Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

The best thing about the White House Covid outbreak is that Stephen Miller tested positive. If ever one human being deserves whatever awfulness befalls him, that is the guy. His isolation should be in a cage at the southern border.

[y66]

The gray revolt against Trump

 

President Trump is losing his fellow baby boomers. Their turnabout is the central reason he trails Joe Biden by a substantial — and apparently growing — margin.

 

Four years ago, Trump handily won his own generation, which is generally defined as being born between 1946 and 1964, while losing every younger generation. The Pew Research Center estimates that Trump beat Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points among voters 65 and older.

 

The latest polls this year show a radically different situation. A CNN poll released yesterday found Biden leading Trump by 21 points — 60 percent to 39 percent — among likely voters 65 and older. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday found an even bigger gap: 27 points. Dave Wasserman of The Cook Political Report calls it “the ‘gray revolt’ against Trump.”

 

Why is it happening? Older Americans began to drift away from Trump even before the coronavirus. Some don’t like his “chaotic and unconventional presidency,” as Ella Nilsen of Vox points out. Others may be more open to supporting Biden than Clinton — given his gender and what polls show to be his lower negativity ratings and less liberal image. Baby boomers also have experience living in a less polarized country, when vote switching was more common.

 

But the virus seems to be a factor, too. Many older Americans understand that other countries have handled the virus better than the U.S. They are tired of the restrictions of pandemic life. And many boomers are afraid — for good reason, given that about 150,000 of the 210,000 confirmed U.S. virus deaths have occurred among people 65 or older.

 

There are only two age groups that continue to support Trump, according to Times polls conducted over the past month. The first is a narrow slice of people older than baby boomers, typically in their late 70s, who have long been conservative. The second is a group of middle-aged people who include the youngest boomers and the oldest members of Generation X:

 

 

The middle-aged group is less vulnerable to the disease than people over 65 (although they’re still vulnerable). The group is also more conservative than people under 40. Its members came of age during Jimmy Carter’s unsuccessful presidency, Ronald Reagan’s two terms in office and the U.S. triumph in the Cold War. My colleague (and fellow Generation Xer) Ross Douthat goes into more depth on conservative Xers here.

 

But winning only a couple of slices of the country’s age spectrum isn’t enough to win a presidential election. The CNN and NBC polls both showed Trump trailing by double digits nationwide. New polls yesterday showed him losing in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

 

Trump keeps telling people that the virus is not as bad as they’ve heard. Older Americans aren’t buying it.

[Winstonm]

More on Change-the-dates-gate: WaPo reporting:

 

 

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it inadvertently altered dates on copies of notes from two former senior FBI officials that were turned over to Michael Flynn's defense team and filed to the court as potentially exculpatory evidence.

The dates were added to notes of former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and former FBI agent Peter Strzok and should have been removed before the documents were scanned by FBI headquarters, the Justice Department told a judge weighing its request to dismiss the former Trump national security adviser's prosecution. McCabe and Strzok were key figures investigating possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.

An attorney for Strzok last week wrote the court saying that a copy of his notes filed by Flynn's defense added at least two dates that he did not write, and at least one suggested a White House meeting happened earlier than it did. An attorney for McCabe similarly wrote the court Friday that an erroneous, added date seemed to suggest he briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee about the Russia investigation on May 10, 2017, which did not happen.

 

At a hearing last week on the Justice Department's motion, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan called the claim by Strzok "unsettling," and ordered prosecutors to certify under oath by Wednesday<b /> whether submitted materials "were true and accurate." Sullivan has said he would issue a written opinion on whether to dismiss Flynn's case "with dispatch."

 

Responding Wednesday, prosecutors disclosed that in Strzok's notes, dates were added by FBI agents participating in a review of Flynn's case that Attorney General William P. Barr assigned in January to U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen of St. Louis.

 

The department said it was unclear who added a date to McCabe's notes.

 

"The government has learned that, during the review of the Strzok notes, FBI agents assigned to the EDMO [Jensen] review placed a single yellow sticky note on each page of the Strzok notes with estimated dates (the notes themselves are undated)," the department said.

 

"Those two sticky notes were inadvertently not removed when the notes were scanned by FBI Headquarters, before they were forwarded" to U.S. prosecutors in Washington to produce to Flynn, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine of Washington, D.C., told the court.

 

Similarly, the government learned "at some point during the review of the McCabe notes, someone placed a blue 'flag' with clear adhesive to the McCabe notes with an estimated date," Ballantine wrote. "Again, the flag was inadvertently not removed when the notes were scanned by FBI Headquarters, before they were forwarded to our office for production."

