Tag: Election 2018
The decline and fall of the Trump presidency has begun
On: November 20, 2018 November 21, 2018 By: Mark
One thing is pretty clear to me as a result of the 2018 midterms: the decline and fall of Donald J. Trump has started in earnest. Most likely it will quickly pick up speed.
The phases are a lot like dying, except Trump is unlikely to ever reach the final stage: acceptance. If he's still around on January 20, 2020 when a Democrat is inaugurated president, it will probably be up to the Secret Service to bodily remove him from the White House. I doubt he will show up for the inauguration of his successor, breaking with a long precedent. After all, he couldn't be bothered to show up for two Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. I don't think there's a back door on the White House, but I think there is an underground walkway to the Executive Office Building. That's probably how he will sneak out of Dodge.
We've hit peak Trump, at least as far as Trump's political power goes. Granted he can still wreak a lot of damage and do other crazy things like getting us into a new war. But he's reached the point where any action is ultimately self-defeating and only his base believes he is truly working in the national interest. If Trump's past is any guide to his future, he may cash in his chips and resign, particularly if Mueller's report ever gets released. The only part of being president that he likes is the attention it gives him, and lately it's been a lot of negative attention. No fun in that!
Trump is such a child that this latest phase was entirely predictable. He tried to spin his midterm losses as a great victory at first. A few days later it finally dawned on him that he was, well, largely trumped. Then of course he started pointing fingers because of course he couldn't possibly be to blame. The most recent one was that these defeats were because he was not on the ballot. How strange! One of the few joys he gets from the presidency is holding rallies. He went all over the country to stir up his base and repeatedly told them they had to show up. And they did, but there's just a lot less to Trump's base than there used to be and they did not show up in the numbers that Democrats showed up. He held three rallies in Montana trying to defeat Democrat Jon Tester and failed.
The nation has been onto the disaster that is Donald J. Trump for a long time. Trump still hasn't figured it out; at least it's not something he can admit to himself. But emotionally he knows he's been whipped. You can see it in his poutiness and isolation, but also by his reflexively defensive positions. He knows he can't keep House Democrats from investigating him next year. He's tried putting in a lackey, Matt Whitaker, as Acting Attorney General to blunt the Mueller probe, but it doesn't look like it's going to work. Before November 6th, he had Congressional Republican majorities to protect him. Starting in 2019, House Democrats are going to strip him metaphorically naked. We'll see his tax returns. We'll learn how much the Trump Campaign was in bed with the Russians. For the next two years, his life will only continue to get more hellish. This is why I think there's a significant probability he will simply resign at some point.
Even Fox News isn't reliably parroting his talking points anymore. Actually it's been Fox News that has set most of his talking points. That is principally Trump's source of news and opinions, but Fox News' listeners are predominantly rapidly aging senior citizens. With all the younger people of color coming into Congress, it's pretty clear that changing demographics are finally reaching critical mass. What eventually emerges won't necessarily be blue states from sea to shining sea; most likely there will always be plenty of red states in between. Before 2020 though it may finally dawn on Republicans that Trump is a dead man walking and it's in their best interest to cut him loose. They probably won't summon the nerve to find a primary challenger to Trump, but they should field someone. As he continues to dissemble, it will be easier for some Republicans to summon some courage in the hopes of beating the long odds. Suddenly, Jeb Bush may not look so bad anymore.
Trump was never great at picking people to work for him. Mostly they are incompetent but sometimes he picks someone actively malicious and effective. Most quickly flame out. His White House is chaotic with no one really in charge. The most recent prominent example was picking Matt Whitaker as acting Attorney General. It's unclear whether his legal staff first looked into this. I doubt they did because any competent attorney would have warned him picking Whitaker was probably against the law. Most likely Trump just decided impulsively to pick him and left it to staff to deal with the wreckage. This just goes to show his utter incompetence.
Trump certainly excels at keeping the focus on feeding his own ego, and the media is likely to keep dancing to his tweets in the hope of continued advertising revenue. While the general rule is that even negative attention is better than no attention at all, Trump will discover that when attention only generates bad press that it can cut him, make him bleed and perhaps fatally wound him too. Stay tuned.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged Donald Trump, Election 2018, Jeb Bush, Republicans Leave a comment/
The bluing of America continues
On: November 16, 2018 By: Mark
I'm still not done analyzing Election 2018. With each passing day as more races finally get called, it's absolutely clear that the Blue Wave arrived on November 6th.
In the U.S. House, Democrats have picked up 36 seats officially. They lead in three others. Republicans lead in three others, but by tiny margins: less than 1000 votes in GA-7, 3000 in NY-27 and 1200 in TX-23. Right now this looks like a 39 seat gain for Democrats. Considering how gerrymandered districts are, this is astounding. Republicans would have been routed much worse if districts were drawn fairly. However, had districts been drawn fairly, it's not clear that Republicans would have had a majority of seats in the current House at all. After the 2014 election, Republicans had a 30 seat majority; and after 2016, a 24 seat majority. Since 2014, it's likely that Republicans maintained control of the House only because so many districts were highly gerrymandered.
November 6th has resulted in some amazing shifts. For example, Orange County in California has six U.S. house seats, now all filled by Democrats. This was where the Reagan anti-tax revolution was born. Before it was 4R-2D. Two of Nevada's three seats are now blue. In Iowa, it was 3R-1D and is now 3D-1R. It shouldn't be too surprising the California added six Democratic seats and New Jersey added 4. What's more surprising is that Texas added 2 Democratic seats, Florida added 2, and Pennsylvania added 3. There were a few genuine surprises: a Democrat won OK-5, considered likely Republican district. They won one in nearby Kansas too. Utah looks likely to place a Democrat in the district containing Salt Lake City. The only place where things turned into a real fistfight was in Minnesota, which turned into a draw: Republicans flipped 2 Democratic seats while Democrats flipped 2 Republican seats.
