Parenthetical Politics

(Political Ramblings from a Little Left of Center)

Trump & Intelligence

Posted on by admin

Trump & Intelligence:  Two words that should never be used anywhere near one another.

Earlier this week, the directors of our major intelligence agencies appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to present their Worldwide Threat Assessment.  The report itself is a tough, depressing read and is best paired with a bottle of good Scotch.

Those appearing included:

  • Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence
  • Gina Haspel, CIA Director
  • Christopher Wray, FBI Director
  • Gen. Paul Nakasone, National Security Agency Director
  • Gen. Robert Ashley, Defense Intelligence Agency Director
  • Robert Cardillo, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director

While I disagree with the political opinions of a few of these folks, it’d be tough to say that this crowd doesn’t have the credentials to back up any unanimous positions regarding national security.  Coats is a former Ambassador and served on the Select Committee on Intelligence in the Senate.  Haspel is a career CIA operative.  Wray is serving for a second time as the FBI Director.  Nakasone is a four-star Army general who has run Cyber Command & Second Army with tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Korea.  Ashley is a three-star Army general who has spent most of his career in Army intelligence.  Cardillo is a career intelligence officer.

And yet they jointly dared to challenge Trump’s opinions about, well, pretty much everything.  The report doesn’t really say much that any literate person doesn’t already know:  ISIS is still a treat, Iran isn’t currently building nuclear weapons, North Korea isn’t giving up nuclear weapons, China is still pursuing global superiority, Russia is still trying to influence U.S. elections, climate change is real, and our traditional allies are pretty pissed at us.  I’m shocked!

In response, Trump tweeted that all of those testifying were “naive” and said that they “should go back to school!”

Seriously.  The man who has never met an intelligence briefing that he’s actually read has the temerity to disparage the intellect of people with strong intelligence backgrounds who are running the intelligence agencies in his own remarkably anti-intellectual administration.

Can someone remind me again when we started just accepting this kind of crap as normal?

The Schultz Scenarios

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So here I was, in the midst of composing multiple blog entries that weighed in on possible Democrat strategies and candidates to win the Presidency in 2020.  Mostly, I was trying to organize a surfeit of suppositions into coherent postings of humane length.  I had almost managed to compartmentalize the daily onslaught of insanity from TrumpLand to focus on the future.

And then there was Howard Schultz.

If this egomaniac runs as an independent in 2020, I’m looking at a passel of pointless text.

After my previous post expressing dismay over Schultz’s possible candidacy, I received considerable pushback questioning the certainty of my conclusions.  Let me be clear.  There is no reasonable scenario where Schultz runs as an independent and Trump does not win re-election.  Anyone who believes otherwise simply doesn’t understand Electoral College math nor the rules of the game.  This isn’t a popularity contest.  It’s just barely an election.

So, okay.  Let’s look into this.

First, though, let me address my rationale to abandon Starbucks.  It was frankly a throw-away thought in my prior post.  Schultz is no longer a Starbucks employee and the company did issue a statement of neutrality regarding 2020.  However, that does not change the fact that Schultz owns about $2.4B worth of Starbucks stock.  If the stock price drops just $1, Schultz’ net worth drops about $68M.  Even a multi-billionaire might notice that.  I realized that skipping my latte wouldn’t have a huge impact here.  It just made me feel slightly better.  And then today, Schultz went on Fox News to tell those of us who dared question him that we “need a little bit less caffeine.”  Well.  Wish granted, jackass.

With that out of the way, let’s move to three basic truths:

  1. Schultz is a Democrat.  Sure, he’s a fiscal conservative and sits to the right of likely Democratic candidates on health care, but he’s still very much a Democrat.  Despite his current protestations, this isn’t open for debate; he himself has said he was a Democrat.  Few Republicans are going to buy what he’s selling.  Republican money will flood to Schultz – but only to split the Democratic vote.  There are no more than a handful of Trump voters that would switch to Schultz and certainly not enough voters to swing any red state’s Electoral votes.
  2. Schultz & Company claim that over 40% of voters are independent and that those are their principal targets.  That position is both misleading and unrealistic.  Most independents (including myself) self-identify as independent but politically lean toward one of the major parties at the moment.  Gallop estimates that only 11% of voters are truly independent and, in that diverse group, it’s rather doubtful that Schultz would be a unifying factor.  In any case, independents don’t win elections; independents swing elections.
  3. My prior analysis of the 2020 Electoral Landscape is still valid.  As noted above, all solid Republican states will remain solid Republican.  It is possible, however, that Schultz could move the needle on a couple of solid Democratic states.  It’s more probable that his greatest impact would be in the swing states.

