#it was on this argument that he revealed to me that he hopes trump wins…

[mioakem]

just ended my year long relationship over an argument abt reproductive freedoms, i truly had no idea he lacked so much empathy towards me. it was one of the most difficult things i’ve ever done but i value my pride much higher than ill ever value any boy

[mariacallous]

If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, you know that the American Experiment took some gut punches over the last week.

Joe Biden – long considered the best hope for preventing another disastrous Donald Trump term – had a shockingly bad debate performance, looking and sounding every minute of his 81 years.

The tainted supreme court then declared, in essence, that a president is above the law, at least when acting in an official capacity. And that came on top of other high court decisions that have blasted away at the foundations of democracy in the United States.

And much of the mainstream news media continued their campaign of false equivalency – treating the president’s age as a worse problem than Trump’s criminality and authoritarian intentions.

But on this Fourth of July, I haven’t given up hope that we will right ourselves. And I’m far from alone.

There is encouraging news in every one of these troubled spheres – politics, justice and media.

I asked one of my favorite thinkers, the author and scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in how democracies can wither under authoritarian rule, for some help. I talked to others, too, especially those who are protecting the vote, fostering good journalism and working for justice.

Here’s what Ben-Ghiat told me: “Part of the reason for so much aggression from the GOP and the courts to take away our rights, including the right to free and fair elections, is because America is becoming more progressive, and Republicans cannot win without lies, threats and election interference, including assistance in that area from foreign powers.”

She sees the US participating in “the global renaissance of mass nonviolent protest against authoritarianism” and notes that, in 2017, we saw the biggest protest in the nation’s history – the Women’s March against Trump, which was then surpassed in 2020 by the Black Lives Matter protests, which involved more than 20 million people in multigenerational and multiracial demonstrations.

“These mass protest movements had electoral consequences in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections,” she added, as many women, non-white and LGBTQ+ people were elected to office.

Ben-Ghiat is convinced that we are ripe for another round – and the stakes are higher than ever.

On the justice front, I’m not suggesting that we somehow set aside the terrible and hugely consequential decision that gives a president – guess who in particular? – immunity for his official acts.

But at the same time, the courts, including the jury system, are often functioning admirably, if not flawlessly. Just over a month ago, Trump became the first former US president convicted of felonies. Trump allies who wanted to charge that the courts have been weaponized found it harder to make that argument less than two weeks later when Hunter Biden, too, was convicted in a jury trial.

Mainstream journalism, as noted, often disappoints. The moderators of the CNN debate clearly should have been empowered by their network bosses to challenge Trump’s barrage of lies in real time. The stunning New York Times editorial calling for Biden to set aside his campaign for the good of the nation may have been well-reasoned, but it struck me as another example of targeting the president and letting Trump off the hook. To my knowledge, only the scrappy Philadelphia Inquirer has written a similar editorial about Trump.

Too much of the politics coverage is out of whack with reality. The media is baying for Biden’s head, but – with some exceptions – seems mostly bemused by Trump or at least habituated to how dangerous he is.

But there’s good news in journalism, too. Consider ProPublica’s essential reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas’s rotten ethics. Or the way many news outlets have revealed the threats of Project 2025 – the alarming and detailed plan by Trump allies to dismantle democratic norms should their leader win a second term.

I’m also heartened by young journalists who are making their way in a difficult career field.

“No matter what problem we’re talking about, good journalism is part of the solution,” said Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School (where I run a journalism ethics center). “The young journalists whom we have the privilege to work with here are some of the sharpest, most committed and talented that I’ve ever seen.”

Their work “will be a ballast for democracy”, Cobb told me, “even amid the giant challenges in front of us right now”.

Most of all, I’m moved by the valiant efforts of many ordinary citizens. One friend, active in voter protection efforts, praised “all of the grassroots volunteers working to preserve democracy who I am sure will continue in all the ways possible if Trump wins”. She mentioned the flood of small-dollar donations that followed Biden’s debate debacle, and credited “the courageous judges, court personnel, jurors et al who are working, despite the risks to themselves, to see that justice is served in the cases against Trump”.

Will any of this matter when so much is going wrong and when the threats are so great? The screenwriter and former journalist David Simon offered a dour view this week: “Our American experiment is so over.”

More aligned with Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s big-picture view and the others quoted here, I remain hopeful, if not optimistic about the future of the United States.

On 4 July, at least, let’s remember that we’ve come a long way, and the journey isn’t yet complete.

[rocorambles]

Meeting in the Middle

Pairing: Sakusa x reader

Genre/Warnings: NSFW, Yandere, Misogyny, Controlling Behavior, Degradation, Non-Con/Rape, Spanking

Summary: Sakusa shows you that he’s more than capable of meeting you in the middle and listening to you for a change. But be careful of what you ask for.

A/N: This is for the Poly Wives Angst Collab~ RIP us and our never ending collabs we create for ourselves.

If someone had told you five years ago that you’d be dating one of Japan’s most eligible bachelors, a professional athlete fawned over by media and fans nation-wide, the epitome of the strong and silent type, you would have laughed in their faces. What is this? Some silly fairytale? The childish checklist of “things I want in a boyfriend” you’d written in middle school?

But life has a funny way of working and you find yourself in an obnoxiously lavish and rowdy nightclub, made only more crazy by the surprising appearance of some VIPs.

It seems like volleyball has somehow become Japan’s national sport overnight and although you aren’t necessarily the biggest follower of anything remotely athletic, even you know exactly who the rambunctious trio catching everyone’s eyes are.

You can’t deny there’s more than just a bit of appeal in the way their button up shirts cling to toned muscles, but you’ve never been one for crowds and you stray to the emptier corners of the establishment to avoid being swept by the crowd of excited fans. But when Atsumu cheesily winks and flirts as he signs scandalously bared skin of female fans, you mockingly gag, only to whirl in embarrassment when you hear an amused snort from behind you.

“Not a fan of Miya Atsumu?”

Staring wide-eyed and slack jawed when someone asks you a question is very rude and you want to answer. But you don’t trust yourself with basic human speech when Sakusa Kiyoomi is staring at you expectantly. So you shake your head side to side instead, heat rising to your face at the small upward curve of his lips.

“Neither am I.”

Atsumu never lets the two of you live down how he’s the one who technically brought you together, even if it was at the cost of his pride. (You chuckle when you remember his loud squawking when Sakusa recounts the dialogue exchanged at your first meeting.) But even months later, even after Sakusa has officially introduced you to the rest of the MSBY team, even after they’ve accepted you as part of their cozy and rowdy family, you can’t stop feeling impostor syndrome.

Dating Sakusa still feels unreal and you can’t help but feel like you’re living someone else’s life, stuck in a rose-tinted dream, playing dress-up and make believe as you parade around in clothing far more luxurious than you’re used to, whisked around on your lover’s strong arm as you follow him around the world from match to match. And as lovely as it is, you long to truly make this relationship your own, to feel the rawness and grittiness of love and life, to experience the charm and comfort of being true to yourself and knowing Sakusa loves you just as you are.

But your desire to be with him, to call him your own trumps your own wishes and you find yourself quickly backing down everytime you suggest something that he’s quick to turn down, desperate to appease and please him even at the price of your own desires.

He’s never outrightly rude about his preferences, never raises his voice. But somehow that makes the judgement and disdain in his dark eyes that much more apparent. You remember a rough day of work you had, the relief you had felt about being able to swiftly swap your constrictive work apparel for a pair of worn-in shorts and a baggy t-shirt. Your outfit would certainly not win any fashion awards, but you blissfully sigh at how comfortable you are as you call a local pizza shop, ordering delivery self-indulgently.

You could feel yourself becoming one with the couch you’re lounging on, the television playing in the background. But even in the hazy in-between of sleep and alertness, your eyes snap open when the door opens and you lazily smile as your boyfriend enters your shared apartment, returning from another grueling practice.

“You look like you’ve had better days.”

Your smile slips, anxiety flooding through you as you self-consciously curl in on yourself while his lips purse, eyes scrutinizing your sloppy appearance.

“Umm, yeah...tough day at work-”

“Maybe you should freshen up with me. You might feel better in a...real outfit.”

You know better than to think that it’s really a suggestion, cursing yourself, humiliation coursing through you when you think of how foolish you were to get so comfortable so quickly. You’ve seen the caliber of the women who lust over your boyfriend unabashedly despite his long-time relationship with you. You need to try harder. You need to be better.

Self-deprecation rips you to shreds as you painstakingly groom yourself, donning a dress you know Sakusa loves, applying a full face of makeup and a spritz of his favorite scent. And despite how exhausted you are, how much you’d rather be slumped on the couch, gorging on a slice of pizza, it’s all worth it when you see the appreciative look in his gaze as his eyes rake over your figure.

But worry gnaws at you once more as the doorbell rings and his eyebrow raises questioningly at the interruption. It’s a painful walk of shame as you plaster on a fake smile, tipping the delivery boy, the usually tantalizing smell of cheese and grease only making you nauseous as you bring the box to the dining table.

“What is that?”

“Dinner…”

Your voice trails off and you feel so small, so pathetic as Sakusa’s face borders disgust as he observes the offensive item.

“You didn’t cook?”

The disappointment in his voice has you spewing excuses and apologies, your heart shattering when he merely waves off your ramble, telling you he’d order a salad from elsewhere and to enjoy your meal.

You never order pizza again and a steaming hot plate of freshly cooked food is always waiting for Sakusa when he returns home while you patiently wait for him with a painted face and impeccable outfits.

Your friends and family tell you how grateful you should be, how envious they are as they oggle your latest high-end designer pieces, cooing over how picture perfect the two of you always are, staring wide-eyed at your gorgeous home, not a speck of dust or object out of place. Who would have thought that you would be the epitome of the ideal housewife in such a short time?

Yes, you wonder. Who would have thought? Certainly not you.

If only they knew how deep down the deception goes, how lost you are in this pretend world you’re stuck in. And your heart twists and turns when your friends share about the little and big spats that happen behind closed doors, giggling and sighing in an understanding you’re not part of when they playfully complain about how much work love is.

But it’s always worth it in the end because the good always outweighs the bad if you’ve found the right person (not to mention the makeup sex is a bonus). Or so they say, but you wouldn’t know what any of that feels like. Sakusa doesn’t leave room for any arguments, any disagreements, any hint of anything less than a perfect relationship.

Even in the privacy of your bedroom, you feel like you’re in a cheesy porno, dressed in the prettiest white slip dress decorated with dainty lace and a string of pearls around your neck. You feel like a doll as you’re positioned on the bed, eyes demurely looking down, letting Sakusa do as he pleases while he guides you, calloused hands roaming over your skin. You’re sure he means for it to be pleasurable and intimate, and you can’t deny that he knows your most sensitive areas, shuddering when he grazes over your hardening nipples. But there’s a coldness to his movements, a calculating aspect in the way he examines you, dark eyes scrutinizing every inch of you as if they’re looking for a blemish, a reason to lecture you on not taking care of yourself.

Yet as predictable and standoffish as he is, he does know how to pleasure you and you writhe underneath him, moaning, lower lips dripping in your own arousal. But you whimper when he growls at you to stop moaning so loudly, to stop acting like a slut.

“I’m dating a lady, not a whore.”

The words cut you, pain and emptiness mixing with the rising pleasure, muddling into a confusing and overwhelming mess insides of you. You don’t trust yourself to speak, hot tears pricking at your eyes, unsure whether a moan or harsh words would slip past your lips. But you know that neither will work in your favor, so like always, you hold your tongue, doing whatever you can to keep your lover happy. You close your eyes, letting yourself get lost in the tightening knot inside of you, submitting to the waves of pleasure that crash over you as you cum, fingers tangling in the rumpled sheets, back arching in ecstasy.

Only when Sakusa is asleep, his back turned to you, the two of you cleaned and freshened up, do you let your tears stream down your face, feeling more alone than ever in your shared bed.

You hold out longer than you should, much longer than you should, in the hopes that things will improve, that Sakusa will loosen up, reveal his true self to you, let you reveal your true self to him. It’s just early dating jitters, early relationship issues. Things will get better.

Except it’s months later and things aren’t better. If anything, they’re worse and you can feel the weight of his expectations and the stress of perpetually living by a prewritten script crushing you.

It’s time to put an end to this charade.

It’s just another uneventful night and you idly stare up at the ceiling as you wait for Sakusa to join you in bed. Your heart is racing, throat feeling dry and choked up as he slips under the covers. You’re terrified, of Sakusa’s reaction, of ending everything, of starting from scratch. But you know it’s the right decision and when he finally settles in beside you, you begin to speak.

There’s only the sound of your trembling voice as you quietly tell him how you’ve felt all along, how everything has felt so prim, proper, fake, how everyday just feels like another session of rehearsing your lines, making sure you meet whatever standard he’s set for you. You want passion, real love, fights, laughter. You just want to be yourself. You just want to be with someone who loves you exactly the way you are.

“Kiyoomi, maybe we should break up. I don’t think we’re right for each other. I don’t think I’m what you want. I don’t think I’ll ever be what you want.”

“You’re right. Despite how much time, work, money, and patience I’ve spent to better you, you haven’t changed at all.”

You’re left reeling from the matter of fact harshness of his words, the slight exasperation in his tone, as if this is all your fault, as if you’re just a bothersome misbehaving pet.

“Prim and proper? Passion? Fights? So you’re tired of manners? Tired of being a respectable woman? You just want to fight and fuck like animals?”

You open your mouth to protest, anger licking at the open wounds his verbal assault leaves behind. But before you can retort, the air is ripped out of your lungs in a stunned yelp as your body is swiftly flipped over, your face shoved into the mattress until it’s a struggle to breathe, fabric and cushion all you can taste.

Your arms flail as you struggle to breathe, nails clawing at the sheets, arms trying to push yourself up against. But it’s no use against Sakusa’s strength and just as specks of black begin to enter your vision, fingers tangle with your roots and you gasp as your head is harshly jerked up, neck bending painfully back, jaw forced open from the strange position.

You whimper, tears beginning to blur your sight as a calloused hand turns your face until you’re staring at a condescending impassive countenance.

“If you want to be treated like a slut that badly, I’ll be a good boyfriend and give you exactly what you want. Ass up. Now.”

There’s no room for disobedience and spurred on by fear and pain, you listen, awkwardly shuffling into position, shame heating your face at how exposed you feel. But it’s only the start and you scream as a heavy strike lands on your bare ass, more and more blows raining down upon you, until you’re sobbing for mercy, agonized cries forced from your mouth, thighs trembling at having to support yourself through the torture.

Your upper body slumps in relief when the hits finally stop, but you flinch when fingers methodically prod at your entrance. You instinctively try to lurch forward, away from the touch, but it’s no use and you clench your eyes in humiliation at the sloppy wet sounds betraying your arousal.

“This is the wettest I’ve ever seen you. You really do like being used and treated like a bitch.”

You wish you could deny it. You wish you had the spirit to talk back, maybe even spit on that handsome face. But all you can think of is how full you feel as Sakusa’s cock slams balls deep inside your dripping hole, how deep he is inside of you from this angle, how overwhelmingly pleasurable the mix of pain and lust is as he uses you like you’re nothing more than a warm breathing sex doll.

All you can do is lewdly moan and take it, tears slipping down your face, drool seeping into the ruined sheets, eyes rolled back in your head. The coil in your stomach tightens and tightens no matter how hard you try and hold it at bay, desperately trying not to cum, not to inadvertently admit your body’s betrayal as it succumbs to every thrust. But it’s too much, the unfamiliarity of this brutal pace, the overpowering sensation of his tip reaching new depths inside of you, and you shatter to pieces, pussy convulsing, body twitching, pleasure like you’ve never felt before surging through you.