In the U.S. Senate, Democrats are likely to lose a total of two seats, reducing their share to 47-53. They had to defend 25 of 34 seats, four of which were in deep red states (North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and West Virginia). Of those four they kept just West Virginia with Joe Manchin's win. But Democrats defeated Dean Heller's reelection bid in Nevada, and flipped retiring Jeff Flake's Republican seat in Arizona giving it to a bisexual woman, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. Republicans picked up no seats in states that were not already crimson red. Arizona is now a purple state, Texas is looking a bit purple with Ted Cruz's narrow win and now Nevada looks reliably blue. In Florida, Democrats may have been their worst enemy thanks to a badly drawn ballot in populous Broward County where the Democrat Bill Nelson's name appeared in a small box in the bottom left corner of a very tall ballot. Many Democrats who voted Democratic for governor missed this entirely; possibly resulting in what looks like Nelson's loss.
Democrats look to pick up five governorships in Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Nevada and Wisconsin. Three are particularly notable but today I'll concentrate on Maine, where Janet Mills won convincingly, ending Paul LePage's deeply divisive era (he left due to term limitations). This plus the pickup in of a house seat in Maine makes Maine less red and a bluer form of purple. One Republican "win" in Georgia looks highly suspicious. Brian Kemp oversaw his own election, disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters and set up fewer machines in heavily Democratic districts. It's probably more accurate to say he would have lost if the election had been run fairly, as the margin of his victory was less than 60,000 votes.
Some other metrics are interesting. The U.S. House for the first time will have over a hundred women: 103 total, 4 of whom are nonvoting (delegates). Three members are Muslim, 2 are Native American, at least 11 are of Asian ancestry and 48 are black. So women are about 25% of the House now, nowhere close to the 51% of the population they represent but a sizable improvement. These statistics mirror the Senate's, with 22 out of 100 senators women. Two are Asian, 3 are black and 4 are Hispanic. Overall the Senate does not look like America, with 88% of senators' white.
Democrats now control 14 state legislatures. Republicans control 23 legislatures. Republicans flipped only one chamber: the Alaska House. Democrats picked up two state supermajorities. Perhaps more importantly than what Democrats gained was what Republicans lost. They lost supermajorities in the Michigan, North Carolina, Texas and Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, Republicans lost supermajorities in both the state house and state senate.
In short it was an impressive election for Democrats by almost any metric. Republicans have plenty to fear in 2020. The nation is bluing up.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged Election 2018 Leave a comment/
Election 2018 – Curiouser and curiouser
On: November 9, 2018 November 9, 2018 By: Mark
I woke up Wednesday morning and wrote my last post thinking the midterms were over. Two days later it's clear they are not. They are still unfolding. Each passing day suggests that this was indeed a true wave election for Democrats, not the high tide as I suggested on Wednesday.
In that post, I had originally thought Jon Tester had lost his Senate race, but when all the votes were finally counted, it turns out he won convincingly, by nearly 3% of the vote. Similarly, last night in Arizona Kyrsten Sinema pulled ahead of Republican Martha McSally by half a percentage point, or about 600 votes, as absentee ballots were counted. In Florida, just .2% of the vote (or about 18,000 votes) separates Democrat incumbent Bill Nelson from Rick Scott. A recount is likely. But it's not over in Mississippi either, where a runoff will be held. There were actually two senate elections in the state, one a special election. On the second, two Republicans were on the ballot so these votes were split, but Democrat Mike Espy was only .9% behind front-runner Cindy Hyde-Smith. It's possible but unlikely that Democrats will flip this deeply red state too. Remember a year ago no one believed that Democrat Doug Jones would win his special election in Alabama either. So the best case for the Senate would be 51R-49D, which would leave the Senate unchanged. As I noted, given the dynamics, just holding on to their 51R-49D minority would have been a major accomplishment for Democrats. Right now a 53R-47D Senate is looking most likely.
In the House, it looks like there will be 230D-205R. I thought a ten-seat majority was most likely, but Democrats look to actually have a 25-seat majority. Without question, the House election was a blue wave. These numbers are all the more surprising considering how deeply gerrymandered these voting districts are. You have to go back to the 1974 election to find Democrats picking up so many seats in one election. The 1974 election of course was just after the crest of Watergate and Nixon's resignation. And in 1976, as a result of Watergate (and President Ford's deeply unpopular decision to pardon President Nixon), Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency. Given Trump's decision yesterday to fire Jeff Sessions and install his lackey as Acting Attorney General, history could well repeat itself in 2020. Trump may be destroying the Republican Party. Nixon and Ford only gravely wounded it.
In the governors' races, it sure looks like Brian Kemp's win in Georgia is a direct result of voter suppression. Not only did he as secretary of state rigorously cleanse the voter rolls, in some minority precincts voters waited more than four hours to vote. According to the Washington Post:
Another problem was the limited number of voting machines in some locations. More than 1,800 machines sat idle in storage in three of the state's largest and most heavily Democratic counties. In Fulton County, according to figures provided by elections director Rick Barron, the ratio of machines to registered voters was lower than it had been in 2014, despite predictions that turnout was likely to break records for a midterm election.
It's also possible that voter suppression was a factor in the Florida governor's race too, still under dispute but with Republican Ron DeSantis officially ahead by .4% or about 36,000 votes. One thing is clear: since Florida voters approved an amendment granting voting rights to ex-felons, future elections like this will be harder for Republicans to pull off.
In short, this turned out to be a wave election for Democrats using pretty much any metric. Only the U.S. senate races broke for Republicans, which was to be expected since Democrats had to defend 25 of 34 seats. And day-by-day, their win looks less impressive.
