Month: September 2019

AS THE WHISTLE BLOWS, DEMOCRACY FADES

The ultimate outcome of the Ukraine/whistleblower ordeal is less important than the broader message it portends. In other words, welcome to the tipping point in the unraveling of our democracy.   This is no longer about an unhinged president doctoring a weather map with his Sharpie.  This is about a concerted and rapidly escalating assault on the very democratic values that made America great.

In many ways, Trump’s flagrant flaunting of a whistle-blower statute to keep a report documenting his alleged misdeeds from a congressional committee is neither new nor surprising behavior. This is a guy who has never shown the slightest inclination to let a law, covenant or moral code interfere with his singular motivational force of self-interest.  

Yet, this aberrant behavior pattern is rapidly escalating, from the amusing to the abhorrent.  Back during the 2016 campaign, reporters profiling this unlikely candidate almost uniformly described him as someone who “defied conventions” (here, here and here).  How benign and understated that seems now. It’s like describing Jeffrey Dahmer’s epicurean tastes as defying convention.

As diabolical as Trump has been, there was once room for reasoned optimism regarding the long-term impact of his malignancy on the future of American governance.  After all, our democracy has survived brutal assaults over the past 200+ years.  Surely our system of checks and balances, along with the commitment and integrity of dedicated public servants, would help mitigate against serious damage inflicted by the Donald’s defying of conventions.  Well, that worked for a while. But most of the White House folks with even a modicum of integrity have been fired or quit.  And the checks and balances we learned about in grade school grind at a snail’s pace.

For all practical purposes, our democracy has ceased to function.  This isn’t just Trump’s fault, although he is clearly the triggerman, the guy who took a dysfunctional system and reduced it to the kind of shambles that would warm the heart of a narcissistic authoritarian.  The problem began more than a decade ago when politics became so divisive and polarized that Republican congressional leaders would rather pass no legislation than work with a black Democratic president.  That’s why the biggest problems facing the country – immigration, gun control, health care, climate change – have seen insufficient or no action in the past 20 years.

That opened the door for Donald J. Trump to get elected on the solemn assertion that “I alone” can fix America.  And it’s been downhill ever since.

Remember all that stuff about three “co-equal” branches of government serving as the cauldron of our democracy?  Well, what many of us didn’t learn back in those civics classes was that the system was predicated on at least a modicum of good faith.  It’s common for Congress and a president to be on different pages. What the founders didn’t contemplate was a Trumpian presidency insisting that, it alone, controls the entire book.

So now we have, yet again, an impasse crisis between the president and Congress.  The Trump-appointed inspector general for the intelligence community reviewed a whistleblower complaint supposedly involving, among other matters, a phone conversation Trump had with the new president of Ukraine. The IG found it to be credible and of “urgent concern,” terms of art in the law that requires such matters to be referred to the Intelligence committees of the House and Senate.  The Trump administration is refusing to comply with the statute.  

At the same time, the Donald, out of a mixture of arrogance and invincibility, has been somewhat transparent when it comes to corruption.  That leaves us with the ironic duality of a president openly defying the whistleblower law while tweeting out much of the content likely involved in the matter.  Trump has acknowledged asking the Ukrainian president to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden’s son, and has also admitted sending his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to push Ukraine officials to dig up dirt on Biden for use in the 2020 presidential election.  

Meanwhile, House Democrats continue to spar with each other over potential moves on the impeachment chess board, largely over Trump’s obstruction of justice during the investigation into Russia’s interference in 2016 election.  Their opponent, however, has moved on to get another country to interfere in the upcoming election.  None of those chess pieces are moving right now because Donald Trump has pulled the rug out on the very democratic processes they rely upon.

Despite the constitutional impeachment and oversight responsibilities assigned to Congress, Trump has thumbed his nose at every turn, denying information and testimony that the House and Senate are clearly entitled to.  From the president’s tax returns to Don McGahn’s testimony, to information about immigration policy, bank loans and scores of other subjects, the White House has refused to produce any of it.  The intransigence is totally without precedent.  The result has been litigation and appeals, that may well continue beyond the 2020 election.

