The Democrats seeking the presidential nomination seem to be talking
about everything but what will be Job One for the next president. That’s how it
looks to someone who isn’t keeping score but only knows what he reads in the
newspaper.
I mean,
Medicare for All is an interesting proposition. But how are you going to dampen
the outrage? If the next president can’t approximate that, the rest of the
agenda will die on the shoals of distrust and disgust. Whether Trump leaves by
impeachment (and not even Sky Masterson would take any odds on that), or is
defeated at the polls, or is term-limited out and actually goes in 2025 (he has
hinted he may not), some day there will be another president. And that one --
even if it’s one of the Mikes, Pence or Pompeo -- will have to pick up the
shards and dig out the land mines and bind the wounds of Trump’s long,
rancorous ego trip.
His House
claque members made it clear in the impeachment hearings that they are not the
kind to go gently into the night of a more gentle administration, and Moscow
Mitch isn’t bringing up anything in the Senate because he thinks his
party’s leader won’t sign it.
And it could
get a lot worse. One of the few pieces I’ve seen that even tries to discuss the
what’s-next problem is one Frank Vyan Walton did for Daily Kos on Nov. 17 (h/t James
McCrea). Walton raises a lot of issues, not least, about halfway through, that
Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other white warriors the FBI is belatedly discovering have
been recruiting and arming for the day when their country is taken away from
them completely by the foes of Trump. The dumbest man in the House, among
others, has predicted civil war if that happens. Come to think of it, so has Trump.
But, far short of civil war, the 35 or
so percent who see no evil in anything Trump has done so far will be balky and
recalcitrant if he leaves under rigged conditions, which in their minds are any
conditions. Heck, they -- and he -- say the election he won was rigged against
him.
The election returns may not be all that Vladimir Putin
wants, but for sure they will not usher in an Era of Good Feelings. Someone is
going to have to create that before universal higher education or balancing the
budget (remember that?) can even be brought up.
As far as I can tell the Ds not only are
not talking about that, they aren’t thinking about it.
Any suggestions for them?
If Dem candidates point out that problem, they run the risk of committing a "basket of deplorables" faux pas. Bernie Sanders seems to have a better attitude toward them than I do. He understands why they vote that way. They HAVE been screwed and ignored. I just have a hard time respecting someone who is screwed and then takes it out on the wrong people.
ReplyDelete"I just have a hard time respecting someone who is screwed and then takes it out on the wrong people." Me too, Stanley.
DeleteStuff is still coming out of the woodwork. There's this item stating that "...indicted associate Lev Parnas is prepared to tell Congress that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was ousted over corruption concerns in a bid to get dirt on Joe Biden, CNN reported Friday."
ReplyDeleteThere's not only the rancorous attitudes, but the roots of corruption that run deep, and won't be gone just because Trump is gone.
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ReplyDeleteKathryn Olmstead in WaPo doped out the post-Watergate reforms and lays out reforms needed after Trump's departure.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/15/watergate-led-sweeping-reforms-heres-what-well-need-after-trump/?arc404=true
I think seriously curbing action under emergency order acts would be a good start.
The cold civil war has already started with limited hot skirmishes in the form of white nationalists killings and Antifa malicious destruction.
Trumpistas have primed their followers with so much propaganda about their enemies in "the media," that however and whenever he leaves, it will be seen as a put-up job, and the war will heat up.
What will cool their ardor (possibly) would be a recession. Some economists predict one in March. It seems wrong to pray for economic disasters or very public, severe mental breakdowns. So I suppose we must pray for Jesus to change hearts and minds.
Here is another link to the Kathryn Olmstead article if ypu are paywalled out of WaPo: https://www.theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/watergate-led-sweeping-reforms-here-s-what-we-ll-need/article_fded8cd5-6623-584f-b8a4-8f20bad73bc6.html
DeleteI agree that the reforms Olmstead suggests would be a good start. I see a lot of parallels between Watergate and the present impeachment proceedings. For one thing a lot of the reforms they enacted then were about things that were already illegal at the time. Same as now. Though Trump has shown a willingness that even exceeds Nixon's to brazen through blatent law-breaking. A lot of people alive today have no memory of Watergate. It's a long way in the rear-view mirror, and apparently we didn't learn and were doomed to repeat a lot of the lessons.