All through it Sakusa continues his relentless rhythm, a sneer marring his flawless face as he watches you suffer through your orgasm, writhing underneath him. It’s disgusting how much you love this, pathetic, pitiful, and yet he’s harder than he’s ever been, more turned on than he ever thought possible. And all it takes is a few more thrusts before he’s spilling inside of you, a strong hand holding you still and tight to him as his groin presses against your ass, not an inch of space between the two of you as he paints your insides white.

Maybe you had a point all along. You’re absolutely filthy and wrecked and he grimaces at the tear, sweat, and sex stained mess he touches as he shoves your exhausted body away from him. Yet there’s a certain appeal to your disheveled appearance, how ruined you are because of him.

How beautifully you break.

Well if you have no desire to improve yourself, he can learn to meet you in the middle, learn to let you be the low-life whore you have no desire to move up from. After all, that’s what you said love is, right?

Accepting each other’s differences.

[ordinaryschmuck]

The Bright Side of 2020

It's easy to say that 2020 was an awful year. Because it was. 2020 is easily one of the worst years in a while, filled with death, depression, economic collapse, a pandemic, and even the word 'poggers' becoming a thing. 

Seriously, what the hell is 'poggers?!' The more I see it, the less it makes sense to me!

2020 was filled to the brim with so many awful moments. In no way should we forget any of it, and heaven forbid that we ignore all of it.

But that doesn't mean we should let the bad overshadow the good.

As we enter the last month of the dumpster fire that is this year, let us look over the good that came from it. Because I don't want to end 2020 with a whimper, but at least with a little glimmer of hope.

So here is my list:

Joe Biden has been elected as our new president, and the entire world had collectively celebrated. Sure, Trump is reacting to the news like a toddler who won't share his ball and decided to run home crying to his mommy. But by January, we will never talk about this man again, and America will remember him as he was back in 2016: A bad joke that wasn’t that funny to begin with, and has been annoying to hear since the beginning.

Our new vice president will not only be the first female VP but will also be a VP who is an African American, an Asian American, and an Indian American. It doesn't make up for the years when old white dudes were in charge, but it's a start. So let's take a moment to appreciate our new VP, shall we...That was nice. Next!

Voice actors who are people of color are given more of a chance to voice characters who are POC as well. It gets better as white VAs are getting replaced with VAs with the correct background to perform as specific characters. You can make the argument that a voice is a voice and that it doesn't matter who the face behind it is as long as the performance is still good. But if you're going to go the progressive route anyway, then why not go all the way with hiring actors to portray their own race/culture?

Several comedians kept us laughing despite how the year got worse and worse and how emotionally drained they were because of it. Laughter is the best medicine and boy, does it help that I can still laugh off the pain this year brought.

On a darker note: Online personalities Ryan Haywood from Achievement Hunter and Adam Kovic from Funhaus were revealed to dealing in sexual misconducts with their fans. On the surface, this seems like a bad thing. And with the betrayal and heartbreak that came from it, it certainly seems like so. But look at it this way: These monsters would have continued to do such awful things, regardless if they got caught this year or not. And while it pains me to know so many good videos are going to be deleted, some of which helped me on days that I needed a laugh the most, it is good knowing that Haywood and Kovic won't get away with what they did again. Because we won’t let them.

Back to a lighter note: A rare yellow turtle was discovered in India, and I am in love with this thing! I thought it was a mustard stain at first when I saw the photo, but it's a turtle. And it's adorable. And I will not rest until I find it and give it cuddles it deserves. Which is all of the cuddles.

So many incredible LGBTQ+ representations were given this year! Yes, that whole thing with Dean and Castiel was unforgettable as much as it is unforgivable. But if you ignore the live-action side of things and look at animation, you will find things are brighter than a rainbow over a pride parade. Catra and Adora finally kissed in a moment that was both satisfying and beautiful. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn became a couple in Harley Quinn, giving comic fans something they wanted for years. Adventure Time fans were given a forty-five-minute episode filled with adorable moment after adorable moment of Marceline and Princess Bubblegum being an operant couple. Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts has a character who explicitly says, "I'm gay," and even gets a boyfriend in the end (I think. I haven't finished the show yet). And Disney has finally, F**KING FINALLY, taken steps in the right direction with their new hit: The Owl House. A series where the main character is a bisexual Latina who has a same-sex love interest that has an explicit crush on the main character.

And while we're on the topic of entertainment: HOLY S**T, have you seen the quality content we got this year?

Amazing animated shows came out with hit after hit with series like The Midnight Gospel, The Owl House, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Central Park, and many, many more. Shows that are hilarious, beautifully animated, and tell compelling stories with equally compelling characters.

Adventure Time, Animaniacs, Eddsworld, Phineas and Ferb, and Crash Bandicoot came back with revivals, reboots, specials, and long-awaited sequels that were not just as good as they were before leaving, but in some ways, are even better.

A recorded performance of Hamilton can now be seen on Disney+, meaning that theater kids can finally see the show they have been obsessing over since that soundtrack came out.

HBOmax took shows from DC's piece of s**t streaming service, meaning that fans can watch Doom Patrol and Harley Quinn on a service that's actually worth the price...Titans can suck a dick. But Doom Patrol and Harley Quinn! Doom Patrol and Harley Quinn!

Avatar: The Last Airbender and Community is on Netflix now...so go watch them.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that stars the famous bi-racial Spider-Man, that also shows off the color and diversity that is present in the people of Harlem. And given what happened this year, that is definitely appreciated. Not to mention that I’ve heard it's a fun game on top of that!

And that's just the s**t I can think of off the top of my head. There are plenty more good things that came this year, some of which I'm sure is better than what I put on this list. All a person has to do is do some research, which I encourage you to do yourself.

Don't let 2020 win by beating you down. Instead, let's focus on the bright side to stop the dark shadow of a year from taking over.

And I'm begging you: Keep this list going! It's not a bad thing to give people good news for a change.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 16, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

The reality that Joe Biden is about to become president and Kamala Harris is about to become vice president is sinking in across Washington, and today gave us some indications of what that’s going to mean.

Stories about what exactly happened in the Trump administration are coming out, and they are not pretty. Politics trumped everything for members of the administration, even our lives.

Today Representative James Clyburn (D-SC), who chairs the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, revealed documents from senior appointees in the Trump administration overriding the work of the career officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those documents show that the political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services called for dealing with the coronavirus crisis by pursuing a strategy of “herd immunity,” deliberately spreading the coronavirus to try to infect as many people as possible, with the theory that this approach would minimize the dangers of the pandemic. While doing so, they downplayed what they were doing, tried to hide the dangers of the virus, and blamed the career scientists who objected to this strategy for the rising death rates.

Although the White House has tried to distance itself from senior Health and Human Services Adviser Paul Alexander, last summer he was widely perceived to speak for his boss Michael Caputo, the Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs whom Trump had appointed, and for the White House itself. Alexander, a part-time university professor from Canada, defended Trump against scientists, accusing CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat of lying when she provided accurate public information about the worsening pandemic. When she suggested everyone should wear a mask, he claimed: “her aim is to embarrass the President.” Alexander attacked Anthony Fauci for his attempts to protect Americans. “He just won’t stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” wrote Alexander on July 3, 2020 (yes, I counted the exclamation points); “does he think he is the President???”

Alexander advocated spreading the infection to younger Americans: “So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares? If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares…as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life….who cares if we test more and get more positive tests.”

Alexander wrote to Caputo: “There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus.  PERIOD.” On the same day, he wrote: “Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…”

On July 24, he wrote to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Caputo: “it may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected” as a strategy to get “natural immunity…natural exposure,” an argument that illuminates Trump’s insistence this summer that schools and colleges must open.

But the idea that young people are safe from the virus is wrong. Today, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that while Americans older than 65 have borne the brunt of the coronavirus, young adults are suffering terribly. From March through July, there were almost 12,000 more deaths than expected among adults from 25 to 44. Young Black and Hispanic Americans make up not just a disproportionate number of that group of victims; they are a majority. Those extraordinary death rates have continued. Younger adults are indeed endangered by the coronavirus; the idea it is harmless to them “has simply not been borne out by emerging data,” doctors Jeremy Samuel Faust, Harlan M. Krumholz, and Rochelle P. Walensky—Biden’s pick to run the CDC-- wrote in the New York Times today.  

Another report today showcases two former CDC political appointees who are now speaking out to call attention to the silencing of career scientists at the agency. Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the CDC, and his deputy Amanda Campbell watched as political appointees in Washington ignored scientists, censored doctors’ messages to the public, and cut the agency’s budget. “It was… like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the CDC,” McGowan told New York Times reporter Noah Weiland. “Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won.”

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking website from the Poynter Institute, named the downplaying and denial of the seriousness of coronavirus its “Lie of the Year.”

Today it became clear the administration dropped the ball in other important ways. We have more information now about the extensive computer hack that appears to have been conducted by operatives from the Russian government. It’s bad. Hackers placed malware on commercial network management software upgrades to gain access to government computers, along with those of major U.S. companies, as far back as last March. They have been able to root around in our secrets for months. Hackers accessed the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and parts of the Pentagon, among other targets. The intrusion was discovered on December 8, when the cybersecurity company FireEye realized it had been hacked and alerted the FBI.

Today the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), issued a joint statement acknowledging “a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign” and indicated they are not sure yet what has been hit. “This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government.” It is clear the U.S. has been hit hard: Trump’s National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has cut short an overseas trip to come home and deal with the crisis.

In the New York Times, Thomas P. Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security Adviser said, “the magnitude of this national security breach is hard to overstate.” He insisted the U.S. must call out Russia for this attack (assuming it is confirmed that that country is, indeed, behind the attack). “Trump must make it clear to Vladimir Putin that these actions are unacceptable. The U.S. military and intelligence community must be placed on increased alert; all elements of national power must be placed on the table.”

“President Trump is on the verge of leaving behind a federal government, and perhaps a large number of major industries, compromised by the Russian government. He must use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.”

The New York Times called this breach “among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times.” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called it “stunning.” “Today’s classified briefing on Russia’s cyberattack left me deeply alarmed, in fact downright scared. Americans deserve to know what’s going on,” he tweeted. Blumenthal also recognized the severity of the coronavirus early: he tweeted on February 25: “This morning’s classified coronavirus briefing should have been made fully open to the American people—they would be as appalled & astonished as I am by the inadequacy of preparedness & prevention.”

And yet, there are signs that the country is reorienting itself away from Trump and modern-day Republicanism.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, previously a staunch Trump supporter, has released an advertisement urging people to wear masks and admitting he was wrong not to wear one at the White House. It seems likely he is eyeing a future presidential run, and clearly is calculating that it is wise these days to distance himself from Trump’s anti-mask politics.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has refused to advance a coronavirus relief bill since the House passed one last May, seven months ago, is now trying to make a deal that includes direct payments to Americans hurt by the pandemic. He explained to Republicans today that Republican senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are running against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia, are “getting hammered” because the people want the bill and the Senate is holding it up.

Finally, Bloomberg last night ran a story by journalist Craig Stirling highlighting the work of economists David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, who examined the concept of “supply side economics,” or the “trickle down theory.” This is the economic theory popularized in the 1980s saying it’s best for the economy not to support wages at the bottom of the economy—the demand side—but rather to free up capital at the top—the supply side—because wealthy entrepreneurs will create new jobs and the resulting economic growth will help everyone. This idea has been behind the Republicans’ forty-year commitment to tax cuts for the wealthy.

In their study of 18 countries over 50 years, Hope and Limberg concluded that this theory was wrong. Tax cuts do not, they prove, trickle down. They do little to promote growth or create jobs. Instead, they mostly just help the people who get the tax cuts.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[rapeculturerealities]

Ashley Judd was one of the first women to attach her name to accusations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein, but like many of the claims that followed, her account of intimidating sexual advances was too old to bring Mr. Weinstein to court over.

Then a legal window opened to her. After reading about a director’s claim that Mr. Weinstein’s studio, Miramax, had described Ms. Judd as a “nightmare to work with,” she sued the producer for defamation in 2018.

Mr. Weinstein’s rape trial in Manhattan, which began with jury selection last week, is a spectacle not only because he is the avatar of the #MeToo era, but also because it is one of the few sexual assault cases to surface with allegations recent enough to result in criminal charges.

So, unable to pursue justice directly, women and men on both sides of #MeToo are embracing the centuries-old tool of defamation lawsuits, opening an alternative legal battleground for  accusations of sexual misconduct.

While the facts of the cases vary, the plaintiffs are generally using defamation law not just for its usual purpose — to dissuade damaging speech about them — but also as a tool to enlist the courts to endorse their version of disputed events.

This year, key verdicts are expected in defamation cases involving President Trump, the Senate candidate Roy Moore and the actor Johnny Depp, and lawyers are watching the proceedings closely.

In some cases, women are basing their suits on recent statements in which the men they accused called them liars; or in Ms. Judd’s case, on a disparaging statement she said she was not aware of until the director, Peter Jackson, revealed it in a 2017 interview. Men like Mr. Depp are using defamation suits to fend off allegations from women, in his case, his ex-wife Amber Heard, who accused him of domestic abuse.

Courts have only begun to grapple with this #MeToo-inspired wave of defamation lawsuits, which are, in some cases, being brought because the statutes of limitations on sexual misconduct can be as short as one year, depending on the state and severity of the accusation. Those statutes are a bedrock legal concept designed to discourage people from being sued or imprisoned based on witness memories that may have eroded over the years.

The cases raise a swirl of issues, including the appropriate limits on freedom of speech; the power of social media, where an accusation can spread on platforms that vary in reliability and authority; and whether the statutes of limitations should be extended, as some states have already done.

Advocates on both sides are anxious. Lawyers for people accused of misconduct fear that a string of defamation victories for women will prevent men who believe they have been wrongly accused from freely defending themselves. At the same time, backers of the #MeToo movement fear that a spate of defamation cases against women will push victims back into the shadows.

“The next year is going to be very interesting when it comes to the law of defamation,” said Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer representing Virginia Giuffre, who said she was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation and accused Mr. Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz of being part of it. After they issued statements saying she was lying, she sued them for defamation. Mr. Dershowitz has countersued Ms. Giuffre for defamation; Ms. Maxwell settled in 2017.

“We’re going to see a wave of opinions that will shape that landscape quite a bit,” Ms. McCawley said.

Several  cases involve big names in politics and entertainment. Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump for his comments during his presidential campaign that her accusations of unwanted kissing and groping were fabricated. The president has argued that he cannot be sued in state court while in office, an issue that is likely headed for New York’s highest court. Its decision will be closely watched by E. Jean Carroll, who filed a similar claim against Mr. Trump after he said that she had lied about his raping her to increase sales of her new book.

Leigh Corfman, who accused Mr. Moore of touching her sexually when she was 14, sued him for defamation after he called her story false, malicious and “politically motivated.” That trial is expected to start this year in Alabama. Mr. Moore lost his Senate race in 2017 after accusations surfaced from Ms. Corfman and other women.

And last year, at least eight women reached settlements with Bill Cosby’s insurance company to end their defamation lawsuits. They filed them after his representatives accused them of lying when they said Mr. Cosby had sexually assaulted them decades ago.