Election 2018 postmortem – more of a high tide for Democrats than a blue wave
It's probably fair to say that yesterday's midterms lived up to nobody's expectations, except perhaps the Cook Political Report's. They did a pretty good job of calling the House, which Democrats now run. The way it looks the morning after, Democrats should take the chamber 228 – 207. After the 2016 election, Democrats were behind 194-241; so 34 seats were flipped if these results hold. 218 were needed, so they will probably end up with 10 extra seats. That's certainly a huge improvement and ends eight years of being out of power, but wasn't quite the tidal wave Democrats were hoping for. Maybe it was a high tide instead.
The Senate results were a bummer for Democrats, but really it should not have been unexpected. Several contests are still too close to call, but if things hold up the 51 – 49 Republican majority will expand to 53 – 47, a two seat pickup. It was a crazily bad year for Senate Democrats to just retain what they had. 34 seats were in play and Democratic incumbents held 25 of them. Five of these incumbent Democrats were in deep red states (Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia and North Dakota). Democrats retained only West Virginia and Montana. They narrowly missed in Arizona and Montana but picked up Nevada. In a big wave they might have retained their seats. Trump's rallies and constant polarization were successful in keeping these states red. If you add up all the votes cast in these Senate elections, Democrats outpolled Republicans by ten million votes. But in a country where Montana has the same clout in the Senate as California, it didn't matter. Geography was the Republicans' friend last night and was the primary factor in their wins. 2020 won't be so kind to Republicans. In 2020, 21 Republican seats are up for grabs versus 11 Democratic seats. In 2022, 22 Republican seats are up for grabs vs. 12 Democratic seats. So it's unlikely that their majority will persist beyond 2020, in spite of having geography in their favor. Some losses though suggested hints that the tide may turn in a few years. Beto O'Rourke lost by less than three points to Ted Cruz. Texas is definitely purpling up as indicated by a number of down ballot House races Democrats picked up, most notable TX-32 with Pete Sessions' loss.
The governors' races were opposite of the Senate races. 36 seats were in play, and Democrats controlled only 9 governorships. There was nowhere for Democrats to go but up. Some wins were huge for Democrats: Scott Walker was thrown out in Wisconsin; Kris Kobach lost his race in the deeply red state of Kansas. The big disappointments were in Georgia and Florida, where wins by Kemp and DeSantis might well be due to voter suppression. Some voters in Georgia waited five hours to vote and you would be correct to guess these were not in Republican strongholds. Both wins suggest the South still has plenty of racism. One plus for Democrats in Florida: a referendum that passed will allow ex-felons to vote. This might be a significant advantage for them in 2020. Overall, Democrats did well with governorships, now controlling 23 of 50, a net pickup of seven seats.
In state legislature races, Democrats flipped four state senates (Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire and New York) and two state houses (Minnesota and New Hampshire). Democrats now control New York's legislature and governorship, and the New Hampshire's legislature too. Republicans flipped no state houses. Overall though Republicans still have a huge majority, controlling state senates 30 – 18 and state houses 29 – 20.
For me the biggest disappointment of the night were in Georgia and Florida. It's still possible Stacey Abrams will pull out a win in Georgia, but it's unlikely. Some races look lost by tiny margins, particularly Jon Tester's seat in Montana. But there is plenty for Democrats to celebrate elsewhere. The Nevada senate seat was a sound win for Democrat Jacky Rosen. Nevada is turning into a reliably blue state. In Virginia U.S. house races, Democrats triumphed in a number of squeaker contests, including VA-2 and VA-7. I used to live in VA-10 and was thrilled that Jennifer Waxton soundly trounced incumbent Barbara Comstock with an 11-point win. Democrats flipped this nearly forty-year red seat to blue, and blue is where it will probably remain as it covers much of Fairfax and Loudoun counties near Washington D.C. In addition, Dave Brat lost in VA-7. You may recall he claimed Eric Cantor's old seat in a surprise win in a Republican primary. This win is very sweet for Democrats.
Unquestionably for Democrats, regaining control of the House of Representatives was the achievement of the night. This means the Affordable Care Act won't be overturned and the many corruptions of the Trump Administration will get a serious investigation. There are likely other bombshells that Trump will have to deal with in the months ahead, most noticeably Special Council Robert Mueller's reports. Impeachment is probably pointless since it won't amount to conviction in the Senate, but investigations should fully expose Trump's corruption and his tax returns are likely to get released.
Obviously the partisan wars were not solved last night. The next two years are likely to be even more divisive as Democrats regain some power. One hates to root for failure, but we are long overdue for an economic recession. Considering the trade sanctions, Trump did remarkably well in Red America. If he continues with his current policies though many Red State voters may finally smell the smelling salts in 2020. Some, like Kansas, have already awoken.
My hazy Election 2018 predictions
On: November 4, 2018 By: Mark
Predicting elections is hard, but that doesn't keep the prognosticators from trying. The view does get somewhat clearer the closer you get to Election Day. As 2016 attests, there are always wild card factors that will somewhat obscure our vision. We like predictability but sometimes the voters don't tell us how they really feel until you count the votes.
In truth, there are so many factors in elections these days that even the very wise cannot see the ends. There has never been voter suppression on quite the scale we are seeing it in this election, at least not since the Jim Crow Era. We've got voters in Ohio being purged from the voting roles because they didn't vote in the last election. We've got the state of North Dakota, with the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court, prohibiting Native Americans from voting if they don't have a fixed street address. We've got two secretaries of state basically controlling who gets to vote in their election for governor (Kansas and Georgia). In Dodge, Kansas, now predominantly Latino, we have just one polling place for the whole town, which is a mile from the nearest bus stop. We've also got some tried and true voter suppression tactics: false mailings, racist robocalls and fewer voting places in minority areas. None of this seems to bother our Supreme Court, although a federal judge or two can succeed in preventing some of the worst excesses. In Georgia, a federal judge rejected the "exact match" standard for voting imposed by its secretary of state and Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp.
