P.M. Carpenter

Still rotting at the head

So here we go — bigly, again; yet more evidence that those smocking liars at Justice have been complicit with Trump in explaining the oranges of U.S.-Russia collusion. (Under the Bush II administration, it would have gone nucular.)

The Washington Post's top story Tuesday reveals that in response to Attorney General William Barr's godawful four-page abstract on "this Russia thing," the special counsel wrote a deeply disgruntled letter to the A.G., describing Barr's "principal conclusions" of the investigation as failing to "fully capture the context, nature, and substance' of Mueller’s work."

In other, briefer, more comprehensible words, Mueller called Barr just another Trumpian liar.

Continued Mueller: "There is now public confusion … [that] threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations." Two years of Mueller's honest work damaged if not destroyed by another of Trump's corrupt, dishonest appointees .

Notes the Post: "Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter." Bullshit. Mind-reading isn't required to virtually know that Boy Scout Bob Mueller would somehow publicly suggest that Barr was battling Trump for the "Con Artist of the Year" award. (Sorry, Mr. Attorney General. You're battling the best of 'em.) 

It's reported that Mueller originally agreed with Barr that media coverage of the AG's s summary was biased against the summary. Here, we should recall the earlier-quoted passage: "Justice Department officials said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter" (italics mine) — which suggests there was more than Mueller's quite unlikely unhappiness with the media, that Mueller's disquiet was, instead, almost certainly pointed toward Barr.

Also reported is that "A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes…. In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that news coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work" — again, "according to Justice Department officials." There is a congruity here that nevertheless doesn't square. Someone is lying. And I'd not put my money on Mueller.

Lies, lies, and more lies. If any Trump employee ever possessed even a dram of dignity, he or she has long since lost it. Simply being around that much corruption is bound to doom one's decency.

A Democratic Senate: One helluva challenge

NBC News' "First Read" comes across like the Last Supper:

With the GOP holding a 53-47 advantage right now, Democrats must pick up a net of three Senate seats to win control of the chamber if they win the White House (with the vice president getting to break 50-50 ties).

Assuming [a] Dem wins in Arizona and Colorado — as well as a loss in Alabama — Democrats have to beat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, plus flip one of Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Kentucky or Texas.

It’s doable. But it’s also daunting.

Then comes the really bad news:

Without control of the U.S. Senate — and with Mitch McConnell in charge — it’s a legitimate question whether a Democratic president in 2021 can get his/her cabinet and court picks confirmed. Let alone pass Medicare for all. Or an ambitious climate plan. Or tax hikes on the wealthy.

And McConnell enjoys nothing more than kicking Democrats in the head. So, be afraid.

Does this look like a far-left party?

Here are the latest standings among Democratic presidential candidates. (I'll relate these political clichés now to relieve someone of pointing them out later: Yes, it's early in the race, it's only 2019; a lot could happen between now and November 2020; the numbers will dramatically shift as the moneyless drop out; and Joe Biden is old.)

The CNN survey was conducted among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by SSRS (FiveThirtyEight's rating: A-) just after Biden's announcement last Thursday, so just as obvious as the above, his rather wild upward swing could represent a temporary blip.

Biden 39%
Sanders 15%
Warren 8%
Buttigieg 7%
O’Rourke 6%
Harris 5%
Booker 2%
Gabbard 2%
Klobuchar 2%
Castro 1%
Gillibrand 1%
Inslee 1%
Swalwell 1%
Williamson 1%
Yang 1%
de Blasio <1%
Ryan <1%
Bennet 0%
Delaney 0%
Hickenlooper 0%
Messam 0%
Moulton 0%

From CNN's reporting, which contains the most astonishing results to my thinking, there is this: "That puts Biden more than … roughly 30 points ahead of … Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (8%)." Moreover, excluding Sanders at 15%, the polling results confine Biden's chief competitors (Booker, Harris, O'Rourke, Buttigieg and Warren) to a rather pathetic grouping of 2% to 8%.

