Month: February 2019

Falsely suggesting that you served in a war that you did not serve in is a contemptible thing to do. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut did this on at least three occasions prior to becoming a candidate for the Senate. At two political events honoring veterans, one in 2007 and the other in 2008, he referred to the bad reception Vietnam veterans had received on returning home, but he did so in a way that suggested that he was one of them. At another veterans’ event in 2008, he went further and said, “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.” In truth, Blumenthal received five scholastic deferments from that conflict before landing a spot in the Marine reserves.  He spent no time in Vietnam and he should be criticized harshly for ever suggesting otherwise.

But here’s what Sen. Blumenthal did not do. He did not say that he was a war hero or ever describe being in Vietnam in any way. He did not say he served in Da Nang, nor did he concoct any war stories. What he did, which was unforgivable, was to speak in a way that intentionally conflated his Vietnam Era reserve service with others’ combat experience so he could claim a little extra credibility while speaking at veterans’ events.

I wish we could hold him permanently accountable for his horrible decision to do this, but it’s difficult when the president of the United States consistently lies about Blumenthal’s shameful record.  The latest example from the president is little different from his many prior ones, except this time he appears to told the lies directly to high officials in the Vietnamese government.

I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate Senator from Connecticut (how is Connecticut doing?). His war stories of his heroism in Vietnam were a total fraud – he was never even there. We talked about it today with Vietnamese leaders!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2019

Again, Blumenthal never said he was in Da Nang and he never told war stories of his heroism. He served in the military during the Vietnam War but on three occasions he gave the strong impression that he had actually served in Vietnam. One one of those occasions, he explicitly and falsely stated that he had served in Vietnam, which he had not.

For whatever reason, simply retelling the true story of Blumenthal’s indefensible behavior is not enough for Trump. Seemingly every time that Sen. Blumenthal opens his mouth to criticize the president, the president responds by lying about Blumenthal’s record.

Because Blumenthal deserves to get raked over the coals for his misstatements for the rest of eternity, I’ve traditionally grimaced but tolerated Trump’s exaggerations.  But I think telling these lies to foreign leaders is taking things several steps too far.

Maybe I am a hardass on matters like this, but I personally would never vote for anyone who had ever falsely claimed to have served in combat. I think a lot of people feel the way I do, which is why it ought to be sufficient to just tell the truth about Blumenthal.  Nonetheless, he’s a U.S. Senator and he deserves a certain basic level of respect.  He appears to be doing a very adequate job of representing his constituents and I happen to agree with him on most political matters, so I don’t find his presence in the Senate all that objectionable.  But, regardless of how you feel about his political service, it should be obvious that it’s wrong for the president of the United States to travel to a foreign country and repeat outright lies and fabrications about a sitting senator.

This is such an egregious act on Trump’s part, that he’s forced me to do what I never thought I would, which is to offer this limited defense of Blumenthal’s disgraceful behavior.

If Charles Pierce is correct that yesterday’s Michael Cohen hearing was “as sordid as the worst brothel on the Singapore docks,” it was still nice to see the man brought low and thoroughly humbled. I almost enjoyed watching the Republican members completely ignore everything Cohen had to say in favor of savaging his character. If anything, they were far too kind. But there was one significant problem with the GOP’s performance. They continuously lambasted Cohen for having come before Congress previously and lying his head off. But the only perjury counts he received were related to lies the president had told himself. Even more sketchy is the fact that Cohen stated under oath that the president’s lawyers had reviewed and edited his perjurious testimony before he gave it.

This cognitive dissonance provided extra poignancy when Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona told Cohen, “you’re a pathological liar; you don’t know truth from falsehood” and Cohen responded, “I’m sorry, are you referring to me or the president?”

Still, the Republicans were successful in distracting from the main point, which was that Trump’s pursuit of a skyscraper in Moscow was initially a higher priority for him that winning the nomination or the presidency, and that he’s lied constantly about this, exposing himself to blackmail and foreign influence by the Russians.

The Democrats were little help. As the New York Times dryly noted, “few members seemed to have done deep research to elicit new information,” which is a substantial understatement. As repulsive as the Republicans’ tactics were, at least they had a plan and at least they executed it. Too many Democrats wasted their time going on fishing expeditions only to come up empty.