 

A spokeswoman for McCabe declined to comment.

 

In a statement, Aitan Goelman, Strzok's lawyer, questioned the government's claim that the additions were unintentional.

 

"The government claims that the undisclosed alterations were a result of sloppiness and not a deliberate attempt to mislead," Goelman said. "It would be easier to give the government the benefit of the doubt if the alterations didn't fit a false narrative pushed by the President, or if they weren't made by a team specifically chosen by the Attorney General to provide political aid to President Trump, or if Bill Barr hadn't already demonstrated his willingness to cast aside the Department of Justice's tradition of neutrality in an attempt to help President Trump." my emphasis

 

 

[Zelandakh]

Huge mistake from KH - she did not push back on the MP lies about there being a complete travel ban from China nor on JB opposing it. Neither is true but when she lets it go the voters will think so. This is precisely what allowed MP to win the last VP debate and she should have been prepared for this.

[kenberg]

We shall see, but at the halfway mark I think KH is way out in front.

[y66]

KH is up on my card too. It looks like she's getting in her zone.

[y66]

Of the four candidates on stage in the last two weeks, only one of them had not served in nationwide office, and in that respect Senator Harris had more to prove than anyone else, to show that she is not only a credible vice president but a credible potential president given her running mate’s age. And she held her own. Whether anyone won or not, she came across as a plausible national leader. I don’t know that it changes anyone’s votes, but she probably did what she needed to do. As for Pence, he did not change the dynamics of the race at a moment when his ticket is losing, but he delivered a lot of the lines that his campaign wanted out there.

Trump is losing badly with women and older voters. I suspect these voters are calling this debate for Dems.

[y66]

New COVID-19 cases in past week:

 

Vietnam - 5

Taiwan - 9

Yemen - 10

New Zealand - 25

 

White House - 34

[helene_t]

The 25 cases in New Zealand were all either "historical" (patients that recovered long time ago but just hadn't been registered before) or imported cases still in in isolation. There hasn't been any community transmission for 13 days.

[y66]

"Out of an abundance of caution," we should expand Medicare to cover everyone in America.

[y66]

What is Latin for "We salute you who are about to die. You will always be in our hearts and prayers”.

[kenberg]

The debate started with covid and first impressions are important. Pence attempted to defend the indefensible. game over.

 

 

I think KH might have put more emphasis on now rather than January. She talked about what they knew in January. Of course in January there is uncertainty. Fauci has said as much. But this is October. Last week DT was still talking derisively about JB's mask. Since then DT and a large and growing number of those around him have come down with covid. DT says covid is nothing to be afraid of, the Pence team was slow to agree to the protecting plexiglass for last night's debate. In short, many months into this they are still acting like idiots. I doubt Pence is actually that stupid but DT is, and MP lacks this courage or lacks the ability to contest him. Party loyalty is perhaps a good trait sometimes but not at this point.

 

And, of course, Pence was, I guess is, the person that is nominally in charge of the administrations response.

 

All of this is known to everyone, it simply cannot be dismissed as fake news. The administrations response was and continues to be incompetent in the extreme. Pence explained what a great job DT has done. That's quite a corner for him to find himself in.

[y66]

Holding an in-person debate during a pandemic creates risks, no matter how many precautions the debate’s organizers take. And the precautions for last night’s debate were pretty weak, as experts told my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli.

 

But American history offers an alternative to in-person debates — from the first year of televised presidential debates, no less. As Frank Donatelli, a former aide to Ronald Reagan, writes in RealClearPolitics:

 

On Oct. 13, 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon and Sen. John Kennedy debated for a third time, this time a continent apart. Nixon was in a Los Angeles studio, Kennedy was in an identical studio in New York, and a panel of four questioners and moderator Jack Shadel of ABC were in a third location in Los Angeles.

 

Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy debated remotely in 1960.Associated Press

This remote format has some advantages, Donatelli noted. There is no audience to interrupt. The candidates can’t engage in stunts, like walking over to their opponent. And the debate moderator can control the microphones if one candidate keeps interrupting the other.

 

Donatelli wrote his article in May, even before the coronavirus infected Trump and parts of his inner circle. Donatelli’s conclusion: “Let the virtual debates of 2020 begin.”

[kenberg]

And, if Trump does not want to show up then, well, he is not required to. The Twon Hall audience can remotely submit their questions, Biden can remotely respond, and Trump can go... well go do whatever .

 

 

Maybe Trump is tired of being president and so is making it completely clear that no one should vote for him. I was watching a math lecture yesterday and it was really nice to be able to say "I'm retired, I don't have to watch this". Happy golfing, buddy.

