Tag: Chuck Schumer

FORGET CIVILITY. FIGHT TRUMP WITH WHATEVER WORKS

It seemed so clear to me when I started writing this post: tossing the president’s press secretary out of a restaurant was wrong. So were the boisterous dining disruptions that protesters foisted upon other Trump surrogates. Aren’t we supposed to go high when they go low? All this does is let the Trumsters play the victim card, right? Then a funny thing happened: I changed my mind.

Believe me, that was a painful experience. We all have our own style and approach to dealing with conflict, born of our life experiences. I spent more than 30 years as a union rep, tangling with some pretty virulent management types. The only real control I had – on a good day – was over myself. I chose civility, decency and respect, not out of a higher moral calling, but because that approach worked for me and my goal of helping union members get the best contract possible. That meant avoiding personal attacks and name-calling, and sticking to the issue at hand, while building power to make a decent deal.

So I cruised right along on my high horse, crafting this ode to civility and respect. I reread my words, searching for a pithy and righteous close. That’s when it struck me. I was wrong. This is Donald Trump’s America now, an ugly, hateful abyss that keeps turning darker and bleaker by the hour. Civility and respectfulness are not going to get our country back anytime soon.

During this past week:

A California woman screamed at a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent that Mexicans are “rapists, animals and drug dealers”, echoing one of Trump’s favorite litanies.

A Tennessee congressional candidate put up a billboard vowing to “Make America White Again”.

A South Carolina woman was charged with beating a black child and screaming racial epithets at him because he was swimming in a pool with white kids.

A North Carolina man who insists that God is a white supremacist and the Jews descended from Satan won the Republican primary for a seat in the state legislature.

Thousands of children, many in diapers, remain separated from their migrant parents as a result of Trump’s unconscionable political power play at the border.

The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim travel ban and delivered a serious blow to organized labor. With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, credible court observers predict that abortion rights will be abolished within 18 months, and that the court will tilt severely rightward for decades to come.

In other words, Donald Trump is doing precisely what he promised. He is shaking up the foundations of our country at levels totally off the Richter Scale. This isn’t a collegial debate over tax policy or farm subsidies. This is a historic existential battle for the heart and soul of America. We are in a cold civil war that is getting warmer by the day. It will take more than civility to win this one.

Earlier this week, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters was wildly cheered by a crowd of energized millennials when she told them: “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!” By the end of the week, Waters had canceled all public appearances because of death threats. Trump called her “unhinged” with an “extraordinarily low IQ” and claimed – incorrectly – that she had threatened to harm his supporters. Then came top congressional Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, both blasting Waters for encouraging such incivility. Said Schumer: “If you disagree with a politician . . . vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Oh yes it is, Senator. The Civil Rights Act did not flow majestically from a reasoned debate by golden tongued orators. It took years of street protests and massive harassment of political opponents. As Jonathan Bernstein, a former university professor, wrote for Bloomberg this week, “From the American Revolution on, the spoils of freedom, fair treatment and equality have not gone to the patient and polite. The spoils have gone to those who are incensed and determined, unafraid and unashamed to raise more than a little hell.”

No, embarrassing cabinet members in restaurants and other direct actions are not going to end our Trumpian nightmare. But they are viable tactics in a broader strategy to do just that, by flipping at least one of the two congressional chambers in November and removing Trump from office in the 2020 election, if not before. It’s all about voter turnout, tapping into the passion of those millennials who cheered Maxine Waters’ call to action, reaching blacks, Latinos and others, disenchanted with both parties, but ready to act now against a president intent on marginalizing them. Those actions pull them in, strengthen the movement and evolve into votes.

As a personal matter of style, I will continue to choose civility. If I owned a restaurant, I’d let Sarah Huckabee Sanders eat there. On the other hand, if someone tosses her out because of the abhorrent policies she has to defend, it reminds us all that these are not ordinary times. It reminds us that the rules of political discourse have to change in order to accommodate the toxicity of an environment that threatens the values we hold dear.

We don’t have to become Trump to beat Trump, but neither should we cling blindly to an honor code of civility when dealing with a lying thug who takes children away from their parents and emboldens bigotry of every stripe. That, Senator Schumer, is what is really not American.

ENDING THE SHUTDOWN MAY HAVE AVERTED A DREAMER NIGHTMARE

Senate Democrats didn’t mess up by ending an embryonic government shutdown. Their mistake was using the tactic in the first place. Quickly retreating from a bad decision, a foreign concept to the current president and his Republican sycophants, is smart and effective leadership.

