Democrats: Rome Is Burning While You Fiddle On The Debate Stage

Democratic Debate Round One, July 20, 2019. Photo by CNN

Regarding the current spate of “debates” and the rush to morph one-liners and soundbites into policy:

I’m 70. Old enough to remember a time of lynchings, Jim Crow, Watts and DC and other cities inflamed by racial frustrations and bomb throwing, Chicago convention violence, outrageous conduct by a president and his minions, three assassinations and multiple assassination attempts, George Wallace, George Lincoln Rockwell (look it up), segregationists at the top of school front steps, hatred-shouting and spit-dribbling white mothers, terrified black children, backs and fronts of buses, whites-only lunch counters, police dogs and fire hoses, marches across bridges and down the National Mall, Vietnam protests, body counts, a letter from the Birmingham jail (and if you have to look that up, you have some reading to do), the Texas Tower, and a host of other terrible socially-eviscerating events all within the span of 20 years.

I went to school in cities totally bent toward racism, and small towns in which few, if any blacks lived or had ever been seen by a white child. In one school in Tennessee, I attended a class in which the history of the Civil War was twisted in such a way that Union victories were portrayed as Confederate successes, facts (and Yankee students) be damned. I drove past miles of cotton fields in which black share-cropping families in tiny shacks eked out livings working the land for white land owners—but it wasn’t slavery, no, not 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Give me a break. I knew enough even at 15 to see the lie in that sad tableau.

I followed the news and watched the half-step advances of Civil Rights legislation, and saw Lyndon Johnson sign landmark bills that dragged white Southern politicians kicking and screaming into the 20th century, if only for a moment in time (by the way, Mr. Trump, you have not done more for blacks than any other president). But I also saw the hatred that followed those laws, and the attempts by white racists, white nationalists, white-is-righters and other xenophobic groups to amp up their attacks on blacks and on the increasing populations of Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners who were beginning to build new lives in the United States. The peaceful world we dreamed of in our youth, the world we believed we would bequeath to our children, is little more than ashes now.

So, just for the record, I want to make it clear that what is happening in America today is not new to these aging eyes or playing out for the first time on the silver screen of my still vivid memories. What is new, and more disconcerting than many of those past events is the nationwide normalization of behavior that subverts the ideals and future of basic humanity. There is no outrage among the citizenry that is accompanied by serious debate and sense of purpose and commitment to do anything more than mouth soundbites, point fingers, and wring hands. Folks, that will not help. Such group-think passivity only strengthens the bullies who, so far, have not paid any significant penalties for their malfeasance and near-traitorous actions.

You know that Trump will win in 2020 if there is not a course change among the non-Trump electorate. So far, there is no evidence that any Democratic candidate for the presidency is capable of energizing and leading the public to defeat this most egregious piece of inhumanity ever to live in the White House (though Jackson does come to mind as a close second). What passes for debates is pure show, and poor show at that. Debate, by definition and once-upon-a-time practices involves well thought-out positions that can be defended with logic and clarity, and countered with equally illuminating information. I state my case, present supporting information, and you listen. When I’m done, you take my points in order and refute them with facts. We go back and forth a few times, sharpening the initial question or hypothesis with each pass. Eventually, the judges award the debate to the most persuasive and well-prepared debater, the person who has, through a preponderance of evidence and oratorical skill, made his or her case.

I think it’s fair to say we have not seen such a debate form in decades. Nor has such a form appeared in the latest Circus Maximus arena sponsored by hyperbole-driven television networks. So, we are left with nothing to show for all the shouting and name-calling and stapled together policy soundbites presented by the Democrats.

If I were a betting man, basing my bet on what has transpired so far among the Democrats, and based on the Democrats inability to raise the level of national outrage beyond the boiling point, 2020 will go to Trump through pure incompetence on the part of his opposition. The Republicans behind Trump stand for all that is wrong, all that is contentious, all that is divisive, destructive, and degrading to non-whites and non-them. They have exhumed the bodies and anthems of the early1900s America-Firsters; they have pumped a new kind of toxic gas for their base to use, and use it they will—to destroy the very foundation of our democracy in order to exterminate the vermin they have been told infests our nation’s cities.