I thus see five possible outcomes, presented here in the order of probability:

  1. Schultz wins no Electoral votes, but screws the Democratic candidate.  Trump is re-elected President.
    • This is by far the most likely scenario.  The Democratic candidate will be forced to run a campaign that deals with Schultz;  Trump will be able to run exactly the same campaign he’d run without Schultz in the picture.  Schultz and the Democratic candidate will split a majority of votes in several swing states.  Trump will win only a plurality of votes in those states but will still be awarded all of those states’ Electoral votes.  It doesn’t matter if that’s fair or not.  That’s the way it is.
  2. Schultz wins some Electoral votes, but no candidate gets a majority.  Trump is re-elected President.
    • This could easily happen.  If no candidate receives 270 Electoral votes, the Constitution dictates that the U.S. House then decides the winner, with each state getting exactly one vote.  While Democrats control the House, Republicans control 26 states in the House.  Game over.
  3. Schultz wins few (if any) Electoral votes, but is a non-issue.
    • This only happens if Schultz completely implodes and gets very few popular votes anywhere.  However, since Schultz has a boatload of money to self-fund a serious campaign, this isn’t a likely outcome.  If he runs, he can buy impact.  If the Democrat manages to win in this case, it’ll be after a much tougher battle than necessary.
  4. Schultz wins no Electoral votes, but screws Trump.  The Democratic candidate is elected President.
    • I’ll include this possibility for completeness only.  However, as previously noted, Schultz will only take votes away from the Democrat.  If someone wants to propose any solid Republican state that might vote for Schultz, please chime in.  (Hint:  Don’t bother.)
  5. Schultz wins a majority of the Electoral votes.  Schultz is elected President.
    • This just ain’t gonna happen.  Schultz and his paid consultants are delusional if they believe otherwise.  Do the math.  For the sake of argument, let’s assume an alternate universe where Schultz can somehow win every toss up state plus every state that leans Democratic plus every state that leans Republican.  I’ll even throw in his home state of Washington and nearby Oregon just for grins — although they are both safely Democratic at the moment.  In this scenario, Schultz somehow wins in states as diverse as Texas, Florida, Virginia, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington.  And yet, even with ALL of these 20 states in his column, Schultz would STILL be well short of an Electoral victory.  See Outcome #2.  There is no plausible reality in which Schultz wins.  Period.  In the current political environment, no third-party candidate could.

So.  Is there a chance the Democrats could still win if Schultz runs as an independent?  Sure.  There’s a chance that we get the third outcome above.  There’s also a chance that we get hit by a giant asteroid.

If the alternative is another four years of Trump, I’ll take the asteroid.

Schultz 2020 = Trump 2020

Posted on by admin

Starbucks founder and former CEO Howard Schultz was just on 60 Minutes.  The man is considering a third-party bid for the Presidency in 2020.

Bloody hell.

Folks, that’s the ballgame if he runs.  Schultz is a billionaire with the money to make a serious dent in the contest.  He has no chance of winning the election, mind you.  But he will swing the election to Trump.  The Electoral map and the rules of the game all but guarantee it, regardless of the Democratic nominee.  When directly asked if he was concerned about his negative impact on Democrats, Schultz dodged the question with some “I want to see America win” pablum reminiscent of the current occupant of the White House.  Make no mistake:  Even more so than Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and Jill Stein before him, an independent vanity candidacy by Schultz will be a catastrophic spoiler.

Steve Schmidt, the former manager of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, is on-board with Schultz.  Schmidt, you might remember, is the genius responsible for putting Sarah Palin on that ticket.  You’d think he’d be done screwing with America.  But apparently not.

Despite contemplating the massacre of a Democrat’s chances in 2020, Schultz claims to be a “lifelong Democrat” himself.   If true, then he should declare as a Democrat, enter the primary, and see if he can gather enough Democratic support to win the nomination.  I’d even listen to his pitch myself.  There are worse choices.  If Schultz doesn’t like the Democratic party, he should try to fix it rather than undermine it.  In any case, if Schultz is ultimately responsible for another four years of Trump, history will never forgive him.  I know I never will.