[y66]

There is not going to be any stand-alone bill [for airlines] unless there is a bigger bill and it can be part of that, or it could be in addition to it.

Good move.

[y66]

Kidnappers stand by.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/gretchen-whitmer-michigan-militia.html

[Winstonm]

If you don't think something ugly will occur Nov 3, you're simply not paying attention: first, a crazed Trump

 

 

Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes," declared the president, "the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we're gonna get little satisfaction unless I win. Because I won't forget it. But these people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama, and that includes Biden; these are people that spied on my campaign, and we have everything.

 

"Now they say they have much more, and I say Bill, you got plenty. You don't need any more."

 

Comparing Mr Barr unflatteringly to former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grennell and successor John Ratcliffe, both of whom have released documents related to the Russia investigation, Mr Trump gave his attorney general a warning.

 

"To be honest, Bill Barr's gonna go down either as the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he's gonna go down as a very sad, sad situation. I mean, I'll be honest with you. He's got all the information he needs. They wanna get more, more, more, they keep getting more, I say: 'You don't need any more. You got more stuff than anybody's ever had.'"

 

 

Then a calculating Barr:

U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has advised U.S. Attorneys' Offices that a longstanding policy prohibiting the department from interfering in U.S. elections will no longer preclude prosecutors who suspect election fraud from taking public investigative steps, even in the hours before polls close on Nov. 3, ProPublica reported Wednesday.

 

 

[barmar]

I didn't insinuate Roe was a moral decision. But using the SCOTUS to try to change laws is the wrong way to go. Laws can be challenged, but the correct way to change laws is legislative.

SCOTUS doesn't change the law, they determine that the law is unconstitutional. After the decision, we proceed as if the law doesn't exist at all.

 

The legislature can then pass a new law that would pass constitutional muster. The SCOTUS decision usually includes details about the problems in the original law that made it unconstitutional, so the legislature can try to avoid those problems. For instance, I think SCOTUS determined that government interest outweighs personal privacy when the fetus becomes viable in the third trimester, so it's still constitutional to prohibit late-term abortions.

 

Since then, a number of states have passed additional laws that try to find other ways around the Roe decision. Like adding requirements on the doctors performing the abortion.

[barmar]

The debate started with covid and first impressions are important. Pence attempted to defend the indefensible. game over.

 

 

I think KH might have put more emphasis on now rather than January. She talked about what they knew in January. Of course in January there is uncertainty. Fauci has said as much. But this is October. Last week DT was still talking derisively about JB's mask. Since then DT and a large and growing number of those around him have come down with covid. DT says covid is nothing to be afraid of, the Pence team was slow to agree to the protecting plexiglass for last night's debate. In short, many months into this they are still acting like idiots. I doubt Pence is actually that stupid but DT is, and MP lacks this courage or lacks the ability to contest him. Party loyalty is perhaps a good trait sometimes but not at this point.

 

And, of course, Pence was, I guess is, the person that is nominally in charge of the administrations response.

 

All of this is known to everyone, it simply cannot be dismissed as fake news. The administrations response was and continues to be incompetent in the extreme. Pence explained what a great job DT has done. That's quite a corner for him to find himself in.

Remember, the election is for President, not Vice President. The job of the candidates last night was primarily to support their POTUS candidates, promoting themselves was secondary.

 

As John Adams wrote, the Vice Presidency is "the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his imagination conceived".

[Winstonm]

The debate started with covid and first impressions are important. Pence attempted to defend the indefensible. game over.

 

 

I think KH might have put more emphasis on now rather than January. She talked about what they knew in January. Of course in January there is uncertainty. Fauci has said as much. But this is October. Last week DT was still talking derisively about JB's mask. Since then DT and a large and growing number of those around him have come down with covid. DT says covid is nothing to be afraid of, the Pence team was slow to agree to the protecting plexiglass for last night's debate. In short, many months into this they are still acting like idiots. I doubt Pence is actually that stupid but DT is, and MP lacks this courage or lacks the ability to contest him. Party loyalty is perhaps a good trait sometimes but not at this point.

 

And, of course, Pence was, I guess is, the person that is nominally in charge of the administrations response.

 

All of this is known to everyone, it simply cannot be dismissed as fake news. The administrations response was and continues to be incompetent in the extreme. Pence explained what a great job DT has done. That's quite a corner for him to find himself in.

 

The only thing I wish KH had done is when Pence attacked her for disparaging the vaccine she should have responded" "I'm not disparaging the vaccine. What I said is Donald Trump cannot be trusted."

[Winstonm]

SCOTUS doesn't change the law, they determine that the law is unconstitutional. After the decision, we proceed as if the law doesn't exist at all.