This is not a time for shallow and meaningless sound-bite "debates." Rome is burning while the Democrats fiddle and vie for points in their ivory towers and television stages. The time for debate is long past—someone had better take action, and that someone is the American electorate writ large. All I ask for is someone--man or woman--who will take off the gloves and lay a hard, punishing, take-down blow to the madman of Pennsylvania Avenue, and who can deliver an equally mighty blow to his weak-sisters on the HIll.

Impeaching Trump Is A Rabbit Hole He Wants Dems To Go Down

Memo

To: Democrats
From: But What If I’m Write?
Subject: The impeachment rabbit hole Trump, McConnell, and other actors want you to enter.

If there is any one takeaway from Wednesday's hearings in the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees where Robert Mueller III, former special counsel for the Russian 2016 election interference investigation spent seven hours being praised and beaten by Democrats and Republicans, respectively, it’s that Democrats appear desperate to impeach Donald Trump. 

And that would be an incredibly costly mistake. A mistake Trump and his Republican allies at home and abroad are hoping Democrats will make. My message to Democrats, and particularly to Nancy Pelosi who has been trying to hold her colleagues back, is do the campaign time and resources math before you leap down that rabbit hole.

An impeachment process, no matter how well supported by the facts and reasonable, common-sense assumptions detailed in the Mueller Report (which I’ve read in full), will suck all the money, energy, and good will away from the Democrats’ 2020 election months. Before you reply that “it’s the principle of the thing,” let me assure that the exercise of your principle, in this particular case, will, most assuredly, cost you House and Senate seats to the point of a possible loss of the House and a shrinking minority in the Senate. And the Republicans are counting on that fact. In fact, behind closed doors they are betting that your impatience and anger—justifiable in my opinion—will blind you to the signs of the trap they are digging.

Trump, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and the House and Senate campaign committees, all their associated PACS, and certain foreign bad actors know two key things: 1. A House impeachment process will eat up the Democrats campaign time, creating nationwide media (social and news) and get-out-the-vote vacuums in every Democrat-held district; and, 2. The Republican financial war chest, already massive, will be targeted with a vengeance at vulnerable or swing districts where Democrats, who would otherwise be there to fight for their seats, will, instead, be trapped in Washington for a protracted impeachment process. Removed from the fight by their own hands, Democrats will not be financially or strategically flexible enough to fight the local fires the Republicans will be sure to set. 

I hardly need to tell you that Republican- and foreign-funded social media political tricksters will spin you around like an F-5 tornado. Let me put it simply: Trump and McConnell know that if you don’t show up to raise money and campaign 24/7 in the spring and summer of 2020, you will lose in the fall. If you are sitting in Washington debating impeachment, you cannot be back home to raise money, work the media, defend against personal attacks, pound the streets, and win. 

The House Republicans don’t have to show up at impeachment hearings; they don’t have to engage in House floor debate. They know perfectly well the numbers are against them in that chamber. But bear this in mind: Trump plays the chaos game, and he will take a short-term loss (a House impeachment vote) for a big-time gain (keeping the  White House, winning back the House and holding the Senate). He is aided and abetted in this strategy by McConnell who cares only for his Republican majority and will suck up to Trump’s game of divide-and-conquer every single time. And we know from the Mueller Report that Mr. Trump is not reluctant to take on help from abroad if it means any kind of victory.

If you do nothing else, Democrats, look at the calendar: It’s now late July, almost August. That means there is one long recess coming up and you won’t be back in Washington until September. Once you’re back, it will take a month, maybe six weeks, to organize an impeachment inquiry, which will eat up another month—taking you to November, if you’re lucky and fast. And remember, this won't be a quick one-and-done as it was with Bill Clinton's impeachment in the House; in 1998, the House had the advantage of Ken Starr's full investigation so formal investigatory hearings were dispensed with--even so, the House process ran from early November until mid-December. The Mueller Report will only serve as a starting point for any Trump impeachment; the House will have to work up its own investigation. That takes time. 

