brief seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states Biden won was key to gaining the unanimous vote for Speaker just this week.

And long after Trump was comfortably ensconced at his Mar-a-Lago beach club he was pushing his supporters to pursue “audits” of the vote even telling people that he would be reinstated in a matter of months. As recently as the fall of 2022 he was demanding that he be returned to the White House or hold a new election!

We’re about 10 weeks before the 2022 midterms and Donald Trump is still — openly — talking about undoing/rejecting the 2020 presidential election results.

Which still can’t happen, legally or logistically.

Which still (for now) doesn’t seem to affect his chances in 2024. pic.twitter.com/C1lqzjn5cR

— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) August 29, 2022

Whether you believe he was justified in doing it, or even think it was his patriotic duty to try, there is simply no doubt that Trump tried to overturn the election results. Denying that fact is simply delusional. And yet, as Aaron Blake at the Washington Post reports, it appears that tens of millions of Americans are in deep denial:

The Economist and YouGov this week became the latest to publish a head-scratching poll showing Republicans rejecting basic facts about Trump and his legal jeopardy.

The poll asked people whether Trump was “involved in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.” He, of course, was…But to most Republicans, this apparently never happened. Just 18 percent in the YouGov poll said Trump was involved in trying to overturn Georgia’s results, compared to 59percent who say he wasn’t.

It’s now the second poll to show the vast majority of Republicans saying Trump wasn’t even involved in trying to overturn the election. YouGov asked similar, non-Georgia-specific questions in August. Republicans said just 38-30 percent that there was an attempt to overturn the election. That’s shocking in and of itself. But then it showed only half of that 38 percent said Trump was personally involved.

So in both polls, only about 1 in 5 Republicans said Trump tried to overturn the election — the very basic threshold fact that undergirds two of his four indictments.

Now maybe they see this as a matter of semantics and judge that he wasn’t really attempting to “overturn” the election because it wasn’t really legitimate in the first place? But that would be an awfully convoluted explanation. More likely this is related to the fact that he’s been indicted in federal court in Washington DC and Fulton County Georgia for doing just that and they are simply unwilling to believe he’s guilty of it.

What this means is that The Big Lie, which was originally simply Donald Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen from him now includes an equally absurd lie that Trump never tried to overturn it.

It’s easy to blame the voters for this and ultimately it is their responsibility as citizens to be smart enough to resist such a ridiculous falsehood. Perhaps they just don’t know the truth because their media diet is so reliant on right wing propaganda that the facts aren’t easily available to them. But according to a new Pew Research Poll, while Americans generally are turning out the news more than they used to, Republican attention to current events has dropped precipitously:

In 2016, 57% of Republicans and independents who lean Rep­­ublican said they followed the news all or most of the time. In the 2022 survey, 37% said the same, a decrease of 20 points. By comparison, the share saying this among Democrats and Democratic leaners dropped by only 7 points, from 49% to 42%.

It’s likely that many of them are sticking their heads in the sand because on some level they either know the truth and don’t want to admit it or they believe that any news they don’t like is fake. They have been conditioned by Trump and the right wing press to only hear what they want to hear. He told them outright, “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” and they believed him.

It will be interesting to see what happens as Trump’s legal saga unfolds over the next few months. At this point it looks as though Trump’s hand-picked judge in Florida will drag the classified documents case out until after the election. And who knows when any trials in the Georgia case will take place? As things stand now, the federal case in Washington is the one most likely to go first and that’s where the evidence of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election will be laid out in great detail.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that it will affect most Republican voters even if he’s found guilty and sentenced to jail because they are impervious to the truth when it comes to their Dear Leader. The Big Lie gets bigger and bigger as time goes on and they seem to be powerless to resist it.

Salon

Upcoming “Corporate Bullsh*t”

David Dayen reviews an upcoming book by Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh, Donald Cohen and Zachary Roth. “Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America” examines the boilerplate arguments corporate shills have used to object “to virtually every government and social program, from the abolition of slavery to the increase in the minimum wage.”

Dayen writes:

These timeworn tactics have been successful, the authors write, because “they offer a civic-minded, reasonable-sounding justification for positions that in fact are motivated entirely by self-interest.” It’s an attempt to set the terms of debate and to make those terms unchanging and unmovable. The endless repetition of these talking points is a source of their strength. But identifying their history and application to virtually everything can be a source of their weakness.

The six categories of corporate bullshit begins with pure denial. “Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually,” said Senator and later Vice President John Calhoun of South Carolina in 1837, about chattel slaves. Nineteenth-century slavery advocate George Fitzhugh called slaves “in some sense, the freest people in the world.” This up-is-downism was later used to justify child labor (“perfectly happy”), industrial water pollution (“purer than the water that came from the river before we used it”), households in poverty (“such families don’t really exist”), pesticides (“no reports of illness or death”), smoking (“not addictive”), climate change (“nothing but beneficial”), and lead in consumer products (“helps to guard your health”).

