When you think about it, John McCain and Aretha Franklin could hardly have been more different. The one thing they had in common was that they were both outstanding Americans. We will celebrate both of their lives this week.
That’s what makes America great, my friends. It’s not the power of our armed forces, or the size of our economy. It’s most definitely not hatred and white nationalism.
Life in the time of Trump.
His friends are going to jail.
He’s mad as hell
Despite the smell.
“The system’s rigged!” he wails.
The one’s chasing a pardon.
The other wants a deal.
Who will come off best? you ask.
Manafort, I feel.
Any way you look at this, you lose.
Paul Simon, “Mrs. Robinson”
That’s a pretty good description of the UK’s Brexit options. As I see it, there are three alternatives, all of which leave the country worse off than it is today:
Given these unappetizing alternatives, could a second referendum possibly be so bad?
On the ex-campaign manager Paul.
It appears that he’s taken the fall.
He said “pardon me.”
Hopes that Trump sets him free.
But for now, there’s no door in that wall.
On the late maverick senator John.
One can hardly believe that he’s gone.
He served to the end.
He had plenty of friends.
Not including our president Don.
It didn’t exactly work out the way Thomas Jefferson expected. Even by the end of the nineteenth century, his vision of America dominated economically and politically by small, scrappy yeoman farmers had been crushed by the capitalist colossus. That is why it is so difficult to say how Jefferson would have responded to today’s unanticipated conditions. Would he have supported increasing the size of government to deal with a world with Facebook and Amazon, or would he have been an honorary Koch brother? We’ll never truly know.
Except that there is one place in America that really resembles Jefferson’s dream: Vermont. Everything is smaller than life by design in Vermont. And so it may well be that Jefferson’s intellectual heir isn’t really Sarah Palin, the city-hating Sage of Wasilla; it is Bernie Sanders.
Two interesting and related pieces of news today:
Where have you gone, John McCain? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Ronald Reagan was the first GOP president to openly appeal to Reactionaries. He didn’t actually do much for them, but they knew he was on their side, and at the time, that was enough. In a similar vein, George W. Bush completely understood the language of the religious right, and used it to great effect, but didn’t make a great effort to push their agenda. His father did nothing at all.
The Reactionaries thus were a fairly undemanding lot until the latter stages of the 2008 election, at which time the crowds were baying for Palin, not McCain. The Tea Party, which consisted of both CLs and Reactionaries, followed, with its emphasis on scorched earth legislative tactics and its open contempt for government and the establishment. Trump was the final piece of the puzzle.
What changed? In my opinion, two things. First of all, an African-American was elected president. That fact, in and of itself, was enough to persuade the white nationalist right that they were in danger. Second, they have Fox News to whip them up on a daily basis. That didn’t exist in Reagan’s day.
The bottom line is that Reactionaries viewed themselves as a “Moral Majority” during the Reagan years. Today, they think of themselves as an oppressed minority. It is the newly-acquired sense of victimhood that makes them so angry and dangerous.
If Bernie Sanders really wants to make his “revolution” a reality, he’s going to have to do two very improbable things. First, he has to overcome the checks and balances inherent in our political system that are designed to make radical change very difficult. Second, he’s going to have to persuade white working people and minorities to put aside their differences and work together in their shared economic self-interest to overthrow the capitalist barons and create the long-awaited American Jerusalem.
To that end, logically, Sanders should be out doing everything he can to: (a) persuade the Democratic Party to become more openly accepting of white working culture (e.g., don’t be so hostile to religion, patriotism, and guns); and (b) convince poor white nationalists that voting with poor minorities against the wealthy is in their best interests. It sounds impossible, and it probably is, but my point is that Sanders isn’t even trying. He appears to think that all he has to do is propose government spending programs that will benefit working people of all colors, and everyone will fall into line.
Centuries of history say he’s wrong about that. Personally, I would bet the ranch on it. The Democratic Party is first and foremost a coalition of victims, and class is only a small part of that.
Last Tuesday, Trump’s former fixer confessed that he was guilty of a campaign finance violation involving the payment of hush money at Trump’s direction, while his former campaign manager was convicted of eight counts of various kinds of fraud. The president went to a rally in West Virginia later that day. The crowd chanted “Lock her up!”
I was incredulous when I heard this the first time. Were these people living in some sort of parallel universe? Later, however, I began to understand the real significance of “Lock her up!” It scares the daylights out of me.
