The Carpentariat

Fall financial assistance

Thursday is the final day of the fall fundraiser. So many thanks to the readers who have contributed. I'll continue, for six months, to cover the election and post-election periods out of respect for, and an ethical duty toward, those who have pitched in to financially help. And now I need a couple days off. 

(With one little exception. I couldn't resist noting Political Wire's summary of a Hill report: "ABC’s 90-minute town hall with President Trump drew fewer viewers than NBC’s 'America’s Got Talent.'" Just not in the White House.)

A "firehose of lying." (Guess who?)

From CNN's magnificent Daniel Dale (former Trump fact-checker with the Toronto Star), a wee bit of presidential correction.

Another tour de force from @ddale8 fact-checking a torrent of lies pic.twitter.com/xDxKI32ef8

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) September 16, 2020

It's time to "out" these mealymouthed jerks

Tom Nichols​​​​​ has some fun with his erstwhile partisan compatriots — and I have an objection:

"Would-be Madisonians among the Republicans warn that no party should have untrammeled access to the levers of power—and especially not the Democrats. Yes, they say, we understand that Trump must go, but if Joe Biden is allowed to run the executive branch without a Republican Senate, America will become a one-party state that sooner or later will fall under the boot of the dreaded Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This faux constitutionalism is naked hypocrisy: I do not recall, during my days in the GOP, anyone on the right ever pleading that Americans should leave at least a few Democrats in office so that we Republicans would not go crazy and start force-feeding Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek to impressionable schoolchildren."

Nichols is, of course, correct about his memory and Republicans' "faux constitutionalism." I too cannot recall Republicans lamenting their unchecked majorities under George W. Bush for six years, or two or effectively four years under Trump, who, at any rate, and with the GOP's unqualified approval, has become a government unto himself.

But just who are these Republicans who "understand that Trump must go"? Nichols does not say. He quite obviously maintains ties to certain incumbent GOP pols who "grant" to him that "Trump is a sociopath and an idiot," as he puts it. Yet he leaves us clueless — mostly — as to who they are. And that, among the NeverTrumpers, must stop.

I also recall rather fierce debates a few years ago on Andrew Sullivan's Dish about the propriety of "outing" gays against their will. Some argued that gay men should decide for themselves when to "come out," and the opposing team counterargued that gay men should say they're gay and if the gays don't then they would. This was an ethical debate in which Team #1 was decidedly in the right, it always seemed to me.

However on the topic of Republicans outing Trump, I must flip the script. It's true that a significant number of congressional GOP pols know this president, their party's leader, to be a dangerous, sociopathic idiot. But to side with Trump for just a moment, such public knowledge is always attributed in journalistic accounts to "anonymous sources" — which is bullshit.

If some Republican senator from Toothless Redneck USA is compelled to let friend Tom Nichols know, redundantly, that Trump is a dangerous, sociopathic idiot, then that "public servant" drawing a paycheck from taxpayers should be on the record that he or she is enabling and cooperating with a dangerous, sociopathic idiot.

For the good of the nation — which supersedes any mere partisan friendship — Mr. Nichols should not bat an eye at violating the senator's confidence. As it is, he's violating our confidence in NeverTrumpers.

Once honorable "fellow travelers"

How delightful that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the eloquent bogeyman of all morons Trump, has resurrected the Cold War phrase, fellow traveler.

When I first read the good colonel's admonitory truth that "Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler" I felt as though I was being transported back to those happy, carefree days — compared to now — of runaway McCarthyism. Tail-gunner Joe couldn't slam down more than two stiff shots of aged bourbon before excitedly exclaiming that some poor innocent bastard was a traitorous "fellow traveler."

But were Sen. McCarthy's accusatory words actually of Cold War origin? You know the historical drill; I wouldn't ask if it were so.

Fellow traveler was coined by the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1925. The phrase was, at that time, in no way deprecatory; Trotsky's genius merely noted that Russian intellectuals sympathetic to the 1917 revolution who nevertheless had abstained from being outspoken proponents of communism should be free to continue writing as independent thinkers; they would act as a sort of literary bridge between old Russia and the coming proletariat regime. Such thinkers were just traveling along, so to speak, with their fellow, new-day Russians.

Under not the proletariat but Stalin's regime, the designation of fellow traveler, by the end of the 1920s, would get you shot. Under Stalin's successor, Vladimir Putin, it could make you president of the United States.

When will Jesus bring the last cheeseburger?

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman may possess a diffident demeanor, but in recalling his time with Trump in the White House, there's one thing he is not: shy. Speaking with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg about the president's extortionist phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Vindman calls Trump's behavior "criminal," "corrupt," "repulsive" and "un-American."

