A New Birth of Freedom or Bust

George Michael reinvented freedom, so we can too!

As expected, the Senate did not convict Donald Trump despite the votes to convict from members of his own party. The Republican Party has become an anti-democratic, extremist movement with Trump as its demagogic head and there was no way that his peons would turn on him. In any case, they mostly agree with him anyway. 

What might get lost in all of this is that a majority of Americans wanted conviction, and the Senators who voted to acquit represent over 70 million people less than those who voted to convict. Our Byzantine Senate and the Constitution's inadequate limits on executive power tell the tale. As in so many things, the will of the people is thwarted by an arrangement that gives an entrenched minority outsized power.

We see this in states that nullified Medicaid extension and in the Supreme Court's decisions on voting rights. We see it most acutely in the Senate, where Wyoming and California get the same representation and the filibuster prevents any legislation that Mitch McConnell doesn't like. 

Furthermore, the Republican Party in its current iteration is explicitly anti-democratic. That includes refusing to honor long standing norms. In the most egregious case, Mitch McConnell refused Merrick Garland's nomination to proceed, but rammed Amy Coney Barrett's through a week before the election. 

Meanwhile inequality worsens, the climate crises worsens, and discontent rises with a system where police can murder with impunity and a president can try to overthrow the government without consequence. Solutions to any of these problems are impossible with all of the democratic choke points being held so savagely by McConnell and other Republicans.

What this country needs, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, is a "new birth of freedom." Just as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments radically broadened the bounds of American democracy after the Civil War, we need to redefine freedom. This should include not only negative freedom from things, but positive freedom to achieve things. Education, health care, housing, and other essentials ought to be guaranteed to all Americans in order to allow them a true pursuit of happiness. 

None of that is possible in the current system, and as long as the Republican Party maintains its choke points, never will be, no matter how many people want change.

The most basic, most elementary thing that could be done to enable the necessary change that the majority thirsts for is the death of the filibuster. That only takes a single vote. After that can come a new Voting Rights Act, statehood for DC and territories that want it, and court packing. The only solution is more democracy, and if Democrats like Sinema and Manchin don't see that, then we can expect absolutely nothing to change. It is flabbergasting to me that devotion to bad, arcane Senate rules will likely end up trumping the drastic need to repair this rapidly dying society. 

Impeachment Is Not A Spectator Sport

After months of avoiding an impeachment inquiry, Nancy Pelosi was forced to begin one because a government official had finally produced a smoking gun and Trump confirmed it with the release of the call with Ukraine.

It would be very tempting to sit back and let Congress do its work, but that would be a massive mistake. Pelosi is approaching this is a gingerly, almost apologetic fashion. She has been pushing for a narrow, rather than a broad inquiry. She has taken the investigation out of the more progressive Judiciary Committee and put it in the hands of the more conservative Intelligence Committee. This is evidently part of a laughable strategy intended to get the support of moderate Republicans. The last 25 years appear to have taught the Democratic leadership nothing about who they are dealing with.

If we leave them to their own devices these are the stupid kinds of decisions the Democrats will make. We simply cannot allow this. Impeachment is not a spectator sport. We need to be constantly calling and contacting our Democratic reps and letting them know that we want a broad inquiry and to act from a position of strength, not weakness. The lily-livered types will get scared of the polls, instead of acting in ways that will persuade voters and move those poll numbers. Make them more afraid of their base than they are of vague "swing voters."

At the same time, pressure needs to be put on Republicans. I know that it seems like a long shot to expect Republicans to turn coat, but if GOP politicos think their futures are at stake, they can potentially be persuaded. Make them defend Trump's unhinged Twitter rants, which are doing a lot to undermine his defenders. Show up to their town meetings and make them have to own this. I don't know if this will work, but it beats not trying. There have been moments where GOP support for Trump has wavered (the Access Hollywood tape, for example.) The point is to turn wavering into defection.