At the same time, defamation suits are a go-to strategy for accused men trying to preserve their reputations. Mr. Depp’s lawsuit is expected to go to trial this summer in Virginia unless the judge dismisses it. And a judge in Brooklyn is considering whether to allow or throw out a lawsuit filed by the writer Stephen Elliott against Moira Donegan, the creator of a widely circulated list of men accused of sexual misconduct that included him.

Mr. Elliott, 48, who denied having assaulted anyone, said in an interview that after his essay  about the accusation was rebuffed by mainstream news outlets and with his career in shambles, he saw a defamation lawsuit as his only option.

“What would you do if you had been falsely accused of rape?” he said.

There are lower-profile cases moving through the courts, too. Thirty-three out of 193 cases that the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund supports involve defending workers who came forward about sexual harassment and were then sued for defamation, said Sharyn Tejani, the fund’s director.

For many plaintiffs, a benefit of suing for defamation is the opportunity to air the facts of what happened years ago, even if they are unable to sue for harassment or assault.

“In order to prove you’re a truth teller, you have to prove it happened,” said Joseph Cammarata, who represented seven Cosby accusers. “This is a direct way to get at the person who assaulted you.”

In Ms. Judd’s case, it could lead to a hearing over her account of visiting Mr. Weinstein’s room at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel one morning in late 1996 or early 1997, expecting a professional breakfast. She said that Mr. Weinstein, wearing a bathrobe, had requested to massage her or for her to watch him shower, and that she had refused.

Ms. Judd has argued that Miramax called her a “nightmare to work with” in retaliation for the hotel encounter. Miramax’s alleged conversation with Mr. Jackson occurred more than 20 years ago. The statute of limitations for a defamation claim in California is just one year, but the judge let the case go forward, saying that it was plausible that Ms. Judd would only learn about the conversation through Mr. Jackson’s 2017 interview. (The judge threw out Ms. Judd’s sexual harassment claim, saying it did not fall within the scope of California law.)

Mr. Weinstein has not directly disputed the allegation that Miramax said Ms. Judd was a “nightmare to work with” but has argued that his attempts to land her major acting roles later on showed that he was not trying to hinder her career. He has denied having any nonconsensual sexual encounters, including with the two women at the center of his rape trial in Manhattan. On Monday, prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that he had been charged with rape and sexual battery in connection with encounters with two women there.

Compared with some other countries, in the United States a defamation case is relatively difficult to win, because of a standard set by the Supreme Court to protect freedom of the press. If the plaintiff is a public figure, as many are, he or she must prove the statement was both false and made with “reckless disregard” for whether it was true.

In countries without the same high bar, including China, Australia and France, men have won high-profile defamation cases against women or news outlets that published their stories.

In the United States, a court must also find that the speech in question is based in fact and not purely opinion. Part of Mr. Trump’s argument against Ms. Zervos is that his statements were “fiery rhetoric, hyperbole and opinion” that are protected by the Constitution. Mr. Moore has made a similar argument. In denying Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, a judge wrote that he knew exactly what transpired between him and Ms. Zervos, so his calling her a liar was akin to an assertion of fact.

The public airing of #MeToo stories over the past two years has made these suits  noticeable, but the strategy is not entirely new. In 1994, Paula Jones sued President Bill Clinton alleging that he had  exposed himself to her when he was governor of Arkansas. One portion of the lawsuit accused him and his associates of defaming Ms. Jones by characterizing her as a liar.

A judge dismissed the claim, writing that the comments were “mere denials of the allegations and the questioning of plaintiff’s motives.” Mr. Clinton settled the rest of the suit for $850,000, without admitting wrongdoing; his lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky during the Jones lawsuit led to his impeachment.

But a more recent ruling, by New York’s highest court, has given hope to lawyers representing women. The court in 2014 revived a lawsuit filed by two men against Jim Boeheim, the Syracuse University basketball coach, who had accused the two men of lying when they said one of Mr. Boeheim’s assistants, Bernie Fine, had abused them as children. The defamation lawsuit was settled in 2015. (Mr. Fine lost his job, but after an investigation, he was not charged with a crime.)

The decision made the New York court system an attractive place to file this kind of lawsuit, said Mariann Wang, who represented the plaintiffs in that case, and Ms. Zervos until recently.

Since the #MeToo movement took off, a number of states have lengthened the statutes of limitations for sexual assault claims, meaning future victims may have less need to rely on defamation lawsuits.

But those suits remain the only legal option for people like Therese Serignese, who said Mr. Cosby gave her pills backstage at a show in Las Vegas in 1976, when she was 19. The next memory she had was waking up to realize that she was being sexually violated.

She joined a lawsuit in 2015 asserting that representatives for Mr. Cosby had defamed her and other women by calling stories like theirs “fantastical” and “past the point of absurdity.” Mr. Cosby’s insurance company settled the lawsuit in April, about a year after he was convicted of sexual assault.

“My point was to make him accountable,” Ms. Serignese, 62, said. “Put him out there and make him work to prove that I’m not telling the truth. Because I knew I was telling the truth.”

[safflowerseason]

veep rewatch - 3.02

Season Three, Episode Two - The Choice

aka - The One Where Dan Gets Seasick 

(It seems like a good time to begin this series again...)

Gary, to himself in the mirror: …When did you get your dad’s face?

LOL at Dan telling Richard not to be cute. 

Gary: Ma’am, instead of doing all this pre-campaigning, sometime in the next 24 hours, you grab a mic, you say, "I'm Selina Meyer and I'm running for President of the United States!” *beat* Selina: I’m just gonna use the bathroom really quick.

Kelly: This definitely does not do video. Amy: Then what were you doing?!  (I just think it’s hilarious the way Anna Chlumsky delivers this little line…that perfect outraged bemusement.)

Hahahaha Dan gets so seasick. He’s so terrible I don’t even feel sorry for him. (This also means his S2 line about power-boating on Lake Erie is now irrelevant, which is fine because I think this is a more hilarious canon fact about Dan.) 

Wendy, about Jonah: Look who I found in a basket on our front door. 

What the hell is Jonah wearing in this scene. What is that terrible cardigan. What is that T-shirt he is wearing underneath. What.

Criminal: Hey, I voted for you! Selina: Thank you very much, sir! But I’m afraid you have to go to prison!

The chaotic scene on the boat, with everyone yelling and speaking over one another about POTUS’s announcement is quite well done, reminiscent of the scene in the kitchen during Helsinki (another great Selina-Amy-Gary-Dan group scene.) 

Ben: Ma'am, I swear to God, we all thought he was gonna just eat some shrimp, rattle off a few platitudes, go home, watch Full Metal Jacket for the millionth time and fall asleep.

Amy: Has POTUS gone nuts? We can’t have a crazy president.  Gary: In Italy they do.  (Heh.)

Selina: I can't identify myself as a woman! People can't know that! Men hate that. And women who hate women hate that, which, I believe, is most women, don't you agree with that? 

Dan: I swear to God, I felt better on the fucking boat.

Dan: And as vice president, here's your choice, two doors, pro-choice, pro-life. That’s it. Selina:…Is there a third door?  Amy: What, like a woman's door?  Dan *scornful*: A back door? No.

Lots of little physical comedy bits in this episode…Dan being sick on the boat, Selina and the bathroom door, Richard and Kelli getting tangled up in the phone lines….Most of these bits require really coordinated dialogue as well, characters speaking over one another at the exact right moment…I feel like this kind of really specific and technical scene work went away in the later seasons, in favor of the characters just screaming outsized insults at one another. Which is a bit sad, because these scenes are so superbly done, and all of the actors involved really get to show off their technical skills as well as their mastery of the dialogue. 

There’s an argument to be made that the premise of this episode is not super realistic. I suppose it’s plausible that a lame-duck outwardly liberal but still old-white-male POTUS might reveal he has a more conservative view on the timeline for abortion. What’s less plausible is that Selina’s response requires completely rethinking her views on the topic, or that she’s run for high constitutional office in the United States without articulating a clear stance on the issue. The whole “what’s Selina’s position?!” drama is a bit over-blown. Why doesn’t she just reaffirm whatever her stance is? (I guess that is kind of what she ends up doing, by rehashing the book). And the notion that she could reverse her previous position to something more conservative that aligns with POTUS’s views does not actually make any sense politically, considering Selina’s party and her hopes for the future…like presumably POTUS has also pissed off other members of his liberal party? And he’s a lame duck POTUS anyway. Who cares? 

However, I think this is an example where it’s fine that a show about politics does not hold up to perfect realist scrutiny, because it still makes for a great episode of television where we see Selina really wrestle with her identity as Veep and as a female politician, and we get to dive deep into the stakes of a “controversial” political issue (in quotations because it shouldn’t be controversial) and watch how the team deals with it. 

Jonah: I’m going to be updating more than I'm actually dating…which is a shitload. I think in the BMTL universe, Jonah resurrects Ryantology and his unhinged videos are part of how he wins the presidency. This kind of aggressive-direct-to-the-people-straight-talk-cut-through-the-bullshit rhetoric is exactly how Trump appeals to his base (even though it’s not at all true that it’s “real”), and is certainly more interesting politically than Jonah advancing as a politician because he’s racist and sexist and hates vaccines. 

Kent and Sue begin their hilariously robotic flirting in this episode. 

Selina’s got so many great lines in this scene about gender politics and the politics of abortion, all of which I would put on a coffee mug or a t-shirt.  “Get the government out of my fucking snatch.” “If men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM.” “As a woman, I am not gonna put in a fuckin’ sentence ‘As a woman…’ I am not putting my eggs in that basket.” “This is about access to safe abortions for vulnerable women.”

Read alongside one another, these lines illustrate how conflicted she is, not about abortion, but about her identity as a female politician and in turn, how that identity is perceived by the public to influence her political choices and views. She doesn’t want to be a labeled as a feminist political warrior, but she is still clearly passionate enough about women’s issues enough to try and figure out a way to articulate her views without sacrificing her political future—a future that depends on the support of old, white men. 

Costume-wise, Amy stands out among the ensemble in another turquoise green dress (I am very into her snakesin heels). This one is a wrap dress that is a bit darker than her dress for Mike’s wedding. Selina is wearing a black top and a red skirt, in a not-so-subtle nod to her struggle over what to say in public about abortion. Dan’s and Mike’s ties both have red in them. Unusually, nothing in Amy’s outfit really links her to Selina or to Dan.

Selina: Well, he fucking fudged it. Now we know he’s running for President, that stupid bastard. 

Dan’s meltdown is very well done by Reid Scott. This season, he really brings out Dan’s more intense side, highlighting his obsessive and neurotic qualities that we don’t normally see (because Dan keeps them buried) and adding this slightly unhinged edge to the character. At the same time, he emphasizes how Dan struggles to keep up the usual facade that everything is easy for him. In the previous episode, we even saw a flash of Dan’s crazy eyes. I simply don’t understand how Mandel watched Dan’s arc in S3 and came to the conclusion that this character didn’t really care about anything except money and sex. All Dan cares about in this season is winning, to the point where he actually self-destructs. It will be really fun to observe how the writers and RS play out Dan’s journey with this rewatch. 

Amy to Dan: Go home. Take an Ambien. Take fifty!

Ben: I’m going home, and if anyone needs me…I don’t care.

Poor Gary in this episode. He fails so hard at trying to be an actual political strategist. 

Dan: Hey you, Ugly Betty, give me that burrito! Jonah: Don’t just give it to him, dude!

“This is what happens when you fuck with my office!” Dan literally is seconds from beating up Jonah in this scene…his dangerous side on full display here. Part of me wishes we saw more of this super macho physical enforcer Dan, but at the same time, I do think it’s a bit jarring compared to Veep’s regular tone as a show. (It also makes you wonder what Dan’s breaking point is, when it comes to physical violence.)

Selina: Well, I said nothing…a big, fat, morbidly obese nothing.

[tindez]

In the end, the evidence was inescapable. “The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process,” Romney said. “And really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do.” [...] I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president’s misconduct—quoting hymns and scripture, expressing dismay at his party, and bracing for the political backlash. [...] “I get that a lot—‘Be with the president,’” Romney told me, sounding slightly perplexed. “And I’ll say, ‘Regardless of his point of view? Regardless of the issue?’ And they say yes. And … it’s like, ‘Well, no, I can’t do that.’”

While I disagree with Mitt Romney on many things, I find it heartening to see a Republican who definitely thought this through and stuck to his convictions. Country over party! Kudos to him and to Utah.

So, I’m sharing this with y’all. Stay optimistic! Sometimes those we disagree with can still get work done alongside us.

(full article under the cut for those without access to The Atlantic)