"I thought I could potentially communicate with him," says the involuntarily retired Army officer, "maybe speak to his better angels, explain to him that his ideas about Russia were harmful to the United States." (Mused Goldberg later: "You wanted to appeal to Donald Trump’s better angels?") "I didn’t know precisely what Trump’s boundaries would be," continued Vindman, "but I did think we would be operating within boundaries."

And that was Vindman's mistake.

William Taylor, who succeeded the brutally mistreated Marie Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine, explains Vindman's bespectacled innocence: "One thing Alex Vindman is not is cynical. I’m absolutely convinced he’s a patriot, to the point where he’s a bit Boy Scoutish."

Col. Vindman is less unsuspecting these days, now that Trump and allies have given him advanced seminars in radical cynicism. But I believe he has drawn the wrong conclusion as to why this president insists on being Putin's bitch. "Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin," Vindman tells Goldberg. "They may or may not have dirt on him, but they don’t have to use it. They have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin is, and so he admires him. He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances. So he’ll try to please Putin."

To me that seems a dubious inference; Trump admires Putin and wishes to emulate him, and so he bows before his autocratic mentor? And Trump is anything but "unwitting" in his dealings with Vlad — he anticipates the Russian tzar's wants and needs and scurries to fulfill them.

Neither do I agree with former director of national intelligence Dan Coats' assessment of Trump's national betrayal. In Rage, Bob Woodward writes that Coats "continue[s] to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump." Peter Strzok, the roaming, texting, bad-boy former FBI counterespionage chief, sees it Coats' way: "[Trump] is unable to put the interests of our nation first, that he acts from hidden motives, because there is leverage over him, held specifically by the Russians but potentially others as well."

Perhaps these gentlemen have taken one too many super-spook courses, wherein the bloody simple is deliberately complicated so as to validate the worthiness of super-spookdom. Again, Trump has authoritarian urges and so hopes to please Putin, or KGB Vlad and the Russkies have something on Donald? Pshaw, I say. Forget psychology and unsubtle blackmail and head straight for Occam.

Trump never expected to find himself in the White House — for once he underestimated the tipping-point buffoonery of the American electorate — but when he did find himself there he set out to secure his post-presidency business interests. That's as far as his mind can stretch. The Donald has all the human complexity of flatlining Babbittry: the buck, the dollar, get the next dollar, mankind's highest achievement. He wants Trump Towers in Moscow and Vladivostok and maybe some rigged-game casinos, too. (The house's vast built-in advantage isn't enough for the serially bankrupting Trump.)

This is all there is to the president's genuflecting before the favor-dispensing, actual strongman Putin.

In my dream of dreams, once he falls under indictment and faces a barrage of civil suits next year in a state and federal blowout, Trump flees to Moscow, rooms with Ed Snowden, and begs Vlad for "political" asylum — whence he broadcasts a one-hour, primetime propaganda show, Howard Bealelike, Mon.-Fri., on Russian TV. And then one day, while on the air, that last McRusskie cheeseburger, well ...

State of the Nation

CALIFORNIA

THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

Bernie, being difficult, as always

If you want to know just how hard nominee Bernie would have bounced on his own November rubble, then take a gander at this piece, published Saturday in the Washington Post. The Vermont senator's admonitions about Joe Biden's presidential campaign strategy read like a playbook for how to get one's ass kicked in a general election.

"Sanders has come to worry about the Biden campaign’s prospects," writes reporter Sean Sullivan, and is "urging Biden’s team to intensify its focus on pocketbook issues and appeals to liberal voters." The socialistically titanic presidential candidate who collided with Biden's moderate iceberg in the primaries "has told associates that Biden is at serious risk of coming up short in the November election if he continues his vaguer, more centrist approach."

That approach, which has carried progressive-conservatives such as FDR, John Kennedy and Barack Obama to the White House, while the George McGoverns of Democratic politics have sunk in the freezing seas of leftism, has been as politically axiomatic as the necessary acts of kissing babies and eating fried hotdogs in Iowa.

Nevertheless, Sanders "has identified several specific changes he’d like to see" in Biden's campaign; e.g., stumping more often "with figures popular among young liberals, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," who would send most Midwestern housewives and virtually every Southern male fleeing not gently into the night.

Why does Bernie think Joe, according even to Rasmussen Reports, for Pete's sake, is leading Trump in Michigan by 8 points? Or that Arizona is competitive? Or that Wisconsin has swung swiftly toward the Democratic nominee? Still, says the senator's former presidential campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, "there are areas the [Biden] campaign can continue to improve upon." The smugness is appalling.

As WaPo's Sullivan notes: "It is rare for such a prominent party figure to repeatedly voice private criticisms of the party’s nominee and acknowledge them publicly, especially in the campaign’s final stretch…. [And] until now, there had been few outward signs of discord between Biden and Sanders. Shortly after the senator ended his campaign in April, he promptly endorsed Biden, offering an unequivocal stamp of approval."