I am a very regular customer at Starbucks and have, in fact, composed multiple blog entries at local establishments.  I use the Starbucks app so I quite depressingly know exactly how much I spend with them.  While I’m not generally one for boycotts, at this point I cannot in good conscience continue to frequent the chain.  Schultz is the largest shareholder of Starbucks and I don’t want a penny more of my money to assist his potential campaign.  I will use the remainder of my nine Starbucks Stars to make them give me the free drinks I’m already owed, but I will then take my business to other coffee shops.  If Schultz comes to his senses and backs off the idea of an independent bid, I’ll return to Starbucks and offer him my sincere appreciation.

In the meantime, whenever this idiot talks, I’ll only hear the immortal words of a possible fictional relative, one Sergeant Schultz from “Hogan’s Heroes”:

“I see nothing! I know nothing!”

The Donald

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With sincere apologies to William Blake and to a well-remembered English teacher whose passion for “The Tyger” was contagious.  [Edit: And to several readers who thought this posting was weird: Yeah. It is.]

Donald Donald, breeding blight,
In the House that once was White,
What indifferent shrug or sigh,
Could frame thy imbecility?

In what batch of ballots past,
Were such callous choices cast?
On what skills dared we depend?
What sad life, kept prospects pinned?

And what hubris, & what guile,
Could twist the truth for reasons vile?
And when thy hand began to tweet,
What ill will didst thou entreat?

What the venom, cold and crass,
Thin skin shedding in the grass?
What the skulking hiss we hear,
Strangled and benumbed from fear!

With forty-four who came before,
Diminished by an oafish boor:
Shown thy soul, did we not see?
Did we who chose such men choose thee?

Donald Donald, breeding blight,
In the House that once was White,
May the time be drawing nigh,
To tame thy imbecility?

Data Matters

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“I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.”

– Will Rogers, 1935.

Some things never change.  While Democrats have thus far shown remarkable solidarity in response to the shutdown, there are numerous party battles on the horizon that could make Game of Thrones look like a baby shower competition.

There’s the obvious acrimony that will develop as an abundance of aspirants decide they are the consummate choice to take on Trump.  Setting the criteria for inclusion in primary debates – and setting rules for those debates – won’t be at all pretty.  There’s also the very political selection of a city to host the 2020 Democratic convention.  And, of course, there’s the creation of the 2020 Democratic party platform – a fairly meaningless document that will nonetheless cause massive amounts of heartburn.

The role of the Democratic National Committee itself will be an issue.  Tom Perez, the DNC chairman, needs to convince skeptics from all corners of his party that the DNC will be a neutral actor during the primaries.  It doesn’t help that Obama let the DNC whither in favor of his own Organizing for America project.  As a result, the DNC is still playing catch-up with its Republican counterpoint in numerous arenas.

One arena of massive concern is in the management of voter data.  Yeah, I get it.  You’re thinking about being stuck on a slow elevator watching paint dry on Mike Pence’s face while listening to Yanni.  However, this tedious, esoteric issue could easily be the difference between winning and losing in 2020.

There’s a very ugly public battle currently being fought over whether ownership of data should be at the national or state level.  The DNC wants to combine all data into one common database; the states want their own repositories.

State parties understandably want to retain control of the data that they (mostly) have gathered.  They are also correct that state-level data management worked just fine during the mid-term elections.  However, that was because the largest entities holding elections were the states; there were no national contests.

Unfortunately, silos of data only work well within those silos.  They are largely useless in their native form by anyone else (for a variety of reasons well beyond a political blog).  The states have countered that they can work directly with other states to share their data, but that’s just a whole lot of repetitive work.

The DNC has understandably tried to position themselves as the best choice to own everything.  Central data management does brings massive benefits to a national campaign and leveraging a common set of data augmentation, validation, and reporting schemes helps candidates at all levels.  Unfortunately, Perez has shown an amazing lack of political nuance as he’s lobbied for that point of view, sending a tone-deaf memo to state party leaders berating them for not immediately acknowledging his brilliance and not simply handing over all of their data.

Both the state and national parties understand that data is valuable and that there is money to be made by whatever entity controls it.  However, from a standpoint of winning elections, this CANNOT BE AN ISSUE.  The state and national folks need to figure out how to share data AND the income it generates.

If only there was someone that was an expert in data management that could help the Democrats figure all of this out.

