Month: April 2019

Let’s remember what the Russian hacks of the DNC accomplished for Donald Trump and the Republican Party back in the summer of 2016. Here is how the New York Times reported on the immediate fallout once the pilfered emails were released to the world by Julian Assange:

Democrats arrived at their nominating convention on Sunday under a cloud of discord as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The revelation, along with sizable pro-Sanders protests here in the streets to greet arriving delegates, threatened to undermine the delicate healing process that followed the contentious fight between Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton. And it raised the prospect that a convention that was intended to showcase the Democratic Party’s optimism and unity, in contrast to the Republicans, could be marred by dissension and disorder.

Bernie Sanders was satisfied, but reminded folks that “The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race.” Some of his supporters were gleeful:

Mr. Sanders’s supporters were elated by Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s decision, which they said had been long overdue.

“Thank God for WikiLeaks,” said Dan O’Neal, a delegate from Arizona who was wearing a “Bernie for President” T-shirt. “The party was stacked from the beginning with Debbie in charge.”

I’ve always believed that the story of impartiality was a bit overblown. It seemed less a matter of trying to game the system against Bernie than not taking his chances seriously and operating under the assumption that Clinton was already the nominee. Regardless, it was understood at the time that Schultz needed to resign because the process she had presided over had been flawed at best and unfair to Sanders at worst.

Now, I know that there’s a difference between a primary contest involving candidates who are vying to replace an incumbent president and a primary contest that involves an incumbent president. In theory, however, the same principles should apply. If a president receives a challenger or challengers from within his or her own party, those challengers should be allowed to operate on a level playing field.

The Republicans most definitely don’t see things that way.

When Trump ran in 2016, he was a political outsider regarded with thinly veiled contempt by much of the Republican establishment. Now that very same establishment — the leaders of the GOP in Washington and states across the country — has fallen in lockstep behind the president and begun marshaling efforts to ensure him a second term.

In January, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution of “undivided support” for the president after reaching an unprecedented agreement to merge the party and Trump’s reelection team into a single unit. Weeks later, the party’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, taunted any would-be contestant. “Have at it,” she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference put on by Schlapp’s organization. “Waste your money, waste your time and go ahead and lose.”

Imagine if then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had told Bernie Sanders to go ahead and challenge Hillary Clinton but he’d be wasting his time and money, and that he would surely lose. That would have been evidence of bias and a rigged system far beyond what actually occurred on the Democratic side in 2015 and 2016. Think about how silly it would sound if a Republican challenger to Donald Trump pleaded that “The party leadership must…always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process.”

Things don’t look much more inviting on the ground in Iowa.

Steve Scheffler, who represents Iowa on the Republican National Committee, has a warning for anyone in the party hoping to deny President Trump the 2020 GOP nomination.

“We want to protect the integrity of the caucuses and give people the ability to make their case,” he said, referring to the balloting that kicks off the election season next February. But, Scheffler went on, there will be zero tolerance for any Republican who comes to Iowa and “starts bashing the president and his policies.”

“That,” he said, “will be dealt with.”

This is just one more example that demonstrates that there are significant differences between the two major American political parties. Both of them are biased against outsiders and insurgent candidates and both of them will create significant hurdles for anyone trying to challenge the status quo. But only the Democrats recognize that the correct standard of behavior from their party apparatus is impartiality in their internal elections. The Republicans don’t even pretend that their primaries and caucuses will be administered fairly, and they certainly won’t be forcing Ronna Romney McDaniel to resign if evidence emerges that she put her fingers on the scale for Trump.

From Politico. (Emphases mine):

O’Rourke: My Cabinet secretaries will hold monthly town halls By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL 04/01/2019 03:54 PM EDT

Beto O’Rourke pledged Monday to sign an executive order requiring his Cabinet secretaries to hold monthly public town halls if he’s elected president.