I have distrusted Bernie Sanders for six years. I remain distrustful. He's an asp in the grass, and once President-elect Biden is sworn in, he'll become even more venomous.

"Florida, Florida, Florida," as Tim Russert reminded us in 2000

I just wanted to reassure you that Biden has this election in the bag, since it, like the 2000 contest, could well come down to Florida's Electoral College votes. Why is it a sure thing for Biden? I hear you ask. Because Florida is a sane, rational, levelheaded state, just like Joe Biden, as Keith Olbermann observed not that long ago.

Comments

You may now comment by entering only your name; I have eliminated the need to enter an email address.

I never understood the purpose of requiring the latter. If I harvested email addresses, it might be useful, but I don't. Furthermore, any commenter was free to enter email gibberish, such as [email protected], and more than one commenter enjoyed the freedom to do just that. So even for harvesting purposes, it had its drawbacks.

Anyway, only a name — any name — is now required. I hope you appreciate the change. (I beg you, no questions as to where the reply function went. I've already exceeded my level of technical competence.) 

The NYT stumps me

From the NYT's Giovanni Russonello, this has to be the most baffling electoral analysis I've yet read, subtitled "An authoritative new study on 2018 midterm voters shows how despite his strong position, Joe Biden is lagging behind the rates at which some key demographics broke for the Democrats two years ago."

Sounds bad, right? Rubbing it in, Russonello then observes that "Mr. Biden may not be able to count on the same level of support that Democratic candidates received in 2018. Some of the groups that swung hardest in Democrats’ direction in 2016 have been slow to warm to Mr. Biden." (I ardently wish the NY Times would drop its silly insistence that "Mr.," "Mrs." or "Ms." be used repeatedly and throughout each article. I believe we all know just who "Biden" and "Trump" are, and we're most unlikely to mistake those references for Mmes. Biden and Trump.)

Russonello then specifies three key groups — young voters, Latinos, and white suburbanites — as those whom, one assumes, given all the lead-up, Mr. Biden, not Mrs. Biden, mind you, may be suffering some lag, compared to Democrats' 2018 turnout. That's the impression one gets from Russonello's writing: "Recent polls show the party’s presidential nominee lagging behind the rates at which certain key demographics broke for the Democrats two years ago." On the other, confused hand, the Times reporter also observes that "the surge in Democratic votes across the board, particularly among key groups, appears to tee up Mr. Biden for a strong showing."

But back to those aforementioned three key groups; you'll need to tell me where the possible "lagging" support lies.

Mr. Biden is not particularly popular among young people. [Yet] Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by 63 to 27 percent among voters under 35, according to Quinnipiac; that’s better than Mrs. Clinton’s 58-28 margin among the youngest voters in 2016.

Mr. Biden is up on Mr. Trump by anywhere from 20 to 32 points among Hispanic voters nationwide, according to recent polls. That is considerably weaker than Mrs. Clinton’s advantage, and far below the Democrats’ wider lead in 2018. [However] partly because the Hispanic population is so diverse — with regard to nation of origin, racial identity and political thought, among much else — and because phone surveys rarely have a Hispanic sample of much more than 100 people, this group can be hard to accurately poll.

[White suburbanites]: This is one area in which Mr. Biden is well positioned to carry the gains of 2018 forward — and even exceed them. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll last month showed Mr. Biden winning in the suburbs by a whopping 25 points.

I have never been quite so lost while reading a NYT piece. I'm not even sure that Russonello's initial implication was that Biden is treading on certain fault lines.

If I may make a career-counseling suggestion to Mr. Russonello: Switch from journalism to writing mystery novels. You're a natural.

Praise Jesus and Mother Mary

Politico:

"A new study of Catholic and evangelical voters … suggests Trump is poised to lose a sizable chunk of his Christian voters in November….

"The online survey, which was commissioned by the left-leaning group Vote Common Good and conducted by a team of academic pollsters … predicts an 11 percentage point swing toward Biden among evangelicals and Catholics [in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin]."

I had never heard of Vote Common Good, nor is it scored by FiveThirtyEight, so I was suspicious of its findings. This, however, reassured me:

"Other polls have captured similar gains in Biden’s religious support, including an August survey by Fox News that showed the former vice president at 28 percent support among white evangelicals — up 12 percentage points from 2016 exit polls for the Democratic nominee."

The shift's explanation seems to be twofold: "the contrast between the former vice president’s palpable faith and Trump’s transactional view of religion," and [Trump's] 'cold response' to the nationwide reckoning over systemic racism"; "the president’s law-and-order messaging has given Biden an opening to connect with churchgoing Americans who are accustomed to calls for courage and justice."

An 11 or 12 point swing toward Biden and decency scarcely denotes a major shift in political thinking among Christian evangelicals and conservative Catholics. But it's a significant start — one sure to widen with the unstoppable generational emergence of today's religious youth who are less racist than their forebears and more idealistic than "transactional."