In the grand scheme of things, what Cohen provided was mainly contained in his opening statement and amounted more to aggravating factors than primary rationales for impeachment. He confirmed that Donald Trump has committed a variety of crimes, both before and during his time as president. Cohen provided documentary evidence implicating Trump in bank, wire and insurance fraud, campaign finance violations, misuse of a charity, and tax evasion. He also exposed Trump as a fraud who revels in stiffing contractors and routinely inflates his net worth when it suits him. He gave firsthand accounts of Trump’s extreme prejudice against black people. He explained his role as a fixer, including how he bullied reporters and university administrators, and how he worked with people at the National Enquirer to “catch-and-kill”  negative stories about his boss.

These were all very serious matters, but not the kind of earth-shattering revelations required to build momentum for a Pence administration.  The truly dangerous stuff lurked in the background. Cohen confirmed that he is actively cooperating with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York:

Welcome back, music lovers. I am going to go for a change of pace this week. Depending how it goes, I might continue to mine this for a while. By this point, you have figured out that I am nothing if not eclectic in my tastes. The common thread is that I like artists who take a few chances and express themselves. There has never been a shortage in my lifetime, and for that I am grateful.

I may not be a jazzhead in any traditional sense of the term, but there is a good deal that I enjoy, and my personal collection is pretty extensive. When I did some college radio DJ work, for a while I hosted a couple hours of jazz programming each week. I’d usually do themed shows that were either free jazz, or themed shows focusing on a phenomenon of the 1970s, kozmigroov:

For a while in the 1990s there was a site called Kozmigroov Index. It eventually morphed into The Kozmigroov Connection. So what is Kozmigroov?

Kozmigroov is a transgressive improvisational music which combines elements of psychedelia, spirituality, jazz, rock, soul, funk, and African, Latin, Brazillian, Indian and Asian influences culminating into an all encompassing cosmic groove. At its most accomplished, Kozmigroov is both expansive and highly rhythmic, and simultaneously finds connections with the mind, soul and body.

The impression I get is that club DJs in the acid jazz scene in the late 1980s (and I do have some acid jazz in my collection, to probably no surprise to anyone), were going through a lot of used records bins and digging up just about anything they could from the 1970s that would give them a good groove. Thanks to those crate diggers, listeners began to explore where those sampled bass lines, etc. were coming from with the end result being a lot of stuff got reissued on CD for the duration of the 1990s and into the first few years of this century. We even got new kozmigroov artists, who were inspired by these early artists, but who offered their own very 1990s spin. The best work is not only danceable, but emotionally moving in ways I cannot even begin to describe.

Hopefully Pharoah Sanders’ “Morning Prayer” is a fair introduction to this unique jazz thread. I will have more.

From The Hill:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) says in a new interview that there is a “hostage situation” in the Republican Party.

The freshman lawmaker and self-described democratic socialist told Rolling Stone that “a lot of Republicans” know they should speak out against President Trump, but don’t.

“In the Republican Party, there’s a hostage situation going on,” she told the magazine. “There are a lot of Republicans that know what the right thing to do is — not just on impeachment but on a wide range of issues — and they refuse to speak up.”

Ocasio-Cortez called it “an unacceptable position” for GOP figures not to stand up to the president.

“We’re not in the realm of politics anymore,” she said. “These are not questions of politics. These are questions of society. These are questions of equal treatment. These are questions of civil rights.”

She also said that she would vote to impeach Trump “no question,” but acknowledged that some lawmakers “come from very tough districts where their constituents are torn” on their support for the president, making it difficult to easily commit to voting for impeachment.

She rejected the argument that some lawmakers have different intentions “behind closed doors” despite voting with Trump.

“If they vote the same way, what does it matter?” she said. “I don’t care what’s in your heart if how you are voting is the same as someone who is actually racist.

“I am tired of people saying, ‘I’m gonna vote the same way as bigots, but I don’t share the ideology of bigots.’ Well, you share the action and the agenda of bigots. We need to hold that accountable.”

Yup.

“We need to hold that accountable.”

In both parties.

Those Dems that “come from very tough districts where their constituents are torn?”

I am sorry.

Better to to take a chance of losing an election than to continue to let Trump run roughshod over the entire government (and most of the population) of this country.

I mean…really!!! When was the last time you heard about an ex-congressperson on the breadlines? They are set up for life in the DC/Democrat/Republican revolving door system. Whatever big money got them in will simply continue to pay them as insider lobbyists. All you need to do is look at the fate of the Dem insider that AOC beat in the primary.