Linking immigration rights for the Dreamers with the GOP spending bill made sense earlier this month – an eternity ago in this bizarre political climate. Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes to pass a resolution keeping the government open. Democrats needed to find a way to keep undocumented young people brought into the country as children from being deported. Donald Trump told the world that he wanted to save the Dreamers through a “bill of love” and would sign any bipartisan immigration measure the Senate came up with.

The Capitol was hardly ensconced in a spirit of peace and love, but – for one brief, shining moment – there was real anticipation of at least a little give-and-take, the likes of which have not been seen here in more than a generation. Then Trump offered his “shithole countries” soliloquy, and Kumbaya morphed into a war chant.

The Donald’s boasts about his stellar negotiating skills have all the credibility of his claim to the be the world’s least racist person. There isn’t a rule of effective negotiating that he doesn’t regularly violate, including the one about not going back on your word. Days after telling a bipartisan Senate delegation that he would accept whatever immigration plan they came up with, and two hours after signaling his agreement with their proposal, Trump did a complete reversal and embraced the entire draconian screed of the anti-immigration hawks.

Although the rug had been pulled out from under them, Democrats stayed the tactical course of making immigration the quid-pro-quo for producing the needed votes to avoid a shutdown. The narrative quickly changed. It was no longer about Democrats helping Republicans pass a budget bill in exchange for protecting the Dreamers. It had become, through optics pushed by right wing messaging, a matter of Democrats forcing a shutdown to protect illegal immigrants. Besides, the leverage had no juice. The Trumpian gang got where they are by promising to drain the swamp. They abhor government. It’s the Democrats who believe in government and what it can do to make people’s lives better. Although the Dreamers have had strong public support, most polls showed substantial public anxiety over a prolonged government shutdown on their behalf.

That left Democrats in a weakened strategic position. Closing the government was hardly an effective club to use on a party that dislikes government. Yes, the talking point here was that Republicans would suffer from a shutdown since they control Congress and the White House. But the reality was that government closed because Democrats insisted to impasse on an immigration deal in exchange for the spending measure. That had the potential, particularly for the long haul, of weakening public support for the Dreamers.

I get the angst and disappointment of my friends on the left, and particularly on the part of those young people who grew up as Americans and see the clock ticking on possible deportation to countries they view as foreign. The pre-shutdown rhetoric of Democratic leaders about there being no spending bill without taking care of the Dreamers was powerful, passionate and hopeful. But, despite the message of many self-help books, a determination to win doesn’t guaranty victory. A prolonged government shutdown was simply not the instrument to induce surrender by a majority party that cares nothing about the fate of young immigrants, government workers or the people they serve. It would be like kidnapping Hillary Clinton and asking Donald Trump to pay the ransom.

By agreeing to fund government for another three weeks, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer not only bought time, he also brought the narrative back where it belonged, namely on how to keep the Dreamers from being deported. No longer is Trump’s campaign machine cranking out ads about Democrats shutting down government in order to help “illegal aliens.” Instead, late this week, the president put the White House on record for the first time in support of a bill that would not only give work permits to about 1.8 million young immigrants but would also grant them a path to citizenship.

Yes, Trump’s blink on the Dreamers, was in the context of an overall immigration proposal that would also include $25 billion in funding for his wall, along with severe reductions in the number of immigrants allowed into the country. It now seems more likely than ever that a bipartisan group in the Senate will produce a bill that follows the president’s position on the Dreamers but pushes back in some other areas.

To be sure, we are not yet at the end of the road on all of this. It remains very much an uphill battle for Democrats. They are, after all, Washington’s minority party right now. But hard, fruitful negotiations are still ongoing. And that would not be happening if the government remained shut down. The chatter would never have risen above the finger pointing.

Instead, the endgame offers two broad scenarios . One is a deal that overcomes the worst of right wing ideology and paves the way for nearly two million young people to become citizens. The other is, at the hands of Republicans, a defeat for any Dreamer protection legislation. That would be one more clarion call for a congressional realignment in this fall’s midterm elections. Either outcome is better than a protracted government shutdown with both sides accusing the other of causing it.

