Sometimes things break and they don’t get fixed, and that’s what has had me worried of late. We have an incredibly resilient system of government, and my admiration has grown as I’ve seen it weather one brutal test and assault after another, starting with the effort to impeach Bill Clinton and following on with a series of almost ridiculous disasters that included the botched and stolen election of 2000, the 9/11 attacks, the decision to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, the complete meltdown of the housing market and ensuing global recession, and most recently the catastrophic election of Donald Trump with the connivance and assistance of Vladimir Putin.
Maybe our parents did something to make us deserve this. Maybe we’re all to blame, too. But I won’t stand for it. I’m not going to sit back and take these punches like I’ve somehow got it coming. And all I’ve really had to sustain me in these fights is the belief that our system can survive this and figure it all out and eventually get a measure of justice.
Sometimes I feel feel vindicated in that belief and other times I grow concerned that we’re not up to the task. It can sometimes feel like I’ll spend my whole life waiting for the chickens to come home to roost on the bastards who have been fucking up our lives.
But it’s been a good week. The last ten days or so have really stood out.
To put it bluntly, the president is completely screwed six ways to Sunday, and all that’s left is to wait for this to play out and get our goblets ready to drink the tears. Anyone who knows anything about Michael Cohen understands this already, and the rest of the people will eventually catch up.
My best guess is that Sean Hannity is finished as well although that, too, will not likely become clear for some time. All I know is that they were desperate enough to keep a lid on his conversations with Cohen to pretend he was a client and to put his name out there as if he has a right to have those conversations kept privileged. There was no other reason to list him as a client in the first place and no reason to volunteer his name in open court when the judge was offering to let them give her a sealed envelope.
Kris Kobach is also screwed. He’s just been held in contempt of court for defying court orders related to Kansas’s voter identification laws. And that’s not a good look for a Secretary of State, nor for a candidate for U.S. Senate, nor for the person whom President Trump put in charge of getting to the bottom of our non-existent problem with in-person voter fraud.
Republicans are beginning to have their fantasies hit up against a wall of reality on a more frequent basis now. Their efforts to repeal Obamacare met up with reality. There rhetoric about excluding whole classes of immigrants met up with reality. Now that people have seen their tax bill and it isn’t popular, their false hopes for pulling out of their political tailspin has met with reality, and this is confirmed regularly in local, state, and federal elections where they’re getting stomped in Trump country.
Another example from today came in Arizona where the Republicans tried to pull a fast one and met up with the reality that the Democrats actually read legislation before they vote on it.
Arizona Republicans appeared to back off their efforts Wednesday to rig the rules to keep Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) seat in their column, pulling from the state Senate floor a proposed change in state law that would have guaranteed a lengthy appointment from the GOP governor should the ailing senator leave office in the coming weeks.
Statehouse Republicans seemingly tried to pull a fast one on their Democratic counterparts, quietly adding an emergency clause to a bipartisan bill to clean up special election laws in the state that would have handed Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) assurance that he’d get to appoint a replacement for McCain through 2020.
There’s a bit of disagreement between experts on current state law. There’s general consensus that if McCain’s seat comes open before June 1, a special election will be held to fill his seat this fall — greatly improving Democrats’ chances of winning at least one Senate seat and cracking the door for them to win both. If McCain’s seat doesn’t come open until after June 1, most (but not all) experts think that means Ducey would get to appoint a replacement for more than two years.
McCain is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, and underwent surgery for a digestive issue in recent days.
The move suggests Republicans are nervous he might not be able to run out the clock and guarantee their party a longer appointment to the seat. That could be disastrous: Not only would it open up another Senate seat in a year that’s shaping up to be a terrible one for their party, but it could hurt their chances in both races depending on what candidate jumps into each contest.
Republicans say either former state Sen. Kelli Ward (R) or former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R) would likely move over to the other race, and nominating either would be devastating to their chances at holding that seat. Right now the two are splitting the hardline conservative vote and giving Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), the establishment favorite, the edge in their three-way primary for retiring Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) seat. If one moved over McSally could be in real trouble, and both hardliners could be the favorite for the nomination.
That’s a classic Hail Mary pass. They hoped the Democrats wouldn’t notice but, with the rules requiring a two-thirds majority for emergency bills, the subterfuge failed when their gambit was detected. The Republicans have been pushing the boundaries like this all over the country but they’ve generally lost in court, often in humiliating fashion. Where the Democrats have pushed, as they did to redistrict Pennsylvania, they’ve won despite being in the minority in both chambers of the legislature.