Offsetting this you have record early voting in states that allow it and what looks like what will be record turnout (at least for the last several decades) in a midterm election. Republicans as a share of voters have declined since 2016, and Independents look to be breaking primarily for Democrats. Women form a majority of the electorate, and they are leaning heavily Democrat. 40% of young voters tell pollsters they will definitely vote in this election, still not great but far higher than in previous years. Research suggests they will break at least 2 to 1 for Democrats. Trump's latest tactics to try to sway voters likely won't do too much, simply because so many voters have already voted. Voting on Election Day is becoming the exception rather than the rule. I used early voting in 2016 because I was out of town for Election Day. This year I will be one of the laggards, because it's a short walk across a field to the nearby middle school where my wife and I will cast our votes.
So how all this will ultimately turn out is today anyone's educated guess as many more factors are obscured than in previous elections. It is unquestionably the most important election in my lifetime, except perhaps 1964 when Barry Goldwater was on the ballot. Goldwater you may recall wanted to nuke the commies in Vietnam. We had a more sensible electorate then and he was soundly trounced. Trump is already in office and is far more erratic than Goldwater ever was. So we'll see and hold our breath. My guess is that Democrats will be breathing a lot easier Wednesday morning and will do much better than conventional wisdom suggests.
I can't claim this from any deep insight, but the tealeaves are not too hard to read. In special elections and limited elections last year Democrats did fantastically. The only reason they didn't win the Virginia Senate last year was because of a tied vote in one district, decided by a coin toss. It doesn't get any closer than that. They picked up the governorship, lieutenant governorship and attorney general, and flipped the deeply red Virginia House of Delegates. In states like deep red Oklahoma, Democrats have won a number of special elections. Democrats are challenging Republican incumbents pretty much everywhere, often with incredibly strong candidates, many of them women and first timers running for office. Democrats are outraising Republicans and appear to be running a better ground game. In short, Democrats have energy and a string of proven victories since 2016. Trump's negatives are too baked in for any one event to do much to change voters' minds. And besides, many of them have already voted.
But there are nightmare scenarios out there. In 2016, we didn't see Russian interference in our election as a credible threat, which was one reason I predicted Clinton's victory. This time it may come down to races that are fraudulently decided. In certain places in Texas, if you check the box for voting a straight Democratic ticket, you are voting for Republican Ted Cruz. We've seen election officials stuff the ballot box before, most notably in Cook County, Illinois in the 1960 election. It's quite possible that John F. Kennedy was not a legitimately elected president. For the last few decades, Republicans have proven to be ruthless. I wouldn't put it past some of them who could control the public vote tally by reporting false numbers. In general though our election reporting system is fair, while eligibility rules for voting are in many places deeply unfair.
I believe that Democrats will retake the U.S. House of Representatives. My guess is they will take it by at least a 10 seat margin, but I think it's quite likely the number will be 20 seats or higher. Few pundits expect Democrats to retake the Senate, given that far more incumbent Democrats are running this time than Republicans, and many in deeply red states. Polls are all over the place but despite the bad math I don't think that Democrats will do worse than their current 49-51 minority. If this is a true wave election then seats that look tied or close to tied will break primarily for the party out of power. For example, Texas might well send Democrat Beto O'Rourke to the U.S. Senate. If it occurs, this will be a seismic political event suggesting that Texas can no longer be counted in the red state column.
Trump has ensured that this election will be all about him. In the end that may be what decides who controls the Congress. If I had to bet, I would bet for a 50-50 Senate. But it's not inconceivable that Democrats will flip the Senate too.
Democrats can expect to pick up ten or more governorships and control of many more state legislative bodies too. It should be a very good night for Democrats overall. The only question is how good it will be.
Righting our Upside Down government
On: October 8, 2018 October 21, 2018 By: Mark
Down is the new up. This was honed in last Saturday when the U.S. Senate voted in Brett Kavanaugh as our newest justice, despite multiple credible allegations of sexual assault against him.
The vote was perhaps not surprising as Republicans always put party before country. Had Kavanaugh been defeated or withdrawn, someone of similar far right inclinations would have been voted in instead. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has now realized his dream of a reliably conservative court, which would have happened anyhow.
We are living in the Upside Down. If you are not familiar with the term, you haven't seen the Netflix series Stranger Things (terrific series you really should watch anyhow). We have probably been in the Upside Down for a while, but Saturday's vote literally confirmed it. Republicans have seized the Supreme Court. It is now an officially political wing of the Republican Party.
If there was any doubt, now-Justice Kavanaugh's most recent testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee proves it. In short, our democracy has been formally hijacked. Our government is no longer credibly run for the benefit of the people. It is now run for the sponsors of the Republican Party, principally corporatists, which amounts to groups of well-moneyed white men, but also a lot of white people feeding on their anxiety about losing privilege. You can see it in the tax cuts they passed which directly passes wealth to their class. The Republican Party is rife with racism and misogyny; indeed these things control it.
Which raises the question: how to we right our Upside Down government? Is it even possible? We'll have an inkling a month from now after the midterms because right now Republicans control all three branches of government. They have as close to a vice grip on all of them as possible. It will take a mighty wave of Democratic votes to begin to make our government representative of the people again. It's unclear given the many obstacles put in the way (gerrymandering, voter purges, voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression and special interest money) whether it is possible.
Even if Democrats regain Congress, it's but the first of many very hard steps that must occur to return to something like normal. It's increasingly clear to me that for it to happen at all, Democrats must fight dirty like Republicans. And by fighting dirty it's unclear if they won't become as corrupt as Republicans in the process.
