Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[sharon j]

I couldn't have said it better, "Crazy is as Crazy does"[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/crazy-is-as-crazy-does/ar-AABUmaJ?ocid=spartandhp

[barmar]

I wonder if Trump got the idea for the doctored Nancy Pelosi video from Jimmy Kimmel. For years he has been doing a regular bit called "Drunk Donald Trump", where he shows Trump giving a speach, and slows down the audio so it sounds like he's drunk.

 

However, it's clear to everyone watching the Jimmy Kimmel show that this is manufactured for comedy. Not to mention, there's plenty of examples of Donald Trump actually getting words spectacularly wrong.

[y66]

From A Senator Wants to Have a Greater Impact. So He’s Leaving the Senate. by Carl Hulse at NYT:

 

WASHINGTON — It is quite a testament to the current state of the Senate that a successful veteran lawmaker of two decades believes he can accomplish more by quitting than by trying to stick it out another six years.

 

“This place is definitely broken,” said Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico and a longtime advocate of government reform who surprisingly announced in March that he would not seek a third term in 2020 in his solidly blue state.

 

In assessing his political future, Mr. Udall said he had become convinced that he could do more to advance his progressive ideas on climate change, war powers and a comprehensive electoral overhaul by skipping another two years of relentless re-election fund-raising. Instead, he said, he intends to redouble his efforts in those areas in hopes of setting the stage for big changes should Democrats prevail next year, even though he won’t be back in the Senate himself.

 

“You don’t necessarily have to be there to see that they are completed,” he said.

 

Mr. Udall’s decision to not run again, discussed in an interview on Wednesday, showed how the gridlock infecting Congress and the wide political divisions in the country can frustrate even the most experienced lawmakers and make them rethink their careers. It also illustrates how overwhelming and time-consuming fund-raising for multimillion-dollar races can be, leaving lawmakers little opportunity for the work they are supposed to be doing.

[Winstonm]

label me as a Libertarian.

 

That is a broad category. What do you personally mean by Libertarian?

[Chas_P]

That is a broad category. What do you personally mean by Libertarian?

 

The libertarian or “classical liberal” perspective is that peace, prosperity, and social harmony are fostered by “as much liberty as possible” and “as little government as necessary.” Libertarian is not a single viewpoint, but includes a wide variety of perspectives. Libertarians can range from market anarchists to advocates of a limited welfare state, but they are all united by a belief in personal liberty, economic freedom, and a skepticism of government power.

[hrothgar]

The libertarian or “classical liberal” perspective is that peace, prosperity, and social harmony are fostered by “as much liberty as possible” and “as little government as necessary.” Libertarian is not a single viewpoint, but includes a wide variety of perspectives. Libertarians can range from market anarchists to advocates of a limited welfare state, but they are all united by a belief in personal liberty, economic freedom, and a skepticism of government power.

 

I find it highly amusing that Chas's personal perspective is a cut and paste job

 

https://theihs.org/who-we-are/what-is-libertarian/

[Winstonm]

They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. :P

[kenberg]

I find it highly amusing that Chas's personal perspective is a cut and paste job

 

https://theihs.org/w...is-libertarian/

 

Oddly, my computer won't go there. Not to anything connected with ihes. Maybe my virus protection is watching out for me!

Here is a question that can serve as a quick identity check of libertarian.

How does he feel about publicly funded elementary schools?

From what I can tell, a person who favors public funding of elementary schools would be kicked out of the libertarian club by the true believers.

 

But this happens all the time. Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. Ah, but a Democratic Socialist. Which I suppose, to a true socialist, means that he is not a socialist.What's a liberal? What's a Christian? What's a whatever?

 

Having concerns about government overreach hardly makes a person a libertarian, else we are all libertarians. Do you have to oppose public funding of elementary schools to be a true libertarian? Let those who so describe themselves argue that one out.

[y66]

From How Liberalism Loses by Ross Douthat at NYT:

 

In Australia a week ago, the party of the left lost an election it was supposed to win, to a conservative government headed by an evangelical Christian who won working-class votes by opposing liberal climate policies. In India last week, the Hindu-nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, won an overwhelming electoral victory. And as of this writing, Europeans are electing a Parliament that promises to have more populist representation than before.