Oh, wait.  I’M an expert.  And it’s not like I’m the only one.  Anyone that has even a cursory understanding of the management of large data sets knows that this is by no means a unique problem.  There is nothing new here.  Nothing.  Large multi-site & multi-national corporations have been dealing with this problem for eons.  Local execs always want to control their own data; corporate execs always want to manage everything at a corporate level.  I guarantee that the DNC data issues are nowhere near as complex as the issues faced by any Fortune 500 company.

After Republicans got spanked by OFA in 2012 with respect to data management, the Republican National Committee began a state-of-the-art project to update their data strategy.  Although it’s a vast oversimplification, the RNC essentially created a for-profit trust which allows multiple Republican entities to deposit data in a common format in a centralized database.  That data is augmented with social media information, voter analytics, and data from numerous other sources to create a quite remarkable (and frankly scary) voter base profile.  For a fee, subsets of that data are then be made easily available to candidates and groups affiliated with the Republican Party.  The data contributors share in the revenue but, since the trust itself is a separate entity, it can raise money free from campaign finance limitations.

The strategy worked well and was a huge resource for Republicans in 2016.  Hillary Clinton even blamed her loss partially on the DNC’s data not being nearly as useful as the RNC’s data.  While there were no shortage of other reasons for her loss, the quality and usage of voter information were definitely issues.  That’s simply not acceptable for 2020.

The DNC has essentially said that they want to copy the RNC strategy.  That’s not a bad choice at all, but technology has moved on even in the few intervening years and there’s even more that Democrats can do if they can get their acts together.  It would help a whole lot if party leaders at all levels could tone down their rhetoric and acknowledge that this does not have to be a zero-sum game.

This is a national issue and it needs a national strategy.  The states need to give up sole ownership of their data; the national party needs to let the states share in data revenue.  Time is running out and Democrats are far behind Republicans in this arena.  Democrats need to hire someone immediately that knows what the hell they’re doing and give them the authority to make it happen.

$5.7 Billion

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I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Trump’s prime-time border diatribe last night, but I did read the transcript.  Wow.  Numerous media outlets have done a decent job fact-checking the cornucopia of outright lies, so there’s little reason to do that.  However, I will add a few thoughts to my previous take on the subject.

First, could a southern wall stop a random terrorist from entering the country?  Yeah, sure.  But at an initial cost of $5.7B, Trump would need to prove that it’s a cost-effective solution to a pervasive problem.  He didn’t.  He can’t.  The facts are:

  • Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security recently estimated that successful illegal entries into the U.S. fell 91% between 2000 and 2016.  Seems we’re already on the right track without a wall.
  • Over 2/3 of the immigrants that are currently in the U.S. illegally entered the country legally and then overstayed their visas.  If we want to fix an illegal immigration problem, perhaps visa enforcement might be the place to start.
  • While Trump keeps telling us that 4,000 terrorists were caught trying to enter the U.S. in 2017, he conveniently ignores the fact that only 12 non-U.S. citizens on the terror watchlist were stopped at the Mexican border last year.  The vast majority of the rest were stopped at airports.  Even assuming for the moment that a wall would work, is $5.7B a good price to pay to address .03% of the problem?
  • The border patrol did stop another 41 non-U.S. citizens on the watchlist at the Canadian border.  Are we going to build a northern wall as well?

While $5.7B is real money, does anyone really think that would be the end of it?  I’m pretty sure that’s not the way extortion works.  If Trump gets his down payment, we’ll have a new shutdown well before the end of the year to pay for the next installment.

So how about this?  We give Trump the $5.7B so he can say he “won” – BUT he can only use the money for one of several non-wall options.  Here’s just a few possibilities:

  • If we really want to make America safer, we could buy the military some very impressive hardware.  $5.7B will buy 2 Zumwalt-class Guided Missile Destroyers, 47 F-35A Stealth Fighters, or 161 M1A2 Abrams Tanks.
  • If we want something that might actually be useful on the border, $5.7B will buy 1414 RQ-4 Global Hawk Surveillance Drones.  Or we could just pay to double the number of border patrol agents for the next five years.
  • $5.7B would go a very long way towards a cure for Alzheimer’s.  Find me anyone that thinks that’d be a waste of money.
  • Thinking outside the box a bit, we could buy both an iPhone X and an iPad Pro for every man, woman, and child living in the Greater Austin area … ’cause, well, that’s where I live.
  • We could buy a 2019 F-150 for every military service member currently deployed outside of the United States.
  • We could write a $1700 check to every public school teacher in America.
  • The Dallas Cowboys are currently worth a bit over $5B.  We could literally make them America’s Team and we’d even have some money left over to buy a decent offensive line.

