Sending impeachment to the Senate: "A Very Strange Debate"

I hope to soon be proved wrong. But I just don't see how Nancy Pelosi's gambit of holding the articles of impeachment against Trump back from formal submission to the Senate until McConnell and his crew agree to call witnesses during the trial is a sensible play.

David Super (A Very Strange Debate Balkinization 12/23/2019) argues:

The notion that, by withholding the articles of impeachment, House Democrats can extract procedural concessions from Senator McConnell, is preposterous. As Senator McConnell has pointed out repeatedly, threatening to withhold something he does not want provides little leverage. It is like my saying I will refuse to dump a thousand gallons of toxic sludge on your lawn unless you give me a million dollars. On the other hand, ... permanent Senate rules and the decisions of Chief Justice Roberts, not Senator McConnell, will set the rules for a Senate trial and are likely to give the House’s impeachment managers ample opportunity to subpoena Administration officials. Senator McConnell clearly knows this; the Democrats would do well to tailor their strategy accordingly.

He makes the safe and obvious assumption that, as it look now, the Senate would acquit Trump in a trial. Clearly, we will never know what happens if the Senate never takes up the charges.

Super also reminds us of the stakes:

As for the questions of whether President Trump really has been impeached if the House never sends articles of impeachment to the Senate and whether the President would prefer to prevail in a Senate trial or to never have one, I do not know and I do not care. The former is a question of empty symbolism: the President’s place in history will not be determined by such technicalities but rather by his unprecedented relationship with Russia, by his transformation of the mores of the presidency, and by his throwing sobbing immigrant children into cages. The second question represents an unhealthy substitution of personal concerns for advancing the well-being of the country: we should be focusing on restoring our political institutions – which includes in part communicating with voters in ways they understand – and on ending our shameful treatment of immigrants rather than on the vanity of one man. [my emphasis]

He mentions several possible angles and motives possible in Pelosi's current stance. He doesn't mention the Occam's Razor explanation: that she never wanted to do impeachment and this is her way of burying it now.

So far, the only obvious results from his play that I can see is that the Republicans are arguing that Pelosi holding the charges back from the Senate shows the Democrats know that there charges were concocted. I don't know how seriously people in the FOX News bubble take their propaganda points. But whether they believe the charges against Trump are bogus or not, the current situation gives them an obvious talking point.

But Pelosi needs to formally send the impeachment article to deactivate that talking point and to achieve the most plausible immediate goal, which Super describes, "establishing once and for all which senators are willing to accept what the President has done may play an important role in reforming or replacing the Republican Party."

More on (a few) white evangelical conservatives trying to distance themselves from the embarrassment known as Donald Trump

The Christianity Today editorial supporting the Senate to convict Trump on impeachment charges got predictable pushback from the Christian Right. CT has followed up with a supportive piece by their president, Timothy Dalrymple (The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President 12/22/2019)

It doesn't distance itself from the position of the earlier editorial, on which I commented here a few days ago.

But it does contain this somewhat puzzling qualification, noting that the impeachment editorial was signed by editor-in-chief Mark Galli:

CT does not have an editorial board. Editors publish under their own names. Yet Galli has stood in the trenches for men and women of faith for over three decades. He has been an outstanding editor in chief. While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry — our board and our staff hold a range of opinions - he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day.

For whatever reason, CT does not formally call "the editorial voice of the magazine" an editorial board.

Aside from a Mad King Trump outburst on Twitter, some of the usual suspects did an open letter to CT, the signatories including noted Christian scholars Michele Bachmann, Gary Bauer, James "beat-the-kids" Dobson, Mike "the Huck" Huckabee, Cindy Jacobs, Robert "let's-have-a-civil-war" Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, and Ralph Reed. (Melissa Barnhart, Nearly 200 evangelical leaders slam Christianity Today for questioning their Christian witness Christian Post 12/22/2019)

Neither of the two CT pieces use the word "white" anywhere. But the problem they are addressing is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of white evangelical Christians. As Nathalie Baptiste notes (A Christian Magazine Called for Trump’s Removal. Top Evangelicals Say It’s A Liberal Plot. Mother Jones 12/20/2019):

White evangelicals have always been Trump’s most unwavering allies and voting base, but the impeachment question may have begun to splinter even that group. An October Public Religion Research Institute found that 99 percent of white evangelicals opposed impeachment. (In contrast to the 86 percent of Black Protestants who disapprove of the president.)

You can find stories written by reporters of major media outlets who venture out into the wilds outside the Beltway Village bubble and quote mysterious self-identified evangelicals out in the "heartland" explaining why they support Trump. It's only a mystery to people who somehow haven't managed to catch one of the basic facts about American politics, which is that there is a massive overlap between "self-identified white evangelicals" and "white people who really don't like black people (or Latinos, or gays, or immigrants, or wimmin) very much".

The Christian Post article linked above does mention someone criticizing Mark Galli for supposedly dissing those pore, picked-on white evangelicals that the Mean Libruls criticize just because they're so prejudiced against some many people. Why cain't them Libruls show some respect for POPs (people of prejudice), huh, answer me that!

Here's how Dalrymple dances around that particular (white) elephant in the room:

Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters. And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord. While the Trump administration may be well regarded in some countries, in many more the perception of wholesale evangelical support for the administration has made toxic the reputation of the Bride of Christ.

Galli’s editorial focused on the impeachment, but it was clear the issues are deeper and broader. Reasonable people can differ when it comes to the flagrantly partisan impeachment process. But this is not merely about impeachment, or even merely about President Trump. He is not the sickness. He is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty. [my emphasis]

But Dalrymple makes sure to not identify the Christian Right's political goals with the President they criticize because his a serious embarrassing, sleazy criminal:

The problem is not that we as evangelicals are associated with the Trump administration’s judicial appointments or its advocacy of life, family, and religious liberty. We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. ...

Similarly, this is neither a criticism of the evangelical Trump voter nor an endorsement of the Democrats. The 2016 election confronted evangelical voters with an impossible dilemma: Vote for a pro-choice candidate whose policies would advance so much of what we oppose, or vote for an extravagantly immoral candidate who could well damage the standing of the republic and the witness of the church. Countless men and women we hold in the highest regard voted for President Trump, some wholeheartedly and some reluctantly. Friends we love and respect have also counseled and worked within the Trump administration. We believe they are doing their best to serve wisely in a fallen world.

Authoritarian atttudes toward women are bound up with the antiabortion position, and militarnt antiabortion groups in the United States have been a key element in spawning not only "mainstream" partisan fanaticism but also the hardcore, violent far-right brand. And the fundamentalist version of "faimily" (patriarchal, heteronormative, excessive sexual repression) and "religious liberty" (effectively treating conservative Christianity as a state religion) are very much part of the authoritarian, anti-democratic "sickness that began before" Trump. Pretending that Trump is somehow an anomaly for today's Republican Party is ducking the reality of the asyymmetric polarization with see in the radicalism of that party.

And, "Friends we love and respect have also counseled and worked within the Trump administration. We believe they are doing their best to serve wisely in a fallen world," applied to people who willingly serve in appointive positions in the Trump Administration is a mealy-mouthed version of "they were just following orders."

Is Pelosi playing complex poker with McConnell over impeachment? Or just trying to make the whole thing go away?

Digby Parton is optimistic that Nancy Pelosi's current stance about not sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate is a great move, as she explains in Nancy Pelosi turns up the heat on Trump and the Republicans — and it's working Salon 12/20/2019.

Considering how conservative and buttoned-up Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been about this whole thing — keeping the charges narrowly focused on Ukraine, and resisting every attempt to include Robert Mueller's material or the emoluments violations in the impeachment inquiry — it came as something of a shock on Wednesday night when she abruptly announced that she would not name House managers for a trial or send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she knew how that body planned to proceed.

It was an unexpectedly bold power play, upending what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants had hoped to turn into a dull, perfunctory affair in order to spare their vulnerable swing-state Republican incumbents as much damage as possible. They know that holding a real trial with witnesses could be disastrous, and they have been fighting both the Democratic leadership and the White House on that point.