Unfortunately, there are no fast solutions to this problem. It took nearly forty years of persistence plus huge amounts of money for Republicans to wholly own government. Some biases are inherently baked into our system and are virtually impossible to change. The biggest problem is the U.S. Senate, which is not weighted according to population. Rural states have a disproportionate advantage in the Senate. As long as these states promote conservative values, at best the Senate will always swing between Republican and Democratic control.
So a combination of long-term and short-term strategies is needed. The bottom line is that we must fight like hell for democracy. It is not something we can fix in one, five or even ten years. It's likely a generational problem. Much of the problem can go away with time as conservative voters literally die out. This is premised though on having a voting system that is fair, and Republicans have done everything possible to tilt it to their advantage.
If you read this blog regularly, some of these suggestions will seem familiar. But it's quite clear that what we've done before simply doesn't work. We need new tactics:
Pack the court. When Democrats control Congress and the presidency again, pack the Supreme Court. There is no constitutional requirement to have only nine justices. It just takes a law. It's been done before. Given that Republicans would not even consider Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, at a minimum if Democrats control the Senate they should not allow any subsequent Supreme Court vacancy to be filled until Merrick Garland's nomination is first considered. I'd add two more justices to the court, conveniently to be nominated by a Democratic president.
Call a constitutional convention to reverse Citizens United v. Republicans probably won the trifecta because of this 2010 landmark Supreme Court ruling. It allowed corporations and rich people to make unlimited contributions to political campaigns, and to hide their advocacy under shadowy political action committees. We can count on Congress not to pass such an amendment, since it would not get past a Senate filibuster. A state-driven constitutional convention is scary to many Democrats. It should not be. In this case, 80% of Americans favor overturning this ruling, and that includes a majority of Republicans. A constitutional convention by the states does not enact such an amendment. Rather, if passed at a convention it requires state legislatures to consider it, same as an amendment passed by Congress. It would pass the ¾ threshold easily. This would effectively take corporate money out of the election system (at least at the federal level), promoting a government by the people, instead of corporations. Don't expect a 5-4 conservative majority Supreme Court to overturn their previous decision. We need a permanent fix and a constitutional amendment is the only remedy.
Candidates should run on not accepting corporate and PAC money. Candidates that have done this have enjoyed great success. You would think it would put them at a financial disadvantage, but for most candidates it spurs small dollar donations instead. I live in Massachusetts. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) has never accepted these donations. Neither has Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Both vote in the people's interest because they cannot be bribed. If you want to support this cause, an easy way to do it is to join Wolf-PAC, ironically a PAC that exists specifically to help elect candidates who don't accept corporate and special interest money.
Build from the bottom up, as Republican did. Democrats seem to be getting this message. Gerrymandering is done at the state level. So the more Democrats that control state houses and governorships, the more Democrats can either end gerrymandering in their state, or if they must gerrymander, do it for Democratic advantage. Redistricting will occur after the 2020 census. Assuming that census is not biased (which of course Republicans are trying to bias), if Democratic governors and legislators are in place by 2020, those states can affect composition of the U.S. house in the 2020s and beyond.
Rebuild the Democratic Party. This is probably the hardest thing to do, as special interests and their money still largely control the party. A party that authentically represents the will of the people should be successful. Progressives must take over the party, hopefully as benignly as possible. Doing so though may be so divisive that it fractures the party, which Republicans would obviously favor. For example, the Democratic Party could have a position that its candidates and the party should not accept PAC and corporate money. Do this and voters will have a clear understanding that the Democratic Party works for them, not the elite.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged Brett Kavanaugh, Citizens United Decision, Constitutional conventions, Democratic Party, Democrats, demographics, Election 2018, Gerrymandering, Merrick Garland, Mitch McConnell, PACs, Progressives, Republicans, Stranger Things, Supreme Court, U.S. Census, Upside Down, Wolf-PAC Leave a comment/
The 25th Amendment remedy to remove Trump is looking more probable
On: September 7, 2018 By: Mark
In case it's not obvious, we are amidst a current constitutional crisis. It's only not a constitutional crisis if you are perfectly okay with authoritarianism over the rule of law or are fine with one branch of government refusing to hold the other accountable. If that's you, then you don't believe in our constitutional government.
The New York Times published an anonymous OpEd the other day. In it, a "senior administration official" admitted they were managing Donald Trump the man-child, by keeping many of his impetuous decisions from actually being carried out. This OpEd is perfectly consistent with Bob Woodward's latest book Fear in which many other senior administration officials anonymously say similar things.
However, these self-styled patriots apparently couldn't keep the man-child from a disastrous policy of separating foreign children from their parents at the Mexican border, probably because they liked the policy. But at least they were awake enough to distract Trump with something shiny and new until he forgot about a boneheaded impetuous decision to assassinate Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. This anonymous insider says staff are whispering a 25th amendment while none of them are bold enough to actually resign and call for it to be invoked.
As for Trump, of course he is bursting blood vessels over this. He calls it fake news while demanding that the Justice Department find the official who wrote it and charge him/her with "treason". This is his tacit admission that he believes it was written by someone on his inner staff. Our man-child president of course has no idea what actual treason is. It's quite possible that Trump is guilty of treason by collaborating with Russia to rig our election. Given that no state secrets were released in this OpEd and freedom of speech and the press are privileges of our democracy, this argument makes no sense … unless it's the open secret that our president is a narcissistic moron. Even Trump's supporters must now agree he is one; they just see it as a feature, not a bug.
Apparently it takes a moron to bring down a constitutional democracy, which is what Trump means by Making America Great Again. I got to admit; I did not see this coming. I thought you had to be more devious to bring down our great democracy. But perhaps Trump is just a fool; unaware that overlord Vladimir Putin had surreptitiously pressed his buttons.