 

The global fade of liberalism, in other words, appears to be continuing. Right-wing populism struggles to govern effectively, but it clearly has a durable political appeal — which, as Tyler Cowen points out in a Bloomberg column, has not yet been counteracted by the new socialism, the new new left.

 

The global context is useful for thinking about how American liberals understand their own situation. Since the shock of Donald Trump’s election, many liberals have decided that their own coalition is the real American majority, victimized by un-democratic institutions and an anti-democratic G.O.P. Their mood is one of anger at the System, and confidence in their unacknowledged, temporarily-impeded mandate: They’ve got the structures, but we’ve got the numbers.

 

But what if American liberals, while unfortunate in the Electoral College, are luckier than they think in other ways? The fact that populism is flourishing internationally, far from the Electoral College and Fox News, suggests that Trump’s specific faults might actually be propping up American liberalism. If we had a populist president who didn’t alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.

 

That liberal belief may also misunderstand the real correlation of forces in our politics. We had an example this week on our op-ed podcast, The Argument, where my colleague and co-host David Leonhardt interviewed Pete Buttigieg, the Midwestern mayor running for president with promises to build bridges between the heartland and the coasts. Leonhardt pressed Buttigieg on whether that bridge-building might include compromise on any social issues, and the answer seemed to be “no” — in part because Mayor Pete argued that on abortion and guns and immigration most middle Americans already agree with Democrats, that the liberal position is already the common ground.

 

The strategic flaw in this reading of the liberal situation is that politics isn’t about casually held opinions on a wide range of topics, but focused prioritization of specifics. As the Democratic data analyst David Shor has noted, you can take a cluster of nine Democratic positions that each poll over 50 percent individually, and find that only 18 percent of Americans agree with all of them. And a single strong, focused disagreement can be enough to turn a voter against liberalism, especially if liberals seem uncompromising on that issue.

 

A pattern of narrow, issue-by-issue resistance is also what you’d expect in an era where the popular culture is more monolithically left-wing than before. That cultural dominance establishes a broad, shallow left-of-center consensus, which then evaporates when people have some personal reason to reject liberalism, or confront the limits of its case.

 

None of this needs to spell doom for liberals; it just requires them to prioritize and compromise. If you want to put climate change at the center of liberal politics, for instance, then you’ll keep losing voters in the Rust Belt, just as liberal parties have lost similar voters in Europe and Australia. In which case you would need to reassure some other group, be it suburban evangelicals or libertarians, that you’re willing to compromise on the issues that keep them from voting Democratic.

 

Alternatively, if you want to make crushing religious conservatives your mission, then you need to woo secular populists on guns or immigration, or peel off more of the tax-sensitive upper middle class by not going full socialist.

 

But the liberal impulse at the moment, Buttigiegian as well as Ocasio-Cortezan, is to insist that liberalism is a seamless garment, an indivisible agenda that need not be compromised on any front. And instead of recognizing populism as a motley coalition united primarily by opposition to liberalism’s rule, liberals want to believe they’re facing a unitary enemy — a revanchist patriarchal white supremacy, infecting every branch and tributary of the right.

 

In this view it’s not enough to see racial resentment as one important form of anti-liberalism (which it surely is); all anti-liberalism must fall under the canopy. Libertarianism is white supremacy, the N.R.A. is white supremacy, immigration skepticism is white supremacy, tax-sensitive suburbia is white supremacy, the pro-life movement is white supremacy, anxiety about terrorism is white supremacy … and you can’t compromise with white supremacists, you can only crush them.

 

Which liberals may do in 2020, because Trump remains eminently beatable. But in the long run, the global trend suggests that a liberalism that remains inflexible in the face of variegated resistance is the ideology more likely to be crushed.

[cherdano]

Douthat's international comparisons would be more convincing if any of these parties were as extremist on healthcare and taxes for the wealthy as the GOP.

