Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

From People in Coal County Worry About the Climate, Too by Eliza Griswold at NYT:

 

Ms. Griswold is the author of “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America.”

 

Dwayne Thomas, who is 70 years old and president of his local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America in southwestern Pennsylvania, spent 43 years working in Appalachian coal mines. For generations, in mines and the nearby steel mills that coal made possible, his family, like many others, has relied on jobs in the fossil fuel industry. Mr. Thomas knows the sacrifices that come with the work. His father, Elmer, died of black lung in 1995. His brother Robert was killed in an accident at the Maple Creek Mine in Bentleyville, Pa., in 1996.

 

Despite having a sense of patriotism and longstanding pride in the role that miners have played in American history, he’s also aware that his region’s dependence on fossil fuel jobs needs to end. “Climate change is happening,” he told me recently by phone from his home in Fayette County, Pa. “We have to tackle it before it becomes too large an entity to take on.”

 

The best way to begin tackling climate change, as Mr. Thomas sees it, is taking the Green New Deal seriously, rather than rejecting it out of hand, as President Trump did this week, complaining that “it’ll kill millions of jobs” and “crush the dreams of the poorest Americans.”

 

“It’s not socialism,” Mr. Thomas said of the warming temperatures and rising seas. “It’s reality.”

 

Now some lawmakers in Congress are attempting to address in tandem the climate crisis and the economic crisis that have cost rural Americans hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past several decades. The Green New Deal is often faulted for being overly idealistic — “a green dream,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called it — or vague.

 

But as Varshini Prakash, co-founder of Sunrise, a youth movement to stop climate change, pointed out when I spoke to her, the Green New Deal isn’t intended to be a 10,000-page policy paper. “It’s an economic agenda for the 21st century,” she said. “It isn’t just about climate; it’s about creating tens of millions of good, high-paying unionized jobs.”

 

Others who have spent their lives in communities that rely on extractive industries are ready to give the Green New Deal a shot, but the first step, as Mr. Thomas sees it, is to shift the positioning of the Green New Deal from addressing climate change to creating sustainable jobs for those in danger of being left behind by both the industries they served and the federal government. “You’re going to lose a lot of people if you just talk about climate,” he said.

[Winstonm]

In one 2018 cable published by the Mail on Sunday, U.K. ambassador Kim Darroch says President Donald Trump pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran as an act of "diplomatic vandalism" to spite his predecessor, Barack Obama.

 

Actions taken for reasons of personal vindictiveness instead of best interest of the country themselves are impeachable offenses, high crimes and misdemeanors, a phrase which was widely understood in 1776 to mean: egregious abuse of office.

 

Nancy Pelosi, get your act together.

[barmar]

Actions taken for reasons of personal vindictiveness instead of best interest of the country themselves are impeachable offenses, high crimes and misdemeanors, a phrase which was widely understood in 1776 to mean: egregious abuse of office.

 

Nancy Pelosi, get your act together.

Good luck proving this one.

 

They haven't even been able to prove that the citizenship question is intended to reduce responses by people of color and thus favor Republicans, despite finding a memoy that specifically points to research that shows that it would have this effect.

[hrothgar]

Good luck proving this one.

 

They haven't even been able to prove that the citizenship question is intended to reduce responses by people of color and thus favor Republicans, despite finding a memoy that specifically points to research that shows that it would have this effect.

 

There has been no attempt to formally prove this.

 

This seems like a nonsensical standard

[Winstonm]

Good luck proving this one.

 

They haven't even been able to prove that the citizenship question is intended to reduce responses by people of color and thus favor Republicans, despite finding a memoy that specifically points to research that shows that it would have this effect.

 

This doesn't have to be proven - it is enough, though, to initiate an impeachment inquiry, which is needed to prevent continued stonewalling.

[Cyberyeti]

So Trump wants a load of US born congresswomen to "go back to where they came from",I suspect various people want to send him back to Germany.

[cherdano]

Progressives aren't used to a conservative aggressively taking them on and become unhinged when Trump does so. The funny thing up that I chuckle about is that every time he tosses bait out there for the progressives, they bite. They just don't see he's setting them up and fall for his schtick every time getting more and more neurotic with each incident. For those self proclaimed, smug superior intellectuals, it just proves they think they are really smart, but in some ways are pretty dumb.

I guess yesterday has been a good day for you - Trump called for four congresswomen of color to "go back to their home countries", and liberals did bite! They did call him him xenophobic, racist, racially charged!! A great day for the intellectual conservative movement!!! You must have been chuckling on your sofa all day long!

[barmar]

And in the case of 3 out of 4 of the congresswomen, their "home countries" are the US. But maybe Trump will start a "birther" movement for AOC, just to justify his stupid tweet.

[Winstonm]

I've always had a fondness for understated headlines: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-a-racist-if-you-still-support-him-so-are-you?ref=scroll

 

Trump Is a Racist. If You Still Support Him, So Are You.