I hope something good comes out of this approach. But I just don't understand why Pelosi thinks she has leverage over McConnell. The whole plan seems to turn on this assumption: "Trump also wants to stage a full trial because he believes that what he did was perfect and wants 'total exoneration' on TV."

We'll see if that works. But if Pelosi doesn't send the charges to Senate for trial, the Republicans will declare complete exoneration for Trump anyway. It's possible that Trump is so intensely fixated on having the Senate find him innocent that he will insist on having witnesses called, for which Pelosi is supposedly holding out.

But to me, this looks very uncomfortably like Pelosi finding an excuse to make the impeachment just go away, which was her position in her first six months as Speaker this year.

Republican doubletalk on Trump and on the Senate convicting him on the impeachment charges

I've never been much impressed with the NeverTrumper schtick. It basically is a way for some Republicans to distance themselves from Trump's vulgarity and sleaze while still advocating for Republican positions and constantly criticizing the Democrats for not being Republican enough.

I've always distinguished John Dean from the NeverTrumpers, because he has been make substantive criticisms of the Republican Party's authoritarianism for a long time. Like in this article co-authored with Bob Altemeyer, who has done extensive research and writing on authoritarianism, Why Do So Many Americans Continue to Support Donald Trump? In a Word: Authoritarianism Justia 03/20/2019:

There are a lot of Americans who do not care for democracy (Altemeyer, 2006 at www.theauthoritarians.org). They do not mind that he fails to follow the Constitution, or that he poses a danger to democracy. In fact, surveys of these people show they would prefer a demagogic autocrat who will “stomp out the rot,” which they believe infects society. Because most Americans see the world differently, this finding may be difficult to accept. It is, however, based on solid science.

The research to which we refer began during World War II and has, over the decades, produced a clear understanding about Americans who are highly submissive to authority, how they became that way, plus a great deal about how they think and maintain their beliefs. This body of science is well known in academic circles, and it is essential to understanding the Trump presidency and his supporters. Yet it is being largely ignored.

I would note that a major body of systematic study on this problem precedes the Second World War, Studies on Authority and Family (1936), carried out and published in 1936 as one in a series of special publication by the Institute for Social Research, aka, the Frankfurt School.

But Dean is aligning himself with NeverTrumper Max Boot on what strikes me as a really bad tactical idea:

This is playing out so far like I dreamed it could, and it can get better if the House Democrats continue to sit on the articles. This is Trump’s nightmare because more can and will come out on his guilt. Mitch’s nightmare too, notwithstanding his pretending otherwise. https://t.co/LEH5KDXGHU

— John Dean (@JohnWDean) December 20, 2019

Not sending the impeachment to the Senate would be taken by virtually everyone as a lack of seriousness on the part of the House Democrats. And it would be.

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss some other tactical considerations on the timing of formally sending the impeachment to the Senate. (Ana has been particularly sour about establishment Democrats the last week or so.) Nancy Pelosi's Impeachment Fakeout TYT 12/19/2019:

There was an interesting conservative endorsement this week of the need to remove Trump from office, from Christianity Today, a conservative evangelical journal (Trump Should Be Removed from Office 12/19/2019).

(Update 12/23/2019: The editorial was signed by CT's editor-in-chief Mark Galli but speaks in a collective voice of "we" and "our". In a follow-up piece supporting Galli's position, CT's president Timothy Dalrymple writes, "CT does not have an editorial board. Editors publish under their own names. Yet Galli has stood in the trenches for men and women of faith for over three decades. He has been an outstanding editor in chief. While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry — our board and our staff hold a range of opinions — he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day." For whatever reason, CT does not formally call "the editorial voice of the magazine" an editorial board, but I've left the original references in this post. The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President 12/22/2019)

I don't think their editorial board is made up of NeverTrumper types. But in a similar way, it's very tempting for Democrats to praise conservative pitches like this and distribute them on social media as a kind of "evidence against interest" argument.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone — with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused. [my emphasis]

But my guess is that this kind of argument will mainly function to give evangelical pastors and members of their congregations who are so inclined something to say that sounds thoughtful and critical while they explain why they support Trump against being removed from office, by Senate conviction or by the 2020 election.

The CT editors also include their arguments from two decades ago for impeaching Bill Clinton on far more frivolous excuses than the very substantial high crimes and misdemeanors that are well documented for President Trump. Because Republicans who are trying to sound thoughtful or prayerful about Trump's conviction still need a whataboutism argument against the Democrats. And readers can make their own judgments about whether their criticism of Trump is as passionate as their criticism of Clinton they quote. It's notable that the very substantial evidence of multiple instances of felony obstruction of justice on Trump's part documented in the Mueller report don't merit an explicit mention in the editorial.

The full editorial on Clinton in 1998 The Prodigal Who Didn’t Come Home 10/05/1998) is notably longer than the current one about Trump. And it doesn't offer any sympathetic alibi language for evangelicals who might want to sound like they disapproved of his affair with Monica Lewinsky but didn't support impeaching him and removing him from office. On the contrary, the 1998 editorial sneers at Clinton's admission that his affair was "inappropriate".

The following excerpts present an notable contrast. From the 2019 editorial:

Let’s grant this to the president [Trump]: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.

Did the 1998 editorial show similar understanding for Democrats' concerns about crass partisanship by Republicans? Um, not exactly:

On August 17, Bill Clinton acted like he was cornered. There was no mea in his mea culpa. He no sooner acknowledged an "inappropriate" sexual relationship with a female intern less than half his age, than he started blaming those who were doing their duty in pursuing the truth and upholding the law. Even his subsequent attempts at apology — to his cabinet, to party loyalists, to Democratic members of Congress — looked more like sandbagging operations to shore up crumbling support than like the fruit of personal reflection. For Bill Clinton, there was no openness to being found.

So, for Christianity Today, 1998: Clinton admits wrongdoing then criticizes rabid partisanship in the impeachment process - deserving of total contempt.

Trump and his supporters in Congress staunchly deny that Trump did anything wrong and dismiss the Democratic investigation, which were closer to reluctant and apologetic than rigidly partisan - Trump and his supporters obviously deserve generous Christian sympathy for their objections to Democratic partisanship.

I'm underwhelmed by this conservative kinda-sorta endorsement of a Senate conviction against President Trump.

Taking a deep breath after the Trump impeachment

"When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in."
- G. W. F. Hegel, "Preface," Philosophy of Right

I have to find an excuse to roll out my favorite Hegel quote every now and then. I wanted to include it here with a quote I couldn't find online but that I heard from the late great Molly Ivins the one time I heard her speak live. So I'll quote it from my admittedly imperfect memory from circa 1995: "You should always remember that no matter how bad you think things are now, there's always a good chance you'll look back on now as the good old days."

What brought this to mind was my own feelings of something like letdown after Congress impeached Trump. Because it's a big validation for those of us who have been there with Congresswoman Rashid Tlaib who wanted to impeach the em-eff-er.

But as much as we would like to see Trump get the removal from office he so richly deserves, that does look unlikely at the moment. And, like everything else in the future, we don't actually know how it will play out, though I'm intellectually confident that it will help the Democrats politically.

So times like this make me want to roll out the famous Owl of Minerva, who we can all envy for not having to fret about the future, because she's going to get to deliver the authoritative verdict when she decides it's time.

Minerva, who gets to deliver the official verdict on the meaning of historical events

But I'm not feeling entirely negative. Because WE IMPEACHED THE EM-EFF-ER!!! That's a good thing. Minerva will at least have to take notice of that.

Since I was around during the Nixon Administration and took tremendous pleasure, not to mention political validation, when he resigned, a "mere" impeachment just doesn't provide the same rush.

I started thinking, well, maybe I'm disturbed because in the Nixon and Clinton impeachment processes, both parties in Congress at least pretended to treat it as a solemn occasion. But then I remembered that all I would have to do is browse through Joe Conason's and Gene Lyons' The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (2000) to remember how grotesquely shameless the Republicans were during the Clinton impeachment.

But the Democratic leadership was pushed into undertaking the Trump impeachment against their will and against their own bad, lazy, cynical inclinations. And that's a good thing. A very good thing. And I'm willing to take "yes" for an answer. In the new year, we'll have plenty of time for rending of clothing and gnashing of teeth over the chronic fecklessness of the Democrats and the astonishing shamelessness and villainy of the Republican Party.