Once any hearings are over, the Floor debates will begin, and there is no way your members will work though Thanksgiving, much less Christmas, which is about how long any serious debate schedule would take.  Again, you have to remember that the Clinton impeachment proceedings began during a lame-duck session, not at the beginning of an election period. 

With 2020 coming up, Democrats will be itching to get out the door and back home to their districts which will, by that time, be under heavy fire from Republican challengers loaded with tons of money. Remember, while you, the Democrats, are eating up time on an impeachment inquiry, and floor action, the Republicans will be out in force all across the country, taking shots at you from every angle. 

My hope is that the House Democrats will not start impeachment proceedings in 2019, if they look at the calculus that is so clearly in the Republicans’ favor. But Trump is hoping you don’t do the math. He wants you start this fall and burn as much time and energy as you will most certainly expend.

So, let’s say the voices of the Democrats rise to such a volume that Speaker Pelosi caves and begins proceedings after the winter recess—sometime in early 2020. Are you kidding? You might as well hand your seats over to the competition right now. An impeachment process starting in January or February of 2020 would be political suicide for all but the safest Democrats (and there won’t be many of them if impeachment starts). 

The Republicans will suck all the air, money, and media out of your campaigns if you move forward with impeachment next year. Just think of the damage your headlong rush to “justice” will do to the presidential primaries and Congressional and Senatorial campaigns that are already toss ups. In addition, your constituents may be experiencing impeachment burn-out, and they will take that out on you by not fully engaging with your campaigns; don't take it personally, but don't assume your outrage will translate into votes. If you are perceived as trying to sell a one-note impeachment song around the clock, your constituents will just turn down your volume or, worse, change channels. 

The Republicans will eat your lunch every single day, and Mitch McConnell will remind his members that their majority in the Senate will save the president. This is Trump’s (and, perhaps, the Russians’) master plan for 2020—foment division among Democrats and their constitutents, leverage cyber technology, and limit the Democrats’ campaign visibility and fund-raising abilities. In the process, Trump’s base will hold, or grow, and the Electoral College margins will begin to shift toward an assured Republican outcome.

Don’t doubt this outcome for a second, my Democrat friends. It’s not that Trump himself is capable of thinking up this strategy; it’s that those around him, including McConnell, are capable of maneuvering Trump to such a strategy and then letting him run with it. Lurking in the background, or posing as legitimate players, the Russians and other foreign actors who, despite Mr. Mueller’s warnings, will be finding local, state, and national niches to work in. Democrats, you cannot afford to piss away any energy, treasure, or vigilance in 2020—if you don’t stay close to home, you risk more than the loss of your individual seats; you will be risking our nation’s democratic identity.

So what’s the alternative? To begin with, put impeachment aside; lock it up and don’t open the door no matter how hard or plaintively it begs and screams. Focus all your energies, funds, and personal appearances on holding or expanding your seats, and in making sure you have the strongest get-out-the-vote presence possible in your districts and states. 

There are three possible successful outcomes: 1. You hold the House, retake the Senate, and defeat Trump; 2. You hold the House and win the Senate but Trump wins; 3, You hold the House, fail to take the Senate, but Trump loses.

Personally, I put my bet on 3.

Oh, sure, it would be great to achieve 1: The Ds take over the Hill and a D retakes the White House AND, Trump is left to the U.S. justice system which will, after noon on January 20, 2021, swoop down on him faster than a Peregrine falcon drops on a rabbit. But the numbers are just not there, yet, to support serious thoughts about a Democratic Senate majority in 2020.

If you’re able to pull off option 2 (and your Senate majority is bullet-proof), then impeachment is suddenly quite real, and Trump will have a rough and, ultimately dead end road ahead of him.