(The president keeps baring his ass, and the people talking about his clothing as he does so are part of the problem.)

 

The president is a racist, in his words and his actions.

 

Before you go clutching your pearls and extolling the virtues of “civility,” let me say this: Put a sock in it.

 

This is not a new revelation, nor is it something that we can continue to ignore as though it were coming from a drunk uncle at the family barbecue. Bigotry is dangerous and, coming from our nation’s commander in chief, it can mean an inability to recognize individual humanity and a failure to act with moral authority in times of crisis. Every person talking about his clothes as he cheerfully bares his ass is part of the problem.

 

On Sunday, he claimed that newly elected progressive Democrats “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and “the worst, more corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.” And he told freshmen Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar—outspoken Democratic women of color who have challenged the administration’s inhumane immigration policies—to leave the country.

 

Three of the four were born here in the United States. All are American citizens, and duly elected members of Congress.

 

Trump’s repugnant rebuke of American values did not come out of thin air. It unfolded days after “the Squad” travelled with a delegation of congressional Democrats to tour detention facilities in border states. What they found was deplorable. Reports of rampant abuse and neglect filled the airwaves, leading Trump to again dismiss accurate coverage as “fake news.” Rather than focus on improving basic conditions and getting to work on bi-partisan, comprehensive reforms, the president basically said if immigrants didn’t like how they were being treated, they should stay in their own country.

 

This morning, he turned his ire on some of his most vocal critics in Congress—all of whom have previously called for his impeachment.

 

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” Trump tweeted about the four congresswomen today. “Then come back and show us how it is done.”

 

“These places need your help badly,” he went on, “you can’t leave fast enough.”

 

While Republicans predictably remained tight-lipped and oblivious, Democrats reacted swiftly.

 

“Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ and the country we all swear to, is the United States,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez responded. “You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”

 

“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a tweet. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”

 

This isn’t simply disgusting and divisive rhetoric. Whether it is the abhorrent, inhumane treatment of immigrants detained in government-sponsored concentration camps or the slow, piecemeal aid sent to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, for some, his policies have been deadly.

 

Certainly, this is not the first time Trump has shamelessly revealed himself in public. His “Make America Great Again” campaign was always about catering to our lowest common denominator—a hateful sector of the electorate that believes themselves culturally superior by skin color and religion.

 

For years, even before mounting a formal bid for the presidency, Trump regaled television news audiences with racist conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama. He pledged to send investigators out to prove the nation’s 44th president was not born in the United States. He later derided immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries, calling those foreign nations “***** hole countries.” He once said immigrants from Haiti all “have AIDS” and that Nigerian immigrants would never “go back to their huts.”

 

In Trump’s mind, a judge’s Mexican heritage made him incapable of ruling fairly in a civil fraud case against one of his companies, and he believes “laziness is a trait in blacks.” Trump, whose real estate company was sued for housing discrimination in the 1970s, went on to place a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five innocent black teenagers. Even after the Central Park Five were exonerated, he refused to take it back. After Heather Heyer was murdered in Charlottesville, Virginia, amid a white supremacist protest, he lamented the there were “some very fine people” on “both sides.”

 

Trump is not a fine person. His words Sunday were not racially “charged,” “fueled,” or “tinged.” They were unapologetically racist.

 

And, if you support him, so are you.

 

[PassedOut]

I understand that many politicians are just too cowardly to speak up against a proudly racist and unfailingly vindictive president of the US. But those who actually defend Trump's indefensible statements float in the same cesspool as Trump.

 

On Saturday night I attended a memorial in Chicago for the co-founder of Theater Oobleck, the actor and playwright Danny Thompson. The theater was filled with folks from all over (one woman I know flew in from Berlin) to enjoy the show built around his work and to share what they remembered about Danny. My own favorite memory of Danny had nothing to do with his talent, which was great, but with his character. Like a lot of actors, Danny needed a day job to augment his income, and for several years Danny was a cab driver in Chicago. One day we were visiting a friend in Chicago when she got a call from Danny, who was phoning from a non-descript bar. A couple of guys he'd picked up at O'Hare had been making racist comments in the back of his cab, so Danny pulled over to the curb, turned off the engine, took the keys, and walked a block into a bar across the street, from which he could watch his cab. He wanted her to know where he was in case things turned uglier (they did not). We learned from our host that this was not a one-time thing.

 

Danny was a wonderful friend and I hate that he's dead, but it's comforting to know that there really are people in the world like Danny who are just the opposite of the ignorant racist scum infesting our white house today.

[jjbrr]

Forrest Day has been a holiday in Tennessee since 1921 and a special day of observation since 1969. You want a Republican governor to end the hate? People in hell want ice water.