Which reminds me, the brilliant Roy Edroso has captured the trajectory of the Republican Party, writing that in Trump, the Republicans have "found their dreamboat -- more senile than Reagan, more crooked than Nixon, and even more outrageously fake-Christian than George W. Bush." (Never Their Own Fault Alicublog 12/18/2019)

From 01/06/2008: George McGovern on impeaching Cheney and Bush

I'm re-upping this post from 12 years ago (slightly edited for clarity):

Former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern has an op-ed in the Washington Post today on impeachment, Why I Believe Bush Must Go 01/06/08. I'm pleased to see that he gives a reasonable description of the current partisan atmosphere:

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising. (my emphasis)

And the following is straightforwardly true:

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

McGovern also has an appropriate description of the Bush Gulag, calling it a "shocking perversion".

And he doesn't forget about the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, which Cheney, Bush and Karl Rove decided to embrace as ethnic cleansing by natural disaster:

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot. (my emphasis)

McGovern, a bomber pilot in the Second World War, hasn't forgotten that patriotism is about more than listening to Rush Limbaugh and cheering about killin' foreigners. It also involves commitment to the notion that Andrew Jackson defined as a democratic nation that respects the Constitution.

McGovern, whose wife Eleanor just recently past away, ends on a poignant note:

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.

We could all aspire to be as lucid, engaged and committed to the public good when we become octogenarians as George McGovern is.

What a very Republican Administration looks like

Digby Parton gives us a rundown on the latest Trump news in World mocks Trump at NATO summit: Impeachment has him coming unglued Salon 12/04/2019:

As promised, the House Intelligence Committee released its report on the Ukraine investigation on Tuesday. It was another of those days when everyone on TV was madly reading a pile of documents trying to find any nuggets of new information while at the same time attempting to give the public a sense of the larger narrative. This time there was no William Barr on hand to spin things in favor of the president, so the media managed to tell the real story. It is actually more devastating than anticipated.

To make the whole thing even more frantic and surreal than it already was, on split-screen TV President Trump could be seen in England making an utter fool out of himself and the nation at the NATO summit. He was predictably unable to maintain a sense of dignity or pride, lying and whining at every turn. It was a very strange news cycle, to say the least. [my emphasis]

She also provides a great reminder of why I have never been an enthusiast for NeverTrumpers who pretend that Trumpism is something other than the Republicans Party that have progressively radicalized itself:

In a surprise revelation, it appears likely that the ranking Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was in on the scheme at least as long ago as last spring. The report includes phone records that indicate Nunes was speaking to Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas, his Ukrainian-born colleague who was recently indicted by the Southern District of New York. Oddly, in all those hearings over the past few weeks during which Nunes ranted and raved about various made-up conspiracies, he never uttered a word about knowing any of the people involved in all this. [my emphasis]

As Digby, who has no illusions about the nature of the institution called the Republican Parry, rightly concludes, "Our president is an utter fool. Those guys in that video all know it, and so does the leadership of the Republican Party. Imagine how much better off the whole world would be right now if that party's elected officials would do their constitutional duty and put an end to this nightmare."

Trump is responsible for his own actions as President. But the disaster known as Trumpism was brought to us by the Republican Party, not by Trump on his own.

The other NATO leaders don't all show admiration for Dear Leader Trump. Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron appear to make fun of President Trump Euronews 12/04/2019:

As Digby notes, Trump continued his erratic and irresponsible handling of foreign policy and basic diplomacy. "He later refused to commit to NATO's collective defense pledge if whatever country was under attack wasn't 'paid up' on its dues, revealing once again that he remains obstinately ignorant about how NATO funding works."

Julia Ioffe has provided us with a description of the kind of destruction the very Republican Party Trump Administration (Trump Is Waging War on America’s Diplomats GQ 12/03/2019:

... the administration — through three years of attempted budget cuts, hiring freezes, and grotesquely personal attacks—has eviscerated the country's diplomatic corps and put highly sensitive matters of national security in the hands of politically appointed novices. They are people like Gordon Sondland, the Trump donor who became America's ambassador to the European Union, who is now playing a starring role in the Ukrainian imbroglio that imperils the Trump presidency. It is no accident that impeachment hangs on a matter of diplomacy — and a stand-off between the country's top foreign policy professionals and the president's political allies, national security amateurs installed to do Trump’s bidding rather than the country’s.

And this is an interesting effect of the Republican's America First government is having on US influence in world affairs:

Meanwhile, China continues staffing up across the world, including in Africa, where the U.S. has an especially high number of unfilled jobs. According to Australia’s Lowy Institute, which issues an annual Diplomacy Index, China just surpassed the United States in diplomatic muscle. The United States, which for decades after World War II had the highest number of embassies and consulates, has been outpaced by a rising adversary. [my emphasis]

This is bad. But it does mean that a new President in 2021 would have a great opportunity to restart the State Department on a professional basis. Hopefully with a pro-peace emphasis.

Process questions (and fake "process questions") around impeachment

We're hearing a lot from the Republicans about how unfair they think the impeachment process is to poor Donald Trump, the more highbrow versions invoking the Sixth Amendment requires for fair criminal trials.

Steven Lubet provides a legal reality-check on those claims in The Conservative Legal Community Is Grasping at Straws to Defend Donald Trump The American Prospect 11/11/2019, in which he replies to claims by Steven Calabresi of the Federalist Society. Lubet writes:

The opening words of the Sixth Amendment—“In all criminal prosecutions”—make it unmistakable that its provisions do not apply to impeachments, which are clearly noncriminal in nature. Impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate cannot result in imprisonment, fine, or any other criminal penalty. Rather, the only allowable consequences are removal from office and disqualification from future office-holding.

The arguments we hear treating Senators as jurors in impeachment trials are also misleading: "Impeachments, of course, are tried by the Senate, per Article I, Section 3, with no requirement of impartiality. There is nothing to keep senators from expressing their opinions in advance of the trial, as Lindsey Graham has done by branding the house investigation B.S."Joan Biskupic, This point of Lubet's is also relevant to the current Republican polemics:

Impeachment is only a charge of misconduct, the equivalent to a grand jury indictment. There is no Sixth Amendment right either to witness confrontation or a public hearing at the grand jury stage, where the proceedings are secret according to statute. In fact, Trump’s Department of Justice has argued that the records of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury proceedings must remain sealed and non-public, even though they have been subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee.

One ruling that Chief Justice William Rehnquist made during the Clinton impeachment trial I've always found interesting is this one: "Rehnquist upheld an objection of Democratic Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin to the House managers' referring to senators as 'jurors.' Declared Rehnquist, 'The Senate is not simply a jury. It is a court in this case'." (Joan Biskupic, The Rehnquist files: How the last chief justice handled an impeachment trial CNN 09/29/2019)

Lizette Alvarez reported on that ruling, which has wide implications for how the Senate approaches the decision-making process (Harkin Wins Endorsement of Wider Role Than Jury New York Times 01/16/1999):

In a calculated fashion, Senator Harkin was underscoring a fundamental Democratic argument: Senators are not there simply to digest the facts of the impeachment case, but also to consider the national interest. The more appropriate word to describe the 100 Senators is "judges," Mr. Harkin said. And judges make all sorts of decisions, some of them touching on witnesses, for example, or on the public good.

"Regular jurors are not supposed to know each other," Mr. Harkin said on the floor. "Not so here. Regular jurors do not decide what evidence should be heard or the standards of evidence, nor do they decide on witnesses or what witnesses shall be called. Not so here. Regular jurors do not decide when a trial is to be ended. Not so here."

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, ruling on first objection in the trial of President Clinton, sustained the point, saying: "The chair is of the view that the Senator from Iowa's objection is well taken, that the Senate is not simply a jury. It is a court in this case. And therefore counsel should refrain from referring to senators as jurors." [my emphasis]

William Saletan, to whom left-leaning bloggers refer sarcastically as Lord Saletan, disputed that Rehnquist had meant what seemed to be the plain meaning of accepting Harkin's objection (Harkin’s Objection Slate 01/20/1999):

Harkin proudly explained [on ABC's This Week program] that he wasn’t surprised when Rehnquist ruled in his favor, because he had read Rehnquist’s book on impeachment and knew that Rehnquist believed senators in an impeachment trial were “more than just jurors.” He asserted that Rehnquist’s ruling “undermines their case for bringing any witnesses, because obviously we are not jurors.” Above all, said Harkin, Rehnquist was affirming that the Senate “can take into account not just the facts and the law, but the public good … [T]he chief justice really means that we can be expansive, that we can decide on a much broader set of findings than just the findings of fact or law.”