I have little doubt that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has already had discussions with the president's military attachés who carry around the black box with the nation's nuclear launch codes: if Trump wants to launch nuclear weapons, he has to clear it with Mattis first. So maybe that is something of a safety valve for our country, at least until Trump decides to replace him with a toady.
I personally am betting that Trump's all-consuming malignant narcissism keeps him distracted from executing some of these impulses. Since his ego is at stake, Job #1 is to obsessively watch the media to see how he is being portrayed and to counter the relentless narrative that he's an impetuous and dangerous moron. Curiously, his every tweet reinforces the narrative that he is one. I'm actually hoping this state of affairs will prevail until November 6, when voters are likely to deliver Trump a clear message.
The midterm's results may finally give Republicans a clear message too: Trump is toxic to their party. With an election behind them it might stiffen some spines to get rid of him altogether. It's not likely, but it's possible. If it happens though it will because Trump further careens off the rails. They will have to hope they can toss him overboard to calm the seas before 2020 elections.
Much depends on Republican voters, who support Trump with a 90% approval rating. Lost in his high approval numbers among Republicans is the shrinking size of the Republican Party as lukewarm Trump supporters move into the independents column. This explains why Trump's overall approval rating now averages in the high thirties.
Trump will probably get impeached next year when Democrats retake the House. But even if Democrats retake the Senate too, actually removing him will require fifteen or so Republicans to develop spines. So in practical terms, Trump can probably only be removed by the 25th Amendment. A disastrous midterm might be enough of a catalyst for some cabinet members to call for it, members that Trump can conveniently fire.
Vice President Mike Pence though really would have to initiate this process. Some speculate that he is the anonymous author of this OpEd. He is also the one person in the Executive that Trump cannot fire, as he has a constitutional office. Pence, of course, has been working hard to excel in the role of Chief Toady. But doubtless he has presidential aspirations. He might make the leap to "Betrayer in Chief" if he thought he could get away with it. If not, then resigning and offering himself as a Republican alternative in 2020 is not a bad strategy. He's just as evil as Trump but can at least run the machinery of government. That may appeal to Congressional Republicans who would have to give Trump the heave ho.
It all depends on Trump's behavior, of course. He is showing all the predictable strains of someone with extreme narcissism in its final stages of unraveling under threat. The best case for the country would be his sudden resignation in a fit of pique, which I still think is the most likely, perhaps after Mueller issues his report ("rigged witch hunt"). If he survives impeachment and removal and if no 25th Amendment remedy succeeds, this crazy constitutional crisis is likely to drag on through 2020, assuming we survive as a nation until then.
Stay tuned. It's not like we have any choice.
Coming up: a blog post on how we can prevent these crises in future presidencies.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged 25th Amendment, Constitutional crises, Donald Trump, Election 2018, Impeachment, Jim Mattis, Mike Pence, Republicans Leave a comment/
Whites are being horribly exploited … by other whites
Fox News host Laura Ingraham drew some attention in August when she said this on her Fox News TV show:
"In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America we know and love don't exist anymore," she said, with videos of agricultural work playing over her shoulder. "Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people. And they're changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don't like."
Donald Trump's election proved there are plenty of white people worried that America isn't quite white enough for their tastes anymore. It's making them nervous and scared and not coincidentally is causing many of them to stock up on guns.
The browning of America is hardly new but for decades Republicans have been riding this anxiety to political power. Richard Nixon's 1968 Southern Strategy (as well as his Silent Majority strategy in his 1972 reelection) harnessed this fear. Ronald Reagan stoked it too, with images of imaginary welfare queens buying steaks and driving Cadillacs. Donald Trump of course made this anxiety the center of his campaign and his presidency. Fear, particularly fear of "the other" is a powerful motivator.
Reagan's imaginary welfare queen was probably not a white person. This is strange because whites receive the majority of food stamps. In 2015, 40% of SNAP recipients were white. That's more than blacks (26%) and Hispanics (10%) combined. If you are one of those whites on food stamps though, it may be scary though because it suggests that you can't do any better economically than those other "lesser" races in our country. That can be unsettling. But whites traditionally have always been the biggest recipients of food stamps because they are a majority of the country.
Still, Laura Ingraham's remarks are awfully odd considering that she has an adopted Guatemalan daughter. With images of brown agricultural workers in the background during her tirade, you have to wonder how long it's been since most of our agricultural workers were white. Whites don't want to work agricultural jobs, even for increased wages. I live in Western Massachusetts where local farmers advertise heavily for agricultural workers but get few takers. That's because these jobs are brutal, far away and don't pay well. Just 23% of agricultural workers in the United States were born here. I was born in 1957 and I'd be very surprised if in my 61 years the majority of agricultural workers were ever white.
As for Ingraham's assertion that none of us ever voted on these changes, what a load of malarkey! Congress makes immigration law so we have only ourselves to blame. Agricultural interests though doubtless pushed these laws. They succeeded with guest worker programs and policies that gave short shrift to immigration enforcement on our Mexican border. This was not bad. It allowed our agricultural section to flourish and keep their prices low. With native born Americans unwilling for the most part to take these jobs, that we still have an agricultural sector is due principally to these workers we're told to despise. To this day, it's largely unheard of for an employer to be held liable for undocumented workers they employ.
Yes, America certainly did look a lot whiter in 1957 than it does today. The places I lived in when I was young were so far in upstate New York that I don't recall even seeing a black person until I was in high school. Lots of these places still exist, but in cities like Hazelton, Pennsylvania they are finally coloring up. And it's making lots of whites in Hazelton anxious. In 2013, a Hazelton-area chief of police channeled his frustrations with a crazy YouTube video.