Reality will assert itself. Climate change will make itself understood in indisputable terms no matter how many conservatives take money from The Heartland Institute and the Koch Brothers to tell us its fake news. Nearly all of Trump’s lies with be debunked in time and his disgrace is assured. A wave of progressive legislation will come to protect and improve our elections and our systems. I know there is a way out of these woods, and if I didn’t believe we could find the route in time I wouldn’t spend my life doing what I do.
Sometimes I have my doubts, but this week I’m feeling pretty good. Maybe we’ll never fix everything that’s been broken, but I think we’ll get the chance.
Electoral reform is the sine qua non, the prerequisite for all the other changes desperately needed in this country.
It’s not just to prevent an out and out authoritarian state in service to a mafia-like wealth oligarchy, it’s also to prevent the rapid economic breakdown and widespread social disintegration that the GOP seems to desire above everything else.
Nihilism must not be allowed to prevail.
My money is that “Trump County/Red America” will be a lot less “Trumpy/Red” than media keeps telling us if the gerrymandering and voter suppression is stopped.
The “Red” district electoral wins since the Republicans stole their second Presidential election this century are proof enough of that Fly Over county is full of liberals who have just been systematically disenfranchised.
The US is reverting to its clientelistic tradition, as characterized by Francis Fukuyama. That is what happens when that reality calls: there won’t be enough resources for substantially more American Dream lives. The progress is not what is used to be. As economic inequality is too hard, progressives’ joy of intersectionalism is more a consolation.
Republicans are fully into clientelism, as ever. But the identity politics of the Democrats looks pretty clientelistic as well, to say nothing of reverence to corporate authorities. On the other hand, just opposing clientelism looks pretty biased and clientelistic.
lolwut? Mark Lilla, is that you? what kinda bullshit is this? Lemme tellya about “clientelistic”: that’s quotas to keep down the # of Asians and Jewish people in elite colleges. That’s “leadership” requirements like “captain of the tennis team” instead of raw intellect. That shit got done to ensure that poor-mouth white boys could get into those elite schools when better ethnics came along to contest those places. It’s legacy admissions for dropped-on-his-head types like C- Augustus, not to speak of Dingleberry Donald and Kakistocrat Kushner.
So yaknow, maybe you should look into all that clientelism. When you’re done, then come back and we can talk about “identity politics”.
B/c dude, “identity politics divides us … from white supremacy, not from each other”.
This guy has insinuated that the recent chemical attacks in Syria are fake or false flags and defended Putin’s imperial aggression in recent posts. Doesn’t seem to have a problem with that kind of “clientism”.
Talk about “kneejerk!!!”
Sigh…
AG
By “neocentrist” you mean Russian and Syrian State propaganda?
You’ve got to be kidding!!!
But…on the off chance that you are not…
No.
I mean the UniParty duopoly that now runs this country. One that is owned and operated by globalist, corporatist interests.
Both parties, bought and sold by the same operators.
Bet on it.
You disagree?
Go look at the large “contributors”…I actually prefer to call them investors…in the national campaigns of powerful RatPublican and DemocRatic politicians.
Lobbyist democracy.
Pay for play.
It’s the Omertican way!
Bet on that as well.
AG
What does any of this have to do with denying Bashar al-Assad is responsible for chlorine gas in a Douma, and Russia’s culpability in this act in spreading propaganda that both denies it happened and that other actors are responsible?
Absent ruly reliable proof…from any and every side of that story?
I believe none of it.
AG
You believe none of it, so you’re a denier of genocide. Thanks for the self-admission.
If you cared about the truth, you could believe the people who were gassed. This war is the most well-documented conflict in human history. You’re not going to get to play Goebbel’s Secretary line when the time comes:
Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary: `No one believes me now, but I knew nothing’
Great.
The Hitler card!!!
I distrust the government and media of this country, so that means I must believe the propaganda and lies of Hitler’s Germany.
How stupid can you get!!!
I got news fer ya, seabe…a good portion of the population of the world equates with Hitler’s Germany what the U.S. has done with its overt and covert wars since even before Dwight Eisenhower tried to warn us…and failed…about the dangers of what he called “The Military Industrial Complex.”