 

I recognize that I live under a rock for the most part, but I've lived in TN since 1993 with a 10-year hiatus in Texas after college and half a year in California recently. I consider myself a Tennessean, as I think most would.

 

I've never heard of this Forrest guy.

[hrothgar]

I recognize that I live under a rock for the most part, but I've lived in TN since 1993 with a 10-year hiatus in Texas after college and half a year in California recently. I consider myself a Tennessean, as I think most would.

 

I've never heard of this Forrest guy.

 

Famous confederate during the Civil War.

Widely considered as one of the best cavalry commanders ever.

 

Better know as a founder of the KKK and as the perpetrator of the Fort Pillow Massacre

[Winstonm]

I recognize that I live under a rock for the most part, but I've lived in TN since 1993 with a 10-year hiatus in Texas after college and half a year in California recently. I consider myself a Tennessean, as I think most would.

 

I've never heard of this Forrest guy.

 

 

Having a background of living in T-states like Tennessee and Texas, you probably couldn't see the Forrest for the Ts.

[Winstonm]

“These are people that hate our country,” said Trump during a Made in America event on manufacturing at the White House. “They hate our country. They hate it, I think, with a passion.”

 

No, you stupid POS. We don't hate our country. We hate you.

[jjbrr]

Famous confederate during the Civil War.

Widely considered as one of the best cavalry commanders ever.

 

Better know as a founder of the KKK and as the perpetrator of the Fort Pillow Massacre

 

 

Having a background of living in T-states like Tennessee and Texas, you probably couldn't see the Forrest for the Ts.

 

I mean, yeah, absolutely, all us hicks sit around and talk about civil war commanders. what else would we talk about?

 

I guess I'm just not cultured enough to rub elbows with a bunch of racist pieces of *****. You need to talk to Chas about that kind of stuff.

[Zelandakh]

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

 

It is right to point out that 3 of the 4 Congresswomen alluded to in this tweet were born in the USA. It is surely not about immigrant families generally given that his wife was not born in the USA and his grandfather in Germany, so it is absolutely clear that this is open racism. I hope all of the conservatives that post on BBF will take the time and effort to castigate this. It should quite frankly be unacceptable to all Americans.

[y66]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

 

His real estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-American tenants. He described “laziness” as “a trait in blacks.” He called for five black and Latino teenagers to be executed — and then insisted on their guilt even after DNA evidence proved their innocence.

 

He rose to prominence in the Republican Party by questioning the citizenship of the first black president. He launched his presidential campaign by saying Mexican immigrants were “rapists.” His political organization created a television advertisement that Fox News pulled for being too racist.

 

He frequently criticizes prominent African-Americans for being unpatriotic, ungrateful, disrespectful or unintelligent. He mocks Native Americans and uses anti-Semitic stereotypes. He retweets white nationalists. He said that a violent white supremacist march included some “very fine people.” He regularly appoints people with a history of racist comments.

 

And over the weekend, he told four nonwhite members of Congress — all citizens, of course, and three of them born in the United States — to “go back” to where they came from.

 

President Trump doesn’t just make racist comments. He is a racist. He’s proven it again and again, over virtually his entire time as a public figure. His bigotry is a core part of his worldview, and it’s been central to his political rise.

 

Anyone who claims otherwise — like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; Senator Steve Daines of Montana; Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff; and his fanboys in the BBO WC — is simply enabling his hate. (Mnuchin now has a pattern of defending racism, as a way of pleasing his boss.)

 

For a list of Trump’s racist statements — first compiled in 2018 and updated this week — go here. If you think we missed any, email me at leonhardt@nytimes.com.

[y66]

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

 

Seven years ago I wrote a piece for Democracy about where political trends would take us by 2024. Here’s one bit:

 

Trend #5: The Republican Party will continue to become ever more dependent on the white vote, while the Democratic Party will depend ever more on minorities.

 

….So what does this all mean? One: Certain aspects of the culture wars will heat up. In particular, thanks to the increasingly polarized demographics of the two main political parties, fights over immigration and race may well be even more acrimonious than they are today.

That’s all I said in that particular piece, but in other posts where I had more space I still mostly failed to grapple with the obvious conclusion of my own reasoning. I figured there was a limit to what Republicans could do. They could pack-and-crack congressional districts. They could squeeze a little more turnout out of evangelicals and older whites. Fox News could run its endless “scary black folks” segments. State legislatures could pass photo ID laws designed to suppress black voter turnout.

 

But they were running out of options. The last item in that list is a good example of what influenced my thinking. The truth is that photo ID laws have only a tiny influence on presidential elections. It turns out that most people who lack photo IDs aren’t likely to vote in the first place, and loud pushback from liberals offset some of the losses anyway. What’s more, photo ID laws were passed only in states with total Republican control, and by definition those are states that are mostly safe Republican havens to start with. The fact that Republicans put so much energy into this project only showed how desperate they were. There just wasn’t much left for them to do in the face of demographic changes that were reducing the size of their white base by a point or two every election cycle.