[y66]

From Federal judge temporarily blocks part of Trump’s plan to build border wall by Fred Barbash at WaPo:

 

A federal judge has temporarily blocked part of President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the southern border with money Congress never appropriated for that purpose.

 

U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., of the Northern District of California, said that those challenging Trump’s actions had a good chance of prevailing on their claims that the administration is acting illegally in shifting money from other programs to pay for the wall.

 

Gilliam wrote that the government’s position “that when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive may simply find a way to spend those funds ‘without Congress’ does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic.”

 

The law the administration invoked to shift funds allows transfers for “unforeseen” events. Gilliam said the government’s claim that wall construction was “unforeseen” “cannot logically be squared” with Trump’s many demands for funding dating back to early 2018 and even in the campaign.

 

With some contracts already awarded for construction, Gilliam said that allowing work to go forward before the legal issues have been fully resolved could cause irreparable harm.

 

He ruled in response to lawsuits brought by the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

 

The plaintiffs sought preliminary injunctions against the administration’s diversion of billions of dollars meant for other purposes. The plaintiffs alleged that Trump’s actions violate the constitutional requirement that no money may be spent without an appropriation from Congress as well as legal restrictions on the purposes for which funds can be reallocated.

 

The suits asked Gilliam to block any wall-related activity paid for with those funds while he fully considers the merits of the suits.

 

About $1 billion has been moved from military pay and pension accounts, transfers that Gilliam ruled against Friday, but no money has been transferred from the emergency military construction fund for which the president declared a state of emergency in February. That fund represents about $3.6 billion of the money President Trump wants to use.

 

Gilliam said he would rule on that issue separately when the administration actually shifts money using that authority. He doubted the administration would prevail on that, either, questioning whether a border fence met the definition of “military construction,” an interpretation that would give the government “unbounded authority” not authorized by law, he said.

[hrothgar]

Douthat's international comparisons would be more convincing if any of these parties were as extremist on healthcare and taxes for the wealthy as the GOP.

 

Douthat would be a bit more credible if he weren't a racist little piece of ***** who owes his current position to affirmative action.

 

Take a look at some of his college era writing.

He's learned not to be so blatant about his beliefs, but they're still there.

[barmar]

From A Senator Wants to Have a Greater Impact. So He’s Leaving the Senate. by Carl Hulse at NYT:

It also illustrates how overwhelming and time-consuming fund-raising for multimillion-dollar races can be, leaving lawmakers little opportunity for the work they are supposed to be doing.

It's long amazed me that legislators are allowed to get away with all this fund-raising. Can you imagine any other job where the employees are routinely allowed (nay, expectedi/i]) to spend half their time in meetings negotiating to keep their job, rather than doing the work they were hired to do?

[Winstonm]

From Ted Gup

This spring, I received a much-sought visa from Britain that allows me to apply for settlement in that nation after a total of three years of working and living there — as I have been doing off and on in recent years. Receiving it was an occasion for both celebration and sober reflection.

 

It represents an option to exit a United States I now barely recognize — one that almost daily distresses me with its xenophobia, its saber-rattling, its theocratic leanings, its denial of facts and science, its tribalism, and its petty and boorish president. I think of that visa as my “Trump card.” Come 2020, if the nation chooses to continue on this toxic path, it may well be my way out.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ive-got-my-trump-card-will-i-use-it-to-leave-the-us/2019/05/27/eb347a1c-7d7c-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html?utm_term=.0a0ed4672ac7

 

 

I wonder how many feel this way but don't have the ability to follow suit.

[sharon j]

From Ted Gup

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ive-got-my-trump-card-will-i-use-it-to-leave-the-us/2019/05/27/eb347a1c-7d7c-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html?utm_term=.0a0ed4672ac7

 

 

I wonder how many feel this way but don't have the ability to follow suit.

Is there an emoji for raising a hand?

[Winstonm]

What do you call gaslighting on a grand scale? Orwell chose Newspeak but it is 31 years early for that. Perhaps Orwell was a prophet, and the current version of gaslighting precedes Newspeak and should be called Barrump. Although it is not funny: rim-shot: Barrump-ump-ump

[y66]

Strategic communication?