What Rehnquist actually said, however, was narrower. “The Senate is not simply a jury. It is a court in this case,” he ruled. The word “court,” consisting of judges and jurors, is crucial. Rehnquist was agreeing that senators could decide questions such as “what evidence should be heard” and “when a trial is to be ended,” which are the province of judges, not jurors. But judges, like jurors, are bound by facts and law. Harkin was distorting Rehnquist’s ruling into an affirmation that senators could reach beyond the facts and the law to consider “the public good.”

Interestingly, Joshua Zeitz seems to have missed that ruling altogether when he writes (Looking Back on the Clinton Impeachment American Heritage 64:1, Winter 2019), "Rehnquist became only the second chief justice in American history to impanel the Senate as a jury in a presidential impeachment trial." (my emphasis)

Steven Lubet also cites the Supreme Court decision in Walter L. Nixon v. United States (1993) which rejected the claim that Senate impeachments are subject to judicial review as well as the notion that impeachments are judicial proceedings. Trump has expressed the view that impeachment of him is unconstitutional, although it's a safe bet that he has no idea what the Nixon v. US decision was. Rehnquist delivered the Court's decision, which included the following:

We agree with the Court of Appeals that opening the door of judicial review to the procedures used by the Senate in trying impeachments would "expose the political life of the country to months, or perhaps years, of chaos." ... This lack of finality would manifest itself most dramatically if the President were impeached. The legitimacy of any successor, and hence his effectiveness, would be impaired severely, not merely while the judicial process was running its course, but during any retrial that a differently constituted Senate might conduct if its first judgment of conviction were invalidated. Equally uncertain is the question of what relief a court may give other than simply setting aside the judgment of conviction. Could it order the reinstatement of a convicted federal judge, or order Congress to create an additional judgeship if the seat had been filled in the interim? [my emphasis]

This is also an important part:

There are two additional reasons why the Judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments. First, the Framers recognized that most likely there would be two sets of proceedings for individuals who commit impeachable offenses - the impeachment trial and a separate criminal trial. In fact, the Constitution explicitly provides for two separate proceedings. See Art. I, § 3, cl. 7. The Framers deliberately separated the two forums to avoid raising the specter of bias and to ensure independent judgments ...

Second, judicial review would be inconsistent with the Framers' insistence that our system be one of checks and balances. In our constitutional system, impeachment was designed to be the only check on the Judicial Branch by the Legislature.[my emphasis in bold]

Rick Perlstein, impeachment, and invoking ideals of the past

This is an informed commentary from historian Rick Perlstein, who specializes in the history of the conservative movement in the US, Rick Perlstein on the History Behind the Impeachment Inquiry Amanpour and Company 11/15/2019:

This is a notable excerpt:

... one of the things that Nancy Pelosi who's done some great things over the years and I respect her a heck of a lot has said is that she, when she was talking about how, you know, maybe Trump would just impeach himself and we didn't want to push this thing, the only way she wanted to pursue an impeachment inquiry is that they could somehow convince Republicans with the weight of the facts, because otherwise it would be too divisive.

Well, you know, the civil rights movement was divisive.

The suffrage movement was divisive.

Justice is divisive.

You know why it's divisive?

People who don't want justice are going to make us think and I think we're in one of the exitential movements for the nation where we're facing a choice.

Either we get own to brass tacks and fight for the values that the nation was founded on or we worry about divisiveness. [my emphasis]

Rick's reference to "the values that the nation was founded on" especially caught my attention, because he's using the very flawed past to point to shared aspirational ideals that can and should be applied to the very flawed present.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was great at doing that, on polemical, political, religious, and philosophical levels. Franklin Rossevelt's famous 1936 "Rendezvous with Destiny" speech is a classic example of invoking the struggles, aspirations, and accomplishments of the past to create a left-populist political framework. I'm continuously frustrated to see how difficult it seems to be the left and center-left to do that today, despite excellent models like MLK and FDR.

Since conservatism tends to look to restoring the past or preserving existing conditions, or at least to "make haste slowly" toward progress, it may be inevitable that the right will be more comfortable praising an idealized past than the left. But that doesn't mean people on the left have to just give up on the effort!

The fight over Reconstruction in John Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" (2 of 2): the impeachment of Andrew Johnson

This is the second of two posts on how John Kennedy dealt with the history of Reconstruction and its aftermath. Part 1 dealt with Mississippi Senator LQC Lamar.

The profile of Sen. Edmund Ross is of particular interest today because it deals with the deciding vote he cast in the Senate against the conviction of President Andrew Johnson, who had been impeached by the House of Representatives. The Republicans’ opposite to the Democratic President Johnson was based on his hostility to Reconstruction efforts when newly-friend African-Americans “were struggling to lay the foundation for those rights and privileges which accompany first-class citizenship,” as Bacote put it. Johnson’s conciliatory attitude toward the former Confederate leaders and the planter class that had been the driving force of secession and civil war in the years following Lincoln’s assassination encouraged their political resistance and violent terrorism against former slaves and their white supporters.

Kennedy’s description of Ross’ background does show an appreciation of what the pre-Civil War anti-slavery fight had been:

There could be no doubt as to where Ross's sympathies lay, for his entire career was one of determined opposition to the slave states of the South, their practices and their friends. In 1854, when only twenty-eight, he had taken part in the mob rescue of a fugitive slave in Milwaukee. In 1856, he had joined that flood of antislavery immigrants to "bleeding" Kansas who intended to keep it a free territory. Disgusted with the Democratic party of his youth, he had left that party, and volunteered in the Kansas Free State Army to drive back a force of proslavery men invading the territory. In 1862, he had given up his newspaper work to enlist in the Union Army, from which he emerged a Major. [my emphasis]

Kennedy was describing there why the Radical Republicans considered Ross to be a reliable ally against Johnson. But it’s worth pausing to think about what he’s describing there. Ross took part in a “mob rescue” of a fugitive slave, i.e., took part in a forceful action to free a slave who was presumably legally incarcerated as a fugitive. And he was a volunteer in the antislavery and extralegal militia in Nebraska Territory during the Bleeding Kansas confrontation against the proslavery and extralegal militia. The famous Abolitionist John Brown was a captain in the antislavery militia there, too, which is where he won national fame. To put it another way, Ross had been an antislavery guerrilla fighter.

And that’s a reminder of the situation shaping postwar attitudes. The country had been through decades of conflict over slavery and a Civil War that had cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. The Northern Radical Republicans were reacting to what they rightly saw as a President recklessly frittering away the results of victory and even siding with the former enemies.

Kennedy described the political stakes this way, clearly unsympathetic to the Reconstruction cause:

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the event in which the obscure Ross was to play such a dramatic role, was the sensational climax to the bitter struggle between the President, determined to carry out Abraham Lincoln's policies of reconciliation with the defeated South, and the more radical Republican leaders in Congress, who sought to administer the downtrodden Southern states as conquered provinces which had forfeited their rights under the Constitution. It was, moreover, a struggle between Executive and Legislative authority. Andrew Johnson, the courageous if untactful Tennessean who had been the only Southern Member of Congress to refuse to secede with his state, had committed himself to the policies of the Great Emancipator to whose high station he had succeeded only by the course of an assassin's bullet. He knew that Lincoln prior to his death had already clashed with the extremists in Congress, who had opposed his approach to reconstruction in a constitutional and charitable manner and sought to make the Legislative Branch of the government supreme. [my emphasis]

Treating the impeachment cause as thoroughly unworthy, Kennedy wrote, “the actual cause for which the President was being tried was not fundamental to the welfare of the nation.” He bases that position on the role that a law called the Tenure-of-Office Act, to which several of the twelve counts of impeachment were related played in the controversy.