Warren, especially, held a blockbuster of a campaign announcement, raised a bundle of cash, and has probably debuted more progressive programs than the others put together. Yet she's stuck at 8%.

If one adds O'Rourke and Buttigieg's numbers to Biden's — the first two aren't particularly strong on the left — it's tempting to conclude that for all the talk of the Democratic Party having careened far leftward, polling suggests that the party has never before been so vigorously moderate. That may be an overstatement. But I doubt it.

Biden as a prudent "helmsman"

E.J. Dionne identifies the central difference between the Dems' huge cast of presidential candidates.

A significant number of Democrats (and many candidates in this field, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders) say fervently that a return to "decency" and "honor," to use Biden’s words on ABC’s "The View" on Friday, is not enough. Trump’s victory, they contend, revealed deep injustices in American society that must be righted, and they see 2020 as an opportunity to move "much further and much faster toward progress."

On the other hand,

That Biden has potential within so many factions is a sign of the strength he brings to his third quest for the presidency. Unlike an earlier candidate who succeeded on his third try, a 69-year-old Ronald Reagan in 1980, Biden draws not on his party’s ideological passions but on the comfort he creates by occupying the Democrats’ center of gravity. His hope is that Trump has created a thirst not for adventure and experiment but for reassurance and a glorious tranquility.

I, for one, cannot imagine a more sublime objective of moving "faster toward progress" than by eradicating the blight of Trumpism. This must be done by first reinstating America's "decency" and "honor," which, as Dionne notes, is Biden's principal goal: a thoughtful, measured return to "normalcy," which was Warren Harding's winning message in 1920.

The turbulent events of the 1910s had badly wounded Americans' confidence and pride in themselves: major-scale industrialization that reeked disaffection among the nation's growing middle class, and the "status anxiety" that came with it; bootless fears of domestic, violent radicalism; a war mobilization whose outcome proved disappointing at best — to many, just pointless; and an extended battle over President Wilson's botched, ham-handed obsession with joining the League of Nations. Unlike his presidency, Harding's appeal was pitch perfect: Just let us return to normality.

What America does not need in 2021 is the immediate snd concentrated  continuation of ideological warfare over what we might call the sexier of progressivism's proposals. I don't mean that in a heartless or ultraconservative way. Its timing is simply off; there is no chance — zilch — that any proposed progressive plans would survive a congressional vote. Chiefly a cooling-off period against the madness of Trumpism is what's needed, and that would begin by the newly elected president's restoration of allied cooperation and a committed war against foreign interference in our national elections. Without the former, we'll remain a dangerously powerful rogue nation; without the latter, our confidence in democracy will gradually die (indeed, that's already in progress.)

Until America's decency and honor are restored, all those tempting progressive plans are for naught. For a while, just let us return as a nation to some solid sense of Joe Biden's watchwords.

While on sabbatical, Charles Blow became a blowhard

A recent poll, notes the Times' Charles Blow, finds that Joe Biden is leading the president by eight percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, 42 percent to 34 percent. Biden has a significant edge over Trump among women (17 points), millennials (22 points) and independents (10 points)."

Good news, right? Well, Blow feels compelled to nullify it by adding that Biden "also has a history of being 'handsy' with women, did not treat Anita Hill terribly well during her testimony at Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing and led the charge on the disastrous 1994 crime bill." (It appears these ancient histories will still be treated as "news" in early November, 2020.)

Furthermore, Blow argues that "in political circles, Biden’s chief attribute in this election feels like his apparent appeal to … white voters" — "Democrats want to hold constant their support from women and minorities even as they chase the votes of people hostile to the interests of women and minorities." And even though Biden leads Trump substantially among women and minorities?

In the Democratic Party's demographic expansiveness and diversity, Mr. Blow, you will never witness a coalition in complete ideological harmony. Thus if Biden appeals to some working-class whites, where's the harm? And why are some high-profile Democrats (which leaves me out, thus liberating me in my commentaries) forever bashing other Democrats on such antiquated grounds, as Mr. Blow "feels" obligated to do?