If the body count from those wars could be accurately numbered, it would dwarf Hitler’s body count, shameful and evil as it was.
The U.S. is just better at it.
A kinder, gentler (read “slyer”) dispenser of agony and death in its own interests.
And countless other proxy wars that simply would not have happened without U.S. interest and support.
A jailed domestic population that is the highest percentage of its own population than any other country in the world, a jailed population that is overwhelmingly comprised of minority members!!!
Wake the fuck up.
AG
You don’t have to follow media to know the truth. Get on twitter and follow the revolutionaries on the ground asshole. How stupid can YOU fucking get?
. . . the limit yet.
I doubt there is one.
You get your news on Twitter!!!???
Oh.
Nevermind.
Yore Freind…
Emily Litella.
Enjoy your media clown show, I’ll trust civilian journalists.
. . . uprate of this shit.
My sincere apologies.
I stand by this:
From Wikipedia:
Do you really think that the Democratic Party doesn’t work on similar principles?
It’s just representing different clients…and rewarding them in different ways…than does the Republican Party.
Are the Democratic “clients” more in need of help that those of the Republican Party? I don’t know. Are the victims of the offshoring of U.S. industry (sometimes referred to as “deplorables,” at the least the white ones are called that) in less need of some “quid pro quo” from the people that they elect than are the white, educated middle class and minorities that are the primary “clients” of the Democratic Party?
Booman writes above regarding the “brutal test[s] and assault[s]” that our government has endured in the last 20 or so years:
With the possible exception of the first and last actions and 9/11, the Democratic Party was on board with every part of that list. And…I say possible exceptions because I am not totally convinced that the Dem leadership was not in on those games to some degree as well…certainly not the surrender of the stolen elections of 2000 + 2004 and the various and sundry wars, overt and covert.
Both parties have served their “clients” very badly since the assassination years…I call them “the Long Coup”…as far as I can see. The only changes have been that now the majority of residents of the U.S. are both less sure of their position in the world…especially economically…and are simultaneously being misinformed/disinformed by the media in a much more efficient manner.
Booman’s post…and your kneejerk reaction to what das monde wrote…are partisan responses. That’s understandable, because you are obviousy both loyal Democrats.
It is also unforgivable considering the role that the Democratic Party (in its current neoliberal/neocentrist robes) has played in this history.
Sorry, Charlie…AG don’t play that game. And neither do a rapidly increasing number of others.
If…as looks quite likely…the Democratic Party (DNC version thereof, of course) does not reform itself into a more effectively FDR-like stance in the next year or two, then this “Things Break and They Don’t Get Fixed” system of which Booman speaks will simply soldier on into further decay and eventual collapse.
Blaming messengers like das monde and myself (let alone Bernie Sanders and his supporters) won’t cut it.
Not anymore it won’t.
The worm is about to turn, one way or another.
And no matter which it turns…it’s a worm with teeth!!!
Whether it bites the enemies of real democracy or the enemies of this country’s current UniParty system, things are still blowing up a storm. And yes, apparently there are a lot of people who do need a weatherman or two to tell them which way the wind is blowing.
Nothing new there, I guess.
And so it goes.
Later…
AG
Identity politics could go too far, or far enough to bring perceptions of clientelism, and not just in the eyes of “deplorables”. Progressives often do not know limitations of their inspirations even with hard slaps of reality.
I disagree with several things that Fukuyama writes, say:
That would be too ironic if the movement “government is the problem” would not be a principal reason for the decay of the American public administration. But if you have to convince Fukuyama that labour unions are not prime examples of clientelism, then affirmative action can be in question as well.
In Soviet Russia, arglebargle speaks you!
From your pen to God’s daily briefing.
Isn’t Kobach candidate for governor?
Election day after 2016 I told my mom (born Selma, AL 1946) that I never imagined I’d get to see George Wallace elected President, but I still had hope. Because the Americans who have seen progress in the last century (minorities, poor, LGBTQ) would refuse to go back. And this Wallace-ite movement was only promising the rolling all that back. They will refuse, and the fascists will lose.
Also, before this all went down, it was possible to be Liberal/Democratic and not be actually woke to the racist and corporatist nature of American society, but I don’t really think that’s possible anymore. And being woke to that is making moral people really mad.