POLITICS How Mitt Romney Decided Trump Is Guilty Comparing the president’s behavior to that of an autocrat, the Republican senator explains to The Atlantic why he’s voting to convict him. MCKAY COPPINS 2:03 PM ET Mitt Romney didn’t want to go through with it. “This has been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life,” he told me yesterday afternoon in his Senate office. Roughly 24 hours later, Romney would deliver a speech announcing that he was voting to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment—abuse of power. For weeks, the senator from Utah had sat silently in the impeachment trial alongside his 99 colleagues, reviewing the evidence at night and praying for guidance. The gravity of the moment weighed on him, as did the pressure from members of his own party to acquit their leader. As his conscience tugged at him, he said, the exercise took on a spiritual dimension. Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, described to me the power of taking an oath before God: “It’s something which I take very seriously.” Throughout the trial, he said, he was guided by his father’s favorite verse of Mormon scripture: Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good. “I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process,” he told me. “But I don’t pretend that God told me what to do.” In the end, the evidence was inescapable. “The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process,” Romney said. “And really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do.” According to Romney’s interpretation of Alexander Hamilton’s treatise on impeachment in “Federalist No. 65”—which he says he’s read “multiple, multiple times”—Trump’s attempts to enlist the Ukrainian president in interfering with the 2020 election clearly rose to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (He told me he would not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.) Romney’s vote will do little to reorient the political landscape. The president’s acquittal has been all but certain for weeks, as Republicans have circled the wagons to protect Trump. But the Utahan’s sharp indictment ensures that at least one dissenting voice from within the president’s party will be on the record—and Romney seems to believe history will vindicate his decision. He also knows his vote will likely make him a pariah on the right. Already, he says, he’s experienced firsthand the ire of the base. At an airport recently, a stranger yelled at him, “You ought to be ashamed!” During a trip to Florida with his wife this past weekend, someone shouted “Traitor!” from a car window. Eight years ago, he was the leader of the Republican Party, its nominee for president. Today, he has become accustomed to a kind of political loneliness. Romney famously opposed Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and while the rest of his party has fallen in line since then, he has remained stubbornly independent—infuriating Trump, who routinely derides him in public as a “pompous ass” and worse. As I wrote last year, this dynamic seems to have liberated the senator in a way that’s unlike anything he has experienced in his political career. Still, when the senator invited me to his Capitol Hill office yesterday, I was unsure what he would reveal. Romney had been largely silent throughout the impeachment proceedings, giving little indication of which way he was leaning. I half-expected to find a cowed and calculating politician ready with a list of excuses for caving. (His staff granted the interview on the condition that it would be embargoed until he took to the Senate floor.) Instead, I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president’s misconduct—quoting hymns and scripture, expressing dismay at his party, and bracing for the political backlash. Romney confessed that he’d spent much of the impeachment trial hoping a way out would present itself: “I did not want to get here.” In fact, that was part of the reason he wanted former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify about what Trump had told him. “I had the hope that he would be able to say something exculpatory and create reasonable doubt, so I wouldn't have to vote to convict,” Romney said. Still, he found the case presented by the president’s defense team unpersuasive. Romney had a hard time believing, for example, that Trump had been acting out of a desire to crack down on corruption when he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Bidens’ alleged conflicts of interest may have been “ugly,” Romney said, but it was never established that they warranted a criminal investigation. “No crime was alleged by the defense, and yet the president went to an extreme level to investigate these two people … and for what purpose?” The only motive that made sense, he determined, was a political one. Romney was similarly unmoved by the Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz’s contention that a president who believes his reelection is in the national interest can’t be impeached for pursuing a political advantage. “I had Professor Dershowitz for criminal law in law school,” Romney said, “and he was known to occasionally take his argument to its illogical conclusion.” Nor was the senator swayed by the theory that a president can be impeached only for breaking a statutory law. “To use an old Mormon hymn phrase, that makes reason stare,” he said. “The idea that Congress would have to anticipate all of the offensive things a president could possibly do, and then make them a statute?” Romney posed a hypothetical: What if the president decided to pardon every Republican in prison nationwide, while leaving every Democrat locked up? “There’s no law against that!” he said. “So it’s not a crime or misdemeanor. But it’s obviously absurd.” When I asked Romney why none of his fellow Republicans had reached the same conclusion, he attempted diplomacy. “I’m not going to try and determine the thinking or motives of my colleagues,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake for any senator to try and get in the head of another senator and judge them.” But as he discussed the various rationalizations put forth by other Republican senators, he seemed to grow exasperated. He took particular issue with the idea—currently quite trendy in his caucus—that Trump’s fate should be decided at the ballot box, not in the Senate. “I would have liked to have abdicated my responsibility as I understood it under the Constitution and under the writing of the Founders by saying, ‘Let’s leave this to the voters.’” But, he said, “I’m subject to my own conscience.” When I asked how it felt to be formally disinvited from this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he laughed and noted that he hadn’t attended the conference since 2013. But it seems clear that his journey from GOP standard-bearer to party supervillain has been jarring. “I was under the misimpression that what brought Republican voters together was conviction in a certain number of policy points of view,” Romney said. He recalled a political strategist during one of his early campaigns explaining how to court the three main factions of the GOP coalition—social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks. Much of Romney’s career since then has been spent trying to win over ideological purists on the right. In 2012, he said, some Tea Party activists refused to support him, because he didn’t have a plan to balance the federal budget within a single year. Now the conservative movement is ruled by a president who routinely makes a mockery of such litmus tests. Deficit reduction? “There’s no purchase for that,” Romney said. Foreign policy? “The letters with Kim Jong Un didn’t seem to frighten people away … The meeting with the Russian ambassador in the White House right after the election didn’t seem to bother people.” Somehow, Romney said, he is the one constantly being told that he needs to “be with the president.” “I get that a lot—‘Be with the president,’” Romney told me, sounding slightly perplexed. “And I’ll say, ‘Regardless of his point of view? Regardless of the issue?’ And they say yes. And … it’s like, ‘Well, no, I can’t do that.’” For now, Romney said, he is bracing for an uncertain political future. He said he can’t predict whether Trump will emerge from the impeachment battle emboldened or constrained, but he doubts the experience has shaken him: “I think what’s fair to say about the president is that he doesn’t change his ways a lot.” Nor is he expecting that their relationship will be easily repaired. (“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” he joked.) Romney acknowledged that his vote to convict may hamper his own ability to legislate, at least for a while. “I don’t know how long the blowback might exist or how strenuous it might be, but I’m anticipating a long time and a very strong response.” Though he said he won’t make an endorsement in this year’s presidential election, Romney was clear that he will not cast a ballot for Trump. But, he said, “under no circumstances would I vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to become president of the United States.” In 2016, he wrote in his wife’s name, and he told me, “She’ll probably get [a] second vote.” For months, Romney’s detractors on both the right and the left have searched for an ulterior motive to his maneuvering, convinced that a secret cynicism lurked beneath his lofty appeals to conscience and principle. Just last week, the Washington Examiner ran a story speculating that the senator might be positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024. When I asked Romney about the report, he erupted in laughter. “Yes! That’s it! They caught me!” he proclaimed. “Look at the base I have! It’s going to be at least 2 or 3 percent of the Republican Party. As goes Utah, so goes the nation!” The truth is that Romney’s decisive break with Trump could end up hurting him even in Utah, a red state where the president is uncommonly unpopular. What that means for his reelection prospects, the senator couldn’t say. (He doesn’t have to face voters again until 2024.) But as he thought about it, another hymn came to mind. “Do what is right; let the consequence follow,” he recited. “And I don’t know what all the consequences will be.” We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. MCKAY COPPINS is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party.

[reading-writing-revolution]

February 1, 2020 (Saturday)

In the short term, Trump and his supporters appear to have won. The initial position of his defenders in his impeachment trial was that he had neither abused the power of his office by withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for help smearing his rival Joe Biden, nor obstructed Congress by covering the scandal up. But the House impeachment managers’ masterful presentation, along with the leaking of material from former National Security advisor John Bolton’s forthcoming book saying that Trump himself had tried to rope Bolton into the scheme killed that argument. So Republicans pivoted. Yes, they admitted, Trump did what he was accused of. But pressuring a foreign government to smear the president’s political opponent, they say, does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.

The Senate will not vote on acquittal until Wednesday, but the vote on witnesses was widely seen as a proxy for that later vote. So it appears that Republican senators will support Trump. As House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned them, if they acquit Trump, they will be part of the cover up, and they will be tied to Every. Single. Thing. That. Drops. From. Here. On. Out. And there will be plenty.

Last night, around midnight, just after Senate Republicans blocked testimony from witnesses and the admission of new documents, the Trump administration admitted in a court filing that it was withholding 24 emails from between June and September 2019 that describe “communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President’s immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine.”

There are nine months to go before the 2020 presidential election.

Congressional Republicans have chosen to double down on their association with Trump to help them win in 2020, throwing overboard any hope of appealing to moderates. They know it is a devil’s bargain. Next week, they will try to explain their votes in the record, and the Senate has decided not to vote on acquittal until Wednesday, making sure that Trump cannot use either the Super Bowl or his State of the Union Address in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night to crow. But, as never-Trump pundit Rick Wilson warned the Republicans, they are now complicit, and as more and more evidence comes out, Trump will turn on them.

People are saying this is the end for American democracy, but I see the opposite. Radical ideologues who want the government to do nothing but protect property, build a strong military, and advance Christianity took over the Republican Party in the 1990s. They have been manipulating our political system to their own ends ever since. They want to destroy the government regulation of business and social safety net we have enjoyed since the 1930s. But they have done so gradually, and not enough people seem to have noticed, even when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took the shocking step of refusing to permit a hearing for a Supreme Court nominee named by a Democrat. Now they have gone too far, out in the open, and it looks to me as if Americans are finally seeing the radicals currently in charge of the Republican Party for what they are, and are determined to take America back.

Americans are angry. On Wikipedia last night, the entry for “United States Senate” read briefly (before it was taken down): “The United States Senate was formerly the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which, along with the United States House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprised the legislature of the United States. It died on January 31, 2020, when senators from the Republican Party refused to stand up to a corrupt autocrat calling himself the president of the United States, refusing to hear testimony that said individual blackmailed Ukraine in order to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.”

Ironically, this moment looks a lot like the moment that created the Republican Party. In the 1850s, elite slaveholders, who made up less than 1% of the population, took over the Democratic Party, which dominated national politics as their opponents kept squabbling amongst themselves. The slaveholders insisted that the government’s only job was to protect them and their property, and they stifled opposition as well as calls for government projects to spur the economy, getting poor white southerners to rally behind them with increasingly vicious racism.

Finally, in 1854, they went too far. In 1820, Congress had divided western lands evenly between slavery and freedom, but by 1854, the South had spread into all the lands reserved for slavery. So in 1854, planters demanded the right to take their enslaved workers into western land that was reserved for freedom. The proposed law, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, meant that rich planters would keep poor white men from moving west and taking up land. At the same time, adding new slave states in the West would break the balance in Congress. A few wealthy slaveowners would have the power to make slavery national. Free men would fall into poverty, and American democracy would end.

Surely, northerners thought, Congress would never pass such a dastardly law.

You know what’s coming, right?

It did. Under enormous pressure from the Democratic president Franklin Pierce, the Democrats passed the hated bill. Northern Democrats, who loathed the act, signed on, putting party before country.

In response, northerners came together to guarantee that the few rich slaveholders who had taken over the party would not destroy American democracy. Out in the frontier state of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln had given up politics for law, but the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act shocked him back into the political arena. The Democrats “took us by surprise—astounded us—by this measure. We were thunderstruck and stunned; and we reeled and fell in utter confusion,” Lincoln later recalled. He came together with regular men and women from all parties to stop the takeover of the government, “[W]e rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—a scythe—a pitchfork—a chopping axe, or a butcher’s cleaver.”

In the elections held after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, voters decimated the northern Democrats who had put party over country. There were 142 northern seats in the House; they put “Anti-Nebraska” congressmen in 120 of them. By 1856, the movement against the takeover of the nation had coalesced into the Republican Party, and in 1860, it put Abraham Lincoln into the White House.

The party would do well to remember its beginnings.

Media personality Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out today that the 49 senators who lost the vote on witnesses represent 19 million more people than the 51 senators who won.

This morning Bill Kristol, a leader of the neoconservative movement, tweeted: “Not presumably forever; not perhaps for a day after Nov. 3, 2020; not on every issue or in every way until then. But for the time being one has to say: We are all Democrats now.”

Conservative writer Max Boot wrote: “I want nothing to do with a party led by the deluded and the dishonest. I fervently hope our democracy survives this debacle. I fervently hope the Republican Party does not,” then tweeted: “Will I ever rejoin the GOP? No. Trump will leave office some day (I hope!), but he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is. The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure.”

The Senate adjourned Friday and is not due to resume business until Monday at 11:00, when both the House impeachment managers and the president’s lawyers will give closing statements.

---

Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

[mistavybe]

Sports

I’m not a big sports fan at all.

There was a time when I was younger when I followed cricket 🏏 (what Trini doesn’t?), football ⚽️ (not “soccer”, it’s called football - sorry to any Americans who are offended 🤷🏾‍♂️ lol) and NBA basketball.

The cricket and football stuff was mostly a result of peer pressure. When everyone you live with (parents), go to school with and hang out with is a football/cricket fan, then you automatically end up one too.

NBA... i’m not sure how that happened exactly tbh. When I was a kid, pretty much everyone I knew was either a Lakers or Celtics fan. Magic Johnson vs Larry Bird arguments filled most of my earlier school years lol.

I followed through with my NBA obsessions pretty much until the Chicago Bulls team with Jordan, Pippen, Dennis Rodman, etc. Dissolved after their final championship win.

I was kinda into Shaq for a minute... but it just wasn’t the. The finesse I liked was gone.

I haven’t actively been into the NBA since.

Oh and I was a rabid Professional Wrestling fan for all of the 70’s, 80’s and some of the 90’s.

Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Nature Boy Rick Flair, The British Bulldogs, Kevin “The HitMan” Hart, all the way down to Triple X, Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin and then The Rock.

I checked out some point after The Rock left to pursue a film career and the WWF became the WWE and revealed that it was all indeed “just entertainment” (AKA fake af). Once my suspension of disbelief was gone, it wasn’t fun for me any more.

Thankfully, that meant I stopped following WWE before Donald Trump was in the ring eith Vince McMahon lol.

As for me myself, I was never great at sports tbh.

In primary (AKA elementary) school, I was always close to last to be picked.mostly because I couldn’t keep up with the athletic kids because of my asthma issues.

In secondary school, I was seldom picked to play cricket 🏏 and almost always relegated to playing in the Last Stopper position for football ⚽️. If you know anything about growing up West Indian you’ll know that meant I sucked at those sports.

My lack of athletic ability was a big talking point among my parents’ friends because both of my parents well known athletes in their youth.

My dad was one of best football players of his generation, I’m told. Supposedly he could score a goal all the way from the half line on a good day. All I know is that even in his 40’s and 50’s he kicked my footballs so hard that they burst, on several occasions lol. Like, just popped like a balloon. IRL! Do with that what you will.

My mom represented or country at field hockey for many years, and also in various track and field disciplines (shotput, javellin, discus). She held the local record for javellin at one point. And she later went on to become Minister Of Sport in my teens.

My mom actually met my dad while she was competing at a sporting event. He was covering said event for thr newspapers he worked at back then (The Trinidad Guardian and now defunct Evening News).

Both of my parents are Hall Of Fame athletes in my country. My mom for field hockey, shotput, javellin and discus, and my dad for football. My dad also won a trophy for being Sports Journalist Of The Year at my country’s Sportsman & Woman Of The Year Awards ceremony/show, which takes place annually here. It’s like our island’s version of the ESPYs, except we had it here for decades before the ESPYs existed lol.

Getting back to me, the only sport I was ever really any good at was swimming. 🏊🏾‍♂️

I had a strong freestyle, and won several medals in secondary school for that stroke at inter-school meets. (QRC to di worlddddd!!! 🙌🏾)

I actually had Olympic hopes for a while, until one day when I was horsing around and attempted a back flip into the pool... but I over-rotated and hit my head on the side of the pool and knocked myself out.

They fished me out quickly and all was well, but my mom yanked me from swim training at that point. So music was all I had left.

I’d say it worked out okay though, even though I still wonder a bit about the coulda-shoulda-wouldas. 🤔

I do still enjoy watching gymnastics when the Summer Olympics come around. That’s about the extent of my sporting enthusiasm today. Either that, or any time my country is qualifying for the (football) World Cup.

Oh, I performed (by request) at the Welcome Home party in our airport when our Soca Warriors team came home from competing at the World Cup in Germany back in 2006. Does that count for anything?

[sky1news]

Barack Obama news: David Cameron savaged by former US president in memoir | World | News

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The book, ‘A Promised Land’, detailed how the two “butted heads” over their six years of contact. In the book Mr Obama described Mr Cameron, British Prime Minister between 2010 and 2016, as having “the easy confidence of someone who’d never been pressed too hard by life”.

However, the former president also said he personally liked Mr Cameron, and had cooperated with him on a number of issues.

Mr Obama wrote: “In his early forties, with a youthful appearance and a studied informality (at every international summit, the first thing he’d do was take off his jacket and loosen his tie), the Eton-educated Cameron possessed an impressive command of the issues, a facility with language, and the easy confidence of someone who’d never been pressed too hard by life.

“I liked him personally, even when we butted heads, and for the next six years he’d prove to be a willing partner on a host of international issues, from climate change (he believed in the science) to human rights (he supported marriage equality) to aid for developing countries).

“On economic policy though, Cameron hewed closely to free-market orthodoxy, having promised voters that his platform of deficit reduction and cuts to government services – along with regulatory reform and expanded trade – would usher in a new era of British competitiveness.

“Eton-educated Cameron possessed an impressive command of the issues” (Image: GETTY)

Mr Obama’s memoir covers the period from his childhood until May 2011 (Image: GETTY)

“Instead, predictably, the British economy would fall deeper into a recession.”

The former president’s memoir, which comes to 701 pages, tells his story from childhood to the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

He is planning a second book to cover the rest of his time as president until January 2017.

Mr Obama wrote two other best-selling books, ‘Dreams from My Father’ and ‘The Audacity of Hope’ before becoming president.

READ MORE: Michelle Obama recalled ‘having a lot of fun’ with Jill Biden

Obama and Cameron pictured when they were both national leaders (Image: GETTY)

He is also the author of a children’s book published in 2010.