 

For what it’s worth, this was mostly the conclusion of Republicans themselves, too. The famous post-election autopsy written by the Republican National Committee after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss, said this:

 

In 1980, exit polls tell us that the electorate was 88 percent white. In 2012, it was 72 percent white….According to the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2050, whites will be 47 percent of the country….The Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.

 

But there was always a glaring problem with this strategy, one that everybody was keenly aware of: reaching out to black voters would only work if Republicans also ceased their tolerance of white bigotry. In other words, they’d almost certainly lose votes on a net basis at first, which would mean handing over the presidency—and maybe much more—to Democrats for upwards of a decade or so. That’s just too big a sacrifice for any political party to make.

 

So instead they took another route: they went after the white vote even harder. In Donald Trump they found a candidate who wasn’t afraid to appeal to racist sentiment loudly and bluntly, something that simply hadn’t occurred to other Republicans. They never thought they could get away with something like this in the 21st century, and normally they would have been right: it would have lost them as many votes among educated whites as it won them among working-class whites. But after eight years of a black president in the White House, racial tensions were ratcheted up just enough that Trump could get away with it. Only by a hair, and only with plenty of other help, but he did get away with it, losing 10 points of support among college-educated whites but gaining 14 points among working-class whites.

 

The entire Republican Party is now all-in on this strategy. They mostly stay quiet themselves and let Trump himself do the dirty work, but that’s enough. Nobody talks anymore about reaching out to the black community with a spirit of caring or any other spirit. Nor is there anything the rest of us can do about this. Republicans believe that wrecking the fabric of the country is their only hope of staying in power, and they’re right. If working-class whites abandon them even a little bit, they’re toast.

 

So all we can do is try to crush them. What other options are there? Reactionary American whites, as always, won’t give up their power unless it’s taken from them by either a literal or figurative war. Liberals need to be as Lincolnesque as possible in this endeavor—we don’t have to win the votes of unrepentent bigots, just the fretful fence-sitters—but we also need to be Lincolnesque in our commitment to winning America’s latest race war.

[barmar]

I hope all of the conservatives that post on BBF will take the time and effort to castigate this. It should quite frankly be unacceptable to all Americans.

Stephen Colbert said it best. From Yahoo Finance

Colbert thought since Trump enjoys complaining so much, he might benefit from taking his own advice. “If someone's leaving the country, it should be you,” said Colbert, adding, “And if you're looking for a new home, might I suggest you go to hell.”

The studio audience gave him a standing ovation after that remark.

 

Even Lindsay Graham called Trump a racist. Unfortunately, that was 4 years ago, when he was running against Trump in the Republican primary. Now he's defending Trump's comments.

[Winstonm]

I think these latest racist outbursts by the president are actually working against him. He looks and sounds like a raving lunatic and that only appeals to the hardcore right.

[johnu]

It is right to point out that 3 of the 4 Congresswomen alluded to in this tweet were born in the USA. It is surely not about immigrant families generally given that his wife was not born in the USA and his grandfather in Germany, so it is absolutely clear that this is open racism. I hope all of the conservatives that post on BBF will take the time and effort to castigate this. It should quite frankly be unacceptable to all Americans.

 

Maybe it should be unacceptable to all Americans but in reality it may only be unacceptable to about 60% of Americans, not much more.

[cherdano]

187-4. That's the margin by which House Republicans voted against the House resolution condemning Trump's racist remarks.

It's all out in the open now - the fight to keep America white. And I don't know what can save this country.

[Winstonm]

Gee, Sir, everyone says they think you're a great president.

 

I've fact-checked every word Trump has uttered since his inauguration. I can tell you that if this President relays an anecdote in which he has someone referring to him as "sir," then some major component of the anecdote is very likely to be wrong.

 

The Trump lie tell.

[Chas_P]

187-4. That's the margin by which House Republicans voted against the House resolution condemning Trump's racist remarks.

It's all out in the open now - the fight to keep America white. And I don't know what can save this country.

 

Arend, you are in Edinburgh Scotland. Please tell us how your government has dealt with the massive influx of Central Americans into your country. We welcome your insight.

[Chas_P]

I think these latest racist outbursts by the president are actually working against him. He looks and sounds like a raving lunatic and that only appeals to the hardcore right.

 

 

‘We will never be a Socialist or Communist Country. IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE! It is your choice, and your choice alone. This is about love for America. Certain people HATE our Country…They are anti-Israel, pro Al-Qaeda, and comment on the 9/11 attack, “some people did something.” Radical Left Democrats want Open Borders, which means drugs, crime, human trafficking, and much more. Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful. If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!’

 

 

I see nothing in there that has anything to do with how much light your skin reflects. If you do, that's your problem.