Even if these issues are hazards to public health or economic well-being, the market is the great arm of discipline rather than government. Alan Greenspan made an entire career of believing that business will engage honestly or else lose customers; when the housing market collapsed in 2008, he admitted a “flaw” in his thinking. But this hasn’t stopped his ideological compatriots through the decades from claiming that progressive taxation, drug and workplace safety, equal pay, and more are inferior disruptions of the free market’s ability to handle these matters. “Safety is good business,” reads a 1973 Chamber of Commerce newsletter. And anyway, some consumers may want to sacrifice safety and quality products “for a lower price tag,” the Chamber’s Lawrence Kraus said the same year. Federal civil rights protections, similarly, interfere with free enterprise’s right to be racist, which can only be combated through the market itself.

Etc., etc.

Times change. The arguments don’t. Trying to help people actually hurts them; giving the poor a leg up destroys individual initiative; unemployment assistance is “not fair to the people that are currently in the workforce”; taxes punish success and redistribute wealth (SOCIALISM!), etc. No matter how old, they never go out of style.

The public’s short memory and schooling for trades rather than for citizenship helps hoarders of wealth get away with spewing these arguments largely unchallenged decade after decade no matter how many times the sky does not fall.

Dayen tweets (take a flyin’ leap, Musk) that Hanauer (a classic “traitor to his class,”), Joan Walsh, et al. have written “a reference book covering two centuries of the same tired conservative arguments against making any progress in this country.”

Heather Cox Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening” covers some of the same ground from a historian’s perspective. One sees the same struggle by the wealthy to preserve a society that services them at the expense of people they consider their inferiors. They never believed “all men are created equal” was more than a rhetorical flourish by Jefferson. Some even declare outright that this founding (radical) principle was a gross error. Confederates certainly thought so, and their modern equivalents still struggle to enforce that belief even while embracing the Declaration.

Royalists have been with us since the founding.

You can’t win if you don’t show up to play

David Rothkopf described new House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana as representing “a movement that is actively seeking to institutionalize the religious beliefs of evangelical Christians into law.” Rothkopf was just getting warmed up (Daily Beast):

The term Christofascism may seem inflammatory. It is not. It is intended to provide the most accurate possible definition of what Johnson and those in his movement wish to achieve. Like other fascists they seek to impose by whatever means necessary their views on the whole of society even if that means undoing established laws and eliminating accepted freedoms. Christofascists do so in the name of advancing their Christian ideology, asserting that all in society must be guided by their views and values whether they adhere to them or not.

Johnson has ties, Rothkopf claims, to the Christianist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and Seven Mountains Dominionism. Read more at Daily Beast. David Corn has another chilling account of Johnson’s beliefs at Mother Jones. Men in Afghanistan who don’t think the same things as Mike Johnson think the same way. Fundamentalists are universally rigid, dogmatic, judgmental, uncompromising black-and-white thinkers. Fundamentalism is not about what you believe but how.

David Pepper yesterday explained where the Mike Johnsons come from. Gerrymandering is “fueling the insane and extremist behavior of the U.S. House and so many of the American statehouses.” Johnson has risen to Speaker of the House running either unopposed or in uncompetitive, lopsided districts where his extremist views were never really challenged in election after election. “He’s spent his entire career in a world devoid of democracy—devoid of accountability.”

But gerrymandering is only one reason. Democrats’ writing off rural America to focus on federal races handed Republicans the power in those statehouses to gerrymander them:

Democrats focus so much on federal offices in a few swing states, we have decided it’s acceptable to let the young Mike Johnsons of the world, or the Tennessee Republicans of the world, or the book banners, or the abortion banners (no exceptions), and so on, do all the damage they’re doing in statehouses, and not even face opposition in elections that could be referenda on their extremist actions if we made them that.

The Louisiana map above is an object lesson. Of 64 Louisiana parishes in 2020, only 11 Democratic committees had a website, active Facebook page, or published email address for For The Win or the public to contact. Random newspaper stories suggest some exist, but how would anyone know or find them?

Run everywhere, Pepper insists. Don’t let Republicans walk into seats of power unopposed! Bring accountability.

Until we do, all this will keep happening. Mike Johnsons and Jim Jordans and MTGs will keep emerging everywhere, along with hundreds of others like them we will never hear of, we will not run against, but who will be doing great damage every step of the way, while rising through the ranks.

Run everywhere, yes. But running everywhere is easier said than done. At my 2022 review, roughly one-third of Georgia’s 159 counties had no Democratic committees, no party infrastructure to either recruit or support potential candidates willing to make local elections at least nominally a contest. Democrats Joe Biden, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won in Georgia statewide in the 2020 cycle on the strength of Atlanta and environs, but Republicans hold a trifecta in state government.