But Trump’s ruination of democracy goes much further.  With help from the Supreme Court, he has taken money Congress appropriated for various military projects and deferred it to building part of his wall at the Mexican border, a project specifically rejected by Congress.  The Pentagon now wants more money appropriated to replace the funds diverted to the wall.  According to reporting by the New York Times, White House sources say the president has his eye on diverting any such new appropriation toward additional sections of his wall.  

Freedom House is an independent agency that, for the past 50 years, has ranked countries around the world on how democratic their governments are.  The United States had always been near the top of the chart. Since 2017, however, our ranking has steadily deteriorated due to Trump’s frequent attacks on norms and institutions and the wearing down of democratic checks and balances.  Freedom House now places the U.S. well below other large and long-standing democracies such as France, Germany and Brittan.

Standing alone, the Ukraine/whistleblower episode would be tragic enough.  But on the heels of effectively usurping Congress’s oversight and funding responsibilities, this emboldened, in-broad-daylight rush to get yet another country to interfere in our elections moves this crisis into a whole different realm. Donald Trump is not just a terrible president.  He is not just a threat to our democratic way of life.  He has already dismantled huge parts of our democracy.  With a second term, it is hard to see how we would ever get it back.

TURNED OFF BY TRUMP, CORPORATE AMERICA TRIES TO GOVERN ITSELF

Something quite bizarre and remarkable is happening to American capitalism. Our economic system has long been predicated on the laissez faire sacrament of tethering commerce only to what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market.  Roughly translated, that means those who own the means of production should be allowed to suck up all the profits they can, unencumbered by any duty to their workers, customers or communities.

However, as a dystopic sign of chronic congressional constipation, together with the companion malady of massive Trumpian deregulation, some corporate titans are taking unheard of steps to self-regulate for a broader public good, even if it means loss of revenue.  Milton Friedman must be spinning in his grave.  

To be sure, as incredible as this shift appears, so far its scope is relatively small and limited.  It is not likely to win Hosannas from Democratic Socialists anytime soon. Yet, Its significance lies in the profundity of its message, namely that the federal government has grown so dysfunctional that some major corporate entities are taking a stab at public policy governance. 

What makes the role reversal even more bizarre is that the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have responded to this corporate usurpation of policy making by acting like lobbyists in an effort to influence the outcome of corporate legislating. It’s as if the regulators and the regulated simply switched places but carried on the old dance.

Take the issue of guns for example.  As of the first of this month, there have been 283 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. Yet, Congress has not passed any substantive gun control legislation in more than a generation.  Many business leaders are attempting to fill that regulatory void.  Walmart, on the heels of the murder of 22 customers in its El Paso store, banned the sale of assault weapons, hand guns and most ammunition in all of its locations. Dick’s Sporting Goods took similar action a year earlier. Responding to the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Dick’s pulled all assault-style rifles and high capacity magazines from its stores at an annual revenue loss of $150 million.  

The giant e-commerce software company, Salesforce.com, stopped doing business with clients that sell military-style weapons.  A number of banks, including Citigroup and Bank of America, adopted prohibitions against lending money to gun dealers who sell assault rifles, and required them to submit background checks on all other gun buyers. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, set up a new line of investment funds that exclude gun manufacturers and retailers.

Amazingly, these sensible gun regulations – stuff that Congress has been unable to legislate – have managed to push Republican officials into action mode. Unfortunately, the action is aimed at maintaining the sacred status of gun sales.  Yes, the party of free enterprise has suddenly turned to its former arch enemy of regulation as a cudgel to protect the free flow of assault weapons. Republican senators, led by Louisiana’s John Kennedy, are pushing legislation that would prohibit banks from “discriminating” against gun buyers.  Kennedy has also asked federal agencies to stop lending institutions from effectively restricting gun sales by adopting their own regulations.