Former Rep. Joseph Crowley, who lost to Ocasio-Cortez, joins top lobbying firm

Riiiight…

$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!

Hustle for them on the inside, then continue hustling for them on the outside.

The very essence of what’s wrong with this system today.

I’ve been watching this blog for several days.

Has anyone here yet praised Elizabeth Warren for her stand against Big Money in her campaign?

Elizabeth Warren is making the most ambitious promise yet for getting money out of politics

I haven’t read all of the comments, but I didn’t notice any praise for her.

Why?

Hmmmmm?

Too badly branded by that Pocahontas thing?

Or too far left…not that far left, really…for the DNC?

Nice.

Keep up the good work.

Later…

AG

Perhaps it is not shocking that only thirteen House Republicans voted for a Joint Resolution on Tuesday that terminates presidential Proclamation 9844, which Donald Trump issued to declare a national emergency at the southern border. I guess whether you’re surprised or not depends on how cynical you are about the Republican Party.  Either way, if reporting on Vice-President Mike Pence’s Tuesday meeting with the Senate GOP Caucus is accurate, there could be more support on a percentage-basis when the Resolution is taken up in the Senate.

One of the most vocal critics of the administration in the meeting with Pence was Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky who is known for his libertarian family brand.  He could eventually vote for the Resolution, but first he’ll apparently have to invest the fifteen seconds it takes to read it.

Undecided senators were mostly non-committal on how they will vote in interviews on Tuesday. The strongest remarks came from Paul, but even he wasn’t ready to join GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in pledging to vote for the resolution.

“I haven’t looked at the bill yet, but I am against emergency powers,” Paul said.

Since there are already three Republican senators on the record as supporting the Resolution, the president can hope to do no better than 50-50 on the roll call. Supposedly, there are as many as ten GOP senators who are leaning towards voting ‘aye,’ but they don’t want to announce their support and get blamed for tipping the balance against Trump.

As many as 10 Senate Republicans could support a resolution of disapproval if a vote were held today, according to four GOP senators who attended the lunch and heard Republican senators’ complaints. That’s far more than the four needed to pass the legislation on a simple majority and force Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency. Currently there are three public “yes” votes in the Senate GOP conference…

…More than a half-dozen Republican senators are mulling voting for the resolution, though they are hesitant to become the deciding vote to defy Trump and make an announcement…

I may be wrong about this, but I truly believe that there will be a bigger price to pay for Republican senators who stood by this president than those who challenged him. I think this will even be true among Republican voters in Republican primaries. It may not feel that way right now. In fact, I’m sure these conservative lawmakers are being strongly encouraged by their supportive constituents to back and defend Donald Trump against his detractors. In the end, though, I suspect that there will be almost no penalty for having bucked Trump after he is gone. Trump’s role in the party will be scrubbed even more thoroughly than George W. Bush’s was after he left office.

So, I think it’s now only cowardly of the Republican senators to cower in fear, but actually counterproductive.  One day, they’ll get some mileage if they can say they cast the deciding vote against Trump’s fake border emergency.  It’s too bad they’re so bad at predicting the future.

Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage: The joke is on them

Part of the Brexiteer mythology is that the EU is made up of incompetent and unprincipled bureaucrats who can be counted on to come grovelling for a compromise even if only at the last minute. To their discomfort and horror there is still no sign of the EU27 caving and all of Theresa May’s best efforts at divide and conquer tactics have been in vain. If there is one takeaway from this almost wholly sad Brexit episode it is that, remarkably, the EU27 have stood united behind one of their smallest members and maintained a coherent negotiating position throughout.

And so it is that the UK is staring into the abyss of a no deal Brexit unless they can come up with a better idea pretty sharpish… If there is one majority in the House of Commons for anything, besides the government’s sense of self preservation, it is that a majority want the no deal “option” taken off the table. It was all very well as a negotiating tactic to scare the EU27 into an agreement, but it has become increasingly obvious that it is nothing more than a wilful act of self-harm.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. “Having your cake and eating it” was meant to be a cake walk. Negotiating a future relationship with the EU was meant to be “the easiest deal in history”. But somehow, unaccountably, the EU27 individually and collectively decided that preserving the integrity of the Single Market and Customs Union was more important than short term economic pain. The German car industry didn’t come running to Merkel to tell her to tell the Commission to cut a deal at all costs. Even more annoyingly, some upstart former colony was allowed to dictate the EU terms of engagement…

So as zero hour and B-day approaches it has been the UK which has blinked first. The hard line approaches by both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have been undermined by their own back-benchers and both have had to modify their previous stances. First Corbyn announced he was finally prepared to support a second referendum having failed to defeat May’s deal or precipitate a general election.