Of course, we could also just not spend money we don’t have.  Why doesn’t that ever occur to anyone in Washington?

Shutdown Politics

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Paging 2020 Democratic presidential candidates:

Where the hell are you?

The government shutdown over border wall funding should be your opportunity to break out early.  This is a slam-dunk, folks.

Trump has shuttered part of the government causing paychecks to stop for some 800,000 federal employees ….

  • … over a wall that doesn’t have popular support.
  • … over the holidays.
  • … over the objections of his own party’s leadership in Congress.
  • … after previously agreeing to a bipartisan bill that kept the government open.
  • … after stating on live TV that he’d take responsibility.

Now is the time to get out there and calmly explain …

  • … why the wall is simply not a good idea.
  • … why we can’t afford it.
  • … that Trump is just playing politics.
  • … that the departments of homeland security, state, justice, transportation, agriculture, and interior work for Trump.  As does NASA.  If he doesn’t think these folks need to get paid, that’s on him.

I’m all for compromise, but not this time.  Any parent knows you can’t give into a child’s tantrum.  People apparently need to be reminded of that.

Unfortunately, I don’t see a charismatic spokesperson emerging from the Democratic camp.  We don’t need the mirror image of Trump playing partisan politics on the left.  Schumer and Pelosi can handle the politics; neither can be the voice of reason.  What we need is an adult.  Sure, you’re on vacation.  Get over it.  Show us the leader we need is you.

Troop Withdrawals

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Trump recently announced that American troops will immediately withdraw from Syria and will decrease their presence by 50% in Afghanistan.

As a proud Army Brat (the self-descriptive term used by those of us who grew up in career Army families), I am perhaps a bit more attentive than most when American troops are deployed into harm’s way.  My default reaction is always positive when overseas military personnel are brought home to their loved ones.  I’ve lived the family hardships when a parent and spouse is deployed into an active war zone.  I’ve seen the pain when they don’t come home.

However, our military personnel and their families understand the need to protect American interests abroad.  They understand that deployments into hostile environments are a part of the job.  They only ask for sane, thoughtful leadership with defined goals and solid plans to achieve those goals that neither wastes nor trivializes their sacrifices.

I wouldn’t pretend to claim more than a basic understanding of the infinite nuances of politics and religion in the Greater Middle East.  I suspect I know a whole lot more than our Commander in Chief, but let’s put that aside for the moment.

Announcing major military directives by random tweet is more than irresponsible.  It is simply insane.

We currently have 2000 U.S. troops in Syria. Those troops, along with our Kurdish allies who have done most of the heavy lifting, now control most of the “useful” parts of Syria (oil & gas fields, water, fertile land).  Without an American presence, the Kurds will face Russian, Iranian, Turkish, and ISIS militaries for control – none of which would be in American interests.  Where’s the plan for phasing out our involvement without screwing ourselves and our allies?

We currently have about 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  They mostly serve in training and support roles with minimal combat exposure but are still an integral part of the regional conflict.  Again, where’s the plan for the drawdown?

The bottom line is that there are no plans.  None.  The President blindsided his own people.

General James Mattis, the current Secretary of Defense, is most definitely a hawk.  However, he is unquestionably a patriot and a soldier’s soldier who has earned the respect of the men and women under his command.  Brett McGurk, the State Department’s envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, is a career diplomat who actually is an expert in these conflicts.  Both men deserved to be heard and their arguments deserved to be addressed.  However, not only did Trump ignore their advice, both men were so shocked by the presidential tweets that they felt the need to resign.  Our allies were similarly blindsided as was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the political leadership of both parties.

The only people voicing full-throated support for Trump’s ill-conceived actions are the Presidents of Russia, Syria, Iran, and Turkey – along with Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Rand Paul.

Seriously?

Bringing troops home is by no means intrinsically wrong.  Ignoring the advice of military leaders and civilian experts is likewise not intrinsically wrong.  The Commander in Chief has those prerogatives.

However, if Trump wants support from anyone beyond our enemies, far-right Fox pundits, and a few random isolationists, he needs to present his case with facts, defend it to the American public, and define sane plans for executing the withdrawals.

I’m not holding my breath.