Some of the Republican lobbying techniques against this new self-regulation by businesses trying to reduce gun violence have been even more Draconian.  The country’s biggest credit card issuers, led by Citigroup, decided to take steps that would either restrict or monitor gun sales purchased with a credit card.  This was not without precedent. Smaller companies like PayPal, Stripe, Square and Apple Pay already had explicit policies against transacting online sales of guns and related merchandise.  If big banks took a similar move, it could inflict a substantial dent in gun trafficking.

As reported on a recent episode of the New York Times’ The Daily podcast, senior bank executives went into a meeting with officials from the Security Exchange Commission, ostensibly about some unrelated and arcane financial reporting regulations.  During that session, however, an SEC commissioner made it very clear that the agency would not take kindly to any bank that came out against guns.  That shut down the gun sales credit card gambit, at least temporarily.

 This new corporate resolve to look for ways to push back on a combination of paralysis in some areas, and excessive deregulation in others, has surfaced in a number of other ways.  For example, the Trump administration’s move to roll back rules on methane-emissions was initially seen as a boon for big oil companies. Quite the contrary, most of those corporations – including Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell – were critical of Trump’s move and have said they will stick with the stricter Obama limits out of a desire to be seen as supportive of climate change remedies.

Meanwhile, automakers are balking at Trump’s plan to give them relief from Obama-era rules on fuel efficiency standards.  Here again, the president thought he was doing the companies a favor by rolling back environmental regulations.  But Ford, BMW, Volkswagen and Honda have said they will adopt standards slightly reduced from the Obama rules but much stricter than those Trump is trying to enact.  Other car manufacturers appear headed in the same direction, away from the president’s huge reduction in fuel efficiency rules.  

Mostly, this has to do with California and other states whose fuel standards exceed those pushed by Trump.  But they are also sensitive about being seen as ignoring environmental concerns, a stigma that has never kept the Donald from getting a good night’s sleep.   As a result, Trump is now threatening to hit car companies with anti-trust charges on the basis that they have conspired against him to make cars that don’t pollute enough.  He is also talking about prohibiting states from having stricter environmental standards.

Clearly, the GOP, once the party of big business and states’ rights, has morphed into a demented and unrecognizable entity. It is taking rights away from states, and it is beating up on God-fearing capitalists for trying to do what the government has failed miserably at: making this country a better place.  If this is what MAGA means, someone with a red hat needs to file a consumer fraud complaint. 

MEET THE 2020 CANDIDATE MOST LIKELY TO ASSURE TRUMP’S DEFEAT

Who has the best plan for defeating Donald Trump in 2020?  Is it “electable” Joe Biden and his retrospective of the Obama years? Is it the Democratic Socialism of Bernie Sanders? Is it the policy-in-every-pot approach of Elizabeth Warren?  How about Kamala Harris and her pragmatic idealism?  Or the Minnesota centrist nice of Amy Klobuchar? Maybe the youthful vibrancy of Mayor Pete?

When it comes to crafting the assured destruction of our Trumpian nightmare, there is someone who, hands’ down, tops all of the above.  It is Donald John Trump. Yes, popular mythology has this president coated in Teflon, forever protected from the foibles that would sink any other politician.   He was elected after boasting about his proclivity for sexual assault.  He had babies yanked from the arms of their mothers, insulted all of our allies, took an ax to human rights and environmental protections, all without much of a blip in his approval ratings.  

Yet, there are clear signs that significant numbers of the president’s 2016 supporters are entertaining second thoughts about their guy.  They are embarking on a well-worn path traveled by Trump’s former wives and cabinet members, who learned only too well that what starts off being new and exciting eventually turns into unbearably annoying chaos. 

It is precisely that nerve-shattering mania, in all of its constancy, absurdity and intensity, that may well bring Trump down in 2020.  The guy is a one-trick pony without a second act.  His campaign rallies and tweets are little more than formulaic rants, totally devoid of agility or transformation. Mr. Authenticity is what he is, a pathetic, broken man who couldn’t pivot to save his life. Or his presidency. 

Donald Trump will not be removed from office based on ideas and policies.  Despite all of the fine platform issues advanced by Democratic candidates, it will not be health care, climate change, economic justice, human rights or education policy that drives this presidential election.  It will be chronic and malignant Trump Fatigue, a nauseating state in which, as they say in AA, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired.  