Now Theresa May has announced that if her deal is defeated a second time, she will allow a vote on the “no deal” option, and if that, too, fails (as expected) she will support a proposal to request an extension to the A.50 deadline. Everyone knows that that, in itself, will solve nothing, except perhaps serve to further puncture or at least deflate the Brexiteer balloon.  But essentially they are throwing themselves at the mercy of the EU Council, which must support any such a request with unanimous approval.

The EU Council, for its part, might well impose some preconditions – such as a requirement that the extension is used either to approve and implement May’s deal or to organise a second referendum and/or a general election. What seems certain is that any further extension – beyond, perhaps, an initial three months, will only be approved if a second referendum or a general election is in prospect. The Withdrawal Agreement (May’s deal) will not be re-negotiated. It is up to the UK to come up with an alternative option if they don’t like that deal.

In the meantime the UK would have to take part in the EU Parliamentary elections in May, providing a platform for Remainers and undermining the “EU is Undemocratic” narrative so beloved of Brexiteers. Farage will have to decide whether to stand for a Parliament he effects to despise. Then there is a whole summer for UK tourists to “Europe” to contemplate the joys of applying for visas, green cards and international driving licences, standing in line in the “non -EU” queue alongside various third world “foreigners”, and getting less Euros for their Pound.

Any second referendum, if it is held, will involve a straight choice between May’s deal, the only Brexit on offer, or Remain. The only thing achieved by Parliament over the past three years will have been to take “no deal” off the table. Some Brexiteers might well be tempted to advocate for abstention in the referendum on the grounds that either option is unacceptable. Then they could at least claim credit for the c. 30% to 60% of the electorate who don’t turn out to vote in referenda in any case. Either way the Brexiteer vote could be split between support for May’s deal and not voting in the second referendum at all – in disgust at the whole process.

In those circumstances I could see the Remain option supported by a 2:1 majority of those who do vote – reminiscent of the 1975 referendum vote which too, supported continued EU membership be a 2:1 majority: A vote which seems to have been consigned into the black memory hole of history. May’s deal is almost universally reviled even though it contains a huge concession by the EU – effectively continued membership of the Single Market and Customs Union without the requirement to allow free movement of workers or pay Norway style contributions to the EU budget. There will be many in the EU who will breath a sigh of relief if it is ultimately rejected.

From an Irish perspective, at least we will no longer be jeered at by Brexiteers for voting twice on the Treaties of Nice and Lisbon. The people are allowed to change their minds, especially in the light of new information and the creation of a more informed electorate motivated to turn out in greater numbers. I don’t hear too many complaining that we finally changed our minds on abortion and voted to reverse the 1983 referendum result banning it in all circumstances.

But from a British perspective the political repercussions could be more traumatic. May will inevitably have to resign if “her” deal is ultimately rejected by the electorate, especially by such a margin. Much irreversible economic damage will have been done to the UK economy. But above all, such a volte face will result in the loss of much face in the diplomatic world. It will be some time before the UK is taken seriously on the world stage again, if ever.

But of course it won’t stop the British Brexiteers whinging about the EU, any more than the decisive 2:1 referendum vote in favour of continued membership did in 1975. Some people will always have to have something to whinge about – anything really – as long as it doesn’t point to their own responsibility. But will anyone else ever take them seriously again? BoJo may have his £300K p.a. once a week column in the Daily Telegraph. But who else beyond the Tory pensioners who read the Telegraph will care?

The repercussions for the DUP will also be serious, if not terminal, in Northern Ireland. Depending on whether the DUP end up supporting May’s deal or not – in itself a humiliating volte face – Brexit could well be defeated by a 90:10 margin in Northern Ireland the second time around. Even pro-Brexit Unionist voters will not lightly forgive the DUP for throwing in their lot with a cabal of Brexiteer chancers in London – to the detriment of community relations and economic prosperity in N. Ireland – and bringing the whole question of a United Ireland into play again. Sinn Fein will likely become the leading party in any subsequent election, with the Unionist vote split between the DUP, UUP and splinter groups.