We cannot watch this on television as our nightly entertainment. We need to be out in the streets and demanding justice. This weekend I was in DC, and I witnessed a pathetically small pro-Trump rally on the National Mall. There must've been more flags than people. The other side is mostly old and comfortable. They do not have the energy or guts for a real fight. The most deplorable elements are being whipped up by "civil war" rhetoric. We cannot fight back against that with Facebook memes. Those in power, both Republican and Democrat, must feel the pressure from below. They will not make the right choice on their own, we have to create a situation where they are forced to take that choice. So let's get out there and do it!

Will The Republican Blood Pact With Trump Hold?

It is easy to forget that at one time Donald Trump was seen as apart from the Republican Party. Back during the 2016 primaries he was treated by prominent Republicans as a kind of cuckoo bird, invading the nest of the Grand Old Party. Before Ted Cruz became a servile Trumper, he tried to organize resistance to him at the 2016 convention.

That convention was when Trump and the Republicans signed a blood oath. He would deliver on their policies and use his populist mob to get power, they would turn the other way when confronted with his corruption. That blood pact was confirmed when Trump and the last Republican Congress managed to put through massive tax cuts on corporations and wealthy. It has been furthered by Trump's judicial nominations.

Republicans have paid him back by backing him on everything. Putting children in cages, colluding with Russia, trying to buy Greenland, taking government money at his private properties, and all kinds of other misbehavior has been endorsed by prominent Republicans. Those who once criticized him, like Romney, Sasse, Cruz, Rubio, and Graham have become loyalists.

This week's revelations, however, seem to be some kind of break. The conversation with Ukraine's president cannot be waved away with plausible deniability. Direct evidence of Trump's misbehavior is staring the world right in the face. It's telling that many Republicans have been more lukewarm and evasive on this affair than in other scandals.

For the first time since 2016 I wonder if the blood pact will be broken. I have a feeling that the cracks in the facade will soon be fixed. While I bet many Republican politicians really don't like Trump, they are also afraid of their base, who is still behind him. And as long as Trump keeps up his end of the deal, it would be dangerous to replace him.

I do, however, see a small chance that they will dump Trump. Why? Because being distracted by impeachment will hurt his ability to stay focused on altering the federal bench, the big long term goal of Senate Republicans. If it looks like the Republican candidate will lose in 2020 no matter what, they might as well get Pence in these and keep nominating judges. That will also keep their base happy.

I still don't really see this scenario happening, though. The Republican leadership knows their ideas are unpopular, and that they need Trump as their front man. I can only hope that if he goes down, the rest of the rotten gang will go down with him.

Impeachment Is A Kobayashi Maru (and we should still do it)

The day that the fuller version of the Mueller report dropped, I realized that the impeachment situation is a Kobayashi Maru scenario for opponents of Donald Trump. For those who don't know, Kobayashi Maru was a training exercise for Starfleet in the Star Trek universe where prospective captains were put into an impossible situation. They could try to rescue the civilians aboard the namesake ship, but would be destroyed by the enemy. The point of the simulation was not to guess the correct course of action, but to show how officers would react in bad circumstances.

Impeachment is a Kobayashi Maru because there are two options: to allow a brazen criminal to continue to occupy the presidency, or to exhaust political capital in what will be an inevitable failure to unseat that president. As has been obvious from day one, Republicans will follow Trump to the gates of Hell. They happily defended his breaking up of migrant families and tossing their kids into cages. They signed their deal with the devil, and now there's no going back. In any case, he is the key to their wildest dreams of unfettered capitalism and Christian dominionism. Even if ten Republican Senators defect (which will never happen), the Senate still would not be able to unseat Trump.

A lot of folks, including in the Democratic Party leadership, have made this calculation. They are concerned that this inevitable failure would boost Trump, allowing him an easy path to reelection in 2020. They are more rightly concerned with how focusing on Trump takes air away from appeals on issues like health care that are the party's winning advantage.

I've been thinking long and hard about this, but impeachment needs to be done. If failure is guaranteed either way (which it is), then doing the right thing actually becomes a lot easier. The pragmatic option doesn't exist. The question becomes simply this: are we going to give a proven criminal president a pass, or not? I do not see how we can live with ourselves if we refuse to carry out the Constitutionally mandated remedy for this situation.