Behind Door #3 is a kind of principle-plus-justice outcome that may taste a little bitter, but is, in the end, the right thing to do. It is up to America’s voters and the justice system to put an end to this foul, greed-driven Trumpian dictatorship. I know how much Democratic members of the House want to be in on some grand act bring Trump to his knees in the dirt of the political corrida. But sometimes you have to step out of the spotlight and let the voters and the justice system take the stage. Just because you want to do a thing, doesn’t mean you have to do at thing. You may not get the credit for the win, but you can contribute to the victory. Maybe you don’t get the Senate this time, but the voters will uphold fundamental principles of democracy and the justice system will mete out the proper punishment.

If this is where your principles lie, Democrats, then don’t proceed with impeachment in 2019 or 2020. Get out to your districts and states, work your asses off to hold the House and defeat Trump at the ballot box. That is what Trump does not want you to do…so go ahead and do just that thing.

Trump Must Not Cross The New Rubicon

"So interesting to see 'progressive' Democrat congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run.

 "Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. "These places need your help badly, you can't leave fast enough. I'm sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!"  Donald Trump's Sunday tweets.

In light of Mr. Trump’s recent tweets and counter-tweets and counter-counter-tweets attacking certain Members of Congress (as well as much of the Congress, the judiciary, and the media generally) and insisting that they take themselves and their communist attitudes back to their dysfunctional homelands (Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and New York), it is clear that America is in a headlong rush down a cracking and hate-spiked highway leading to a sooner-than-expected dystopic and bifurcated nation of alienated political, social, and intellectual affections. 

For the moment, as we pause to catch our collective breaths, we find ourselves on the slippery banks of a New Rubicon, with a history-worn die in the small hands of our ersatz leader who has, in the style of Julius Caesar, fashioned himself the 21st century Dictator Perpetuo of the now ironically-named United States. On the near side are communities inhabited by men and women whose affections lie with the Constitution, intellectual freedom, social justice, self-examination, critical thinking and ethically-informed fair play. On the far bank, cowering behind Trump, are men and women whose failure-certified America First affections are stained by conscienceless loathing of all “others” who are non-White, non-straight, non-sexually compliant, godless, liberally intellectual, and anyone who is more than one-drop-of-blood immigrant.

With absolute certainty that he will evade punishment for leading his rabble-filled army toward victory against all he hates, Trump is casting his die, and, with his Sunday tweets, has begun to march across the New Rubicon with racism in his blood, bigotry in his heart, and violence in his voice. Will Trump and his populists, like Caesar and his Populares, cross the river, prevail, and vanquish his real and imagined enemies? Or will his forces be stopped mid-stream by reason-wielding, Constitution-armored, and finally-fed-up voters who, unlike the Roman Senate’s Optimates, will turn back and defeat the Trumpian vanguard before it reaches the near bank?

But enough of history; it has never informed Trump, and to even suggest to him that the path he is on—or the river he believes he will cross with impunity in 2020—might lead to his failure to achieve a second (or even third) term is a heresy he cannot imagine. It is interesting to note, however, that there were many battlegrounds spread across the Roman Civil War (which lasted four years, or one presidential term), and, while Caesar and his Populares ultimately prevailed, he could be defeated, as Pompey proved at the battle of Dyrrhachium, in July, 48 BC. Some military historians have suggested that had Pompey been more aggressive in his pursuit of the fleeing Caesar, the tide of the war could have turned in favor of the Optimates. In the light of such a possibility—a light 2,100 years old—it is imperative to press the fight to its extreme, to not fail or falter in the face of the encroaching enemy, to leave no vote on the battlefield.

Returning to our present predicament—a nation well on its way to becoming a land of the free and brave on one side, facing a shadowy land of the xenophobic and cowardly on the other—it is not only incumbent on rational Americans to stand against racism, bigotry, hate and violence-stoked division, it is existentially the only avenue left if we are going to defeat white nationalism and regain some viable semblance of government of, by, and for the people. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen put it in some of the starkest terms ever on Monday when he opened his column with, 

“There are red states, blue states and, it is now clear, yellow states. The yellow states are represented in Congress by Republicans too cowardly to condemn a president who resorts to unabashed racism not only to stir his base but also to express his genuine bigotry. President Trump does not drink. Stark sober, he is drunk on hate.” 