In his memoir Mr Obama gives his opinions on a number of other world leaders.

He described German chancellor Angela Merkel as “steady, honest, intellectually rigorous and instinctually kind”.

The ex-president claimed Ms Merkel was initially sceptical of him due to his oratorical talents, but added: “I took no offence, figuring that as a German leader, an aversion to possible demagoguery was probably a healthy thing.”

DON’T MISS 

Michelle Obama blasts Trump for preventing Biden’s ‘smooth transition’ [ANGER] ‘No going back’ China relations with US may NEVER be resolved [INSIGHT] Michelle Obama fears Biden win ‘isn’t a magic wand’ amid US tensions [REVEAL]

Barack Obama and David Cameron playing table tennis (Image: GETTY)

Obama pictured with Russian president Vladimir Putin (Image: GETTY)

However, Mr Obama was more critical of Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France from 2007 until 2012.

Comparing Mr Sarkozy to “a figure out of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting” he claimed the Frenchman was “all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric”.

The former American leader added his French counterpart “never straying from his primary, barely disguised interest, which was to be at the centre of the action and take credit for whatever it was that might be worth taking credit for”.

Mr Obama also had harsh words for Russian president Vladimir Putin, describing him as “like a ward boss except with nukes and a UN Security Council veto”.

Referring to politicians who built monopolies in local city government he added: “Putin did, in fact, remind me of the sorts of men who had once run the Chicago machine or Tammany Hall.

“Tough, street-smart, unsentimental characters who knew what they knew, who never moved outside their narrow experiences, and who viewed patronage, bribery, shakedowns, fraud, and occasional violence as legitimate tools of the trade.”

Obama described Merkel as “honest, intellectually rigorous and instinctually kind” (Image: GETTY)

Mr Obama was first elected president in November 2008 defeating Republican candidate John McCain.

He retained the presidency in 2012 after victory over challenger Mitt Romney.

However, the two term limit meant he was unable to run again in 2016 and Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, secured election.

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from Sky1 News https://ift.tt/2UJuEkc

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Here’s my plan, if it works for everyone: The overarching question will be “Is James Comey’s book/publicity tour helping or hurting the case against President Trump?”

You can interpret “the case” however you want, but I mostly mean it politically.

To give the convo some structure, we’ll go through the six claims Comey makes that are highlighted in this BBC article and say whether each helps or hurts.

Ready?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Sure.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Let’s go!

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Ready.

micah: Also, FiveThirtyEight Features Editor Chad Matlin is obsessed with the Comey story, so he’s lurking in this chat and is going to chime in occasionally.

chad: Point of order: I am obsessed with Comey as essentially a character out of a literary political thriller. He’s flawed in all sorts of ways that make him extremely compelling and unable to be plopped into a villain or hero bucket. He essentially admits that he has an ego and a devotion to integrity, which makes it very fascinating to try to tease out where one starts and the other stops.

clare.malone: Hubris!

I agree, Chad.

He is a character who has tangled thoughts on his own actions.

micah: No. 1:

“When asked if he considered Mr Trump fit to lead, the former FBI director said he did not believe claims about Mr Trump’s mental health, but did see him as ‘morally unfit’ to be president.”

Help or hurt?

clare.malone: Hurt.

natesilver:

clare.malone: I’m less concerned with whether Comey thinks Trump should be in office: We care more about Comey’s observations of his interactions with Trump — whether or not he thinks the president obstructed justice, etc. At least, I think we should care more about those.

micah: The media doesn’t seem to care more about that, Clare.

clare.malone: Well, like Comey, I am a morally superior force in the world, Micah.

I am SANCTIMONY embodied!

natesilver: Yeah, I don’t really give a fig about Comey’s view on Trump’s character, except to the extent it reflects proprietary knowledge that Comey has based on working with him. Instead, the assessments Comey makes about Trump in the ABC News interview seem very arm’s-length — as though he’s a political pundit.

perry: Helps. I think someone of Comey’s stature saying that the president is “morally unfit” is important. He is kind of echoing the Never Trump/John McCain/Jeff Flake view, which is not a hugely influential one, but it does have some influence, so it’s part of why Trump is fairly unpopular.

micah: DISAGREEMENT!!!!!

Clare and Nate, why do you think Comey-as-pundit hurts the case against Trump?

clare.malone: Because it distracts from the narrative that actually matters: Comey’s word against Trump’s on a number of occasions where it is a he said/he said.

I don’t think Comey needs to bolster his argument by being bombastic about Trump being unfit.

natesilver: Yeah, it lowers his stature. Comey’s authority comes from having had a seat at the table and having seen Trump up close and personal — not from having particularly good judgment, since there are all sorts of questions about his judgment.

clare.malone: He already has a good reputation as a man-of-the-law, truth-teller type.

natesilver: Right — I think a Chief Justice John Roberts “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat” demeanor would serve him better.

micah: I mean, let’s say Comey has the influence Perry mentions with ~3 percent of Americans — that’s something.

I just don’t know if there are really any neutral observers anymore.

OK, No. 2:

“Another portion of the interview handled the sacking of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in February 2017 for lying about contacts with the Russian ambassador in Washington. The former FBI head said Mr Trump had tried to pressure him into dropping any investigation into Mr Flynn. ‘I took it as a direction,’ he told Mr Stephanopoulos. ‘He’s — his words were, though, “I hope you can let it go”.’”

Help/hurt?

clare.malone: I think help. He’s being honest about the words, but also his interpretation of them — which presumably includes the way the president said it, the tone, emphasis, body language.

natesilver: Help, I guess … but wasn’t that news already public like six months ago?

clare.malone: It’s Comey being transparent about the interaction.

perry: I don’t know if this one matters as much, because this is basically what Comey said last year during the Senate hearing, as Nate said. He put the legal term “obstruction of justice” in there, but this is the core of what he told the Senate back last year.

natesilver: Yeah, I’m gonna say neutral because there’s no news there.

clare.malone: Repetition of relevant facts matters.

So, it doesn’t hurt.

natesilver: I’m a Bayesian, Clare, and it didn’t cause me to update my priors.

micah:

clare.malone: I don’t even want to dignify that one. Next!

micah: No. 3:

Comey said:

“I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook.”

So Comey is anti-impeachment.

Help/hurt?

clare.malone: I don’t actually know how I feel on this one. Sticking by my original logic of “No one should really care about Comey’s feelings about things outside what happened between him and the president,” I would have to say this hurts, since it’s a distraction from the main message.

On the other hand, I guess if he’s trying to look more even-handed and less “Never Trump,” then this is perhaps helpful?

For the sake of consistency, though, I’ll go with “hurt.”

natesilver: I don’t really think it helps or hurts the case against Trump per se.

micah: Let’s get a dose of Chad here.

chad: It hurts, since Comey’s dismissal is what the left uses as proof that there was obstruction of justice. So if the guy who got fired says his firing isn’t enough, then that perhaps has some weight. Since obstruction is fuzzier than Democrats would like.

natesilver: But I sorta agree with Comey that elections are an underrated remedy as compared with impeachment.

clare.malone: Nate, you have to pick one or the other! Help or hurt!?!?

Isn’t that how this game, goes!?

natesilver: Fine.

clare.malone: I love that song.

chad: Nate, please don’t make me reveal your karaoke song.

natesilver:

perry: Hurt. I thought Comey’s anti-impeachment stance was interesting. The legal case against Trump (obstruction of justice, etc.) and impeachment are not exactly the same thing. There is a broad coalition of anti-Trump people, from Never Trump Republicans to the Democrats who are already in favor of impeachment. If Democrats win the House, you’ll see the divide between the pro- and anti-impeachment forces. And I think Comey’s view here is important. He is a sharp Trump critic, but he’s warning against impeachment. We’ll likely see some Democrats outside of the party’s most liberal wing echo what he is saying: Let’s beat Trump in the election, not try to impeach him.

micah: So, I’ve largely resisted all the Comey character analysis and ranting about how he affected the election, but I have to say: I found the fact that Comey — the person who arguably threw the election to Trump — used the phrase “let the American people off the hook” pretty galling.

clare.malone: Why, Micah?

micah: Because he sends this letter days before the election that has a meaningful effect, and then sorta chastises the American people to basically “clean up their own mess” — at least, that’s how I heard/read it.

clare.malone: He’s right in some sense, that, say, Republicans nominated Trump.

perry: I think that was his goofy way of saying that the best way to get rid of an unfit president is through the electoral process. I don’t think he was really attacking the voters.

clare.malone: (I knew I was going to get the letter argument, but I do think that we should also remember Comey is probably a pretty disillusioned REPUBLICAN.)

micah: OK, yeah, I agree with him on the merits — elections > impeachment — but he’s not in the best position to tell voters what they should or shouldn’t do during an election.

Next:

“In the TV interview, Mr Comey said his belief that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential elections was a factor in how he handled the investigation into the Democrat candidate’s use of classified emails on a private server while she was the secretary of state. ‘I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump,’ Mr Comey said.”

natesilver:

clare.malone: Yeah, that’s a hurt.

That just makes his reasoning for his public statements look … sloppy. Because his whole thing has been, “I was acting by the letter of the law,” but obviously the heightened atmosphere of fall 2016 played a part in his ultimate decision.

natesilver: Throughout the ABC interview, Comey seems extremely preoccupied with appearances — both how he’ll be perceived and how the FBI will be perceived.

Yet he sorta concedes that what he’s doing is against Justice Department protocol.

clare.malone: Right.

natesilver: And paints himself as being in a no-win position.

But one nice thing about having protocol and rules and regulations is that they give you a good default answer in no-win situations.

micah: If I could give one piece of advice to the political left, it would be: Accuse everyone of bias against you. That strategy, which a portion of conservatives have used for decades, seems to have all kinds of political benefits.

clare.malone: I mean, the Bernie Sanders people got that memo.

(Not to dredge up old fights …)

(But bring ’em on, I guess.)

perry: This posture in the interview about the Clinton investigation helps the case against Trump in that it weakens the “investigate the investigation” crowd on the GOP side, who say the real crime was Clinton’s behavior, not Trump’s. I thought, with what Comey said about Clinton and former CIA Director David Petraeus, who resigned after a scandal in which he mishandled classified information, Comey exonerated Clinton a bit more publicly than he has before. He all but said, “I have seen real email/documents abuse, and Hillary Clinton didn’t do it, but Petraeus did.”

micah: A lot of this seems to come down to credibility to overcome partisanship. Perry, it seems like you think Comey has at least a dollop of that power?

natesilver: There are a lot of parallels between how Comey saw the various scandals and how the press covered them, including wanting to appear tough on Clinton so as to seem nonpartisan.

perry: I’m not sure if Comey or anyone can overcome partisanship. But I think the media is playing a huge role in the Russia investigation process and struggling with questions of telling this story in both an accurate way but also not being perceived as biased against Republicans and Trump. So an independent authority like Comey saying that Trump’s behavior was more questionable than Clinton’s could affect media coverage, if not the public at large.

clare.malone: Is Comey independent, though?

micah: I’m sorta moving in Perry’s direction a bit — if you follow the news super closely, I think Comey at this point reads as fully immersed in the political/partisan fight; he’s “anti-Trump.” But maybe if you’re only paying attention peripherally, “former FBI director” is what really comes through.

Like, resume-wise, Comey is as independent as they come, Clare.

clare.malone: But right now, in our present reality, is he independent?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

micah: He’s just not keeping up appearances.

natesilver: In the interview, he comes across as part of #TheResistance.

micah: Right.

chad: That says more about #TheResistance than Comey to me.

natesilver: Ehh … it’s not that interviewer George Stephanopoulos grudgingly coaxes answers out of him. Comey seems pretty eager to volunteer his opinions on Trump.

chad: Is Comey playing too much on Trump’s turf, given the personal observations and attacks? Does that weaken his argument? Or strengthen it because those comments are more likely to provoke Trump?

perry: I don’t know that him talking about Trump’s hand size was useful. Or his face color or height. That part of it was problematic.

natesilver: The answer to Chad’s question is:

He’s definitely playing on Trump’s turf by making it personal.

clare.malone: Yeah, it’s not a good look.

chad: Before Trump was elected, Omarosa said all would have to bow down to Trump:

While that was overstated, I do think that there’s a kind of Trump vortex in which people feel they need to fight him on personal terms because his way of argument is so personal and ad hominem. Sen. Marco Rubio had this problem in the primaries, when he tried to fight Trump on Trump’s terms and lost.

natesilver: And Trump doesn’t hugely mind picking a fight with Comey if they both get muddied up.

clare.malone: Comey’s whole thing should be “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion,” and he’s not making himself above reproach.

perry: Here’s that Comey quote from the book:

“His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coifed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his. …

“As he extended his hand, I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.”

In the interview, Comey said: “His tie was too long, as it always is … he looked slightly orange up close.”

This all is kind of petty to me.

It’s like how I imagine Russell Westbrook talks about Kevin Durant in private.

clare.malone: Yeah, his editor did him a disservice there. Either in making him put that in or not taking it out.

chad: My thought: Trump is protected politically because of the base, so his detractors have to resort to attacking him personally. But personal attacks are priced in at this point — the people who want Trump out (whether by impeachment or voting) need to start chipping away politically to gain any traction, in my opinion.

micah: #analysis

Next:

“The former FBI boss writes that on at least four occasions Mr Trump raised the matter of unverified claims that he watched prostitutes urinate in a hotel suite during a 2013 Moscow trip.”

natesilver:

Or maybe that statement alone doesn’t hurt … but Comey seems quite interested in gossip about the pee tape, without really providing much substantive insight into it.

He seems too eager to speculate based on incomplete facts.

clare.malone: I honestly don’t know what to think about this one.

Because Comey offers us no further evidence that he knows whether or not this is likely. He just points out that the president was fixated on it.

But like … if someone told me Russians had Kompromat on me, I’d be fixated too!

perry: I’m confused by this one. I think this is the most outlandish detail of all of the Trump scandals. I have tended not to believe it. I’m not sure Comey should have discussed it unless he had real proof. But Jonathan Chait wrote an interesting column recently on why we should consider if the “pee tape” accusation is true. And Comey’s account makes me believe it more, if only because people don’t deny very outlandish things on four separate occasions.

natesilver: But shouldn’t Comey have more insight about this than Jonathan Chait? That’s not meant as an insult to Chait, it’s just that you’d think you’d have a lot more info as head of the FBI.

clare.malone: I mean, maybe some of the stuff he can’t share publicly?

I don’t know.

I think the Steele dossier stuff is a bit distracting, I agree with all of you.

natesilver: Maybe, but Comey can be a very precise communicator when he wants to be, such as in testimony before Congress — he knows how to hint when he has more information than he can reveal publicly.

In the pee-tape stuff, he sounds like a political pundit speculating and gossiping instead, based on having no particular inside info.

micah: I wonder how knowing much what Comey knows and can’t say would affect how we’re reading all this.

perry: I actually think one thing that helps the investigation is what he did know: Comey goes into some detail in the ABC News interview to both 1. say the Russia investigation started with campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, not the dossier and 2. that he considered Steele reliable based on previous work he had done.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein/FBI Director Christopher Wray/the DOJ/the FBI have hinted at this, but can’t say it as explicitly because they are in office now and it would piss off Trump and some of the Republicans in Congress.

natesilver: I guess I just think that Comey doesn’t stick to a just-the-facts posture and that undermines his position.

chad:

My favorite line from the Comey transcript so far: pic.twitter.com/ONadbSoWXz

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) April 16, 2018

natesilver: I found Comey’s Congressional testimony very compelling, by contrast, precisely because he avoided speculation.

micah: OK, so we already covered No. 6 (Comey’s comments about Trump’s hair and hands), so let’s end this with … AGGREGATE HELP/HURT.