There are plenty of reasons for whites to be anxious, but it's not because the nation is coloring up. It's because pathways for whites to enter the middle and upper classes are narrowing. Things are particularly bleak for blue-collar whites, the base of Trump's support who he's largely left out to dry. A good paying blue-collar job is hard to find and harder to retain. When lost these workers usually quickly fall into jobs that don't pay a living wage, even if they work two or three of them. People like Amazon warehouse workers, many of whom are on food stamps. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is worth $164B but can't pay his warehouse workers a living wage. He'd rather let the U.S. government try to fill in the difference with food stamps instead. Amazon is hardly alone, which is why a $15/hour living wage proposal polls so well.
It's the rise of wealth inequality that is driving most of this white anxiety. While courting whites though Republicans (and sometimes Democrats) have worked instead for their real masters: corporations and rich people. They've enacted tax cuts that disproportionately allow the rich to keep more money. They cut services and when possible entitlements that principally benefit the rest of us, like affordable public college tuitions, that used to be free in many states. Corporations use their tax cuts to buy back their own stocks rather than raise wages for their employees or invest in the future. Minimum wage laws rarely move upward, making it impossible for people falling through the cracks to reach for the next rung. So-called Right to Work laws make it hard for workers to organize for higher wages. Moreover, Republicans shamelessly feed the myth that if you work harder and try hard enough you can scale the economic ladder. In most cases though they took the rungs out of the ladder decades ago. Middle and lower classes have been disenfranchised not by accident, but by design. Bernie Sanders long ago recognized the real issue: the system is rigged against working people.
The game is rigged but there are some signs that whites may be waking up at last. Midterms in two months should be revealing. In deeply red states like Oklahoma, West Virginia and Arizona teacher strikes have drawn the sympathy of the public, including working and middle class whites. They are even electing politicians who commit to raising their taxes in exchange for more services. They can certainly understand how teachers are struggling economically on substandard wages. It may be that Republicans have played the race card about as far as it can be played.
In any event, it's absolutely clear that the rich and the powerful, who are principally white men, have been systematically and cynically abusing middle income and working class whites, feeding their anxieties and promoting false rationalizations for their anxieties. Curiously the best way to make this anxiety ebb is for whites to rise up against their economic masters and elect people who will put rungs back in the economic ladder again, many of whom will be brown, black or female. White politicians are horribly misleading and abusing them.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged Amazon, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Economic ladders, Election 2018, Food stamps, Income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Laura Ingraham, Oligarchy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, SNAP, White anxiety Leave a comment/
So what's wrong with democratic socialism?
On: July 5, 2018 January 31, 2019 By: Mark
We are told socialism is bad and un-American, but is capitalism really all that great? Consider how poor a job the free market is doing in providing affordable health care. Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies did their best to keep their insured pools as pristine as possible. They had no problems canceling people's insurance when they judged they were too risky and often when they needed it the most.
In spite of the ACA, which Republicans and Trump are working hard to kill, premiums still are going up. Since this latest tinkering by Trump, they are going up a lot while kicking millions off health insurance. Premiums for 2019 will be announced shortly before the midterm elections and they are expected to rise twenty percent or more. This will likely result in lots of disgruntled voters. Right now, the cost and availability of health care is their number one concern. So I really don't see why Democrats running on a "Medicare for All" platform should fear the wrath of voters. It's much more likely they will be cheered on instead.
Ask any senior citizen if they want to give up their Medicare. Even the senior citizen gun nuts will give up their guns if the choice was between giving up guns or Medicare. Medicare is wildly popular, despite its issues. The rest of us simply wonder why if it's good enough for old folks, we younger and healthier people can't buy into it.
After all, Medicare takes all comers, at least if you meet the age and eligibility requirements. There are certainly aspects of the program that are annoying and baffling. I have been studying them as my Medicare eligibility looms in a few years. I'm not sure why parts B, C and D can't come as a general benefit for one premium. I don't understand why there has to be a donut hole if you use their drug program. In any event, universal health care is not that hard. Every major industrialized country except for ours has done it. Surprisingly, people in these countries are quite happy with their systems overall. So while we are creating Medicare for All, let's improve the system too.
Of course with our Congress awash in health care money, their real mission seems to be to keep these companies flush with profits. Which is why me and the majority of Americans could really use Medicare for All, which is basically democratic socialism at work. It's socialist in the sense that the government creates and manages the system. It's democratic in that we the people get to elect people who will enact such a system.
The private sector has proven not up to the task. That's why Medicare was created in the first place. The private sector didn't want anything to do with insuring old people. There was no profit in it so it was either put grandma in the poor house or create a government program to fix the issue. Now health care costs are getting so high for the rest of us that we simply can't afford it even if we can find insurance.
Republicans don't get that the government's purpose is to do things the private sector can't or won't but which the public needs. If there were no needs like this, we wouldn't need government. Private health insurance is a failure. Rather than lowering prices, it raises them for all while kicking millions off health care altogether. Competition between insurers with an even playing field was the basis of the ACA. It helped but it has not proven to be the solution. We need something a whole lot more socialistic.
So sign me up as a Democratic Socialist. There's no Democratic Socialist party to join, but maybe there will be if the Democratic Party can't get its act together on these pressing issues. Government exists to help all its citizens and to provide solutions where the free market can't or won't affordably or at all. I see this out here in western Massachusetts where I live. Cities out here have high speed Internet, but many in the hill towns don't. Comcast and the like can't be bothered. It's not profitable. No wonder local governments are engaging in some democratic socialism by creating community networks, an effort I am helping lead in my city, and we already have Comcast. (We've figured that without Comcast, we could get 1 gigabit per second fiber to the home for a third less than Comcast charges. No wonder Comcast can afford to buy all those arenas.)