[y66]

From Trump Country sees majority of new enrollees under Va.’s Medicaid expansion by Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury:

 

A majority of the roughly 280,000 people who now have health care under Virginia’s expansion of Medicaid live in localities won by President Donald Trump, who campaigned on eliminating federal funding for expansion by repealing the Affordable Care Act.

 

In 60 cities and counties, more than five percent of the population has gained health coverage under the expanded program, which began enrolling new patients in November. Trump won a majority of the votes in all but 18 of those localities, according to enrollment figures provided by the state, population estimates and election results.

 

Statewide, 142,230 people living in cities and counties won by Trump have enrolled, compared to 137,259 people living in localities won by Hillary Clinton.

 

“There’s this image of Medicaid as a program that is primarily of benefit to the inner cities, but the reality in Virginia and many other places is that large numbers of people living in rural communities lack health care,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington. “Medicaid expansion is extraordinarily beneficial for people living in those counties that supported Trump.”

Reality is not what it used to be.

[barmar]

From Trump Country sees majority of new enrollees under Va.’s Medicaid expansion by Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury:

Reality is not what it used to be.

The ACA is an example of a common political paradox. People frequently answer polls and even vote based on ideology. But when it comes to actually living their lives, they do what's best. Since the Republican agenda is against socialized medicine, that's how they vote. But since they actually need health care, they don't want to give up Medicaid.

[Winstonm]

The "greatest" economy, "maybe ever, who knows", is in serious danger in the next 18-24 months:

 

US Treasury Inversion Worsens as $12.6 Trillion Bonds Trade With Negative Yield

 

TheStreet.com

Martin Baccardax,TheStreet.com•May 29, 2019

 

Global bond markets extended their recent rally Wednesday, pulling benchmark U.S. Treasury yields to fresh multi-year lows, as investors continue to favor fixed income assets amid escalating trade tensions, slowing growth and tepid inflation. Bank of America Merrill Lynch figures suggest nearly $160 billion has flowed into fixed income assets this year, dwarfing the $135 billion that's moved out of global equity markets, pushing benchmark yields in the world's biggest economies to multi-year lows. In fact, the drive for safe-haven assets, which has been exaggerated by the ramp-up in trade war rhetoric and notable declines in manufacturing and services activity from Tokyo to Toronto, now has nearly $13 trillion in fixed income securities trading with a negative yield.

 

An addendum:

The sweeping tax law Republicans enacted in late 2017 is definitely not paying for itself and has not significantly boosted the economy or increased wages, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service said in a report.

 

But in line with what critics cautioned, the measure triggered a wave of corporate stock buybacks that benefited investors more than anybody else, according to the new study.

[Winstonm]

Bob Mueller just tossed the ball into Nancy Pelosi's court and said, "Your serve".

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III announced Wednesday he was closing his office and offered his first public comments on the results of his work, asserting that Justice Department legal guidance prevented him from accusing President Trump of a crime and noting cryptically that the Constitution “requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse the president of wrongdoing.”

[Winstonm]

Here is why it is imperative to read the Mueller report: David Frum reports:

 

But the words of the report are damning.

 

“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” Mueller wrote. This help “favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”

 

The Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts,” and it “welcomed” this help.

 

There is insufficient evidence to accuse the Trump campaign of criminal conspiracy with its Russian benefactors. However, “the social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government.”

[johnu]

There is insufficient evidence to accuse the Trump campaign of criminal conspiracy with its Russian benefactors. However, “the social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government.”

One reason there was insufficient evidence was that Dennison consistently obstructed justice as noted in the Mueller report. He dangled pardons to Cohen and Manafort and who knows who else, refused to answer some questions from Mueller (36 times he couldn't remember, truly remarkable from the guy who has "one of the great memories of all time"), and blanket refused to even respond to some other potential questions from Mueller. And Mueller was apparently narrowly constrained in his inquiries as there are many other areas he did not investigate (like looking at Dennison's tax returns, loans, and other business dealings).