It can also be carried out in a way that does not backfire, or where the consequences are at least mitigated. The message on impeachment can be intertwined with the "bread and butter" issues. Investigating the Trump finances (which aren't even part of the Mueller probe but are by far where most of the crime goes on) will dredge up all kinds of stuff. The message gets pretty easy: "Your tax return went down last year, but Donald Trump set up a system where people like him don't have to pay taxes." Any serious look into his business empire is going to turn up all kinds of stuff (just listen to the Trump Inc podcast), revelations that can be capitalized on, so long as Democrats run an economically populist campaign. This will be crucial, because with the economy growing they need to not just talk about "jobs," but about compensation, health care, child care, etc.

Ever since Trump's election, the country's politically apathetic soft middle has yearned for a "return to normal." This I think is secretly one of the Democratic party's biggest advantages in the 2020 election. If you spend time talking to so-called independent moderates, they tend to frame things in maddeningly imprecise generalizations. Last time around it was "I don't like either candidate" and people who deep down didn't like Trump ended up casting their vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, which in key states was effectively a vote for Trump. One of those garden variety suburban dipshit opinions could easily turn out to be "I'm just tired of Trump. I just don't want to have to care about politics." In that case, impeachment might actually be able to help Democrats.

And speaking of the soft middle, political corruption is something that most voters dislike. It's the reason Trump kept talking about "draining the swamp." It turns out, of course, that this was not about ending corruption, but invoking the kinds of metaphors for the opposition beloved by fascists. Impeachment hearings will dredge up things that are public but which have been allowed to leave the headlines, as well as brand new stories.

The danger, of course, is that the soft middle white suburban dipshit opinion after the Senate clears Trump could easily turn into "I guess Trump did nothing wrong and those Democrats ruined my life by putting all this stuff in the news that I didn't want to think about." That won't end so well.

Be that as it may, impeachment has to be attempted. Not just because the president has been proven to abuse his power (the basic litmus test of impeachment), but because if we take our political ideals seriously we MUST take action. And though failure may be inevitable in the short term, in the long term the Republicans will never be able to shake the stigma of their support of this criminal. Future generations will look back and know who was in the right.

I am reminded of another time in American history when a political faction held the country hostage against the demands of justice. In 1860 Lincoln gave his famous speech at Cooper Union in New York City, where the prairie politician moved his skeptical east coast audience by reminding them that slavery was wrong and nothing could ever change that. He ended his speech thus: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

We know we are right. We know our duty compels us. Time to act.

An Overlooked Legacy Of Watergate

Sadly the only prison Nixon went to was the one in his mind

Today brought the clearest evidence yet that not only has Donald Trump committed felonies (we all knew that already, of course), but that federal prosecutors are willing to say that he did, and that in addition to this his team was petitioning Russia for help as far back as 2015. The president signaled this was coming with an epically unhinged temper tantrum on Twitter this morning. This day he also finally put forth a name for a new AG, a man who will presumably try to curtail investigations into his behavior. His former Secretary of State also gave an interview where he basically said that Trump constantly wanted to commit illegal acts and seemed unaware of legal restrictions.

A felonious president flying off the handle and desperately filling the Justice Department with lackeys to protect himself against an ever-growing criminal investigation sounds an awful lot like Watergate. (This is not an original observation.) As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

A lot of other people have been thinking so, too. Rachel Maddow's excellent Bag Man podcast did a deep dive into the wrongdoings of Spiro Agnew, which are oft forgotten in the shadow of Nixon's greater malfeasance. Listening to that podcast I thought a lot of how the ghosts of Watergate keep coming back to haunt us.

Decisions were made by politicians and prosecutors at the time that we are still living with. Agnew's criminality was truly staggering. Not only had he taken kickbacks as governor of Maryland, he was still getting cash-filled envelopes in the White House! He also directed federal contracts to the men paying him off. In order to get him out of office as quickly as possible so that he would not succeed his criminal boss Nixon, prosecutors allowed Agnew to resign without going to jail.