However it will not benefit Sinn Fein much in the rest of Ireland. Here Leo Varadker will claim the lions share of the credit. Even some of his staunches critics have had to concede that he has played Ireland’s cards masterfully, building an EU consensus and holding the line when the going got tough. It may not save him at the polls when his other short comings are evaluated – a failure to address Ireland’s housing and health care crises – and a failure to achieve some measure of inter-generational justice: The young are being held hostage by the rentier class.

But then Brexit, as a whole, has served as a monumental distraction from the real issues facing the the UK and the EU: The issues of globalisation and growing inequality between the owners of capital and workers, between different regions within the EU, between urban and rural, young and old. Between public austerity and squalor and private wealth and conspicuous consumption. Hopefully soon we will be able to start prioritising those issues again. Brexit has already dragged on for far too long.

I have some personal business I have to attend to this afternoon, so this will be somewhat brief. There have been several House Republicans who have complained that the Democrats are forcing them to vote on President Trump’s border emergency declaration without giving them time to read the resolution. On Monday, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who serves as the ranking member of the House Committee on Rules, went on National Public Radio and said he’s concerned about “the haste with which the majority is pushing this disapproval resolution through. We’ve had no time to review the bill and no committee has held a hearing or marked it up.”

Here’s the language of the resolution, as provided by Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii.

Resolved (Senate and House) in Congress assembled, That, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15, 2019, in Proclamation 9844 (84 Fed. Reg. 4949) is hereby terminated.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) February 26, 2019

Yes, it fits in a tweet.

In truth, Sen. Schatz cheated a little with those parentheses. Here’s the full text:

JOINT RESOLUTION

Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15, 2019, in Proclamation 9844 (84 Fed. Reg. 4949) is hereby terminated.

So, how long did it take you to read that? Do you think they need to hold a hearing so a committee can mark it up?

The Republicans treat people like they are morons because they believe we are all morons.  If you want more proof, look over at what happened Tuesday in the Senate:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that Democrats were to blame for a recent case of substantial election fraud in North Carolina that benefited a GOP House candidate…

…“We were hit with left-wing talking points insisting that voter fraud wasn’t real. Never happens, they said. Well, that fraud just didn’t happen, that modest efforts to ensure that voters who are who they say they are and are voting in the proper place were really some sinister right-wing plot to prevent people from voting,” McConnell said. “So now, as you might expect, now that an incident of very real voter fraud has become national news and the Republican candidate seems ― seems ― to have benefited, these long-standing Democratic talking points have been really quiet.”

It doesn’t get any more disingenuous than that. The fraud in North Carolina was perpetrated on the voters, not by them. Republican operatives took Democrats’ absentee ballots and threw them in the trash. In other cases, they promised to fill them out for the voters and then checked the boxes for Republican candidates.

There is no depth the modern GOP won’t plumb in their pursuit of an advantage.

When I wrote How a Trump Emergency Declaration Became the Mother of All Headaches, I explained how the Senate Republicans stumbled into the situation they now face where they’re on the brink of losing a vote in a chamber they control.  Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas is already resigned to defeat, “I didn’t want it to come to this, because I think it’s probably going to get tied up in court. And I said it wasn’t a practical solution…All it takes is four right? You can do the math as well as I can.”

When Sen. Cornyn says, “It only takes four,” he means that if four Senate Republicans vote for a resolution overturning Trump’s emergency declaration then it will pass, assuming all the Democrats and the two independent also vote ‘yes.’ There are already three GOP senators on the record with an intention to approve the measure: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Sen. Tillis went so far as to write an opinion piece for the Washington Post explaining his decision. Here’s the key part of his argument:

Conservatives rightfully cried foul when President Barack Obama used executive action to completely bypass Congress and unilaterally provide deferred action to undocumented adults who had knowingly violated the nation’s immigration laws. Some prominent Republicans went so far as to proclaim that Obama was acting more like an “emperor” or “king” than a president.

There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach — that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party.

Republicans need to realize that this will lead inevitably to regret when a Democrat once again controls the White House, cites the precedent set by Trump, and declares his or her own national emergency to advance a policy that couldn’t gain congressional approval.

Because the declaration of disapproval will pass the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday and is a privileged resolution authorized by the National Emergencies Act, the Senate is compelled to bring it up for a vote within fifteen days.