On this Christmas Eve, our allies are learning that they can’t count on America, our military is confused, the stock market is tanking, some 800,000 federal employees aren’t getting paid over the holiday season, and the few sane remaining members of the Trump administration are running for the hills.  Meanwhile, we’re stuck with Little Dumber Boy that governs by TV-inspired tweets focused on a damn wall.

I’m hoping this is just a bad Hallmark Christmas movie and that the happy ending is coming real soon now.

Double Standards

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Last week, federal prosecutors called Donald Trump a felon.

In their sentencing memo for Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time lawyer, the prosecutors noted that Cohen paid off two women who claim to have had extramarital affairs with Trump.  Since the payments were intended to influence the Presidential campaign, they violated campaign finance law when they were not reported.  Prosecutors added that “Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”  Since “Individual-1” is Trump, that in essence makes Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal felony.

That, of course, is just the current status.  The Mueller report is still outstanding and could result in charges related to conspiracy and obstruction of justice.  I’ll contend that there is already sufficient proof in the public domain to meet a civil court’s “preponderance of evidence” standard for these additional charges.  I suspect a criminal court’s “reasonable doubt” standard will also be met in the near future and related impeachment proceedings are still a possibility.

And yet, Republicans are already lining up to defend the President.

I was particularly struck by the on-camera dismissal of the charges by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), saying:

You can make anything a crime under the current laws if you want to. …

I don’t care.  All I can say is he’s doing a good job as President.

My interest in this particular rant was piqued when I remembered that Hatch was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during President Clinton’s impeachment trial.  I suspected that Hatch might have weighed in somewhere with respect to that President’s legal battles during a time when a large portion of the country thought Clinton was doing a “good job” as well.

Of course, Hatch did indeed have something to say.

On Feb. 23, 1999, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) entered a 14,000 word treatise into the Congressional Record.  Since it serves as an uncannily direct rebuttal to the position that he and his colleagues have taken two decades later, below are excerpts presented in order, in-context, and without commentary:

Our duty calls on us to answer a serious question — whether the President’s actions warrant his removal from office. …

The President’s Counsel has argued that the President can only be removed for constituting, what Oliver Wendell Holmes termed in free speech cases, a ‘‘clear and present danger.’’ It was contended that a President can only be removed if he is a danger to the Constitution. … But such a standard establishes an impossibly high bar as to render impotent the impeachment clauses of the Constitution. … Committing crimes of moral turpitude, such as perjury and obstruction of justice, go to the very heart of qualification for public office. … The fact that the underlying behavior was private in its genesis is irrelevant. Such private acts demean the Office of the President, and betray public trust. Those acts therefore are impeachable. …

A President of the United States is not simply a political leader. A President is a head of state and a role model for Americans, particularly our children. What kind of message will we send to our posterity if [his] conduct is not considered worthy of removal? What amount of cynicism and disrespect for our governmental institutions will we engender if we impose one set of rules for the common man … and another for the President of the United States — who receives a pass from removal because he is powerful or has done a ‘‘good job’’ in some eyes? … Whether [he] has done a ‘‘good job’’ is a matter of partisan debate. In fact, adopting a ‘‘good job’’ exception — a term that is so flexible and vague as to be meaningless as a constitutional standard — merely exasperates the partisan tensions ever present in impeachment trials. …

Americans should be able to rely on him to honor those values that have built and sustained our country, the values we try to teach our children — honesty, integrity, being forthright. … Upholding our Constitution — a sacred document that Americans have fought and died for — is more important than any one person, including the President of the United States.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Hatch.

Republican Power Grabs

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In the recent elections in Wisconsin, Democrats won every single statewide race.  Voters chose a Democratic U.S. Senator, a Democratic Governor, a Democratic Attorney General, a Democratic Treasurer, and a Democratic Secretary of State.  In addition, Democrats won 54% of votes cast statewide for the U.S. House and 54% of votes cast statewide for the Wisconsin State Assembly.

And yet, the Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker declared after the election that “We are the ones that were given a mandate to govern.”

Say what?

Indeed, due to massive gerrymandering, Democrats won only 3 of Wisconsin’s 8 U.S. House seats and won so few seats in the Wisconsin State Assembly that Republicans retained a 64% super-majority.