Ironically, many of the tenets of Democratic Socialism put Trump in the White House. During the campaign he promised much better health care than we have now for much less. He's done nothing to implement this promise; in fact he has gone in a completely different direction. Many Obama voters voted for Trump because they thought he could break this gridlock by being different. Obviously they were crassly used, but the idea of having great health care while paying a lot less for it is sound, and is now the number one concern of voters.
Let's bring in a whole new crew of Democratic Socialists to Congress in the midterms. Hopefully we can replace every Tea Partier elected in 2010 with a Democratic Socialist instead. Let's let government govern again. Lyndon Johnson was the right leader in the 1960s to bring Medicare to fruition. Medicare for All can be done providing we elect leaders committing to doing the people's business first.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged "Obamacare", Affordable Care Act, Democratic Party, Democratic socalism, Election 2018, Lyndon Johnson, Medicare, Medicare for all, Municipal Networks, Trump Leave a comment/
In the midst of chaos, plenty of reasons to be hopeful about the midterms
On: June 23, 2018 June 23, 2018 By: Mark
In my last post, I intimated that Trump Disorientation Disorder was striking close to home, affecting my wife's mental health. I'd like to say she's doing better but at least she's getting treatment. I doubt she is alone. Every week in this presidency feels like being on a roller coaster in free fall, but some weeks are freakier than others.
This week certainly was one of them. Trump's cruel policy of separating children from families at the border grew slightly less evil when he decided to rescind this policy, a policy he said could not be rescinded because somehow it was all the Democrats fault. To kind of cap off a freaky week with a bit of humor was this nugget from a Washington Post story. Apparently our "stable genius" president doesn't know that only Congress can change immigration law. He thought he could do it by decree.
A cascade of awful news is not great politics. Trump apparently thinks that being awful pays political dividends. The dividend he is looking for is to turn out his base in the midterms. He may or may not succeed in doing so. But he can't win by just turning out his base. He won the presidency by turning out coalitions, including a lot of Obama voters who didn't like Hillary. Also, a presidential election is much different than a midterm election. In a presidential election, you can win while losing the popular vote, which was his case. In a midterm the playing field is more even. Senators are elected or reelected based on the popular vote. Gerrymandered districts make it harder for incumbents to lose reelection. A recent Supreme Court ruling suggests at least for the moment the court sees no reason to declare these crazily drawn districts illegal. In any event, happy people rarely have motivation to go to the polls, while unhappy people have plenty of incentive.
So the more Trump piles on the unhappiness, the more motivated its victims have to go to the polls. Moreover, Republicans are doubling down on deeply their unpopular policies. Just this week the House narrowly passed a bill that would cut food stamp benefits. It's unclear if this bill will become law, but we do know that Trump has initiated a wholly unnecessary trade war that's already affecting blue-collar Trump voters and is likely to affect many more of them as the midterm approaches. Indeed, countries experiencing American sanctions have created targeted sanctions narrowly focused to rile Trump's prime constituencies.
Republicans in Congress sure have noticed. This is a party of free traders but their complaints to Trump on these tariffs are falling on deaf ears. It's one thing to target policies affecting people that Republicans don't like, such as immigrants. It's another thing entirely for them to affect their own voters.
But it won't be just them of course. It will be lots of us. Tariffs raise prices while reducing competition. To some extent it's affected my purchasing decisions too. We are considering adding some solar panels to our system, but panels are now subject to steep tariffs. With no chronic need to buy them, it's easier to wait until tariffs disappear. The price of panels should drop anyhow but there's no reason for us to pay a premium now. It's not good for solar companies however, which are already suffering and shedding jobs. Most of these jobs are steady blue-collar jobs too, likely worked by a lot of people who voted largely for Trump.
If Trump truly wanted to help his base, he would not have put up this tariff in the first place. Solar jobs have been climbing steadily and are almost the ideal blue-collar jobs of the future. As prices decrease, demand for solar will only increase, plus will be replacing a dying coal industry with clean solar power. It's a no-lose proposition.
This of course is only one of many ways Trump is pissing off his own voters. He and the Republican congress still seem intent on destroying the Affordable Care Act, despite its popularity. He said he was going to replace it with something better that costs less, but hasn't. So premiums will be on the rise right before the election instead. People are already losing health insurance and rising premiums will price many out of the market too. The lack of a penalty to have health insurance also pushes up premiums. Health care availability and affordability is the top issue right now on voters' minds. In short, their policy is deeply counterproductive to staying in office.
Trump of course ran on a platform that in many ways sounded quite progressive. He complained about big business and the elites. Once in office though he populated his administration with these very people. Trump's core voters won't give up on him, but he will peel away plenty of marginal voters. From special elections over the last two years, it's clear that voters are voting their pocketbooks, which explains why Democrats have been winning so many of them.
If nothing else, tariffs will have an inflationary effect. We're likely to see the unemployment rate tick up between now and the election too, most likely due to Trump's tariffs. Those who are victims may find themselves with less of a safety net to fall back on: less in the way of food stamp benefits and unless their state has expanded Medicaid no health insurance too. These factors will lead to economic uncertainty. It's hard to say if it will cause a financial crisis before the election, but it certainly might. In any event, despite the tight labor market, most employed Americans have actually lost income during this administration. And since fewer than half of employed Americans have a 401K or own any stocks, they are not profiting from upturns in the stock market.
To me this suggests 2018 will be a wave election that will swing the country decidedly in a blue direction. There are few signs that Republicans can point to that are to their advantage. It's sure not their immigration policy, which is deeply loathed by all sides. But of course it will be pocketbook issues that will be motivating voters the most, and voters will have plenty of motivation to vote in their best interests.
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged Democrats, Election 2018, Immigration Policy, Republicans, Solar industry, Special elections, Tariffs, Trump, Trump Disorientation Disorder Leave a comment/
Trump: caught in the Chinese finger trap 8 views