If he is, this contempt of court ruling isn’t going to help him. KS is pretty reactionary but the recent voter rebellion against the arch-conservative whackos will not help his chances. Probably not much chance to see a return to someone like Sibelius as Governor but maybe someone less openly corrupt than the Kobach lizard.
Trump is marching us towards illiberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiberal_democracy
Breakage can only be prevented. It can never be repaired.
<a href=http://www.whatthefuckareyoutalkingabout.com/">What?</a>
What?
I don’t know exactly which section Frank is commenting, so I won’t speak for him.
However, in terms of climate change I think we may have passed the point we can mitigate some serious hardship for humans. I live in the DC metro, and I have talked with many scientists that have worked for the government the past 2 decades. The ones that aren’t trying to burn their bridges in getting hired for another Republican administration sound pretty dire. It is amazing how much evidence smart scientists will deny when dealing with Trump. I got into it at a Earth Day forum last year with a female scientist when she kept stating that Trump’s campaign was an act and he must believe in climate change and will work to combat it. I told her to believe what he states in this case, because he wants to roll back environmental regulation. She still got funding from the Smithsonion, so I think she didin’t want it to get out that she bad mouthed the President in anyway.
I think you are way too optimistic. Here in VA Bernie Dems are threatening not to vote. They are upset with Northam’s support of the natural gas pipeline, and/or Kaine and Warner’s gutting of Dodd-Frank. They hate Lamb and Jones. They just want everyone to vote like they think Bernie would, no matter how red their state or district. They are not pragmatic or well informed. They think that Northam’s support which he stated in his campaign, is some sort of stab in the back. They don’t realize we still don’t control either the Senate or the House of Delegates in Richmond. I just can’t deal with the emotional blackmail of these people anymore, and I fear they will do the same nationwide.
I feel like the media is setting us up to be overconfident again. Those poll numbers you wrote about last week seemed to be accurate. I don’t know many Dems that like any actual Dems, they just hate Trump.
Anyways, I hope you are right and I am overreacting. A broken bone is as healthy as before, when it mends, so perhaps this hope.
I hope (and suspect) you are wrong about NOVA suddenly abandoning the Democrats in favor of the imaginary Bernie Party. I have worked on environment and climate change for a really long time but in developing countries not the US but it’s of course a global phenomenon. It will and is already having stochastic (non-linear) impacts that act as accelerants on impacts on our natural and built environments. Peatlands destruction and permafrost melting will have hellish impacts. We are about to open ourselves into a whole lot of whoopass.
Here’s a story. I’ve worked for many years in Indonesia and in 1981, ExxonMobil discovered a truly gigantic gas deposit in the Natuna Islands (part of Indonesia but disputed with Vietnam and China) that their own scientists back then described as basically a planet killer because the huge gas deposit also had 70% CO2 which would escape at the time so they decided not to develop it. (BTW, if Tillerson was truly CEO for 40 years he participated in that decision, which makes his participation in the attempted evisceration of the climate change people at State and USAID all the more despicable.)
So tipping point people. Getting rid of Trump and the GOP is an existential issue really.
“I hope (and suspect) you are wrong about NOVA suddenly abandoning the Democrats in favor of the imaginary Bernie Party.”
That is not what I wrote or least I didn’t mean for it to read like your interpretation. The climate change paragraph was NOVA specific, but the rest was not.
In the next paragraph, I was writing about Dems I have come in contact across the state. All of this is anecdotal, I have no access to private polling or anything like that. The people I am describing are from other areas of the state as well, such as Richmond and Tidewater. In addition, I am talking about Democrats that voted for Bernie and Perriello in the primaries and Clinton and Northam in the GE. One of them I doubt actuallly voted for Clinton in the GE, but that is what they told me. 2 were from Nova and one was from Hampton Roads (Tidewater). The rest were Clinton voters in the GE, and I am not unsure about other voting information. All of them, from both groups, are frustrated with the pace of the Mueller investigation. They all want it wrapped up already. In my estimation, the mood is much different than it was last year around this time. The mild optimism of last year’s brighter spring replaced by inchoate rage or quiet desperation of this year’s seemingly much darker one..