Pepper insists:

Of course they’re going to be extremists when they thrive in a world where they CAN be extremists, never facing any real opposition (often no opposition at all) despite taking positions that only a few years ago were soundly rejected by their own party.

Ending the GOP’s hold in state governments and ultimately in Congress may seem a prospect as slow as eroding the Appalachians, but without making that effort, we could be living before then in the United States of Ameristan.

That’s because he’s never actually participated in one

This piece by David Pepper is illuminating:

A few years ago, now-Speaker Mike Johnson said we do not live in a democracy.

"You know, we don't live in a democracy" but a "biblical" republic.

That's what Mike Johnson said in a 2016 interview as he explained his views on the U.S. government.

That's what the new Republican House speaker, who tried to overturn the will of the voters in 2020, believes. pic.twitter.com/AEwQXwutpl

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) October 26, 2023

As I wrote several months ago, it’s a common right-wing refrain.

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Johnson turns out to offer the perfect example of how in today’s gerrymandered world, people can ride to the highest levels of power without facing a real election their entire careers.

Which means they can be complete extremists and never face accountability for it. It also means that not only do they not know democracy, they actually come to fear it. Not just because they have never experienced it, but because it poses the biggest risk to their grasp on power.

Let’s take a look at Johnson’s career to see how it works:

Before entering office, he spent his years fighting for right-wing causes as a lawyer—like fighting same-sex marriage and to keep in place laws criminalizing sodomy. That’s his right to do, of course, and I’m glad he was largely unsuccessful.

But then his political career began:

In early 2015, when the state representative where he lived in Louisiana ran for another office, Johnson ran for the vacancy.

Incredibly, even that first run for office was unopposed. There ended up not even being an election! So he initially assumed power without ever having faced the voters in a general election.

(No wonder he thinks we’re not a democracy!)

Once in office, he got to work advancing the goals he had fought for as a lawyer, but now as a legislator. One law he pushed within months was so extreme that major Louisiana companies lobbied against it, and even Republicans rejected it, tabling it 10-2 in committee.

What did the voters think about the fact that in only months, he had already proven to be too extreme for even his own party?

We don’t know, because when Johnson ran again that Fall for next 2-year term, he was again unopposed.

No primary.

No general.

How easy! He pays the filing fee, gathers some signatures, and gets to go right back to the legislature with no accountability to the people whatsoever.

(Again, no wonder he doesn’t think we’re a democracy!)

On the strength of his failed bill, and unopposed election victories—on that unmistakable mandate from a people who had no choice in the matter—Johnson decides it’s time to take his political juggernaut to Congress.

And then he encounters the marvels of lopsided districts. He wins in 2016, 2018 and 2020 with the winning margins we have come to expect in a gerrymandered world:

30% (2016)
30% (2018)
35% (2020)

And then in 2022, even after being one of the most active participants in Trump’s January 6 coup attempt, he returns to his roots and runs unopposed again.

For the third time—no wonder he thinks we’re not a democracy!

Bottom line: the now-Speaker of the House is the perfect example of the modern extremist.

He’s spent his entire career in a world devoid of democracy—devoid of accountability:

-It’s how he entered—even his initial entree unopposed (that’s pretty rare, actually. Not even a primary).
-It’s how he rose.
-It’s his most recent race.
–It’s all he’s ever known!

And it’s why all the unabashed and toxic extremism he’s espoused along the way has essentially gone unchecked the entire time.

Mike Johnson IS the current generation of GOP leaders and members. No accountability—ever! Which means all the incentives he’s faced encouraged him to keep being extreme.

Now imagine hundreds just like him. Of course they’re going to be extremists when they thrive in a world where they CAN be extremists, never facing any real opposition (often no opposition at all) despite taking positions that only a few years ago were soundly rejected by their own party.

You actually don’t have to imagine it—just look around. It’s so many states. And it’s the GOP chaos caucus in the House.

There is also the matter of ideological, partisan sorting among the electorate. People want to live alongside like minded people and as our politics have become polarized, they explicitly choose to do it more and more. (I also think a lot of people just adopt whatever the prevailing political view around them are because they really aren’t that interested in the first place.) The main point is that the manipulation of the House voting system has created these bastions of right wing extremism that now seem to be almost impermeable. With the influence of right wing propaganda on both the voters and the political officials, you end up with Mike Johnson.

With Trump putting all his weight behind them

Margaret Sullivan with a sobering take on the Speaker debacle:

The process was appalling, and the outcome even more so, as Republicans in the House of Representatives finally found someone they could more or less agree on.

That agreement, though, may be more accurately described as simple exhaustion after three weeks of embarrassing misfires.