There may be no more poetic way to wrap this story arc than for this bitterly divided country to reach a singular consensus on the only thing that matters right now: the compelling need to stop the constant noise, the deafening drumbeat of useless, irrelevant craziness.  Regardless of where you stand on the critical issues of the day, they’ve all been in a permanent lockdown since January 20, 2017.  It’s been all-Trump-all-the-time. 

That’s how he won the only election he was ever in.  Trump commanded every news cycle and made it all about him. He hasn’t deviated from that schtick for even an hour since 2016. This is not a man with a repertoire of strategies.  He’s a rinse-and-repeat kind of guy.  But here’s the kicker:  It worked three years ago because enough people saw him as totally different from other politicians, a real wild and crazy shit disturber who would fix everything that is wrong with America.  Many of those folks now see him as a crazy old man who never shuts up.  Even in the train wreck metaphor, nobody in their right mind wants to gaze at the same gruesome disaster for three years, let alone eight. 

Think about what we’ve been through just recently. Much of this week has been devoted to the President’s Sharpie-doctored weather map falsely supporting his earlier error in announcing that Hurricane Dorian was headed to Alabama.  Trump’s desire to buy Greenland was a five-day story.  His suggestion that nuclear bombs be used to destroy hurricanes occupied another three days.  Then he “hereby ordered” American companies to stop doing business with China. He called China President Xi Jinping an “enemy” one day, only to reverse course the next day by calling him a “great leader and a brilliant man.” 

For three days last week, Trump focused on marketing his Miami golf club resort as the venue for next year’s G-7 conference, fiercely denying reports that the place is infested with bedbugs. Meanwhile, Trump tweeted to his 64 million followers a picture of an Iranian launch pad that was the scene of a rocket launch failure, except that it turned out the photograph was highly classified as top secret because it could reveal intelligence gathering techniques.  

There is more. Before August ended, Trump, as noted by the New Yorker, called himself the “Chosen One”, flashed a thumbs-up during a photo op with the family of mass-shooting victims, accused Jews who voted for Democrats of “great disloyalty,” and called the chairman of the Federal Reserve an “enemy” of the United States.   He also cheered the burglary of a Democratic congressman’s home and labelled various critics “nasty and wrong,” “pathetic,” “highly unstable, “wacko,” “psycho,” and lunatic,” among other insults.

All this constant, crazy, angry negative noise has begun to turn off previous Trump supporters, folks who voted for him but who were never part of his hard core base.  According to Morning Consult polling, in 15 swing states, including those that won the electoral college count for him in 2016 (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin), Trump has gone from a net positive to a net negative rating between January of 2017 and this summer. (A positive rating means more people approve of him than disapprove, and a negative rating is the reverse.)  

There are other signs of fatigue among 2016 Trump voters.  Although the president’s tweeting has increased substantially over his term ( from 157 times a month during his first six months to 284 times a month for the past six months), his followers are much less active.  Axios reports that Trump’s Twitter interaction rate, measured by likes and retweets, has fallen by 70 percent since he was elected.

Marc Thiessen, the only Washington Post opinion writer who has consistently supported Trump’s policies, recently captured the essence of his guy’s biggest reelection problem: “If you hit the mute button, the administration is doing a great job in many areas,” Thiessen wrote. “But when the sound comes on, the chaos and lack of discipline drown it all out.”

Trump doesn’t do mute. To be sure, his campaign strategists will continue to push their candidate to turn down the volume, assuring him that less is more. A Twitter drought now could pay dividends with a resumption of messaging closer to the election. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” is not merely poetry for lovers, but wisdom for overexposed and overbearing political candidates. 

Fortunately, there is zero likelihood Trump will take that advice.  In his solipsistic heart of hearts, he alone got himself into the White House, and he alone will capture a second term.  God bless him.  If he tried acting less deranged, if he toned down the constant noise of craziness, if he forced himself to appear just a little presidential for a few months, he might well expand his base and win reelection.  

So, by all means, let Trump be Trump. It may well be the best exit strategy out there.