The precedent that members of the White House not pay the true price of their actions was solidified when Gerald Ford granted Nixon a full pardon before he had been convicted or even tried of something. While Ford thought that he was removing a distraction from a paralyzed nation beset by economic decline and the end of Vietnam, he essentially established that presidents and their operatives would never actually be held accountable for their illegal actions in a court of law.

Just consider the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. This was another clear-cut case of presidential law-breaking. While it was done on behalf of policy goals instead of maintaining political power, selling arms to Iran to give money to the Contras was illegal on its face. Reagan and Bush never really had to face the music, and Bush would issue pardons for those involved. The nation mostly moved on.

In the 2000s the George W Bush administration lied the country into war in Iraq and engaged in torture. There was never even really an attempt to do much to punish those responsible. By that time the immunity of the White House to prosecution was pretty much accepted. Trump's crimes present an opportunity to break this cycle.

We talk a lot about the legacy of Watergate being that Americans do not trust the government, but the more consequential legacy is that America is a country where the president's quasi-monarchical status goes beyond expensive state funerals and ceremonial frippery to being above criminal prosecution. This thought must be in the back of Trump's mind today as he prepares a defense against the coming legal onslaught.

America desperately needs to get over this taboo of locking presidents and their minions up. Other democracies do not have this hang-up, and they are all the better for it. Just witness the recent imprisonment of Park Geun-hye in South Korea. The prospect of Trump's imprisonment is no mere legal fantasy, it actually might be crucial to ensuring the future health of our democracy.

Stop Pretending Impeachment Is Easy Or A Foregone Conclusion

Nixon drunk-dialing his former chief of staff Bob Haldeman on the day of the latter's resignation is one of my favorite things. It took over another year for Watergate to run its course.

In the wake of the Flynn scandal, a lot of liberals and progressives have been joyously discussing the possibility of impeachment, or even the fatuous notion that we will have an election "do over." Sorry folks, I'm here throw a bucket of cold water on you. As a historian, that's kinda my job.

As to the "do over," there's absolutely no constitutional precedent for that, so just stop talking about it like it's a thing. As to impeachment, it should never be discussed as if it were something easy to do. No president has been removed from office via impeachment. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached but survived the process, and Nixon resigned before impeachment proceedings could be voted on. I am pretty sure Nixon would have been impeached and removed from office, so I guess I'll let you have one example of a successful impeachment.

My point is that it is almost impossible to pull off. It is beyond impossible if the president's party is in control of Congress, which means you should just stop thinking Trump will be impeached before the next midterm election. It won't happen. It's much more likely that a 25th Amendment scenario happens, but I doubt that'll happen, either. Paul Ryan is creaming his shorts about the prospect of eliminating the social safety net, and if Trump is a vessel for that, so be it. I've said it before, I'll say it again: there's no such thing as "Trump voters" anymore, only Republicans, and Trump is putting forth an aggressively Republican agenda.

So let's say the Democrats manage to win back Congress in 2018. (I'm not holding my breath.) The process behind impeachment is extremely time-consuming. The early Watergate allegations against Nixon started getting serious in January of 1973. He would not resign until a year and half later, in August of 1974. That was even with a Democratic congress. Nixon did everything he could to slow down the process. Later presidents learned from this scandal to make it even more difficult to unseat them. For example, in the Iran-Contra Scandal of the 1980s, Oliver North merely shredded the relevant documents, destroying the evidence. I imagine Trump has minions willing to take the fall, too.

I don't like this impeachment talk because it is yet another wish for the salvation to come miraculously come from on high and end Trump's rule. That simply is not going to happen. Instead of waiting for a miracle, we need to be out there opposing Trump tooth and nail. We need to fight like hell in 2018. We need to keep up the pressure. We need to put our bodies on the line, if need be. The legal processes of this country installed Trump in power, start trusting yourself instead of trusting them for a change.