Blow also argues: "At some point, the leadership and the front-runner are going to have to explain to women and minorities why their inordinate focus on white, working-class voters is justified, and that explanation will have to extend beyond, 'It’s the only way.'" It's questionable that there is an inordinate focus on white, working class voters, and that "Democrats treat [these] voters as if they are white buffaloes — sacred entities." Blow pointedly offers no proof, only opinion, and that which he "feels."

Blow concludes: "Th[e] explanation [that courting white voters 'is the only way'] no longer has currency." Nor is it an emphasis among most Democrats. "'Anything to defeat Trump' is also not a soothing elixir."

The hell it isn't. I'd court the American penal system's most violent offenders if it were lawful and contributed to Trump's defeat.

Whitman's "Lilacs"

By popular demand — one reader — I give you one taste of my literary love.

From Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d," — his elegy to Lincoln — is a stanza (4) which I cannot read without choking up every time.

In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)

"Solitary the thrush, / The hermit withdrawn to himself."

We all have personal reasons to sympathize with Whitman's beautiful words. Mine, I'd rather forget — not only from the deaths experienced in my life, but from lost loves as well. Which makes this passage, whenever I read it, all the more powerful.

It would be instructive to hang them all over again. Maybe.

Roger Cohen has become one of the most powerful voices against the resurgence of global — and Trumpist — fascism:

"A banner is a banner, nothing more" wrote Giovanni Bianconi on the front page of Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian daily. "But also nothing less."

His piece flanked a photograph of a crowd in central Milan holding aloft with one arm a banner saying, "Honor to Benito Mussolini," their other arms outstretched in a Fascist salute. The gathering this week took place not far from Piazzale Loreto, where the Fascist dictator was hung upside down at a gas station after being executed by Italy’s partisan liberators on April 28, 1945.

The crowd was composed mainly of supporters of the Lazio soccer club, whose so-called "ultras" form an extreme-rightist stronghold. It was not a large crowd. Their display of Fascist allegiance will have little practical effect beyond demonstrating again that the unsayable has become legitimate discourse in the age of Trump, and that a white supremacist message has renewed global resonance.

Still, on the eve of Italy’s April 25 national holiday marking the country’s liberation, those raised right arms were shocking. "Honor to Benito Mussolini" is not quite "Honor to Adolf Hitler," but it is not a million miles from it either.

Words that marked that century’s course — Fascism, Communism, totalitarianism, Holocaust — have become weightless in the 21st century, fungible elements in a furious fake-news theater.

Even though I was trained as a historian — a student of mankind's folly — it remains incomprehensible to me that successive generations are incapable of learning the needless, mindless devastations of man's violent past. Hitler assumed the carnage of the Kaiser, who assumed the carnage of 19th-century revolutions and Napoleon, who assumed the carnage of countless emperors and bloody dictators of earlier eras, not one of whom succeeded in their visions of victory. We just go on and on, repeating the imbecilities of "great" and glorious leaders.

Public Service Announcement on (my version of) haute cuisine

I learned today that deviled eggs absent white vinegar (because I had none) are just awful. I tried compensating with more mustard, but they only tasted like eggy hot dogs.

This may not be as important as presidential politics, but when you really want deviled eggs, it is.

***

(Evidently deviled eggs really are important as presidential politics. Perhaps I'll change my site's theme to culinary arguments.) 

Political Wire's "Bonus [Barfer] of the Day"

“If he looks young and vibrant compared to me, I should probably go home.”

— Joe Biden,  quoted by NBC News, responding to President Trump’s suggestion that Biden is too old to be president.

(Trump [72] told CBS News: “Well, I just feel like a young man. I’m so young. I can’t believe it. I’m the youngest person. I am a young, vibrant man.” Then Trump suggested Joe Biden, who is 76 years old, isn’t up to it: “I look at Joe, I don’t know about him. I don’t know.”)