Overall, is he helping or hurting the case against Trump?

clare.malone: Hurting his case, overall.

natesilver:

chad: Nate, I’m curious: I know that not sticking to a just-the-facts stance undermines his argument for you as a data-/evidence-based journalist. Do you think it does the same for the public at large?

clare.malone: It makes him into a more entrenched partisan figure I think, Chad.

micah: But, to Chad’s point, couldn’t we just as convincingly argue that Comey’s flare for trolling and the lurid detail he uses helps his case by getting it more attention?

natesilver: It’s hard to know for sure, but I think the stuff about being influenced by the polls is pretty damaging, as are the personal comments he makes about Trump’s appearance.

micah: Hmmmm … I’m starting to wonder whether we’re all being a bit too highfalutin. Donald Trump won the White House, after all.

perry: Nate made the right point: Comey’s testimony on the Hill. His Hill testimony was powerful, detailed, precise and impersonal. The book/interview stuff I have seen (I haven’t read the book) has not had that same discipline. Comey has the right to write a book that maybe is more interesting, and maybe “interesting” for him or his editor means going beyond what he said on Capitol Hill.

But some of the details are not enhancing his reputation for seriousness

natesilver: “Discipline” is a great word here. If nothing else, Comey had a reputation for being a disciplined guy. But he doesn’t come across as disciplined in this PR tour. Nor does his thinking around key decisions in 2016 seem to reflect especially disciplined thinking.

perry: Part of the issue is that Comey last year basically cast the president as a bully trying to obstruct justice in his notes that got published in The New York Times, and he got a special counsel appointed and then bashed Trump on the Hill in a heavily watched hearing.

He has already helped the anti-Trump case a great deal. Beyond having tapes of Trump saying the things that Comey purports he said, I would have a hard time thinking of how Comey could be a bigger part of the case against Trump.

He may have set a standard that is hard to top.

micah: Well, he could have tried to maintain his reputation for discipline and soberness.

Anyway … that’s a WRAP!!! Last bite goes to Chad!

clare.malone:

micah: Take the last piece of pizza, Chad.

chad: Really excited for Rosenstein’s book.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

It felt like the country held its breath over four long days, anxiously awaiting one of the presidential candidates’ electoral votes to reach 270. On the morning of Nov. 7, the Associated Press finally called Pennsylvania for former Vice President Joe Biden, pushing his total vote count to 284, a divided America poured onto the streets.

Since Election Day, TIME’s photographers have been spread out across the country to capture it all. With limited access to the candidates at events due to pandemic-related precautions, they sought out creative ways to tell the story. In the end, it somehow feels closer to what we all experienced watching the election unfold on our screens — like Tony Luong’s photos of his dinner sitting before the TV in his hotel room. They saw the anxious faces over the long counting of absentee ballots in an election that saw the highest voter turnout in history.

On Saturday afternoon, jubilant celebrations sprang up in New York, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and California and went on into the night. That evening, crowds gathered around at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., to cheer and see President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris address the nation after their victory for the first time.

At the same time, since Election Day, President Donald Trump’s lawyers have been contesting the totals in many states in a series of lawsuits that have gained little traction so far. In states like Florida and Arizona, our image-makers documented protests making convoluted arguments over the tabulation process.

Here are their images and first-hand accounts of this historic moment in America.

Lorenzo Meloni—Magnum Photos for TIMEBiden-Harris supporters celebrate their win in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 7.

Malike Sidibe for TIME—Malike SidibeTimes Square in New York City on Nov. 7, after news organizations projected Biden defeated Trump.

Malike Sidibe for TIME—Malike SidibePeople dressed up like President Trump were frequent in celebrations of his defeat, like this one in New York City on Nov. 7.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMECelebrations erupted near the White House in Washington, D.C., after Biden was declared the winner of the election.

Lorenzo Meloni—Magnum Photos for TIMEA reveler climbs a traffic light on Black Lives Matter Plaza while celebrating in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 7.

Lorenzo Meloni—Magnum Photos for TIMEConfetti explodes as celebrations erupt in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 7.

Lorenzo Meloni—Magnum Photos for TIMEA “USA IS BACK” sign is displayed near the Washington Monument.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMECrowds of people at Black Lives Matter Plaza celebrate the result.

“These are fragments I remember from the long week: The President’s usually defined and controlled expressions dropping for a brief moment into melancholy and unease.

The nearly empty Black Lives Matter Plaza on election night at 4AM, a woman dressed as a clown dancing flamboyantly and taping anti-Trump signs to the asphalt.

The boarded up store-fronts and empty streets in a normally bustling neighborhood near the White House.

A young White House staffer in a small alley at night outside the West Wing, her face catching the light for a split second revealing a tear streaked-face before turning quickly back into the shadow.

The swell of a cheer from a small crowd, followed by a few car honks, then more honking then cheers from every direction, as Joe Biden was announced as President-elect.

I’ve never seen such joy and relief in such numbers in an American city in my life. It also made me think of all the people disconsolate that their beloved president had lost the race.” —Peter van Agtmeal

September Dawn BottomsCelebrations in downtown Los Angeles after former Vice President Joe Biden was named President-elect on Nov. 7.

Michelle Gustafson for TIMEMembers of President-elect Joe Biden’s staff celebrate his victory in Rittenhouse Square Park in Philadelphia on Nov. 7.

Michelle Gustafson for TIMEVance Edwards and his partner Vik Bathula stand for a portrait in the middle of Broad Street while celebrating Biden’s victory on Nov. 7.

Lorenzo Meloni—Magnum Photos for TIMEA man climbs a street lamp on Black Lives Matter Plaza while celebrating the election results.

“I must admit that I don’t know much about the United States. This trip I have chosen to do right now, during one of the most polarizing moments in its history, is precisely to get to know this country better.

One of the things that surprised me was having these big rallies inside airports or in what look like shopping mall parking lots. I tried to return to these places at the end of the great events trying to make sense of it but without finding it.

In Italy or France, such a rally would probably take place in symbolic places like the Piazza del Popolo rather than in sterile places decorated for the occasion.

I found the election system particularly complicated, and am heartened by the fact that the current President is also finding it difficult to understand who won.

Although I am particularly happy to see my American friends and colleagues rejoice in Biden’s victory, as a photographer who has worked for many years in the Middle East, I hope that the United States, democratic or republican, will be more careful with their foreign policies.” —Lorenzo Meloni

Michelle Gustafson for TIMESupporters of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris await their remarks outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 7.

Michelle Gustafson for TIMEAmira Ferjani, 19, waits for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and President-elect Joe Biden’s remarks outside the Chase Center.

Michelle Gustafson for TIMEZach Rossetti, 25, holds a Biden flag on top of his car outside the Chase Center. Rossetti traveled from Scranton, Pa., to witness Biden’s speech. “It’s not every day that the President-elect is from your hometown,” he said.

Michelle Gustafson for TIME“Vote” nails are seen on Madison Kopie, 25, as she sits on her car outside the Chase Center.

“I had been sitting in a park in Philadelphia with a friend on Saturday morning, and all of a sudden, people around us started screaming, car horns honking, collective cheering, and a literal church bell ringing. It was a domino effect of people realizing Pennsylvania had been called for Biden.

There had been a cloud of anxiety and tension that was palpable in the city since Tuesday, but once it was announced, it was as if a dam had broken. I remember a band in Rittenhouse Square had been playing, and when the news came out, they started to play “When the Saints Go Marching In.” People were running out of their houses towards Broad Street and City Hall, dancing to someone’s stereo playing “Party in the USA.” The one word I heard the most in Philadelphia and later in Wilmington was “relief.”

In Wilmington, when the fireworks went off at the end of Biden’s speech, looking around at so many varieties of people in; race, gender, and age, all chanting “USA! USA! USA!” together. You could feel this electric unity running through everyone in that crowd.” —Michelle Gustafson

Michelle GustafsonSocks with Biden’s face are seen on Madison Kopie as she sits on her car outside the Chase Center.

Michelle Gustafson for TIMEMia Duran, 6, of Claymont, Del., outside the Chase Center in Wilmington while people wait for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to deliver their victory speeches.

© Patience ZalangaDemonstrators march and dance in South Minneapolis on Nov. 7.

Patience Zalanga for TIMEAn Aztec dance group in South Minneapolis on Nov. 7.

John Francis PetersCelebrations for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in San Diego on Nov. 7.

Jamie Lee Curtis TaeteA protester holding a sign with Christian and QAnon slogans at a pro-Trump rally in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Nov 7.

“Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to in LA spent the days after the election was in a weird state of limbo, where they were unable to get any work done, or read a book, or concentrate on TV, or even sleep. Election Day simultaneously feels like it was yesterday, and also three months ago. It was difficult for me to put together the captions for these photos just now because everything that’s happened since the election has just sort of melted together into one long anxiety dream.” —Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Sinna Nasseri for TIMEA group of Trump and Biden supporters made an effort to talk about unity and moving forward at the Maricopa County Elections Office in Phoenix on Nov. 7.

Sinna Nasseri for TIMETrump supporters rally at the Maricopa County Elections Office in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 7

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEJoe Biden’s first speech as President-elect is broadcast at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 7.

Ruddy Roye for TIMESupporters of President Trump demonstrate and argue with members of the media and become hostile at the Cuban restaurant La Carreta in Miami on Nov. 7.

“It is here, in the center of a Trump supporters’ rally, that I found myself coming home, with Ruddy Roye in tow, only to be cast out by my community. The crowd last night outside La Carreta on Bird Road first turned on a cameraman for Telemundo before shifting focus toward running us out of the lot. They asked why we’d come here, and Ruddy answered: ‘Because I have always been interested in the eyes of the other.’

Four years ago, it was the eyes of the Democrats we looked into in order to understand how a nation carries on beyond the fervor of a national election. The lessons are in that disappointment. And these eyes in Florida betrayed the same pain we saw then — disenfranchisement, fear for moral values, work, culture and more. The community is raw, visceral and animalistic in its anger.

It’s important to come to know that insidious mistrust that would provoke someone to put hands on people they don’t know, who are just trying to do their jobs. To call through megaphones for the destruction of the ‘communists’ they claimed we were. To call for the truth and transparency Cuba’s dictatorship refused, only to then hunt down anyone there to hear it, using the Cuban flag as the banner under which to drive them out. As a community and as a culture, we have to ask ourselves what we fled for.” —Reported by Rebecca Lee Sanchez

Ruddy Roye for TIMEA supporter of President Trump poses for a photograph in Miami on Nov. 7.

Patience Zalanga for TIMEMembers of The New Black Panther Party make an appearance at George Floyd Square in South Minneapolis on Nov. 7.

Patience Zalanga for TIMETrump supporters protest the outcome of the election in front of the Minnesota Governor’s mansion in St. Paul, Minn., on Nov. 7.

Sinna Nasseri for TIMEWomen pray in the parking lot outside of the Maricopa County Elections Office in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 6.

“Here in Phoenix, Trump supporters have been very vocal since the election, with protests each day and into the late evening. It’s a fascinating melange of the Trump faithful: evangelicals, internet provocateurs, heavily armed militia members and white nationalists. They don’t trust the election results and conspiracy theories fly around like MAGA flags in the wind.

The hard core supporters here don’t seem like they’re going anywhere. They’re distrustful of the legitimacy of the process, and I don’t see them accepting the results.” —Sinna Nasseri

Sinna Nasseri for TIMEA Trump supporter at the Maricopa County Elections Office in Phoenix on Nov. 6.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEAn empty White House Press Briefing Room room after the President delivered remarks on Nov. 5.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEA building’s revolving door, boarded up as a precaution amid potential unrest related to the presidential election, in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEA “Count the Vote” rally in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 6.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEThe White House grounds on Nov. 6, when the results remained unclear.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEPresident Trump enters the East Room of the White House on Nov. 4 to deliver remarks as results of the election remained unclear.

Peter van Agtmael—Magnum Photos for TIMEA performance artist at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in the early hours of Nov. 4.

Jamie Lee Curtis TaeteA woman at a street party celebrating the projected election loss of County District Attorney Jackie Lacey in Los Angeles on Nov. 4.

Rian Dundon for TIMEPeople watch Black Lives Matter protesters march through a residential area in Portland, Ore., on Election Day.

Rian Dundon for TIMEBlack Lives Matter protesters march through a residential neighborhood in Portland, Ore., on Election Day.

Jamie Lee Curtis TaeteA scene outside the voting station at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Nov. 3.

Jamie Lee Curtis TaeteA man at a pro-Trump rally in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Nov. 3 wears a shirt printed with an image from 2016 of a woman crying after learning that Hillary Clinton had lost the election.

I saw and felt an overall sense of calm in Wilmington on Election Day, consisting of equal parts of nervousness and confidence. From 7AM to 7PM, I drove all around Wilmington through various neighborhoods, both urban and suburban. Folks were commuting to their jobs, kids playing in their yards, construction workers resuming their projects, and lastly, voters waiting to vote. I saw Biden/Harris signs every few houses or so.I didn’t see any agitators at any polling locations or major gathering areas, nor did I see any rallies or conflicts between Trump and Biden supporters. Still, the one thing I did feel was this sense of anticipation that couldn’t be outwardly expressed within the wait for the results to come in.

One moment that stood out to me was in the evening at the Chase Center, where President-elect Biden held his event. As everyone waited for the first states to begin calling their vote counts, a few Biden supporters began to trickle in hopes of seeing the President-elect speak or even being let in. That was impossible due to the coronavirus and restrictions. I walked along the barricade and noticed this mother and her daughter quietly staring at the massive American flag that hung from the cranes inside the event area. There was something hopeful and incredibly quiet about that, being on one side of the fence gazing at a symbol of freedom and hope. It seemed to sum up the voices of everyone in the country and where it was headed and how we were going to move forward regardless of the outcome. — Tony Luong

Tony Luong for TIMEDinner in a hotel room watching former Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden on Nov. 3 as election results began to stream in.

from TIME https://ift.tt/3n8Sge5

[tptruepolitics]

Election Prediction 2020

So, I know this didn’t get posted when I said it would, but I think the closer we get to the election the busier life seems to be. Either way, I hope you enjoy this 2,400 word unofficial read!

Half a month away from the most critical election in our lifetime, and despite what the polls may say, most people believe that it is still anybody’s game. This is so true, in fact, that the “get out the vote” effort has never been more prominent. Between the barrage of political news, the endless commercials from “non-partisan” or “independent” groups telling you to get out to the polls and make your voice heard, or the political t-shirts that half of the random people you meet are wearing, there is no avoiding the fateful decision of who to vote for this election cycle, or whether to vote at all. Now, I can touch on the second issue a little later, but I perfectly intend to ignore the first one completely. It’s not my job to tell you who to vote for. The main focus of this article will be a prediction (of sorts) as to who might win. I say of sorts, because I will largely be ignoring conventional methods i.e. polls, surveys, and history in general, and will instead be focusing on feelings. I know that Ben Shapiro famously claims that “facts don’t care about your feelings” and this is a credible claim when you are discussing an issue that has everything to do with facts and nearly nothing to do with feelings. However, in this regard, the lauded political analyst is missing a key component to the election cycle.