But it’s important to recognize that the “actual cause” was Johnson’s obstruction of Reconstruction, including his reckless disregard for the lives and civil rights of the freed slaves. Kennedy, though, argued on legalistic-sounding grounds that the impeachment effort was illegitimate:

But as the trial progressed, it became increasingly apparent that the impatient Republicans did not intend to give the President a fair trial on the formal issues upon which the impeachment was drawn, but intended instead to depose him from the White House on any grounds, real or imagined, for refusing to accept their policies. Telling evidence in the President's favor was arbitrarily excluded. Prejudgment on the part of most Senators was brazenly announced. [my emphasis]

As we are now actively discussing again, impeachment is a political process not a judicial one, although there are some judicial-like elements involved, e.g., the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court becomes the presiding officer of the Senate in the impeachment trial of a President. But the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of the Constitutional language on Presidential impeachment does not have to be specific violation of the law.

But thanks to Ross’ vote against impeachment, Johnson remained in office for the remainder of his term, i.e., early 1869, where he could continue to obstruct democratic Reconstruction.

Kennedy styled the trial as high historical drama, calling it “a trial to rank with all the great trials in history - Charles I before the High Court of Justice, Louis XVI before the French Convention, and Warren Hastings before the House of Lords.” (See the references at the end of this post for more on the historical references.)

And he presents Ross as a kind of martyr to the cause of justice (and respect for Executive power!):

Ross's political career was ended. To the New York Tribune, he was nothing but "a miserable poltroon and traitor." ...

Neither Ross nor any other Republican who had voted for the acquittal of Johnson was ever re-elected to the Senate, not a one of them retaining the support of their party's organization. When he returned to Kansas in 1871, he and his family suffered social ostracism, physical attack, and near poverty. ...

Ross moved to New Mexico, where in his later years he was to be appointed Territorial Governor. Just prior to his death when he was awarded a special pension by Congress for his service in the Civil War, the press and the country took the opportunity to pay tribute to his fidelity to principle in a trying hour and his courage in saving his government from a devastating reign of terror.

Ralph Roske challenged this victimhood portrayal in “The Seven Martyrs?” (American Historical Review 64:2; 1959):

One of the firmly fixed stereotypes in American history concerns the seven Radical Republicans-William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, Joseph Smith Fowler of Tennessee, James W. Grimes of Iowa, John B. Henderson of Missouri, Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia-who voted for President Andrew Johnson's acquittal in the celebrated impeachment trial. It has become the accepted view that the seven senators were relentlessly persecuted, not alone during and immediately after the trial, but indefinitely until they were forced altogether from the American political scene. ...

This myth gained wide currency in part because two of the seven acquitters, John B. Henderson and Edmund G. Ross, could not resist adopting this reasoning in their later writings to explain why they did not go further in politics. ...

On the surface, since none of the seven acquitters ever won reelection to the Senate, this belief seems substantiated. Yet if this were an authentic criterion the converse should be true: that a large majority of the Republicans who voted as the party desired should have won reelection. The results are far from conclusive. Out of thirty-five Republican senators who voted for conviction, seventeen-less than half-won immediate reelection as Republicans.

And, as Kennedy himself noted, Ross went on to get a gig as a Territorial Governor and a special Congressional pension.

Also:

• For a recent summary of the grounds for impeachment, see Jared P. Cole and Todd Garvey, Impeachment and Removal Congressional Research Service 10/29/2015 version.
• “Charles Stuart became a traitor to his office as king and to England from the moment he sought to unlawfully subvert the proper functioning of English democracy. And what made his conduct all the more ‘treasonous’ was the fact that he had sought to do it with assistance from abroad.” (Michel Paradis, Three Lessons From the First Time a Head of State Was Impeached Lawfare Oct. 3, 2019: accessed 11/08/2019)
• Louis XVI was tried by the revolutionary national convention, found guilty of treason, and was executed by guillotine in 1793.
• William Hastings (1732-1818) was a British colonial administrator in India who was impeached by the House of Commons and acquitted by the House of Lords in a trial that extended from 1788 to 1795. Edmund Burke introduced the impeachment motion against him.

The fight over Reconstruction in John Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" (1 of 2)

This is the first on two posts relating to Reconstruction and its overthrow. This is the kind of thing I post about every April as a counter-celebration of Confederate "Heritage" Month. But I'm posting this because of its relevance to the Trump impeachment.

John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage (1956) is an interesting enigma.

Kennedy was a Senator at the time he wrote it and, as we know, had higher political ambitions. The book is a series of historical sketches about Senators who displayed what JFK took to be political courage. (Theodore Sorenson was a significant collaborator on the book.)

The book is now mainly famous for its author, not so much for the content. But it won a Pulitzer Prize and is obviously very well-informed about nineteenth-century American history. Of the seven chapters devoted to individual men, five of them deal with 19th-century political figures and events.

It’s also, unsurprisingly, written with careful attention to contemporary political alignments. Which also makes the book fascinating as a historical document. Because in 1956, phrases like “reaching across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” had not yet taken on their 2019 meaning of Democrats surrendering to Republicans. The segregated South was still the “Solid South” where conservative Democrats were overwhelmingly dominant. The ideological differences between liberal (left/center-left) and conservative cut across both parties. Notably, there were many Republicans who were willing to support some civil rights legislation, in part to weaken the Solid South segregationist bloc.

This context shows up in his chapters on Mississippi Sen. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (Senator 1873-85) and Sen. Edmund Gibson Ross of Kansas (Senator 1866-71). Both chapters apply what in 1956 was still the respectable mainstream academic view that held Reconstruction to have been a bad enterprise driven by vengeful Northerners egged on by malicious, fanatical Radical Republican politicians.

LQC Lamar had the dubious distinction of having been a pre-Civil War Congressman from Mississippi, author of the treasonous Mississippi state secession ordinance, and a soldier in the Confederate Army which was dedicated to killing the soldiers of the United States Army.

The Reconstruction period ended in 1977. As a Senator, Lamar played a double role. In Mississippi, he fired up Klan violence. In the Senate, he played the dignified reconciler, the role Kennedy celebrated as a profile in courage. He praised Lamar as “a man of law and honor” without appraising the sinister double role he played with people in Mississippi. This chapter is genuinely bad because it is so immersed in the “Redeemer” (anti-democracy, anti-Reconstruction) that was still the dominant view even among white historians.

A more progressive and realistic view of Reconstruction was still held and actively defended at the time, even if was considered disreputably left. The Journal of Negro History (now the Journal of African-American History), published the more realistic version. The October 1955 issue of that journal, for instance, published an article by Clarence Bacote (“William Finch, Negro Councilman and Political Activities in Atlanta During Early Reconstruction”), which presented a view of the real stakes in Reconstruction that sounds perfectly mainstream now, but didn’t fit the picture of vengeful Yankee fanaticism dominant at the time that so influenced Kennedy’s own view:

In the political history of the Negro in Atlanta, there are two dates that have great significance, namely, December 7, 1870, and May 13, 1953. On the first date, Negroes for the first time were elected to public office in the city; on the second date, after a lapse of eighty-three years, Negroes again were elected. However, the climate of opinion in 1870 was entirely different from that which prevailed in 1953. The first date fell in a period when the social, economic, and political conditions were unsettled, and when the Negro faced insurmountable odds in trying to adjust himself in an hostile environment. Despite these obstacles, Negro leaders were struggling to lay the foundation for those rights and privileges which accompany first-class citizenship. [my emphasis]

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., sometimes called the court historian of Camelot, would later write that Kennedy’s experience as President with hardcore segregationists like Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett led him to wonder whether he had been overly harsh in his view of the pro-Reconstruction Radical Republicans.

Part 2 will cover JFK's treatment of Edmund Ross, who played a pivotal role in obstructing democratic Reconstruction in the former Confederacy.

Wednesday's escalations in Trump's authoritarian drive

There were two remarkable pieces of news on Wednesday related to Republican authoritarianism.