There is a flaw in the law, though, because the president is allowed to veto Congress’s disapproval.  No one is yet predicting that there will be enough Republican defections in either the House or Senate to sustain a veto override attempt.  As a result, the main tangible effect of Congress passing the resolution will be to add heft to judicial challenges to the emergency declaration.

Nonetheless, the debate is roiling Republican unity in Congress. Opposition is widespread, but the appetite for taking Trump on is weak.

Numerous Senate Republicans say that, like Tillis, they despise Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency to get additional funding for his wall. But most aren’t ready to say they will vote to block him from doing so.

Interviews on Monday with more than a dozen GOP senators who have been publicly critical of Trump’s unilateral maneuver or warned him not to deploy it were cagey about their intentions for what would be a crucial vote in coming weeks on the Senate floor…

…Some Republicans still privately expect the resolution to pass the Senate, but there was little enthusiasm to get out in front of a conflict with the president.

As I wrote previously, the Republicans welcomed this emergency declaration because it gave them a way to avoid overriding a presidential veto so that they could reopen the government. But that only delayed their day of reckoning. What they’re going to do now is the absolute worst of all worlds. First they’re going to rebuke the president and then they’re going to fail to override his veto and hand him control of their pursestrings. They won’t avoid one of the toughest votes they’ll ever face, and they won’t defend their own power and prerogatives. They won’t stand with Trump, but they’ll still defer to him. And then they’ll hope that the courts side with them against Trump, thereby defeating Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the border with Mexico with American tax dollars.

They deserve this fate, but they also deserve the contempt they will get from every single quarter for their cowardice and lack of principle.

There are many interesting things in the New York Times’ latest profile of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. I want to focus on how he talks to Republican voters in his home state. Here’s part of what he said at a recent gathering of Republicans where he was the keynote speaker:

In Greenville, Graham framed the Kavanaugh melee as a proxy battle over President Trump — and placed himself on the Trumpian side of an us-versus-them divide. The Democrats and the national news media, he said, are engaged in a singular mission to thwart the president. “Why? ’Cause they hate him,” Graham said of Trump. “They hate us,” he added, and repeated the call: “They hate us.”

Political parties exist in large part to “thwart” other political parties, especially when they don’t control the White House. It’s not necessary to posit hatred as a primary motivator for political criticism and oppositional behavior. Senator Graham was engaged here in a toxic form of discourse. He was telling people that the Democrats hate them. He said the same thing about the media.

You can hear the same kind of rhetoric on Fox News and hate radio. Joe DiGenova made a recent appearance on Laura Ingraham’s radio program and declared:

“We are in a civil war in this country. There’s two standards of justice, one for Democrats one for Republicans. The press is all Democrat, all liberal, all progressive, all left – they hate Republicans, they hate Trump. So the suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future in this country is over. It’s not going to be. It’s going to be total war. And as I say to my friends, I do two things – I vote and I buy guns.”

Again, the media is treated as the enemy, and in this case the solution involves buying guns in preparation for a civil war–with the obvious implication that Republicans need to get ready to kill some folks.

Continuing with this theme, Steven Bannon evoked civil war during a weekend appearance on Face the Nation: 

“I think that 2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since before the Civil War,” Bannon said. “And I include Vietnam in that. I think we’re in, I think we’re in for a very nasty 2019.”

The country is certainly divided. It’s astonishing to me that President Trump could have over fifty percent approval with any group of human beings, including his own family, but according to Gallup, he’s actually seen an uptick in the number of states where he has majority support:

The good news for Trump is that he had 50 percent approval or higher in 17 states, up from 12 in 2017. (The additions? Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina and Utah.)

The bad news? In 13 states he won in 2016, his approval rating is underwater. And in no state that he won in 2016 is his approval rating worse than in Texas.

That’s hardly an enviable political position for a president seeking reelection, but it’s nonetheless troubling that we have states in this country where most people are actually are willing to tell a pollster that they support Trump.

They no doubt base that support in large part on their perception that they share the same enemies. This is supported by a recent analysis done by Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz. He looked at how people are voting in congressional elections and concluded that they are no longer judging candidates as individuals but only as members of a party that they either support or oppose.

Abramowitz notes that during the 1960s, the 1970s, and even the 1980s, the correlation between the presidential vote in a district and the House vote in that district was about 0.6 — substantial, but not overwhelming (correlations run from 0, meaning no correlation, to 1, meaning perfect correlation). In 2016, it was .97, higher than it had ever been before. The candidates who thought they could overcome their district’s fundamental partisanship by constructing a more moderate profile were almost all on a fool’s errand.