TRUMP’S ‘GOOD WEEK’ IS JUST MORE OF THE SAME

To hear Donald Trump tell it, he had his best week yet in Washington. The president bitch slapped his own party’s Congressional leaders. Then he hugged Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and even let House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dictate a Twitter message for him. Not only that, he helped secure rare bipartisan support for a bill that will get Texas some hurricane relief and keep the government open for three more months. Could this, the Donald’s 137th reinvention, be the one that really sticks? Could it be that he has finally become presidential?

Naaaa, of course not. This was just one more iteration of Trump being Trump. When it comes to his core values, he has always been consistent. And what he really values, at his core, is himself, and how he looks to the world at any moment in time. “It’s all over the news,” the president bubbled in a call to Schumer. “The coverage is incredible; everyone is praising me. Even MSNBC is saying nice things about me.” (Here and here.)

And that’s what it takes for Donald Trump to have a very good week. There was a time he had to really work to create the public illusion of grandeur. Like when he impersonated his own press agent in order to spread lurid reports about his love life to gossip columnists. It’s so much easier now. All he has to do is make nice with a couple of Democrats he spent the last six months vilifying.

Back in the real world, North Korea is polishing its nukes, 800,000 young Americans face deportation, and there is no assurance our government will be funded past December 8. Trump’s feel-good days of early September offer no nourishment for a body politic that has been ailing since January 20. For that, we need skilled leadership, someone with credibility, vision, a sense of direction and an ability to subjugate ego needs for the sake of getting the job done. Alas, Trump is a dismal failure in all four areas. He is constitutionally incapable of getting outside of himself in order to lead others. The president’s euphoric week was packed with evidence supporting the previous sentence.

It started with the dreamers, the now young adults whose parents brought them into the country illegally as children. Through a 2012 executive order, the Obama administration protected them from deportation. Trump excoriated Obama for that action during the campaign, promising, if elected, to send them all back to the countries of their birth. Then he softened a bit, telling the dreamers not to worry because he loves them. However, as the songwriter noted, love hurts. On Tuesday the administration pulled the plug on the dreamers, announcing that they would be subject to deportation in March if Congress did not resolve the issue through legislation. That was it. The president took no position on what Congress should do – protect them or evict them. He just wanted the monkey off his back. Amazingly, the New York Times quoted White House aides saying their boss did not appear to fully understand the meaning of his announcement an hour before it was delivered.

The public response was overwhelming negative. So Trump, naturally, turned to Twitter for a mood adjustment. His message: if Congress doesn’t act, he will “revisit” the issue. For someone who fancies himself as a master negotiator, this was an incredibly insipid move. It instantly deflated the leverage he created by linking the dreamers’ deportation to a failure of Congress to act. But it made him feel better for a while.

Then came the infamous Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders. The Republicans, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, wanted to raise the debt limit and keep government funded for 18 months, getting them past the mid-term elections. Schumer and Pelosi wanted only a three-month extension because it would give them leverage in a year-end funding battle. Ryan called the Democrat’s three-month proposal “ridiculous and disgusting.” Trump’s partner in the meeting, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had just delivered a defense of the Republican’s 18-month plan when Trump shocked the room by siding with the Democrats, whose three-month deal was soon summarily passed by both houses, much to the chagrin of frustrated Republicans.

It was the news of that meeting that gave Trump his good week. He could view himself as a bipartisan deal-maker. Basking in the mania of that image, Trump upped the ante, by joining with “Chuck and Nancy” in supporting a law protecting the dreamers. A day later, he went even further and said he agreed with Schumer that Congress should end the requirement of regularly approving the government’s debt limit, a sacred conservative ritual if there ever was one.

The pundits have had a field day with it all. Some compared it to Bill Clinton’s triangulation. Some wondered if Trump was finally finding his footing. Others, noting that the president was once a Democrat, speculated he might be returning to his roots. The analysis is about as meaningful as trying to figure out why a leaf suddenly falls from a tree. That’s what a leaf does. And this is what the Donald does: grab whatever attention he can to make him look and feel good in the moment. As Poe says, “merely this and nothing more.”

The problem is that moments are outlived by their consequences. Strategies are designed to build a multiplicity of moments that will get you to where you want to go, assuming you know where that is. Trump doesn’t get any of that. He’s too wrapped up in watching himself on cable news to realize that when you blindside associates – on either side, when you yank the rug out from under your treasury secretary, when you love dreamers one day and move to deport them the next, you lack the credibility, integrity and probity needed to lead. You’re just a leaf sailing through the breeze. ‘Tis the wind and nothing more.