The Republicans are escalating their push toward an "Orbanist" authoritarian government under their control on several fronts. Continuing the long Republican drive to establish Dick Cheney's "Unitary Executive" government, this time with the Orange Clown in the Oval Office, President Trump's lawyer argued explicitly that the President is exempt from all laws as long as he's President. Pete Williams reported for NBC News (Trump's lawyers argue he can't be charged while in office — even if he shoots someone 10/23/2019):

The long-standing view of the Justice Department is that a president cannot be indicted while in office. William Consovoy, Trump's lawyer, told the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that the immunity extends to the entire criminal justice process, including grand jury subpoenas for documents. ...

Carey Dunne, New York District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.'s general counsel, said the president's position is too absolute.

There could be examples in which a state should be able to conduct a criminal investigation of a sitting president, "if, for example, he did pull out a handgun and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue."

Asked about that, Consovoy said a president could be charged with such a crime once he was out of office or if he was impeached and removed from office. "This is not a permanent immunity," he said.

"I'm talking about while in office. Nothing could be done? That's your position?" Judge Denny Chin asked.

"That is correct," Consovoy said.

That's where we are at not yet three years into the Trump Presidency.

And the Republicans in Congress mobbed a closed and specially secured hearing room to prevent a Pentagon official from testifying before the House Committee investigating what's come to be known as the Ukraine scandal. This is a 17-minute PBS Newshour report, Republicans disrupt testimony in Trump impeachment inquiry 10/23/2019:

PBS also has an AP story of the same name here. Matt Fuller and Arthur Delaney report on it in Republicans Try To Storm Impeachment Room, Break Rules In Process Huffpost 10/23/2019

The PBS Newshour item on it from the daily program took a "this-side-says, the-other-side-says" approach to the reporting it, though they followed it up with a more analytical discussion, though conventionally scrupulous in presenting Both Sides. It also discusses the Unitary Executive immunity claim the Administration is making in Court. GOP lawmakers violate House rules to disrupt Pentagon official's testimony PBS Newshour 10/24/2019:

Yamiche Alcindor notes in that report:

The scheduled witness was Laura Cooper, who oversees Ukraine policy at the Pentagon. She was expected to discuss the $400 million in military aid for Ukraine that President Trump temporarily blocked.

But Republicans brought cell phones into the facility, where phones are not allowed. Cooper's testimony was delayed for hours.

And Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell is quoted saying, "The tactics are in an effort to delay the inevitable. They have obstructed the hearing. It was an effort to intimidate a witness. They brought in electronics into a secure room." (my emphasis)

Of course the Republicans will defend this action. It's who they are. But this was not a case of ordinary citizens or people deprived of a voice demand attention and action for an important issue. And Republicans sit on the committee whose hearing from which they claim that they are being excluded.

But it's important for the Democrats to recognize the level of escalation in which the Republicans are engaging. More than interrupting the immediate testimony and getting on the news with their phony protest against being excluded, they are showing their base and the public more generally that they are willing to fight. The Democrats have to find a way to show they can fight back effectively, e.g., by some formal sanction against members of the Republican mob yesterday who violated security procedures by bringing mibile phones into areas where they were banned. But they need to understand that they need to show the public, the press, and the Democratic base that they are at least as committed to fighting back as the Republicans were in staging this scene and exploiting it to the hilt in their political propaganda.

This MSNBC report featuring Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna illustrates some of the ways the Democrats can legitimately push back against this action, Oversight Cmte. Member: Republican Deposition Stunt Like A 'Fraternity' 10/24/2019:

As we know, Dear Leader Trump likes mob scenes:

The group of Republicans who disrupted an impeachment inquiry hearing by storming into a secure room at the Capitol had the blessing of President Trump https://t.co/x7N7vxN2Ze

— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) October 23, 2019

Stephen Walt asks a pertinent question, too:

Ask yourself: would those unpatriotic, law-breaking Republicans have disrupted the impeachment hearings (by busting into a secure facility), if they believed the witnesses’ testimony was exonerating #trump?

— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt) October 24, 2019

Using mobs for propaganda isn't a new tactic for the Republicans. One of the most dramatic moments in the disputed Florida vote count in 2000 was the "Brooks Brothers Riot" staged by the Republicans. See:

• John Latigua, Miami's rent-a-riot Salon 11/28/2000
• Miranda Spencer, Who Won the Election? Who Cares? FAIR 01/01/2002
• Mickey Kaus, Everything the New York Times Thinks About the Florida Recount Is Wrong! Slate 11/13/2001
• Mickey Kaus, Update: Hot Recount Docs! Slate 11/19/2001
• Michael Miller, ‘It’s insanity!’: How the ‘Brooks Brothers Riot’ killed the 2000 recount in Miami Washington Post 11/15/2018

This is a report from 2009 on the incident, Maddow & Scarborough: Two Views Of The 'Brooks Brothers Riot' Of 2000 (HQ) 08/07/2009, provided by YouTube user "dawgnpony", Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes take a retrospective look at the Brooks Brothers Riot and connect it to the astroturf opposition hecklers that were showing up to shout down Democratic members of Congress at public meetings in the summer of 2009, with Obamacare their nominal topic of outrage.

The impeachment train

This has been a strange and exciting week in US politics. And it's only Thursday. Trump has basically admitted, once again, breaking the law, this time in connection with using US aid money to pressure the current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to manufacture political dirt against Joe Biden and the Democrats. The memorandum of a phone coversation between Trump and Zelensky the White House released on Wednesday shows to pretty much everyone who's not a diehard Trump partisan that Trump broke the law both by asking a foreign government for assistance in a domestic election (a crime in itself) and by offering a quid pro quo in exchange for that help (a separate crime).

Nancy Pelosi caved in to pressure from even the more conservative members of her House caucus and announced she approved pressing for impeachment. (Ryan Grim, Why the House Democratic Caucus Was Able to Move So Rapidly Toward Impeachment The Intercept 09/256/2019) But lest anyone think she might aggressively push for it, she almost immediately stepped on her own message by trying to limit the focus of impeachment to the Ukraine-Trump scandal and his conversation Zelensky that recently broke. (Kyle Cheney et al, Democrats look to narrow impeachment focus to Trump-Ukraine scandal Politico 09/25/2019)

This not only gives credence to this suggestion by Peter Daou:

TIME FOR REAL TALK

I'm very relieved to see Dem leaders give in to massive grassroots pressure on #impeachment. But it wasn't until Trump came for #Biden that the establishment finally woke up. Apparently torturing brown babies wasn't enough to #impeach him.

So let's be real.

— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) September 26, 2019

When Pelosi made such of a mess by caving in to Trump on the concentration camp funding this past summer, I pretty much lost hope in her ability to lead the impeachment inquiry. At least for a few hours this week, she seemed to rise to the task, however reluctantly. But she may still sabotage the whole thing.

Jeet Heer makes a case for the Ukraine-only approach to impeachment here, The Case for Keeping Impeachment Clean and Simple The Nation 09/25/2019.

David Dayen has a good analogy on why even a stubbornly reluctant Nancy Pelosi decided to move ahead with impeachment (Trump’s Impeachment and the Era of No Accountability The American Prospect 04/24/2019):

Here’s the best way of putting it: Trump is Wells Fargo.

The big bank was among those who contributed to the near implosion of the entire U.S. economy in 2008, and despite that, none of its top executives were held accountable. And Wells Fargo, consciously or unconsciously, got the message that they could continue their practices with relative impunity. And they did. They signed up customers to fake accounts, falsified records in mortgage cases, charged people for junk auto insurance they didn’t ask for, and even charged overdraft fees on accounts that were closed.

Why did this unending series of scandals cease to end? Why did the overt PR promises from Wells Fargo add up to nothing, as the corporate culture still trended toward ripping off customers? Well, what would be the point of Wells Fargo changing its policies? Nobody went to jail, no executive had their assets seized and ended up destitute, and no penalty served as anything more than giving away a small cut of ill-gotten profits. Amid this lack of deterrence, the crime spree continued, and continues.

It's hard to imagine enough Republican Senators voting to remove him. But if the House impeaches him, the Senators will have a choice to make. If the House does the impeachment inquiry even half right, especially if they make public a small fraction of Trump's financial dealings with Russian entities, it will put huge pressure even on Republicans Senators not facing election to show they are not entirely subservient to Trump. Bob Kuttner predicts, "As flat-out illegal behavior is documented, expect more Republicans to defect." (Trump’s Death by Self-Regard The American Prospect 09725/2019)

I hope he's right. But the Mueller report documented multiple instances of Trump's obstructive justice. And the Republicans didn't turn on him over that. The Democrats, on the other hand, do already have that documentation of multiple impeachable offenses, so it would be silly and irresponsible not to use those in impeachment proceedings.