“As a member of Congress, six years in the minority, every major piece of legislation we were a part of came from a town hall meeting just like this,” the former Texas congressman told hundreds of progressive activists and organizers at the We The People summit in Washington, D.C. “That’s why as president I’ll sign an executive order on the first day in office requiring every single Cabinet secretary to hold a town meeting like this every single month.”

O’Rourke committed to tapping a set of Cabinet secretaries who reflect the diversity of America, a contrast to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, whose leaders are overwhelmingly white and male.

“I also wanna make sure that our Cabinet and the entire executive branch reflects the diversity, the ingenuity, the genius of a country with 330 million people,” he said. “So making sure that that’s reflected in the composition of the Cabinet is absolutely important. And no, we will not have people who have corporate interests serving this country. Those positions of public trust will only be people who have the public interest in those positions of public trust.”

—snip—

O’Rourke’s campaign said he held more than 350 town halls during his closer-than-expected Senate run against Ted Cruz in 2018. He framed the town hall policy as a decision that gives more power to everyday people, in addition to rejecting PAC money and contributions from lobbyists.

“As I just committed, those Cabinet secretaries of those agencies and departments will be before you, not a handpicked audience, not a theatrical production, but a real, live town hall meeting not just to answer questions but to be held accountable,” he said.

I got yer “populism.”

Right here!!!

In my opinion, O’Rourke  is the last, best hope for this nation.

You?

Think on it.

Please.

Later…

AG

From The Atlantic (https:/www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/beto-orourke-has-way-out-trumps-immigration-trap
586201/):

Trump Laid a Trap on Immigration–And Only Beto Sees It 6:00 AM ET 4/1/19 – Peter Beinart

Most Democrats are playing into the president’s hands on border security, but the ex-congressman has a different idea.

Beto O’Rourke isn’t known for his wonkish heft. But in his formal announcement for president on Sunday, the former Texas congressman offered one of the most important policy proposals of the nascent presidential campaign: He argued that to solve America’s problems at the border, America’s leaders must “help people in Central America where they are.” In so doing, he began laying a foundation to effectively rebut Donald Trump on his signature issue: immigration.

Every major Democratic presidential candidate decries Trump’s actions at the border. In her announcement speech, Kamala Harris called his policy of putting “children in cages” a “human-rights abuse,” and his proposed border wall a “medieval vanity project.” In hers, Elizabeth Warren said that under Trump, America’s “immigration system … lacks a conscience.” Amy Klobuchar used her announcement to demand “comprehensive immigration reform.” In his, Bernie Sanders called for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the United States and “a humane border policy for those who seek asylum.”

O’Rourke’s competitors are right to demand a fairer and more humane system for evaluating asylum claims. But an improved asylum system won’t reduce the number of people fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador–Central America’s “Northern Triangle.” To the contrary, the better chance migrants have of gaining asylum, the more likely they are to seek it.

All of which plays into Trump’s hands. His core argument is that only by treating asylum seekers brutally–making it harder for them to apply, raising the standard of proof for their claims, and even separating them from their children–can the United States deter them from coming. By chastising Trump for his brutality without offering their own strategy for reducing migration, Democrats are walking into a trap. They’re allowing him to frame the immigration debate as a choice between harsh policies that stop Central American migration and humane policies that encourage it.

By addressing the roots of the migration problem, O’Rourke’s proposal evades Trump’s trap. The migrant “caravans” that Trump demonizes hail from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, where a brutal fight between organized-crime cartels has driven violence to levels that, according to the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, are unprecedented outside a war zone. In 2015, when the organization asked Northern Triangle migrants in Mexico why they had left their countries, 39 percent cited threats of physical harm.

—snip—

Trump wants Americans to view Central American asylum seekers as marauding invaders, heading north to fleece America’s welfare system and rape and murder its people. By focusing on the actual conditions in Central America, O’Rourke can tell a different story: Central Americans aren’t migrating to commit violence but to flee it. Thus, Trump’s recent call to cut off American aid to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala as punishment for migration is epically stupid. It’s stupid because aid is America’s best tool for reducing the violence that leads Central Americans to migrate in the first place. By linking immigration to foreign policy, O’Rourke can do what his competitors can’t: credibly promise to treat asylum seekers more justly while also reducing their numbers.