Thanks. Olmstead just depressed me. I hadn't thought of the War Powers Act as a Watergate reform. ISTM more a "no more Gulf of Tonkin phony-baloney tricks on Congress." In any case, it takes two to tango and, having passed it, Congress has ignored it and let Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush again and Obama do anything they damn please --just don't wake up the cat. Trump is at war with Iran under some 9/11 act of Congress, and nobody says a mumbling word.
DeleteAnd, of course, there is no sense strengthening the power of Congress if it is just going to leave the considerable power it already have lying on the parchment in the National Archives.
After Nixon took his grapefruit juice and flew off to California, President Ford said "our long, national nightmare (was) over." But it didn't end until Barry Goldwater et al went to the White House and told Nixon he had lost Congress. Can you imagine Moscow Mitch, Lindsay Graham and Jim Jordan coming down to Mar-a-Lago to tell Trump something like that to his face? Even if they did, his keen ears wouldn't hear them. And Trump out of office could even be more dangerous than him in office.
"Trump out of office could even be more dangerous than him in office."
DeleteI agree. That's why his permanent dismissal from public life has to be permanent and manifest to even his most fervent supporters.
At the time of Watergate there were a lot of people who said they were making a big deal out of nothing, that Nixon was being hounded out of office. But after he was gone his supporters faded away, and now few people say that Watergate was "nothing". The passage of time gives people some objectivity. Hopefully that will happen when Trump leaves office.
DeleteTrump is sitting pretty for re-election.
DeleteHe has a devoted following as a personality among the extreme right-wing who love seeing him go crazy because it terrifies the liberals. He has a loyal following among plutocrats who want him to keep on giving him tax breaks and erode regulations. They would certainly not object to his using his office for personal gain. and he makes enough noise about "religious freedom" and has delivered enough pro-life justices to mollify many fundie-gelicals and Catholics who can lull themselves with the "God works through imperfect vessels" schtick.
Anything short of a mentally debilitating stroke or a recession isn't going to touch him with these three groups of voters.
Plus his strategy was to concentrate on the electoral college votes. Democrats would do well to do likewise. Why they care about South Carolina--or anyplace in the Confederacy--is beyond me. Those places are hopeless. Keep the West Coast, Yankee East, and concentrate on Midwest farmers and Rust Belt labor.
About the "God working through imperfect vessels" schtick, there are people who think Trump is King David, Cyrus, and Constantine rolled into one. But as imperfect as those people were, they weren't one-trick ponies. Trump's main trick seems to be stoking his base. Maybe that's enough, I don't know. Prior to 1916, I'd have said it wasn't.
DeleteAgree that Dems should put their energy where they can get the most bang. But it all adds up, they shouldn't take anything for granted.
Well, it doesn't all add up is the problem.
DeleteMaine and Nebraska are the only states that have proportional representation in the electoral college. Everybody else is winner-take-all.
Democrats cannot win in South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and most other states in the South, even if the Democrat loses by only a few hundred votes.
Virginia and North Carolina might be worth messing with. Maybe Texas, just because there are a lot of votes there.
But why bother with states that are deep red given what's at stake?
I don't know much about this, but I figure the only one who doesn't come off as a cold hearted elitist to those folks might be the old jewish guy (not B-berg). And I think the old jewish guy actually respects and empathizes with them. At the other end of the spectrum is B-berg. They'll think he'll take away their po' boys along with the Pepsi.
Delete" But, far short of civil war, the 35 or so percent who see no evil in anything Trump has done so far will be balky and recalcitrant if he leaves under rigged conditions, which in their minds are any conditions. Heck, they -- and he -- say the election he won was rigged against him."
ReplyDeleteI don't think a president can unite or heal. If President Obama, with his highly competent advisory team and his fundamental decency, couldn't pull it off, I don't think anyone can.
The basic requirements of virtuous citizenship - such as accepting the legitimacy of elections - have to be imparted at more local levels. Parents have to teach them to their children. Schools need to teach them to their pupils. And communal mediating institutions have to reinforce them.