Last election cycle, in 2016, it seemed that everyone and their mother was completely and utterly shocked when the election results revealed Donald Trump to be the victor – everyone that is, except me. I was nearly certain, although I revealed my prediction to no one (shame on me), that Donald Trump would win, and was subsequently minutely surprised at how surprised everyone was. Not to name drop here more than I should, but even Ben Shapiro claims to have lost money on the election, and still proclaims today that virtually no one saw this coming. Even one of my best friends – who voted for Trump – did not expect him to actually win. Why is this? Well, most people were reading the polls and saw that Trump was behind a fair amount days before the election. For those who didn’t support Trump, they couldn’t imagine that there would be enough “crazy” people in the country to vote for someone whom they viewed as a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, Islamaphobic, xenophobic monster, who was altogether unfit to be the President of the US. The people who supported didn’t believe that they had the votes to elect him, because of all the hateful information that was being spread about him, and were simply voting for him as a vote against the system. There were only a few people who believed he could actually win. I was one of them, not to toot my own horn here.

Why did I believe he could win? Well, I was reading the responses of the media, and the responses of my (college) friends, and I was tuning into my solidarity. Firstly, anytime I had a conversation with friends about politics, it was about how bad Trump was, not how Hillary Clinton was such a great candidate. That was the first hint! No one liked Hillary Clinton. As a matter of fact, I think this goes back further than Hillary. Surely, she was an awful candidate that made you cringe every time you heard her speak, but her politics weren’t much different from her predecessor. Barack Obama, in my opinion, is only a popular president on paper. He was a smooth talker, had a way of feeling relatable, even through his highly polished statements, not unlike Clinton, and was an attractive man, for whatever that’s worth. Nevertheless, his policies were garbage for the most part, and they were not the focus of his presidency. The American public liked Barack Obama because of his personality, not his politics. Hillary was proof of that: nearly mirrored policies, but none of the charisma. Some people pointed out that Hillary had no consistency in her political stances, having flipped on many of them over the years, and that made her unreliable. I don’t think this was a relevant issue for election purposes. Barack Obama got elected with nearly no political history, and therefore an empty track record. No, the elections are hardly ever about credibility. So, because people were not excited about Hillary Clinton, they did not show up to vote. Sure! That’s a fair argument, and it seems to have weight in the voter turnout statistics.

What about Donald Trump? Were people really excited about him? That’s the real question! Trump routinely turned off many in the Republican Party because of his brashness and rudeness. The people that voted for Trump were different people than voted for Mitt Romney four years prior. It is true that Donald Trump did not out-perform Romney as far as sheer numbers are concerned, and it’s also true that he performed nearly identically to Romney in many areas of the country. However, there is a difference between getting the same amount of votes, and getting the same votes. I do think that there were many people in the country who felt disenfranchised about the state of politics in the US, and wouldn’t have voted had Trump not been on the ballot. He certainly reached a new breed of voter, despite turning many away. Now, the real question becomes, will the voters he previously turned away and did not clinch last election cycle be willing to cast their votes for him this election cycle? And also, will it be enough?

Last election cycle, Donald Trump ran on conservative principles, but many people did not believe that he was going to govern conservatively. This was another reason, some conservatives did not vote for Trump: they believed he would swindle the American people – run as a conservative, and govern as a liberal. Have they been proven wrong or what? Since 2016 the Trump administration – no matter what you might think of the policies themselves – has instituted more conservative policies than the past three conservative administrations before it. For the conservatives that were hesitant to give Trump their support in the 2016 election, this should be a wakeup call. He is not putting forth empty promises. He fully intends to do what he says. Have some of them fallen flat? Sure! Did Mexico ever pay for that border wall? Of course they didn’t. That was an impossible promise to make, and I don’t honestly think he even believed he could make Mexico pay for that wall, but it sure made headline news! So, I do think that Trump can make headway in the conservative/republican voter turnout. I believe that he will get more conservative votes this year that in 2016 by a lot, but once again, will it be enough?

This brings us to Joe Biden: 47(ish) years in politics – the exact opposite of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. He has quite the resume. Whether you think that Joe Biden’s positions in the past were good, you have to admit that he has the appeal of dependability. He comes off as friendly, polite, goofy even, and a return to “normalcy” – whatever that means to you. This appeal is extremely appetizing to those who care less about the politics of a president, but care more about the extreme, over-the-top news coverage, day-in and day-out of the every move of the President and his administration. The scandals, the conspiracies, the constant barrage of political haymaking – they just want it to stop, and Joe Biden is a return to that. Now, the real question is, is that enough? If we are just talking about how people feel, without taking policies and current events into account, Trump would probably win by a landslide. Once we put current affairs into the equation and recalculate feelings, the water gets muddier.

2020 is the year to remember, right? That’s what they’re saying. It’s the worst year in the history of years. Wrong. . . This is untrue for a couple of reasons. Firstly, does anyone remember 2016? That was supposed to be the year that we tried to forget. There were memes about history books skipping 2016 and students asking “what happened to 2016”, with teachers responding, “We don’t talk about that”. This seems to be what is going to happen every four years or so for the rest of humanity. The year you live in is the worst it can get and it can’t get any worse. I mean, to recap this year, there was Corona Virus (big one), George Floyd dying, riots that burned businesses and hurt innocent people, murder hornets (is that still a thing), wild fires across California, did I mention Corona Virus, the shutting down of the economy leading to the largest and fastest recession since who knows when, the conclusion of Russian Gate (YES! THAT WAS THS YEAR! Feels like it was 17 years ago, doesn’t it?), and did I mention Corona Virus!! I’m sure I missed stuff. There’s too much to recall. But is this the worst year in the history of our country? No. . . . and it won’t be remembered that way either. I can think of several years that were worse without even trying: Civil War years, any year with slavery I think would count, Jim Crow segregation years, the Great Depression years, the Attack on Pearl Harbor and the years following, the Cold War years, the Columbine shooting year, 2001 and the aftermath of 9/11. All of these are worse than this year, and I hope it stays that way, whether Joe Biden gets elected or Donald Trump gets reelected. I think it would be wiser of us to focus on what we have rather than on what we don’t have.

Now, how does all this affect the election? Well, it doesn’t look good for Trump, that’s how. You see, not being in charge of the administration has some really great benefits! The biggest and best of those is that you can point to all the terrible things that happened in the past year and say, “that wouldn’t have happened under my watch.” Is that a true statement? No. Is that a false statement? Also, no! It’s an unprovable statement, which leaves all to the imagination. And trust me; people have active imaginations this year. This is precisely the attack that Joe Biden and the Democrats are using, and it’s a smart move. It’s pretty much the only move, because aside from the craziness of this year, I’m pretty sure most people were satisfied with the Trump presidency. The economy was booming, taxes were cut, ISIS was stomped out, peace in the Middle East is underway (missed that headline, did you?), unemployment was at a historical low, crime was low… I mean say what you want, but Trump’s administration was doing well overall. The effects that the current events of this year have on the election nearly wipe away the memories of voters though. And it is all about whether the people view Trump as responsible for them or not. Honestly, I think the jury is still out on that one. I think it is fair to say that the election will be the definitive way to tell whether Trump is getting all the blame or only some of it.

So, what about the past month? The presidential debate was an opportunity for Trump to really explain how he didn’t screw up and show people that he is fighting for them. Instead it was Chewbacca vs. the Swedish Chef (yes, I stole that from Ben Shapiro, so sue me), where Donald Trump just howled at anyone who would talk, and Joe Biden just filled in the gaps with mostly nonsensical jargon. Of course, Ben Shapiro missed the role of Chris Wallace who was Miss Piggy trying to save Kermit by yelling at the Wookie every time he tried to bash her hubby. Or was Trump Miss Piggy and Joe Fozzie Bear, and Chris Kermit? I’m not sure. Either way, Trump hurt himself more than he helped himself. The Vice Presidential Debates, which of course no one watched, were much more substantive and meaningful, especially since it is VERY likely that Joe Biden will not last through his first term. This debate, had anyone watched it, would have helped Trump immensely. I don’t think it was the “boom! Gotcha!” debate that every conservative plays it up to be – and I mean every conservative. But I do think that it was a good showing for how similar Kamala Harris is to Hillary Clinton in demeanor. That could easily be a turnoff for many voters, reducing enthusiasm for Biden (or what little enthusiasm there is for him).

That’s another point; Joe Biden doesn’t have much of an appeal except that he isn’t Trump. Now, with the massive get out the vote efforts that are upon us country wide, I think it is safe to say that Biden will not have too much trouble getting votes from people who are less than politically inclined. So, the massive amounts of voters simply against Trump may truly be the turnout of the election. I have friends that believe that Trump will win in a landslide, and I have friends that think that Biden will win in a landslide. I’m leaning towards the latter. This is my official prediction. I will be shocked if Trump actually makes it through this time.

One final note, however, if you are indeed a person who is being pressured into voting one way or another and you haven’t the slightest political insight, stay home. Uninformed voters are the single greatest threat to a democracy. When everyone is voting based on feelings instead of policy, the entire country loses, no matter who is running. It is your right and privilege to vote, but not your obligation or responsibility. It is your obligation and responsibility to make an informed vote, should you chose to vote. Otherwise, you are doing everyone a great disservice.

With that said, I hope you have enjoyed this mini and certainly unofficial analysis of the election 2020. Tell me what you think! If you think I’m full of #*$%, that’s nothing new to politics! That’s why we have so much TP here at True Politics!

[timalexanderdollery]

Did Rand Paul betray libertarians?

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., leaves the Senate floor after a vote in the Capitol on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call

The senator was once dubbed “the most exciting figure in politics” for libertarians. Now he’s one of Trump’s biggest allies. Why?

In 2014, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told an audience at an event in Florida that the Whistleblower Protection Act should be expanded to include government contractors like former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. Paul repeated the view in a 2015 speech on the Senate floor in which he praised whistleblowers who had come forward to tell America that the NSA was collecting phone records on a mass scale as part of the Patriot Act — which Paul called “the most unpatriotic of acts.”

But in 2019, Paul seems to feel differently about whistleblowers, at least the individual whose complaint kicked off House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

At a rally for Trump’s 2020 campaign in Kentucky last Monday, Paul said, “We also now know the name of the whistleblower. I say tonight to the media, ‘Do your job and print his name!’” He’s argued on Twitter that not only is it essential to reveal the name of the whistleblower but also that to not do so would be a violation of Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to face his accuser.

But in Paul’s view, the two perspectives make total sense, as does his unwavering support for Trump, whose presidency has pushed a number of libertarians out of the Republican Party altogether. And though some libertarians — who once hoped Paul could bring about the “libertarian moment” in American politics — have been disappointed by his turn toward Trump, Paul argues he can do more to advance libertarian ideals from inside the halls of power and with the ear of the president.

Shifting views on the importance of whistleblowers

I reached out to Paul’s office, and a representative for the senator said that Paul’s views on whistleblowers have not changed. The representative noted that on November 6, Paul gave a floor speech extolling the importance of whistleblowers and introducing legislation that would extend whistleblower protections to all federal government contractors — not just federal employees or contractors within the intelligence community — and that would retroactively give that protection to contractors like Snowden.

But the next day, Paul blocked a Senate resolution in support of whistleblowers, terming it “fake outrage.” And his own legislation, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 2019, concludes with this sentence:

Congress reaffirms that, in the case of criminal prosecutions and impeachments arising from the disclosures of whistleblowers, the accused has the right to confront his or her accuser in such proceedings and that right is not superseded by the whistleblower protections.

This is why Paul’s office claimed his stance had not changed: Paul’s calls for the whistleblower’s unmasking are in this view not about stripping him of his rights, but about allowing the president to “confront” his accuser.

It is a case Paul makes explicitly in a piece for the Hill, in which he argues that because “the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to confront one’s accusers,” Trump “must both face his accuser and face questions regarding his own knowledge and activities.”

It is a case Paul has also made on Twitter:

Enshrined in the 6th Amendment is the right to confront your accuser. 15th century Doges allowed anonymous allegations inserted in the mouth of the lion to convict the innocent with gossip.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 5, 2019

But that argument doesn’t seem to hold up with legal thinkers, even those who might be supportive of the president. Conservative writer and former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy (who recently published a book lambasting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation), wrote in National Review of Rand Paul, “As a constitutional lawyer, Rand Paul makes a good medical doctor.”

McCarthy added that, though the whistleblower’s anonymity may not be protected by law (while also noting that Paul himself has not said the person’s name), “The Sixth Amendment has nothing to do with impeachment, and it does not advance a claim that the ‘whistleblower’ should be outed and questioned.”

Scott Shackford, an associate editor at Reason Magazine, wrote of Paul’s argument, “The way Paul is talking about revealing the whistleblower now — during the investigation itself — is akin to the police revealing the names of witnesses to a suspect long before that suspect has been charged with any crime,” adding, “The Sixth Amendment does not require the naming of witnesses in an investigation, nor should it.”

For many libertarians, Paul’s desire to unmask the whistleblower has not been popular. Nick Gillespie, Reason’s editor-at-large, told me, “Paul’s call to out the whistleblower and his insistence that Trump has a constitutional right to face his accuser — as if impeachment or just normal politics is a court battle — doesn’t play well among most libertarians I talk with.”

From “the most exciting figure in politics” to a Trump “cheerleader”

Paul entered Congress with a family name virtually synonymous with the libertarian movement (his first name, after all, is in honor of the writer Ayn Rand, a major influence on philosophical libertarianism.) His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, was a three-time presidential candidate and one of the most influential voices in libertarian circles, advocating for non-interventionism abroad, limited government at home, and extreme fiscal conservatism.

Rand managed his father’s 1996 congressional campaign, and supporters of his father urged Rand to run for one of Kentucky’s two Senate seats — which he did, after Rep. Jim Bunning declined to run again, citing Republican opposition.

In a 2009 interview with CNN, Rand said he was running because “I’m very worried about our country; I’m worried about the debt. I’m worried about what the debt will lead to. Both sides of the aisle — Republican and Democrat — have been unwilling and afraid to address the deficit, and someone’s got to.” His father said of Rand, “I think the family sort of expected that he would be the first one to get to politics like this.”

Rand’s win in 2010, amid the rise of the Tea Party (some members of which viewed Ron as the “intellectual godfather” and “brain”), was seen as a harbinger of things to come, not only for the Tea Party but also for libertarian-leaning voters and thinkers across the country. Though there are relatively few Americans who describe themselves as “libertarian” (roughly 11 percent of Americans did so in 2014), the Libertarian Party is the nation’s third-largest political party. A number of Americans hold libertarian-leaning viewpoints, leading to many arguing (granted, not for the first time) that a watershed moment for the ideology was afoot.

As the Cato Institute’s David Boaz told the Atlantic in 2013, America has a “core libertarian attitude.”

“Skepticism about power and about government, individualism, the idea that we’re all equal under the law, free enterprise, getting ahead in the world through your own hard work — all of those ideas are very fundamentally American,” Boaz said at the time. And Rand was viewed as the person to take those viewpoints to the highest echelon of American politics.

Former Rep. Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican who entered Congress at the same time as Rand, told me, “I believe his message was an extension of his father’s strong Libertarian principles, and that was pivotal in 2010 as it ushered in the Tea Party movement. That message was that business as usual was not appropriate and that government should get their fiscal house in order, and get out of the business of health care, and don’t apologize for America.”

Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie said that when Rand first entered the Senate back in 2010, he “was the most exciting figure in politics, not just for libertarians but for most thoughtful Americans.”