One would think Biden is worse than Trump

The NY Times:

"Mr. Trump, who has [a] troubled history with women and has bragged about sexual misconduct, has displayed an almost across-the-board disdain for accusations of harassment, assault or just plain sexism lodged against men who also proclaim their innocence, as he does."

And yet what do Democrats do with their presidential frontrunner? They beat the hell out of him for something that occurred nearly 30 years ago.

It is commonly observed that Republicans fall in line, while Democrats fall in love. The former is true. But Dems don't fall in love. They eat their own.

And then there is McConnell

A critical caveat from Andrew Sullivan:

Even if the House were to approve articles of impeachment, I doubt Senator Mitch McConnell would follow what are the obvious constitutional obligations. McConnell has ripped up Senate rules when they might hurt the GOP’s interests before — remember Merrick Garland? Or the Supreme Court filibuster? And there is some wriggle room here. The Constitution does not explicitly mandate a trial in the Senate if the House approves articles of impeachment. It simply says the Senate has "the sole power to try" a president. You think McConnell would hesitate to use that nuance to shut any trial down before it started?

The answer is simple. No.

Biden and the obligatory "The View"

Appearing, inevitably, on "The View ,"

"Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sat down … for his first extended interview since announcing his third run for president. The show, hosted by an all-female panel, was an interesting choice of venue [it was?]…. Mr. Biden entered the race weeks after several women came forward to say his interactions with them had made them uncomfortable, and he is facing a fresh round of criticism for his treatment of Anita Hill during the 1991 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas.

"Responding to the hosts’ questions about Ms. Hill, Mr. Biden said, 'I’m sorry she was treated the way she was treated.' And pressed to apologize for his physical interactions with women, he offered, 'I’m sorry I invaded your space.'"

You will note he answered the first question, about Hill, in the passive voice, and in the active voice to the second. The man knows what he's doing.

Mistakes were made.

David Brooks "gets it"

"Here is what is subtly different about Biden. He’s not an individualist. He is a member. He belongs to his family; his hometown, Scranton; his Democratic Party; his Senate; his nation, and is inexplicable without those roots. He used the word 'we' 16 times in his short video announcing his candidacy.

"Some candidates will run promising transformational change. Biden offers a restoration of the values that bind us as a collective."

So much for insiderism

Ancient history from only two months ago, by one of the Beltway's leading pundits.

🚨 Scoop: Biden, Bloomberg, McAuliffe rattled by liberal lurch, rethinking runs: Internal polling shows socialism surging in Iowa https://t.co/X8cyYiy1lV

— Mike Allen (@mikeallen) February 2, 2019

A basic principal of successful politics

This is what pro-impeachment House Democrats face in the mossback Republican Senate:

"Republicans in the upper chamber, who would serve as Mr. Trump’s jury if House Democrats were to impeach [Trump], reacted to the [Mueller] report’s release with a range of tsk-tsk adjectives like "brash," "inappropriate" or "unflattering." Only Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, called out the president’s behavior as "sickening."

"Yet no Republican, not even Mr. Romney, a political brand-name who does not face his state’s voters until 2022, has pressed for even a cursory inquiry into the findings by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that the president pressured senior officials … to scuttle his investigation. Where Democrats see a road map to impeachment, Republicans see a dead end."

I consider myself what you might call an ethical pragmatist. Fighting lost causes may be an idealist's dream, but in politics, it's disastrous. I learned this at an early age from studying Lincoln's political approach to his hatred of slavery. He knew the North would never sign on to abolition as a war aim, until the war of union had been secured, which the dubious victory at Antietem served. I also learned it from FDR's battle for the passage of Social Security. Many of his idealistic allies in Congress argued that universal heathcare should accompany passage of the bill, but Roosevelt understood that Republican and conservative Democratic opposition would only destroy the principal objective.

"Incrementalism" is but a four-letter word among committed, activist progressives. Yet as s political approach, it historically has been the most progressively successful. The thoughtful, conservative-progessive approach of devastating Trumpism through the electoral process, rather through the imprudent approach of impeachment and doomed removal, will prove the rule.