(I might add that I, for one, bemoan the admixture of religion and politics. But a pol's gotta do what a pol's gotta do — and that makes me, I suppose, more transactional than idealistic.)

After the above post, an early appointment. Five weeks after an MRI brain scan, I'm to learn a neurologist's interpretation of its result — other than what is already known, that I'm hopelessly, incurably crackers.

See you tomorrow.

***

Fri. afternoon. Good news. I'm not entering early — really early — onset dementia, which worried me the most, since that would have ended my writing days tout de suite. In fact I aced the mental test designed for such an aliment — and they all said, That's amazing … how did you do that? So be humble before me; like Donald, I'm a stable genius for having recalled a few words and counted backward from 100 by 7s. 

So what's with the "white matter lesions" in my brain? They aren't sure, but they suspect multiple sclerosis, which for the last month has been far preferable in my mind — lesions and all — to dementia. Ah, if only you could have been there, in the exam room, for my balance tests. I stumbled and tilted and wobbled like a well-vodka-provisioned Russian private on V-E Day. It was comical. At any rate, from here — what else? — another MRI, this time of my spine. So we'll see.   

Are we headed for the mountaintop?

The Economist, having aggregated a multitude of recent polls, rather predictably predicts a Biden victory in the one and only category that counts — the Electoral College. What's more, it statistically entertains a Biden EC victory in which the vote exceeds 400. (Note that Trump's top range is in the low 300s.)

The Washington Post's data analyst, David Byler, concurs that a Biden landslide of 400+ is "plausible."

"Biden has a bigger lead now than Obama did at this point in 2008," observes Byler, "and he’s competitive in big red states such as Texas and Georgia. That’s why my model — as well as those from FiveThirtyEight and the Economist — see[s] 400 or more electoral votes as an optimistic but plausible scenario for Biden."

My nonexistent model foresees "400 or more electoral votes" as less "optimistic" than realistic.

The failure of lying and the power of truth: Trump vs. FDR

I'm still trying to comprehend how lying to the country can be a show of strength when the liar knows — and we now know that Trump knew — that the lie is soon to be met by the catastrophic consequences of the liar having lied. As more than one study has shown of late, the plain, simple, scientific truth from the White House, from the beginning, about covid's virulence and how to protect against it would have saved tens of thousands of American lives; in fact, roughly 75 percent of the 200,000 now dead. Instead, Trump, like a besotted, blathermouthed gambler at the craps table, let the lie ride.

"I’m a cheerleader for this country," blathered the Great Dissembler from the White House yesterday, perpetuating the Big Lie. "I love our country, and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic. And certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength. We want to show strength as a nation. And that’s what I’ve done. And we’ve done very well. We’ve done well from any standard…. It’s been an amazing job that we’ve done."

He later added, "We don’t want to … start shouting that we have a problem that is a — a tremendous problem."

If Trump possessed any interest in reading, he might have learned by now, between grifts, how FDR demonstrated actual leadership at the dawn of America's entry into WWII. If you're thinking we have a tremendous problem on our hands, said Roosevelt to the public, you're damn right. But, we'll persevere and prevail. FDR's "cheerleading" showed authentic strength, confidence, truth and calm — all the elements of effective leadership that Trump lacks.

***

Or, as Prof. Tribe puts it:

FDR after Pearl Harbor might’ve said, if he’d been Trump, “Why upset folks with some ‘Day of Infamy’ speech? Let’s just calm down till my friend General Hirohito gives up. No need to panic anyone by mobilizing for war.”

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 10, 2020

Scary

​​​​​From a study by Vanderbilt political science professor Larry Bartels, published 31 Aug., "Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy." (I first read a partial quote of this passage in a David Brooks column; emphasis mine.)

Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." More than 40% agreed that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands." (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.)

In response to Rep. Jim Jordan (see my preceding post): This really is today's Right.

The GOP's story — and they're sticking with it

In an uncharacteristic economy of words, the singularly unpleasant Jim Jordan helpfully spells out the Trump-GOP attack machine's playbook: 

Democrats:

Won’t condemn the mob, but blame Republicans for the chaos in liberal cities.

Won’t stop the violence, but refuse President Trump’s help to restore order.

Won’t let you defend your home, but can’t guarantee your neighborhood will be safe.

This is today’s Left.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 9, 2020

I suppose one could say this tweet is at least as honest as anything else Rep. Jordan has ever said.

Democrats and their moderate presidential nominee endorse mobocracy …

They hideously blame Republicans for what happens on Republicans' watch …

They refuse Trump's "help to restore order," which in Portland only escalated the violence …

and, as always, lots of that old-time religion ... They're coming for your guns. 

Nothing like a political playbook based on intellectual integrity.