If the Democrats do blow the impeachment process by, for instance, limiting the charges only to the appeal to Ukraine to make up dirt on Joe Biden, it's will really be time for progressive Democrats to start thinkig seriously about some way to effectively refound the Democratic Party.

Impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one. As Alexander Hamilton explained it Federalist 65:

A well constituted court for the trial of impeachments, is an object notmore to be desired, than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties, more or less friendly, or inimical, to the accused. In many cases, it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side, or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger, that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.

But I also really think the House has a responsibility to act when an official is so brazenly breaking the law, and even admitting it publicly, as Trump did again this week. I think impeachment will actually help the Democrats politically in 2016, not least by showing people that they are actually willing to fight for their own side. But even if it hurts them politically, I really do believe the House has a Constitutional responsibility to impeach him.

Joe and Hunter Biden

James Risen recalls his own story from 2015 about Joe Biden and Ukrainian corruption investigations in I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down. The Intercept 09/25/2019

The original story was Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch New York Times 12/08/2015
Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holding in April 2014, i.e., the month after Russia formally annexed Crimea. (See Ukraine crisis: Timeline BBC News 11/13/2014) Risen's Times article described it as "one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies." It was headed by Russian Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Risen's 2015 article noted that Hunter Biden's position potentially undermined the crebility of Vice President Joe Biden, who was traveling to Urkaine "to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs."

But as Risen also reported, Joe Biden was encouraging more aggressive anti-corruption prosecution at a time when one of the main cases of apparent neglect of corruption involved Burisma Holding and Mykola Zlochevsky. If Joe Biden was trying to shield the company with which Hunter Biden was connected, on the surface it seems a strange way to go about it. Risen wrote, "The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate [in a British investigation of bank accounts they claimed were connected to Zlochevsky] was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September."

Risen's article did not mention any evidence of illegal action by either Joe or Hunter Biden. It just pointed out that it was an awkward aspect of Joe Biden's push on behalf of the US Government for Ukraine to be more diligent in enforcing its anti-corruption laws. Which, for any rightwing trolls who may be reading, is an entirely legitimate foreign policy goal for the US.

Democrats' Reagan PTSD and their big money donors

Paul Rosenberg gives a good summary of the attitude that leads establishment Democrats to their how-quickly-can-we-surrender approach in Democrats' Trump-era quandary is familiar: Play offense or defense? It ought to be obvious by now Salon 07/28/2019:

Republicans live in fear. “Fear of a Black Planet,” fear of strong women, fear of people with different faiths (or the “wrong” version of their own) — those three fears were the cornerstones of “The Long Southern Strategy” ...

But Democrats live in fear, as well: Fear that Republicans will say mean things about them — and won’t vote for them.

Indeed, actual Republicans almost certainly won't vote for them. But there are plenty of other folks out there. Not just independents and "swing voters," but large numbers of non-voters and only-sometimes voters, as well as the Democratic base. Non-voters overwhelmingly support Democrats ...

Furthermore, a broad range of progressive policies have majority support — sometimes supermajority support ...

For decades, Democrats have been obsessed with winning the votes of people they’re unlikely to win, while mostly neglecting, and sometimes actively attacking, those whose votes are much more easily within reach. Republican attacks on Democrats are aimed at energizing the GOP base and depressing the Democrats', both psychologically and operationally: Depressing activism, engagement and turnout.

Democrats’ attempts to placate Republicans, or win them over, not only fail to counter the GOP’s strategy but actively support it. By striking a defensive stance they implicitly validate Republican attacks, always acting as if they’ve got something to apologize for. No wonder the Democrats have so many more non-voters on their side: they’ve given them so much less reason to vote. [my emphasis in bold]

This is a great description of the current establishment Democratic approach to politics, epitimized today by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

It's consistent with the analysis Ryan Grim makes in Haunted by the Reagan era Washington Post 07/05/2019:

The way the older and younger House members think about and engage with the Republican Party may be the starkest divide between them. Democratic leaders like Pelosi, Joe Biden, Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer were shaped by their traumatic political coming-of-age during the breakup of the New Deal coalition and the rise of Ronald Reagan — and the backlash that swept Democrats so thoroughly from power nearly 40 years ago. They’ve spent the rest of their lives flinching at the sight of voters. When these leaders plead for their party to stay in the middle, they’re crouching into the defensive posture they’ve been used to since November 1980, afraid that if they come across as harebrained liberals, voters will turn them out again. [my emphasis]

But together with this defeatist attitude comes the mutually reinforcing drastic dependence of the Democratic Party on corporate donors. Grim in his book We've Got People (2019) describes the pivotal turn twoard dependence on corporate cash in the 1980s associated with California Congressman Tony Coelho, California Democratic liberal wheeler-dealers John and Phil Burton, and their "San Francisco Democrat" Nancy Pelosi. John Burton as a Congressman fought against the remaining power of Southern Democrats in the Congress. Grim portrays his death from a heart attack at 56 as a tragic lost opportunity:

Burton's untimely death cut off the potential of a counter history for Democrats. At the time, said John Lawrence, Burton was one of the few Democrats who understood that the party did not have a permanent lock on the House of Representatives, and it was that overconfidence that stunted the party's ability to think strategically about what kind of a coalition it wanted to be a post-Civil Rights era. Instead, Coelho strip-mined the [Democratic Congressional] majority for every corporate dollar it was worth - until it collapsed.

The Burtons had worked with Pelosi on fundraising. And, of course, San Francisco was then as now a staunchly Democratic city. So the real political contest in Pelosi's first Congressional election contest, a special eleciton in 1987. Her main opponent in the Democratic primary was Harry Britt, a democratic socialist and left activist. Ryan relates:

The Los Angeles Times reported it as an establishment versus insurgent candidate. "The Democratic establishment backed Pelosi, a 46-year-old mother of five who has raised large sums for her party's candidates. Younger, more liberal activists and the city's powerful gay community backed Britt," the paper wrote.

Pelosi ran on the prophetic and on-brand slogan "a voice that will be heard," and on election night she beat Britt 36 to 33 percent, with the rest of the votes scattered among lesser candidates. In the top-two system California uses today, both Pelosi and Britt would have moved to the general election. That electoral innovation, for better or worse, was 25 years away; and Pelosi's total was enought to move to the general against a hapless Republican. Big money and establishment power, in her first race, had beaten grassroots, leftwing energy.

And, as he also notes, Reagan's tax rerforms favoring the One Percent "made it so there were many people tht had the means to pay up big."

The wealthy donors on which the Democrats were now far more dependent were amenable to civil rights concerns and supportive of public investment in education, somewhat less militaristic, and the extractive industries (oil, mining) tended to favor the Republicans. But they wanted what we now call "neoliberal" tax and regulatory policies, much the same as Republicans.

So the Democrats' defeatist attitude is real. But it's also true, as Cenk Uygur likes to say, that corporate Democrats are paid to lose.

Rosenberg provides a useful set of bullet-points on why Pelosi's anti-impeahment stance is such a bad approach. Althoug, perhaps surprisingly, he also says, "I’ve long believed that she’s been the most effective legislative leader of the last 40 or 50 years. But she’s lived her whole political life in the disintegrative phase of our political system, adroitly pushing back against disintegrative forces. She has excelled at that."

In other words, she has been operating from a point of institutional conservatism, trying to preserve policy gains of the Democrats that are acceptable to big donors while maintaining her own position in the party and that of other corporate Democrats.

Nancy Pelosi's Surrender Tour

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership of the House of Representatives, which in the current moment makes her the main opposition leader, is becoming more of a mystery by the week.

Her staunch opposition to impeaching President Trump never made a lot of sense to me. Her basic justification, that Trump wanted to be impeached so he could play the victim was always unrealistic. Trump is terrified of having his financial records examined by Congress, the press, the public, and law enforcement, and an impeachment process would put him at huge risk on that front.