And who is it they have managed to elect speaker of the US House, the person in line to lead the nation just after the president and vice-president?

It’s Mike Johnson of Louisiana who, as one example of his profound unsuitability, brags that he doesn’t believe that human beings cause the climate crisis, though his home state has been ravaged by it. He is against abortion, voted against aid to Ukraine and stridently opposes LGBTQ+ rights.

Perhaps most notably, Johnson had a leading role in trying to overturn he 2020 election.

That means that the official second in line to the presidency “violated his oath to the constitution and tried to disenfranchise four states”, as the writer Marcy Wheeler neatly put it.

Johnson certainly has his Trumpian bona fides in order. In 2020, he helped lead a legal effort to reverse the results of the election in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and he hawked Trump’s lies that the election had been rigged.

Whatever his shortcomings, we know that Johnson excels at one thing: pleasing Donald Trump, the autocrat wannabe and Republican party leader who loves nothing more than a good yes man.

This, of course, follows weeks of chaos for the House Republicans, who put up three better-known nominees – Steve Scalise, another Louisianan, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Tom Emmer of Minnesota – before Johnson.

In a historic display of arrogance (not to mention the inability to actually count votes), Jordan tried and failed three times. For this, I suppose, we can be mildly grateful since Jordan is an especially awful person who, as Ohio State wrestling coach, reportedly looked away from credible abuse allegations by the team doctor.

The failed efforts by Scalise, Jordan and Emmer came after the ousting of Kevin McCarthy of California – no stalwart for democracy, either – who, in the end, acted a little too responsibly to satisfy the extreme right flank of his party. Those extremists were outraged by McCarthy’s decision to prevent a government shutdown by passing a stopgap funding resolution.

All told, it’s been quite a month for Republicans who – with their ever-helpful media allies – enjoy describing the opposing party as “Democrats in Disarray”. In fact, there was quite a bit of actual array over the past month as Democrats stayed unified and voted, time after time, for Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Jeffries was never going to be speaker of this Republican-controlled House but he very likely would have been a fine leader of the chamber. He is someone who apparently understands how elections and the peaceful transition of power are supposed to work, and someone who could competently step in as president, should that need arise.

What’s the worst that can happen with Johnson at the helm? There’s no way of knowing but it could be ugly as next year’s presidential election looms.

Shortly after Johnson’s election, a reporter asked President Biden if he is worried about whether, if he wins re-election next year, Johnson might try to overturn the election.

“No, because he can’t,” Biden responded. “Just like I was not worried that the last guy would be able to overturn the election.” He added: “They had about 60 lawsuits … and every time they lost.”

But American democracy has edged ever closer to the brink since then.

There’s no guarantee that the guardrails that held fast in 2020 would do so again four years later. And, let’s face it, if Trump is re-elected, they never will again.

I have to assume that Biden knows very well that the danger is acute and believes he has to say this to reassure Americans in the integrity of the electoral system so they will vote. But whether he believes it or not, Sullivan is right. This system is teetering on a knife’s edge as the Republicans coalesce more and more around winning the presidency by any means possible. They have convinced themselves that it is literally impossible for them to legitimately lose. Once that happens any democracy is on the verge of failing.

Say it ain’t so!

Trump in 2018: “You look at GDP at 3.2 percent, we’re doing so well… Nobody would have believed it”

GDP just hit 4.9 percent under @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/5w0TZm9tjU

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) October 26, 2023

Not counting the gyrations of the pandemic period, it is stronger economic growth than any quarter of the pre-Covid Trump presidency and stronger than any quarter since 2014. https://t.co/xkPejz7Stw https://t.co/0xm4sJ5sPS

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) October 26, 2023

I guess I’m past hoping that people will ever “feel” that the economy has improved as long as the price of eggs is higher than it was in 2010. But honestly, I think that Trump’s ongoing presence in our political culture makes his followers gleefully pretend that the world has gone to hell since he left office and the rest of us are just depressed and enervated by the relentless chaos he causes.

Still, the news is true. The economy is rolling and the relentless doom saying over the past couple of years, predicting an imminent recession, remains wrong.

By the way:

 Inflation has moderated — to 3.7 percent from last summer’s peak of 9.1 percent …

The spate of recent growth is welcome news for the White House, which has invested heavily in infrastructure as part of its “Bidenomics” plan. Economists say its clear those policies are paying off: Robust manufacturing construction and government spending drove much of last quarter’s growth, and households have continued to benefit from historic job gains.

But despite $302 billion in infrastructure spending, the Biden administration has struggled to convince voters that its economic policies are working for them. Biden’s ratings on economic matters are lower than ever, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they approve of the president’s handling of the economy in a recent CNBC poll.

Why? This is why:

It never fails. Biden is old, dontcha know?