If that does not provoke an existential shock to your system, then consider that only four years ago, Senator Lindsay Graham, Trump’s current lapdog, was alarmed enough to call Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” Truth then, fake news now. My, how the worm turned.

The Daily Beast’s Goldie Taylor was a bit more nuanced, but no less on point, in her column on Monday: 

“Bigotry is dangerous and, in the hands of our nation’s commander-in-chief, it can mean an inability to recognize individual humanity and a failure to act with moral authority in times of crisis. Every person talking about his clothes as he cheerfully bares his ass is part of the problem.” 

Taylor closed with this: 

“Trump is not a fine person. His words Sunday were not racially ‘charged,’ ‘fueled,’ or ‘tinged.’ They were unapologetically racist. And, if you support him, so are you.”

Many years ago, my father, a kind, honorable, compassionate man who served his country in uniform in war and peace, struck up a friendship with a man who owned a farm adjacent to my parent’s property in rural Northern Virginia. The man was also a World War II and Vietnam veteran—a fighter pilot as was my dad. But he was also one of the most bigoted, racist people I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet and horror to hear. Not even in this, my own private blog, would I repeat some of his characterizations about Black Americans or foreigners from “the southern or eastern lands,” as he would put it. 

As my father’s health failed, this man would come to visit and the two veterans would talk about their combat experiences, about colleagues who had passed on. Sometimes their conversations turned to their respective properties or the weather. I was usually there to care for my father, and so I was party to—or at least within earshot of—those mostly bland and innocuous conversations. My antennae were up most of the time…but I let stuff slide that never should have been uttered in front of my dad. Too often I failed as a protector.

But one day, I heard this man refer to General Colin Powell in the vilest of terms, digging deep into his bag of hate to besmirch and dehumanize a leader who I’d had the honor to know and held in great esteem. I was sitting opposite him, and the racist shockwave that emanated from his mouth struck me so hard I thought for a moment I’d been physically beaten. When I recovered, I said to the man, “You need to leave this house.” My father, who suffered from severe hearing loss, looked at me, confused. He said, “Why did you say that? He is my friend.” I said, “Pop, he is a racist, he is a bigot, and he just said something that you should not accept. He’s been doing this since he met you, and I should have said something. Now, I don’t want him in your house anymore, not while I’m here.” The man was already rising out of his chair, his aging body firm with his conviction, his eyes aflame, and it was crystal clear I had become an enemy, but he turned away from my challenge. 

He left, and in his wake, my father’s anger with me was something I had to deal with father to son. It was a long conversation about what my father had come to accept as just his neighbor’s way of saying things versus my inability to accept any such thing as normal. I never knew what my father and his neighbor talked about when I was not there, but after that confrontation, the neighbor never visited while I was at Pop’s house.

There comes a point at which the protection of that which is most dear to you calls for the hardest decisions…the kind you stand for in spite of all the blows you will take for that unyielding stance. Sometimes those blows will come from the ones you love; sometimes the blows will come from the institutions you love, the people you want to admire but cannot, the leaders you pray will rise to greatness but who have no greatness in them to begin with, or, worse, whose potential to be great has been compromised in the name of incumbency and comfort.

So it is with me and Mr. Trump. I cannot let him stay in the living room I call America for a moment longer than January 20, 2021. I cannot listen to his vile speech spittled out in front of my children, and the children of my neighbors and fellow citizens. I cannot countenance his plans of exile and barbed-wire fortification. I cannot bear his misogyny and deprecations. I cannot stand silently by while he plans the wreck of all I hold dear. The New Rubicon lies between him and me, and I see him, in all his crassness, casting his die, exhorting his followers to throw in with him and his dreams of supremacy, dreams of terrible pain and suffering to the nation. His dreams; our nightmares. 

He is choosing to cross; I am choosing to fight, with my vote and with my words. Small as they might be, my words will hold me fast in the current. And if I hold fast enough, and if others hold fast with me, we will not let this present terror cross the New Rubicon.