Critics lampoon O’Rourke as light on government accomplishments and policy detail. But so far, he is the only person putting Latin America at the center of his foreign-policy agenda–which is where it belongs. Sanders, Warren, Harris, and Klobuchar didn’t mention Central America in their announcement speeches. The region was absent from Warren’s essay last year for Foreign Affairs. In a foreign-policy speech in 2017, Sanders decried America’s cold-war coup in Guatemala but said nothing about American policy toward the region today. In a foreign-policy address last year, he didn’t discuss Central America at all. The clearest exception is Joe Biden, who in 2018 penned an op-ed titled “The Border Won’t Be Secure Until Central America Is.”

As a resident of a border town, O’Rourke is fortunate in his life experience. The issue he understands best, immigration, is the one Trump has placed at the heart of American politics. Warren and Sanders, who have thus far driven the policy debate among the Democratic presidential field, are focused above all on the way the ultrarich corrupt America’s economic and political system. They could almost be running against Mitt Romney. By contrast, O’Rourke, of all the major Democratic hopefuls, is best positioned to challenge Trump on his signature theme: nationalism.

In his announcement speech, O’Rourke quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s line about individuals being bound together in a single “garment of destiny.” But he implied that this mutuality links Americans not only to one another but also to their southern neighbors. In so doing, he hinted at an internationalist narrative that might counter Trump’s nativist and nationalist one. In his bicultural and bilingual hometown of El Paso, while speaking in both English and Spanish, he imagined the United States helping itself by helping Central America. Thus, in a party still struggling to respond to Trump’s brutal and unconventional approach to immigration and foreign policy, O’Rourke suggested a way to counter them both.

Not much more needs be said.

O’Rourke is the only presidential candidate with a finger on the pulse of two of the most important heartbeats of the U.S. in my view…the Hispanic vote and the youth vote…both of which, not so coincidentally, have been among the largest groups not to vote over many years.

Ignore him at your peril.

While the rest of the candidates are stuck in the static group-think of Washington DC, he is out there talking to the people!!!

Ignore him at all of our peril!!

AG

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved toward using the nuclear option reluctantly, haltingly, and with baby steps that provided plenty of warning. After Barack Obama was elected president but before he was sworn in in January 2009, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell adopted a strategy of total obstruction, declaring his number one priority to be making sure Obama was a one-term president. Throughout 2009 and 2010, McConnell used every available parliamentary trick to slow down the legislative agenda and the confirmation of Obama’s nominees. He was particularly aggressive on nominees for the federal courts. After the shellacking the Democrats took in the 2010 midterms, their majority in the Senate was markedly reduced and McConnell’s ability to obstruct was correspondingly enhanced.

In response, in 2011, Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Tom Udall of New Mexico began advocating that Reid use the nuclear option (which they called “the constitutional option”) in order to enact reforms to the filibuster rules. Although Reid opposed their plans, by October 2011, the pressure had grown substantial enough that Reid pushed through rule change with 51-48 vote. The impact of the change was modest because it only eliminated a post-cloture delaying motion and it only applied to the 2013-14 Congress, but he had changed the rules without a supermajority, thereby technically invoking the nuclear option. In context, however, he had gone nuclear in order to avoid going nuclear.

After President Obama disappointed McConnell by winning reelection in 2012, the Democrats began signaling that they would invoke the nuclear option in January 2013. The threat was credible enough to send many Republican senators scurrying into negotiation mode. In bipartisan votes of 78 to 16 and 86 to 9, the Senate rules were changed to curtail “the minority party’s right to filibuster a bill as long as each party has been permitted to present at least two amendments to the bill.” Reid acknowledged that the reforms didn’t go as far as many wanted them to, but tried to sound optimistic, “It is my hope that these reforms will help restore a spirit of comity and bipartisan cooperation.”