[y66]

Guest post from Robert De Niro via NYT:

 

May 29, 2019

 

Dear Mr. Mueller,

 

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention (in my mind, nothing escapes your attention) that I play a version of you on “Saturday Night Live.” As “Robert Mueller,” my character is intimidating because he is so honest and upright. I do it for comic effect — that’s the intention anyway — but there’s also a lot of truth to it. To put it another way — it’s good-natured fun, but not entirely good-natured.

 

There’s a level of satire, directed at the current administration. To be fair, not everyone appreciates the humor. The president has tweeted that there’s “nothing funny about tired ‘Saturday Night Live’” and that it’s “very unfair and should be looked into,” even “tested in courts,” and “this is the real collusion!” Though what or with whom the show would be colluding is unclear. But then I don’t have to tell you about problems with the term “collusion.” You barely mention the word in your report, and then only to explain why you’re not using it. That could be a punch line on “Saturday Night Live.”

 

As I prepared for my role on the show, I got to know you a lot better. I read about your lifetime devotion to public service and your respect for the rule of law. I watched how you presided over the special counsel’s office apparently without leaks. And you never wavered, even in the face of regular vicious attacks from the president and his surrogates.

 

While I and so many Americans have admired your quiet, confident, dignified response in ignoring that assault, it allowed the administration to use its own voice to control the narrative. And those voices are so loud and so persistent that they beat even reasonable people into submission. The loudest, most persistent voice belongs to the president himself, and under most circumstances, we want to believe our president.

 

There’s a lot of speculation about the president being tone-deaf to facts, but there’s not much disagreement about the tone. Whether you take delight in it as his loyal supporters do or you’re the unfortunate target of his angry rhetoric, the hostile way he expresses himself registers with everyone. Nor is there much credible disagreement that the president treats lies, exaggerations and bullying as everyday weapons in his communication toolbox. These onslaughts of rhetoric aimed at his opposition mostly leave his antagonists sputtering in response, but I don’t think an in-kind response will be very effective either.

 

Say what you will about the president — and I have — when it comes to that lying, exaggerating, bullying thing, no one can touch him. He has set up a world where it seems as if those disapproving of him can effectively challenge him only by becoming just like him. He’s bringing down the level of the entire playing field.

 

And here, Mr. Mueller, is where you come in — where you need to come in. In your news conference, you said that your investigation’s work “speaks for itself.” It doesn’t. It may speak for itself to lawyers and lawmakers who have the patience and obligation to read through the more than 400 pages of carefully chosen words and nuanced conclusions (with all due respect, as good a read as it is, you’re no Stephen King).

 

You’ve characterized the report as your testimony, but you wouldn’t accept that reason from anyone your office interviewed. Additional information and illumination emerge from responses to questions. I know you’re as uncomfortable in the spotlight as the president is out of it. I know you don’t want to become part of the political spectacle surrounding Russia’s crimes and your report on them. I know you will, however reluctantly, testify before Congress if called, because you respect the system and follow the rules, and I understand why you’d want to do it away from the public glare.

 

But the country needs to hear your voice. Your actual voice. And not just because you don’t want them to think that your actual voice sounds like Robert De Niro reading from cue cards, but because this is the report your country asked you to do, and now you must give it authority and clarity without, if I may use the term, obstruction.

 

We’ve learned our lesson about what can happen to the perception of your work when interpreted in rabid tweets by the president, dissected by pundits all over the map, trumpeted in bizarre terms by the president’s absurd personal lawyer and distorted by the attorney general.

 

And if, in fact, you have nothing further to say about the investigation, for your public testimony, you could just read from the report in response to questions from members of Congress. Your life has been a shining example of bravely and selflessly doing things for the good of our country. I urge you to leave your comfort zone and do that again.

 

You are the voice of the Mueller report. Let the country hear that voice.

 

With great respect,

 

Robert De Niro

[Chas_P]

LOL, what an idiot.

 

Birds of a feather flock to this board.

 

But you gotta admit it's amusing. There's a laugh a minute here.