In other words, Trump is getting a lot of support simply because he’s not a Democrat. In many parts of the country, not being a Democrat is all that is required to gain approval, and the Republicans are feeding off of that with the rhetoric that Democrats hate their political opponents.

This will limit how well any Democrat can do in the presidential elections, and it will also strictly limit how many seats the Democrats can win in Congress. But I do have two hopeful observations.

While it may be a fool’s errand for congressional Democrats (or Republicans) to pursue a moderate political profile in an effort to win in areas where their party doesn’t predominate, it should still be possible for the presidential candidates to change the overall split in support between the two parties. In other words, where a presidential candidate is winning, the congressional candidates will probably win, too. What this means is that moving the needle must be done from the top.

The second hopeful observation is that better leadership will result in better citizens. Where people feel that opposing the Democrats is a moral or political necessity, they will make allowances for whatever horrible behavior Trump dishes up, but they’ll follow someone else if and when that becomes necessary. If they aren’t constantly being fed divisive and toxic rhetoric and they aren’t constantly having to make excuses for inexcusable behavior, their devolution as human beings will slow and eventually reverse.

Someday soon, Donald Trump will no longer be the leader of the Republican Party. I hope that day comes before the Republicans formally nominate their candidate for president in 2020. If not, we’ll continue to see U.S. senators behaving like Lindsey Graham. And the country cannot long endure if we don’t get off that course.

The country is not necessarily headed for a civil war, but that will depend in large part in what kind of leaders emerge in 2020. Neither side is going to soften or reconcile organically from the bottom up, so we need people to lead the charge from the top.

I’m a progressive. My politics are of a social-democratic variety. I’m Jewish. And I’m a Zionist.

The last phrase is going to raise the hackles of some readers, perhaps a lot of readers, just as my hackles are raised when I read people attacking Zionism. It has taken me awhile to puzzle this out, although the explanation is, I think, pretty straightforward: we mean radically different things by the word “Zionism”. For someone of my generation (born in the 1950s), and even more so for my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, Zionism was a radically hopeful and forward-thinking ideology behind the movement for establishment of a Jewish homeland. It was about gestures such as planting trees in Israel in honor of a boy’s bar mitzvah. It was about rebirth from the ashes of the Nazi death camps and the pogroms of the Russian Empire. It was about self-reliant social democracy as represented by the kibbutz. And it was pretty much a reflexive attitude among Jews. I’m going to call this ideology Zionism1. For many on the political left today, however, Zionism has nothing to do with any of what I just mentioned. Instead, it’s a reactionary ideology in the service of the repression of Palestinian Arabs, inextricably linked with the corrupt and distinctly unpleasant Benjamin Netanyahu and with evangelical “Christian Zionists”. I’m going to call this latter ideology Zionism2.

There’s nothing in common between Zionism1 and Zionism2.

I’ve called out some diarists here whose critiques of Israel and Zionism have, in my opinion, crossed the line into using dog whistles that evoke traditional anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish control of the media, say, or Jews as disloyal to the countries where they live. I find this sort of dog whistling to be distressingly common in the pages of certain left publications, with Counterpunch my Exhibit A.

One rebuttal to what I’ve just written is commonly framed as “you’re just trying to discredit all criticism of Israel by portraying it as anti-Semitic”. Not at all. Israel has plenty to answer for. Half a century of occupation of Palestinian territories ought to be regarded with distress and anger. But distress and anger don’t justify stupid anti-Semitic dog whistles.

Another rebuttal is commonly framed as “you’re intentionally conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism”. And here we get tripped up by that word “Zionism”. Those using this rebuttal equate Zionism with what I’ve called Zionism2; if they’ve ever even heard of what I’ve called Zionism1, they probably regard it as some sort of fossil and of no relevance whatsoever. They are very mistaken.

So where am I going with this? Most simply put, consider this a plea for making your arguments clear and for avoiding terminology whose definition is unclear or contested. If Zionism for you is what I’ve called Zionism2, ditch the term entirely and write about the particulars. Sure, it’ll take you an extra two or three minutes, but you’ll be forced to be precise and you’ll wind up with a stronger argument in the end. But if you instead opt for lazy, familiar labeling, expect pushback.