Jim, If you are right, you are more depressing than Kathryn Olmstead. Parents (rarely in pairs these days) are busy. Schools are employing metrics to unreward teachers, or the teachers are on strike to be rewarded. And the American Church can't even quote Pope Francis lest it not reinforce the message that Kavanaugh excuses everything else. If you are right, we are doomed.
DeleteI don't really agree that the problem is on the local level, that people aren't taught basic rules of citizenship. The results of local elections are accepted, at least they seem to be here. Kids are still taught to take turns and not cut into line. Sports still have winners and losers. The MAGA bunch aren't young people who didn't have any raising.
DeleteSenator Ben Sasse wrote a Bill Cosby-esque book on raising kids to have good old fashioned values. It was a piece of political posturing. And the senator has since shown himself to be a gutless wonder (along with our other senator and representatives) who hasn't had the courage or honor to buck the Republican party line of being lockstep behind a president who visibly from space deserves impeachment.
Therein lies the problem as I see it. A willful disregard for truth by adults who were taught better, who do know better, to serve some kind of long game about being on the side that retains power.
And as for Obama not being able to unite, kind of hard to do that when there was still so much latent, or not so latent, racism in the woodwork that came out after his election.
If we are to attain virtuous citizenship again we are going to have to start with restoring a respect for objective truth. Alternative facts and fake news are the enemies of democracy.
Katherine@nov 25. Bravo!
DeleteSo the next question - WHY are so many adults who consider themselves to be "good", honest people so willing to support trump in the lies and the harm he is doing to our country?
P.s. I read Sasse's book. Not only political posturing but glaring hypocrisy.
I think at least some people in public life are afraid of Trump and his smear tactics. They're also afraid of his base. Witness his twitter tirades against the ones who testified in the impeachment hearings. I have no doubt that it does hurt, and is hurtful to one's family, to have one's integrity and patriotism assailed, ironically by someone who has neither. But ugly and unpleasant as it is, it's words, and not the lions in the colosseum.
DeleteThen there are the ones who really have bought into the "cult 45" and believe the alternative facts.
But I think the majority are the ones who put up with Trump because they feel he supports the Republican agenda, and choose to ignore his lies.
There's an underlying problem. 70 years of war footing has led to an overly strong executive branch. The indolent and spineless Congress has been glad to cede war powers. Now we have this too strong presidency occupied by an idiot. This is another problem that getting rid of this clown won't fix. Bush and Obama also abused their powers and overreached. They prepared the way for the Orange King.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-end-of-the-rule-of-law/
Yes, it's a hard truth to swallow, but there has been bipartisan abuse of presidential powers for a long time. Congress needs to share blame, as you note, for being spineless and indolent.
DeleteDid anyone read Michael Sean Winters in NCR today? Dang, he was mean about Pete Buttigieg, whom I sort of like. I hope the Dems don't go all circular firing squad. It's said that the Rs hang together, and the Dems hang separately.
ReplyDeleteI agree. MSW must have gotten up on the wrong side of the gutter to conjur up the bile he wrote. Pete is far from perfect, but he knows that most of the country will not vote for any hint of Democratic Socialist programs. I doubt he will make the final cut, but might be a VP candidate or a member of the new POTUS' cabinet.
DeleteThe MSW column reminds me of why I try to ignore punditry about an election that is still 11 months away. But, since Winters says he is old (young?) enough to be Pete's older brother, maybe the whole thing should be written off as sibling envy.
DeleteI'm totally suspocious if any Democrat besides Sanders and Warren. I'll vote for any other versus Trump or any Republican but we won't get the course change we need. I think that course change won't happen without unrest like the 1930's. Hopefully nonviolent demonstrations.
DeleteMeanwhile stuff like this keeps happening. If Nebraska was smart (I'm not holding my breath) they would support Bernie or Warren, or at least some of their ideas, because how many times are the billionaires going to take them to the cleaners and hemorrhage jobs?
DeleteWow. Merry Christmas, Ameritrade traders.
DeleteWord is there may be some antitrust obstacles in the way. (Do we pay attention to those anymore?) At any rate, there will be a transition period. My son works there. Pretty much guaranteed to cause employees trouble, even if (hopefully) many keep their jobs.
Delete