But Wisconsin Republicans still weren’t satisfied.  This week, in a special session of the Assembly that was called solely for this purpose, Republicans told Wisconsin’s voters to go screw themselves.  They rushed through a gaggle of bills – with almost no debate and allowing exactly one minute of public comment – so that they could send the bills to the desk of lame-duck Republican Gov. Walker for his signature before he gets kicked out of the office he just lost.  There is so much to wade through that no one is quite sure yet what was included.  However, here’s just a few highlights of what the bills do:

  • Blocks the Governor’s ability to write regulations.
  • Moves a majority of appointments to the economic development board from the Governor to the Assembly.
  • Prevents the Governor from expanding early and absentee voting.
  • Enshrines limits on collective bargaining rights in legislation.
  • Prevents the Governor from banning guns in the Wisconsin capitol.
  • Moves management of federal benefit programs to the Assembly.
  • Blocks the state from withdrawing from a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.
  • Moves management of lawsuits to the Assembly and gives them the power to hire their own lawyers to represent the state (effectively replacing the Attorney General’s office).

Let’s be clear.  The Democratic candidates ran on these issues.  The Democrats won.  And yet, the Republican-controlled Assembly decided to negate the results of the election with a last-minute power grab.

The Wisconsin Assembly also completed a mass confirmation of 82 last-minute nominees from Gov. Walker, despite the fact that the incoming Democratic Gov. Evers had requested they stay open for another month until the transfer of power is complete.  These confirmations, of course, come from the same party that wouldn’t even give a hearing to a Supreme Court nominee from a sitting President eight months before the election of his successor and ten months before the transfer of power.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

It is also anathema to long-held traditions in Wisconsin.  Indeed, when Gov. Walker won election, he asked the outgoing Democratic Gov. Doyle to immediately halt his signature high-speed rail project since Walker had campaigned against it.  Doyle did so.  Gov. Doyle has also recently noted that his Republican predecessor was “classy” after losing his election to Doyle.  Elections have consequences.  Or at least they used to have consequences.

A bedrock principle of democracy is an absolute expectation of the peaceful transition of power when the will of the voters dictate a change.  Otherwise, democracy dies.

Where is the shrill outrage we’d hear from Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators if Democrats were the ones trying to hold onto power after so clearly losing an election?  Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson simply offered that the uproar over the massive last-minute legislation was “way overblown.”  When asked his opinion about the Wisconsin power grab, outgoing Speaker of the House and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan merely responded:  “I don’t have anything for you.”  Ah, leadership in action.

It would be bad enough if all of this was just a Wisconsin issue.  Unfortunately, it’s not.

  • In North Carolina, the Republican legislature passed laws in a lame-duck 2016 session that limited their Governor’s powers right after a Democrat won that office.
  • In Michigan, after Democrats flipped the offices of Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State this year, the lame-duck Republican legislature is now considering giving themselves power to intervene in state legal proceedings that have always been controlled by the Governor and Attorney General.  Michigan Republicans also just repealed a minimum wage law that they themselves passed prior to the elections.  Of course, they had only passed the law to stop a similar voter-driven initiative from even appearing on the ballot.  Yes, really.
  • In Ohio, the Republican-controlled Senate just passed a bill that would limit the ways in which courts could interpret their statutes.
  • In Utah, the Republican Governor just signed a bill to negate provisions of a medical marijuana initiative that was just approved by Utah’s voters.

We have ourselves a pattern here.

Alas, I can already hear my Republican friends screaming “Democrats do it, too!” and “Both sides are to blame!”

Bullshit.

I am so over hearing this false equivalency argument.

Sure, Democrats have gerrymandered a couple of deep blue states (notably Illinois and Maryland) where they also enjoy north of 65% of the popular vote.  Republicans, however, have massively gerrymandered numerous swing states (notably Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida) to give themselves major advantages in states where the popular vote is much more evenly split.

More importantly, though, there are zero examples of Democrats using stacked districts to conduct power grabs like the ones we are currently seeing from Republicans.  That’s purely a Republicans-Only game.  And it sucks.

The one possible silver lining here is that voters have memories.  In their zeal to protect control of their state governments, Republicans might well be handing national Democrats a major gift.  By disenfranchising swing state voters at the gerrymandered district level, Republicans may well be guaranteeing a huge backlash at the state level.  If Democrats win the popular vote in these states in 2020, they will win all of their Electoral College votes.  The 10 Electoral votes from Wisconsin could certainly come in quite handy.

In the meantime, I guess we just have to accept that Republican politicians don’t give a damn about democracy.  They just want power.