The message behind “Lock her up!” is that the base will support any effort by Trump to become a true authoritarian. They have processed all of the information about his incompetence and corruption, and they simply don’t care. They love his swagger and the fact that he is on their side–that’s all that matters. If he has to turn the country into Hungary in order to stay in power, he has their blessing.
Don’t think for a minute that he didn’t hear them.
John McCain apparently described himself as a man who made lots of mistakes, but who loved his country and believed in public service. That sounds about right to me.
I’ve always believed that the country would have been far better off if McCain had won the GOP nomination in 2000 and had been elected president. He was far better prepared to deal with 9/11 than Bush was. My guess is that he probably would have launched the Iraq War, just as Bush did, but he would have fought it more competently.
In 2008, on the other hand, he was the wrong man at the wrong time. If he had been elected, all of his instincts would have told him to cut the deficit, not to stimulate the staggering economy. He would have been a disaster. We can be grateful that he didn’t win, and that doesn’t even include the farcical Palin episode.
I didn’t agree with his enthusiasm for overseas military adventures, but at least he advocated intervention for the right reasons. He believed in human rights, the rule of law, and liberal democratic values. He supported the ideas that truly make America great.
In so many ways, he was the antithesis of Trump. He will be missed, badly.
I posted a column about a future Trump presidency entitled “The Accidental Fascist” about two months before the 2016 election. What I meant by that was that Trump was running as a strongman without ideology who would “drain the swamp” and get things done, and when he inevitably failed, he would have to choose between defeat at the polls and humiliation or doubling down on authoritarianism. I predicted that he would pick the latter, given his thin skin and pugnacious personality.
I am pretty sure we are going to reach that point after the 2018 election. Trump is sounding more and more like a beleaguered mob boss. His legal problems are mounting, former members of his inner circle are turning on him, and his only real “accomplishment” is a tax bill that everyone other than the GOP donor class hates. He wants to lash out and double down, because that is what he has always done when he has run into trouble. What better way to do that than to fire Sessions and turn the DOJ into his own personal goon squad after the election?
His base is practically inviting him to do it. Only the Senate can stop him. More on that tomorrow.
To say the least, Jeff Sessions is an unlikely champion of our constitutional liberties, but the fact is that his sense of professional ethics is about the only thing that is preventing us from becoming an illiberal democracy. It isn’t just Mueller, although that matters a lot. It is the complete politicization of the DOJ which is at stake here.
Some GOP senators are apparently telling Trump that it is OK to replace Sessions after the election. If that happens, you can be sure that Trump will be looking for someone who will turn the DOJ into a body designed to protect his legal interests and lock up his opponents. There is no reason to believe that a Senate controlled by the GOP will do anything to prohibit that; after all, if you accept the logic of an argument by a pro-GOP commentator in today’s NYT, an independent DOJ is just a “norm,” not a constitutional requirement, and “norms” are designed to evolve over time.
The bottom line is that it is really, really, really important for the Democrats to do everything possible to win control of the Senate in November, even though the odds are stacked against them. If they don’t, all hell is going to break loose.
The EU is up the creek without a paddle. Under attack by both Putin and Trump, it apparently is unable to solve the problems of immigration and slow growth. The UK is leaving; Italy could be next. Illiberal democracy is a growing threat, and more euro crises are very likely in the future. What should be done?
The EU has been a success as a sort of souped-up free trade area. The leadership should accept that and focus on what it does best–permit the free movement of people, goods, and services. Give up on the notion of “ever closer union” unless and until the people of Europe start to see themselves as Europeans first, and citizens of their own countries second. Stop defending the euro at all costs, stop the bailouts, and let the Italians go if they insist.
Other than the nonsensical “rigged witch hunt,” Trump’s favorite catchphrase is “no collusion” (sometimes misspelled). As we know, “collusion” is a legally undefined term, and is not by itself a crime, although it sounds a lot like “conspiracy,” which is. What does Trump mean by “collusion,” and is he guilty of it?
As far as I can tell, Trump’s definition of “collusion” has three elements:
In short, the essence of Trumpian “collusion” is a quid pro quo.
What does the evidence that is currently available to the public show?
The problem is that these actions can also be explained by his very unusual ideology and personality. So what exactly is motivating him? We will probably never know, in spite of Mueller’s best efforts, because even if the system had the ability to ask him directly, nothing he said, under oath or otherwise, could be taken seriously, given his propensity for telling lies.