Even in that election, the Democrats won statewide by about 8% in the fall,, yet still were not able to take the majority in the House of Delegates due to gerrymandering. The same dynamic will be in play in the midterms in November nationwide, where I have read the Dems will have to win by 6-10% to take the House back according to estimates I have seen. We can’t afford any Dem voters to punish the Dems by withholding their vote or thinking voting is pointless, because they don’t see any difference between the 2 parties. Another problem is that a subset of Democratic voters tend to focus on the flaw of a specific candidate or the party as a whole and whip themselves into wasting their vote. We can’t afford any complacency or entitled voting. The Republican voters will not roll over for us so we can have our meltdown over our displeasure with the state of things. It doesn’t take much to deaden a blue wave into a mild ripple.
Regardless of what happens electorally in the coming years, liberals will only be able to perform triage on our system until all prime time news outlet turn their cameras around at a Trump/Conservative rally and say “THOSE people are the problem with America today.”
We cannot let conservative voters off the hook again. We cannot let them burn their MAGA hats and return to the public square as humble, apolitical Independents! who are concerned about deficit spending….only to refill the government with people who will knee cap the needed reforms to prevent Trump 2.0.
Thanks for that perspective. I’ve been pretty bearish on Trump being brought to justice. Listening to the media focus on the deplorables as if everything turns on what they think, it’s easy to miss these realities. And I hope the Democrats are appreciating their successes in that it shows what can happen if they push back even when the odds seem against them.
Here’s something to give you hope:
Trump’s high approval rating among GOP voters is misleading–because fewer voters identify as Republican. In the first Gallup poll after his inauguration, party id was 31-37-31 (GOP/Ind/Dem). In the most recent poll party id was 23-45-29. It’s a (t)rump party of true believers.
Aren’t numbers fun?
But I doubt it is a sign of a true change of heart, but rather just those prodigal conservatives burning their uniforms again and declaring to be Independents to avoid their deserved public shaming and embarrassment.
In my 2nd Most Loyal Republican State (and the greater region), you aren’t seeing the We Won/You Lost, So FUCK YOU! signage/bumper stickers/etc. that followed 2004…and promptly disappeared by 2006.
And that’s the thing, we tend to hang on Trump’s high approval rating among conservatives when that alone is not enough numerically to put him / them over the top. The MSM does a bang up job of making Trump appear to have popular support that needs to be totally degraded before a reckoning, either legally or politically, when the reality is Trump is unpopular and not well liked, regardless of the intensity of the MAGA fever swamps.
I haven’t heard discussion of changes in party identification. If the number of registered or self-identified Republicans is dropping then in absolute numbers Trump’s support among Republicans is dropping as well.
If the media keeps harping that Trump’s support among the Republicans is steady, that can also act to energize/mobilize Democratic voters.
And if the reality is that many Republicans will not turn out to vote, despite what the conservative numbers show up in the polls and the media, that would be a good thing too.
It doesn’t matter what the non-voting knuckle-draggers think in polls if they don’t actually vote or are not stimulated enough to vote. Trump in 2016 benefited from both new not-usually-voting voters and some crossovers from racist Democrats. That’s not going to happen in 2018. And the Electoral College is not a factor.
I actually think only the Senate matters since no legislation will get past it anyway and the Courts matter hugely, as the GOP past obstruction shows. The HOR is just gravy.
I read today that international diplomats and investors are finally learning to ignore DT’s tweets. They see that the tweets rarely coincide with actual policy. That’s a positive step.
it’s taken them this long?
I wish I shared even the shred of optimism in your otherwise pessimistic post. While elections can and do sometimes provide partial correctives (e.g. the 2006 swing and the Hope of 2008), I don’t know how to fix the Poisoning of the American Mind that for now I’ll attribute to Reagan, Rush, and Rupert. Reagan’s cancellation of the Fairness Doctrine changed everything, and I don’t think anyone knows how to deal with it. From this followed Limbaugh, and this dovetailed nicely with the malignancy of Gingrich. Finally, throw in Fox, and the conditions were all in place for the the Decadence of our Democracy. In the public sphere, one side has engaged in total war, and our side has no adequate response.
The one glimmer of hope is your optimism about the end of Hannity and all of the other disasters that have happened to FNC in the last year or two, plus Rupert won’t live forever (Probably. The Devil may have something else to say about this). The problem is that full-time outrage has proven to be a very successful model, and it likely no longer requires Murdoch.
The detox will take a very long time.