By July 2013, however, his optimism was dashed and he again prepared to invoke the nuclear option.

On July 16, the Senate Democratic majority came within hours of using the nuclear option to win confirmation of seven of President Obama’s long-delayed executive branch appointments. The confrontation was avoided when the White House withdrew two of the nominations in exchange for the other five being brought to the floor for a vote, where they were confirmed.

This was only a temporary respite. By November 21, 2013, Reid’s reluctance to go nuclear had hurt his credibility and he went forward. In a 52-48 vote, the rules were changed to eliminate the minority’s ability to block political appointments and all federal judges below the level of the Supreme Court.

This preserved the so-called “legislative filibuster” and was justified on the basis that the government cannot function if the minority prevents the majority from filling spots in the Executive Branch and on the courts. Many predicted that the Democrats would regret the change, and they later had plenty of reason to rue the fact that they couldn’t stop any of President Trump’s cabinet nominees. As for the Supreme Court, many predicted that the Republicans would not honor this restriction, and that turned out to be true as we just saw with the confirmations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

I tell this story to put Mitch McConnell’s newest move to change the rules in their proper context. In an article published in Politico, McConnell explains why he is slashing the post-cloture debate time from 30 hours down to two hours “for all nominations except for Cabinet choices, nominees for the Supreme Court and appellate courts and some independent boards.”

The Senate has two rules that govern how things operate. One is unlimited debate, which means that senators can talk as long as they want, and the other is unanimous consent, which means that nothing can happen unless all 100 senators agree. The filibuster rule is meant to get around these constraints. For regular legislative business, the majority and minority leaders negotiate the parameters (including time for debate) and then ask the members of their caucuses to give their consent to their agreement. This is ordinarily granted without much fuss.  If any senator objects, however, then the majority leader has to file a cloture motion to end debate.  This is the filibuster vote, and in recent years there has been a 60-vote threshold. Once cloture is successfully invoked, which typically takes three days, the debate on a bill or nominee can begin, and the debate will be cut off after a definite period of time. For nominees, this has been 30 hours.  McConnell used this very effectively when he was in the minority. By refusing to grant unanimous consent for almost all nominees, he forced Reid to repeatedly go through the cloture and debate process, thereby chewing up weeks and weeks of legislative time debating non-controversial people, leaving less time for the Senate to work on legislation.

Given this history, it’s a wonder that lightning didn’t strike McConnell when he wrote the following explaining his new rule change:

“Since January 2017, for the first time in memory, a minority has exploited procedure to systematically obstruct a president from staffing up his administration. This new, across-the-board obstruction is unfair to the president and, more importantly, to the American people. Left unchecked, it is guaranteed to create an unsustainable precedent that would see every future presidency of either party obstructed in the same mindless way. The Senate needs to restore normalcy. And this week, we will vote to do just that.”

What makes the nuclear option “nuclear” is that it violates the rules in order to change the rules. It should require a supermajority to change a rule, so using a mere majority to make it so a mere majority can prevail is not supposed to be permissible. In this case, McConnell is going nuclear to eliminate a problem that he invented. It was only because of McConnell’s willingness to abuse the spirit of the rules that Harry Reid eventually succumbed to pressure to fight back in the only way he could. Many people warned that as soon as Reid took one step down that road, it would open the floodgates to more and more changes to eliminate the minority party’s rights in the Senate. Others warned that the Republicans would make the same changes once they were in the same position, so it was foolish for Reid to hold off on the premise that he could preserve comity in the Senate. Both groups were correct.

McConnell was intent on breaking the traditional Senate, and his guiding star is only to do what gives him an advantage in whatever set of circumstances he finds himself.

This rule change isn’t such a big deal in itself. It only speeds up the process of confirming people who are going to confirmed anyway. But it’s galling that McConnell is willing to explain the change by arguing “Since January 2017, for the first time in memory, a minority has exploited procedure to systematically obstruct a president from staffing up his administration.”

A benevolent God would strike him dead for making a statement that egregiously self-serving and false.