The follow-on argument was that the negative public reaction to impeachment could make it harder to defeat Trump in the 2020 election. She based this on a flawed reading of the results of Bill Clinton's impeachment. And, in any case, the argument treated impeachment not as a Constitutional duty but a purely partisan decision. The same problem applies to her point that Trump is good for Democratic fundraising.

Her argument that if Trump were impeached and the Senate declined to convict him would make it impossible to prosecute him after he leaves office because double jeopardy would apply apparently makes her the first person in the history of the United States to realize that. And it's silly. Impeachment is a political process, not a criminal trial. Of course, double jeopardy does not apply to an impeachment acquittal.

The Pelosi drama has now turned into one of the most dramatic displays ever of the Democrats' reluctance to fight Republicans. Especially since in her fundraising and speechmaking and politicking, Pelosi uses dramatic descriptions of the seriousness of Trump's conduct, even saying she wants to see him in prison. This is a notable contrast to her steadfast refusal to even begin formal impeachment investigations. It looks weak. At least to anyone who's not a political pundit assuming that Pelosi is pursuing some kind of super-sophisticated political strategy.

This really just looks like an unwillingness to undertake a difficult but necessary fight against genuinely rogue and criminal behavior by the President.

The most plausible alternative explanation that I can come up with is that Pelosi could be assuming that the Democrats will have a repeat of the experience of 2006-8, i which the Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives and elected an African-American President in 2008. But two big differences in that situation compared to now are (1) we can't count on one of the worst financial crises in history striking in the month before the Presidential election in 2020 and (2) the radicalization and lawlessness of the Republican Party including a willingess to ignore election laws is far more pronounced today. We're also now in the tenth year of the Citizens United decision, of which President Obama rightly said just after the Supreme Court handed it down in 2010, "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. ... I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest."

Zach Carter poses the question that the Huffpost headline-writer renders as What The Hell Is Nancy Pelosi Doing? 06/30/2019. He mentions this recent stop on Pelosi's Surrender Tour:

But a few hours after Pelosi declared her devotion to the children suffering at the border, she deferred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on their fate.

As horror stories detailing conditions at the border began piling up this week, [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell passed a bipartisan bill expanding funding for Trump’s immigration authorities by $4.6 billion. Progressive Democrats in the House, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), wanted to include some basic humanitarian safeguards on that money, but Pelosi, citing resistance from self-described moderate Democrats, decided instead to just pass the Senate bill, no strings attached.

Impeachment is a meaningless gesture? Why didn't Andrew Johnson, Dick Nixon, and Bill Clinton realize that?

Neera Tanden has discovered what Consitutitional scholars since 1789 have completely missed. This "impeachment" thing is just a toothless resolution of disapproval!

People. Impeachment does not reign Trump in. It’s a judgment on his behavior. It does not stop his behavior. It doesnt mean he leaves office. The Senate is not acting. And after they refuse to act he will say crazy things like he said today.

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) June 13, 2019

Does everyone get how you’re basically being Trump puppets when you yell at Pelosi because Trump is doing something insane? Get out of this mindless cycle. Blame the abuser.

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) June 13, 2019

This is Neera Tanden defending Nancy Pelosi who is stauchly defending Donald Trump against having to face an impeahment process.

One more reminder that the problem is not that establishment Democrats won't fight. They are more than willing to fight progressives: "you’re basically being Trump puppets." Also, "mindless". Fighting Republicans doesn't come so easily to them.

Tanden is currently president of the centrist-Democratic Center for American Progress.

Zwei Videos am Mittwoch, die uns eine Vorstellung davon geben, warum Trump im Jahr 2020 sehr wohl wiedergewählt werden könnte

Mueller hat gestern seine öffentliche Erklärung abgegeben, Robert Mueller makes 1st public statement on Russia probe PBS Newshour 05/29/2019:

Speaker des Nancy Pelosi hatte nach Muellers Aussage einen geplanten Auftritt im Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi Commonwealth Club 05/29/2019

Der einzige Hinweis, den Pelosi gab, dass sie ihren entschiedenen Widerstand gegen die Amtsenthebung Trumps noch einmal in Erwägung zieht, war, dass sie vage sagte, dass "alle Optionen auf dem Tisch liegen", und dann ihre Anti-Amtsenthebung wiederholt. Sie nutzte Krisenrhetorik zu Trumps Verhalten und Abtreibungsrechten. Obwohl sie an der Umfragen-geprüften "sicheren" Umrahmung der letzten 50 Jahre der "Wahl" (choice) festhielt. In letzterem Fall erleidet die Frauenrechts-Seite einige schwere Rückschläge bei der Abtreibungsrecht. Vielleicht ist es also an der Zeit, dass die demokratische Führung beginnt, die Abtreibungsgegner über ihre radikale Rhetorik über Abtreibung als Massenmord mit etwas mehr als der Standardrhetorik des letzten halben Jahrhunderts herauszufordern.

Pelosi war noch nie eine "Tribüne des Volkes" als Politiker, und das ist okay. Nicht viele Politiker sind das. Doch ihr öffentliches Interview kurz nach Muellers dramatischer und höchst bedeutsamer Rede konzentrierte sich auf die Erstellung von Listen demokratischer Positionen zu Themen, bei denen eine bedeutende Mehrheit des Landes sie unterstützt. Das gleiche, was die Demokrten in den letzten 25 Jahren getan haben, das heißt, seit der "Gingrich-Revolution" Eroberung des Repräsentantenhauses von 1994. Wenn sie einfach Positionen zu wichtigen Themen Stellungnahmen abgaben hätten, die populärer sind als die der Republikaner, hätten sie in all den letzten 25 Jahren nicht nur das Repräsentantenhaus aber auch den Senat und das Weiße Haus kontrolliert.

Als Bonus erklärte Pelosi, dass sie auf die Forderungen nach einem Green New Deal durch ... die Überweisung an einen Ausschuss, damit er verschwinden soll reagiert.

Cenk Uygur sagte am The Young Turks später am Tag des Pelosis Commonwealth Club Interviews, "the Resistance has totally turned into the Assistance" ("der Widerstand hat sich total in die Unterstützung verwandelt"). The Demokratische Führung hat seit Trumps Wahl sich sebst "the Resistance" genannt.

Dahlia Lithwich bewertet die Situation so (Mueller Spoke. Part of America Heard Laurel, and Part of America Heard Yanny. Slate 05/29/2019; interne Links weggelassen; meine Übersetzung):

Robert Mueller ist ein Mann, der nichts mit dem beginnenden Niedergang von Normen, Höflichkeit und Rechtsstaatlichkeit zu tun haben will. Deshalb hätten wir uns nie wundern dürfen, als er ursprünglich versucht hat, seinen akribischen Bericht zu verfassen und uns dann im Wesentlichen zu verschonen. Deshalb sollten wir uns auch nicht wundern, dass er heute Morgen im Wesentlichen genau das wiederholt, was er vor zwei Monaten in seinem Bericht dargelegt hat, einen Bericht, den er wirklich gerne von uns lesen lassen. Mueller schrieb seinen Sonderermittler-Bericht für eine Welt, in der davon ausgegangen wird, dass Fakten und Wahrheit das Handeln informieren werden. Wie seine Rede heute Morgen deutlich machte, glaubt er immer noch, dass wir in dieser Welt leben. Aber so ist es nicht.

Robert Mueller ist ein Mann, der nichts mit dem beginnenden Niedergang von Normen, Höflichkeit und Rechtsstaatlichkeit zu tun haben will. Deshalb hätten wir uns nie wundern dürfen, als er ursprünglich versucht hat, seinen akribischen Bericht zu verfassen und uns dann im Wesentlichen zu verschonen. Deshalb sollten wir uns auch nicht wundern, dass er heute Morgen im Wesentlichen genau das wiederholt, was er vor zwei Monaten in seinem Bericht dargelegt hat, einen Bericht, den er wirklich gerne von uns lesen lassen. Mueller schrieb seinen Sonderbeiratsbericht für eine Welt, in der davon ausgegangen wird, dass Fakten und Wahrheit das Handeln informieren werden. Wie seine Rede heute Morgen deutlich machte, glaubt er immer noch, dass wir in dieser Welt leben. Aber so ist es nicht.