 

The legislature can then pass a new law that would pass constitutional muster. The SCOTUS decision usually includes details about the problems in the original law that made it unconstitutional, so the legislature can try to avoid those problems. For instance, I think SCOTUS determined that government interest outweighs personal privacy when the fetus becomes viable in the third trimester, so it's still constitutional to prohibit late-term abortions.

 

Since then, a number of states have passed additional laws that try to find other ways around the Roe decision. Like adding requirements on the doctors performing the abortion.

 

You're being naive if you think the makeup of the court can't alter laws - Plessy v Ferguson (1896) and Brown v Board of Education (1954).

[Winstonm]

 

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump LIBERATE MICHIGAN! 10:22 AM · Apr 17, 2020

 

Of course, there is no connection between a leader's words and his followers actions.

 

LANSING, Mich. – A team of militia operatives is charged with conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a plot in which they considered storming the state Capitol in a commando raid that would use Molotov cocktails to keep police cars at bay, according to newly unsealed court records.

 

Members of a militia group purchased weapons, conducted surveillance and held training and planning meetings, but they were foiled in part because the FBI infiltrated the group with informants, according to a criminal complaint.

 

The FBI became aware early in 2020, through social media, that a militia group was "discussing the violent overthrow of certain government and law enforcement components" and "agreed to take violent action," according to a sworn affidavit.

 

Members of the group talked about "murdering ... tyrants" or "taking" a sitting governor, according to the affidavit. The FBI monitored a meeting June 20 in Grand Rapids, the affidavit says.

 

Discussions included using 200 men to "storm" the Capitol Building in Lansing, kidnap hostages including Whitmer and try the governor for treason, according to the affidavit.

 

The group met for field exercises and training this year and conducted surveillance of the governor's vacation home on at least two occasions in late August and September, the affidavit alleges. They purchased an 800,000-volt Taser and night goggles for use in the kidnapping plot, according to court records. Members of the plot said they wanted to complete the kidnapping before the election Nov. 3, according to the affidavit.

[y66]

This probably belongs on the pet peeve thread. Why are people saying that the wheels are coming off the Trump campaign? I mean, how can something that was never on come off? Pre-offed?

[y66]

Social distancing is good.

 

At an event in Kentucky today, McConnell also said: “If any of you have been around me since May the 1st, I’ve said, ‘Wear your mask. Practice social distancing.’ ... Now, you’ve heard of other places that have had a different view, and they are, you know, paying the price for it.”

[y66]

How Joe Biden can rescue the economy in the face of Republican obstruction by Matt Yglesias at Vox

 

... What an emergency reconciliation bill could achieve

 

Reconciliation does, of course, have very real limits. It’s hard to use it to ban fossil fuel extraction, to legalize undocumented immigrants, or to alter labor law. But from the right point of view, these are the virtues of reconciliation. The topics it won’t let Democrats touch are precisely the areas where moderates have the most qualms about a majority rules Senate. What top Democrats need to do is convince nervous moderates that a very aggressive reconciliation strategy is the key to getting the left off their back.

 

Consider the following ideas Biden has embraced:

 

• Creating a new universal child allowance to help parents and slash child poverty.
  
• Creating a fully funded rental housing voucher program to ensure that every family that needs help gets it.
  
• Expanding the Affordable Care Act to cover millions more and make coverage more generous for those who get it.
  
• A climate plan that centers investments in clean energy, rather than taxes on dirty energy.
  
• A huge increase in funding to low-income school districts.
  

Biden does not need to treat these ideas as separate from the short-term need to stimulate the economy. He can simply do all five of them, and throw in a short-term boost to unemployment insurance and state/local budgets and some cash for specific public health interventions. Then the long-term increases in spending can be offset by enacting his proposed tax increases on the rich. That will ensure the deficit falls over the long run. But since the short-term deficit is not a problem and the whole idea is to stimulate the economy, the tax cuts can be delayed until 2023.

 

Legislating in this manner would cut against a lot of congressional traditions. The budget would need to get written quickly, with most of the work effectively done in the lame-duck period. And a sprawling piece of legislation that touches on the jurisdictions of many committees would need to be written via a centralized process.

 

But this is how Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell handled the ACA repeal and tax cut battles of 2017 and 2018 when they controlled both chambers of Congress — sharply curtailing the committee process in the name of speed.

 

To get it done, Biden needs to convince members of Congress that it’s in their collective interest for him to have a successful presidency with a roaring economy and real accomplishments. And if they don’t want to curb the filibuster, they need to get the job done with a massive reconciliation bill. Once that’s done, Biden can pivot to the filibuster.