In Gillespie’s view, Rand “seemed likely to bring what [Reason editor-at-large] Matt Welch and I had called ‘the libertarian moment’ to fruition: Here was a guy who was talking seriously and persuasively about reducing the size, scope, and spending of the federal government in every dimension; who was attacking police abuses in Ferguson, [Missouri]; calling for an end to the drug war; and reaching out to black and Latino audiences in serious ways; and who said of illegal immigrants, ‘If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you.’”

When he was preparing to run for president, Rand continued to emphasize his desire to see the GOP become a bigger tent, saying in 2014 that the party could not simply be for “fat cats, rich people, and Wall Street.”

But Rand’s more recent actions — lambasting the Ukraine whistleblower and demanding his name be revealed publicly, and his seeming enthusiasm for Trump — has turned off many libertarians. In a piece for Reason titled “Rand Paul Wants Whistleblower Outed. Libertarians Want the Old Rand Paul Back,” Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote:

Paul’s enthusiastic and near perpetual support for Trump actions continues to bum out many libertarians — who had hoped Rand would turn out more like his father, former Rep. Ron Paul — and limited-government conservatives, for whom the Kentucky senator was a bright spot back when the Tea Party movement showed promise and principles. In the #MAGA era, Paul has become one of the biggest cheerleaders of Trump-style Republicanism and a tireless defender of the president’s perspective.

Allahpundit, an anonymous blogger for the conservative website Hot Air, told me of Rand, “I remember his acceptance speech in 2010, when he beat Trey Grayson in the primary, right at the moment that Tea Party conservatism was catching fire. Grayson was the McConnell-backed establishmentarian, Paul was the populist outsider.”

The writer added, “Specifically, I remember him addressing Washington and telling him that he had a ‘message from the Tea Party.’ What did that message turn out to be? ‘Anything for Trump.’”

Rand’s particular calculus on supporting the president is complex: He once called Trump a “delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag.” But he clearly believes that staying within the bounds of the Republican Party — and firmly in support of the president — is his best option for pushing Trump, and the GOP, in a more libertarian direction. (By contrast, Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian who left the Republican Party in July, has voiced support for impeachment.)

As Gillespie told me, “I think he’s trying to figure out ways to advance his agenda, which ultimately is about balancing the budget and scaling back the warfare state. I suspect that he figures he’s got a better chance of getting some or all of that done by being the president’s good graces.”

Ross said much the same: “I don’t think he changed his principles, I think he was made aware of a different manner in which to advocate those principles. Hence his somewhat cordial relationship with this president.”

A libertarian angel on Trump’s shoulder?

As conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued in 2018, perhaps Trump didn’t defeat libertarian ideals in 2016, but rather reappropriated them for his own purposes — most prominently with foreign policy, where Trump ran hard against the Iraq War and interventionism (and against America’s intelligence services, of which Rand is a longtime skeptic) and won.

That’s where Rand has centered his efforts to influence Trump. For example, he argued in June against a potential war with Iran during an appearance on Fox News — the president’s favorite television channel.

“One of the things I like about President Trump is that he said the Iraq War was a mistake,” Rand said. “I think an Iran war would be even a bigger mistake than the Iraq War. We lost over 4,000 soldiers over there. I don’t think we need to get involved in another war.”

I am happy to see a President who can declare victory and bring our troops out of a war. It’s been a long time since that has happened. https://t.co/fEBb8080fK

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 19, 2018

It’s not as though Rand has stopped fighting Republicans in his efforts to court Trump. He joined Democrats in adding an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that required congressional approval before money could be used in military operations in Iran.

But the problem he faces is that Trump’s occasional nod to libertarian ideals has little to do with the ideals themselves. After all, troops originally withdrawn from Syria by Trump have now been tasked with protecting Syrian oil fields, and the practice of wiretapping American citizens (something Rand has spoken out against) has not only continued under the Trump administration but also widened, with some of Trump’s biggest allies voting to maintain Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and give it additional powers (and Trump signing that expansion into law).

On other issues, like the deficit, Rand continues to rail against the Republican status quo, calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution — and the president doesn’t seem to care. Sure, Trump and Rand may find common ground on certain issues (like the debate over Russian interference), but that seems more to do with what Trump thinks will be most beneficial for Trump.

Despite this, in an interview with libertarian commentator John Stossel, one of Rand’s biggest supporters, he said “progress has been made” in the fight for libertarian ideals, citing tax cuts, fewer regulations, and Trump’s call for an end to “endless wars.”

When Stossel noted that Trump “hasn’t pulled out of anywhere,” Rand responded, “Compare it, though, to George W. Bush, who got us involved everywhere. Or President Obama, who sent 100,000 troops to Afghanistan. The rhetoric of President Trump has been, I think, a relief.”

“Has it happened yet? No,” he acknowledged. “But I continue to push.”

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[shanedakotamuir]

Did Rand Paul betray libertarians?

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., leaves the Senate floor after a vote in the Capitol on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call

The senator was once dubbed “the most exciting figure in politics” for libertarians. Now he’s one of Trump’s biggest allies. Why?

In 2014, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told an audience at an event in Florida that the Whistleblower Protection Act should be expanded to include government contractors like former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. Paul repeated the view in a 2015 speech on the Senate floor in which he praised whistleblowers who had come forward to tell America that the NSA was collecting phone records on a mass scale as part of the Patriot Act — which Paul called “the most unpatriotic of acts.”

But in 2019, Paul seems to feel differently about whistleblowers, at least the individual whose complaint kicked off House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

At a rally for Trump’s 2020 campaign in Kentucky last Monday, Paul said, “We also now know the name of the whistleblower. I say tonight to the media, ‘Do your job and print his name!’” He’s argued on Twitter that not only is it essential to reveal the name of the whistleblower but also that to not do so would be a violation of Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to face his accuser.

But in Paul’s view, the two perspectives make total sense, as does his unwavering support for Trump, whose presidency has pushed a number of libertarians out of the Republican Party altogether. And though some libertarians — who once hoped Paul could bring about the “libertarian moment” in American politics — have been disappointed by his turn toward Trump, Paul argues he can do more to advance libertarian ideals from inside the halls of power and with the ear of the president.

Shifting views on the importance of whistleblowers

I reached out to Paul’s office, and a representative for the senator said that Paul’s views on whistleblowers have not changed. The representative noted that on November 6, Paul gave a floor speech extolling the importance of whistleblowers and introducing legislation that would extend whistleblower protections to all federal government contractors — not just federal employees or contractors within the intelligence community — and that would retroactively give that protection to contractors like Snowden.

But the next day, Paul blocked a Senate resolution in support of whistleblowers, terming it “fake outrage.” And his own legislation, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 2019, concludes with this sentence:

Congress reaffirms that, in the case of criminal prosecutions and impeachments arising from the disclosures of whistleblowers, the accused has the right to confront his or her accuser in such proceedings and that right is not superseded by the whistleblower protections.

This is why Paul’s office claimed his stance had not changed: Paul’s calls for the whistleblower’s unmasking are in this view not about stripping him of his rights, but about allowing the president to “confront” his accuser.

It is a case Paul makes explicitly in a piece for the Hill, in which he argues that because “the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to confront one’s accusers,” Trump “must both face his accuser and face questions regarding his own knowledge and activities.”

It is a case Paul has also made on Twitter:

Enshrined in the 6th Amendment is the right to confront your accuser. 15th century Doges allowed anonymous allegations inserted in the mouth of the lion to convict the innocent with gossip.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 5, 2019

But that argument doesn’t seem to hold up with legal thinkers, even those who might be supportive of the president. Conservative writer and former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy (who recently published a book lambasting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation), wrote in National Review of Rand Paul, “As a constitutional lawyer, Rand Paul makes a good medical doctor.”

McCarthy added that, though the whistleblower’s anonymity may not be protected by law (while also noting that Paul himself has not said the person’s name), “The Sixth Amendment has nothing to do with impeachment, and it does not advance a claim that the ‘whistleblower’ should be outed and questioned.”

Scott Shackford, an associate editor at Reason Magazine, wrote of Paul’s argument, “The way Paul is talking about revealing the whistleblower now — during the investigation itself — is akin to the police revealing the names of witnesses to a suspect long before that suspect has been charged with any crime,” adding, “The Sixth Amendment does not require the naming of witnesses in an investigation, nor should it.”

For many libertarians, Paul’s desire to unmask the whistleblower has not been popular. Nick Gillespie, Reason’s editor-at-large, told me, “Paul’s call to out the whistleblower and his insistence that Trump has a constitutional right to face his accuser — as if impeachment or just normal politics is a court battle — doesn’t play well among most libertarians I talk with.”

From “the most exciting figure in politics” to a Trump “cheerleader”

Paul entered Congress with a family name virtually synonymous with the libertarian movement (his first name, after all, is in honor of the writer Ayn Rand, a major influence on philosophical libertarianism.) His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, was a three-time presidential candidate and one of the most influential voices in libertarian circles, advocating for non-interventionism abroad, limited government at home, and extreme fiscal conservatism.

Rand managed his father’s 1996 congressional campaign, and supporters of his father urged Rand to run for one of Kentucky’s two Senate seats — which he did, after Rep. Jim Bunning declined to run again, citing Republican opposition.

In a 2009 interview with CNN, Rand said he was running because “I’m very worried about our country; I’m worried about the debt. I’m worried about what the debt will lead to. Both sides of the aisle — Republican and Democrat — have been unwilling and afraid to address the deficit, and someone’s got to.” His father said of Rand, “I think the family sort of expected that he would be the first one to get to politics like this.”

Rand’s win in 2010, amid the rise of the Tea Party (some members of which viewed Ron as the “intellectual godfather” and “brain”), was seen as a harbinger of things to come, not only for the Tea Party but also for libertarian-leaning voters and thinkers across the country. Though there are relatively few Americans who describe themselves as “libertarian” (roughly 11 percent of Americans did so in 2014), the Libertarian Party is the nation’s third-largest political party. A number of Americans hold libertarian-leaning viewpoints, leading to many arguing (granted, not for the first time) that a watershed moment for the ideology was afoot.

As the Cato Institute’s David Boaz told the Atlantic in 2013, America has a “core libertarian attitude.”

“Skepticism about power and about government, individualism, the idea that we’re all equal under the law, free enterprise, getting ahead in the world through your own hard work — all of those ideas are very fundamentally American,” Boaz said at the time. And Rand was viewed as the person to take those viewpoints to the highest echelon of American politics.

Former Rep. Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican who entered Congress at the same time as Rand, told me, “I believe his message was an extension of his father’s strong Libertarian principles, and that was pivotal in 2010 as it ushered in the Tea Party movement. That message was that business as usual was not appropriate and that government should get their fiscal house in order, and get out of the business of health care, and don’t apologize for America.”

Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie said that when Rand first entered the Senate back in 2010, he “was the most exciting figure in politics, not just for libertarians but for most thoughtful Americans.”

In Gillespie’s view, Rand “seemed likely to bring what [Reason editor-at-large] Matt Welch and I had called ‘the libertarian moment’ to fruition: Here was a guy who was talking seriously and persuasively about reducing the size, scope, and spending of the federal government in every dimension; who was attacking police abuses in Ferguson, [Missouri]; calling for an end to the drug war; and reaching out to black and Latino audiences in serious ways; and who said of illegal immigrants, ‘If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you.’”

When he was preparing to run for president, Rand continued to emphasize his desire to see the GOP become a bigger tent, saying in 2014 that the party could not simply be for “fat cats, rich people, and Wall Street.”

But Rand’s more recent actions — lambasting the Ukraine whistleblower and demanding his name be revealed publicly, and his seeming enthusiasm for Trump — has turned off many libertarians. In a piece for Reason titled “Rand Paul Wants Whistleblower Outed. Libertarians Want the Old Rand Paul Back,” Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote:

Paul’s enthusiastic and near perpetual support for Trump actions continues to bum out many libertarians — who had hoped Rand would turn out more like his father, former Rep. Ron Paul — and limited-government conservatives, for whom the Kentucky senator was a bright spot back when the Tea Party movement showed promise and principles. In the #MAGA era, Paul has become one of the biggest cheerleaders of Trump-style Republicanism and a tireless defender of the president’s perspective.

Allahpundit, an anonymous blogger for the conservative website Hot Air, told me of Rand, “I remember his acceptance speech in 2010, when he beat Trey Grayson in the primary, right at the moment that Tea Party conservatism was catching fire. Grayson was the McConnell-backed establishmentarian, Paul was the populist outsider.”

The writer added, “Specifically, I remember him addressing Washington and telling him that he had a ‘message from the Tea Party.’ What did that message turn out to be? ‘Anything for Trump.’”

Rand’s particular calculus on supporting the president is complex: He once called Trump a “delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag.” But he clearly believes that staying within the bounds of the Republican Party — and firmly in support of the president — is his best option for pushing Trump, and the GOP, in a more libertarian direction. (By contrast, Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian who left the Republican Party in July, has voiced support for impeachment.)

As Gillespie told me, “I think he’s trying to figure out ways to advance his agenda, which ultimately is about balancing the budget and scaling back the warfare state. I suspect that he figures he’s got a better chance of getting some or all of that done by being the president’s good graces.”

Ross said much the same: “I don’t think he changed his principles, I think he was made aware of a different manner in which to advocate those principles. Hence his somewhat cordial relationship with this president.”

A libertarian angel on Trump’s shoulder?

As conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued in 2018, perhaps Trump didn’t defeat libertarian ideals in 2016, but rather reappropriated them for his own purposes — most prominently with foreign policy, where Trump ran hard against the Iraq War and interventionism (and against America’s intelligence services, of which Rand is a longtime skeptic) and won.

That’s where Rand has centered his efforts to influence Trump. For example, he argued in June against a potential war with Iran during an appearance on Fox News — the president’s favorite television channel.

“One of the things I like about President Trump is that he said the Iraq War was a mistake,” Rand said. “I think an Iran war would be even a bigger mistake than the Iraq War. We lost over 4,000 soldiers over there. I don’t think we need to get involved in another war.”

I am happy to see a President who can declare victory and bring our troops out of a war. It’s been a long time since that has happened. https://t.co/fEBb8080fK

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 19, 2018

It’s not as though Rand has stopped fighting Republicans in his efforts to court Trump. He joined Democrats in adding an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that required congressional approval before money could be used in military operations in Iran.

But the problem he faces is that Trump’s occasional nod to libertarian ideals has little to do with the ideals themselves. After all, troops originally withdrawn from Syria by Trump have now been tasked with protecting Syrian oil fields, and the practice of wiretapping American citizens (something Rand has spoken out against) has not only continued under the Trump administration but also widened, with some of Trump’s biggest allies voting to maintain Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and give it additional powers (and Trump signing that expansion into law).

On other issues, like the deficit, Rand continues to rail against the Republican status quo, calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution — and the president doesn’t seem to care. Sure, Trump and Rand may find common ground on certain issues (like the debate over Russian interference), but that seems more to do with what Trump thinks will be most beneficial for Trump.

Despite this, in an interview with libertarian commentator John Stossel, one of Rand’s biggest supporters, he said “progress has been made” in the fight for libertarian ideals, citing tax cuts, fewer regulations, and Trump’s call for an end to “endless wars.”

When Stossel noted that Trump “hasn’t pulled out of anywhere,” Rand responded, “Compare it, though, to George W. Bush, who got us involved everywhere. Or President Obama, who sent 100,000 troops to Afghanistan. The rhetoric of President Trump has been, I think, a relief.”

“Has it happened yet? No,” he acknowledged. “But I continue to push.”

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