Elevator Speech on Impeachment

1. Democrats conducted illegitimate inquiry into Trump for > 3 years based upon discredited Steele dossier and similar false "intelligence" reports.
2. Bidens did engage in corrupt behavior in Ukraine.
3. Trump was justified in defending himself by looking into corruption on part of Democrats who had been attacking him and interfering with his foreign policy.
4. Delay of military aid to Ukraine is not unprecedented, as Biden similarly held up aid to Ukraine.  The weapons were ultimately delivered so this is no way a high crime or misdemeanor. 
5. Schiff has a conflict of interest in that he receives large amounts of money from firms supplying weapons to Ukraine and elsewhere.

There are conflicts of interests on both sides.  A real policy difference regarding Ukraine and Russia may underlie the interagency efforts to remove Trump.  Trump was the legitimately elected president and has legal authority to make foreign policy.  The bottom line is that the biggest threat to our democracy is the unaccountable military-intelligence community that works with the mainstream media in guiding the national discourse.

Off the Rails with Adam Schiff

There is much to dislike about Donald Trump:

• Narcissistic personality
• Tax cuts for rich
• Reckless policies with regard to environment
• Overly partisan in favor of Netanyahu
• Reckless in withdrawing from Iran nuclear deal (JPCOA)
• Reckless in killing Iranian general Soleimani
• Jingoistic

I could go on and on.  So why did a Democrat such as Adam Schiff go all out in attacking Trump for something he didn't do (collude with Russia)?  How did the quick pivot to Ukraine come about?  Is Schiff a hero for his perseverance in attacking Trump on issues of foreign policy, or is he a dupe distracting attention from Trump's very serious shortcomings?

Schiff is heavily supported by the military industrial complex.  

The defense contractors love him. Northrop Grumman ($16,217), SAIC ($11,005), Lockheed Martin ($10,298), Boeing ($10,208), Honeywell ($10,025), Raytheon ($7,040), and General Dynamics ($7,038) are all among his major donors.

Schiff is chairman of the the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  As such, he gets inside scoops from the CIA and other intelligence agencies.   His job is to support these constituents.  We Democrats appreciate his ability to bring the real power of the military intelligence complex to our side of the table.  And so the mainstream media, which doesn't not like Trump for many good reasons (see above), views Schiff as an asset, encouraging him in his attack on Trump from the military intelligence angle.

So Schiff has been doing his job as he sees it while becoming a national figure as opposed to a niche Democrat connected to the military intelligence complex.  He's too close to the intelligence community and thus unable to see big picture.  The Russia collusion charges were false charges initiated from within the intelligence community.  The Ukraine pivot was a counterattack by the intelligence community against the Trump administration which had successfully defended itself against the Russian collusion charges and was, legitimately, looking into how those false charges got taken so seriously in the first place.  Schiff and his mainstream Democratic supporters never accepted the truth regarding Russiagate as they gone too far out on the limb to plausibly return. 

And that's how we got to the point where Democrats are attacking Trump for things he didn't do, as opposed to his many glaring weaknesses.  Schiff is leading the Democratic and NeverTrump Republican lemmings over the cliff.

It's Klobuchar v Sanders for the Democratic Nomination

Bernie Sanders has a big advantage as the primary season kicks off.  He's alone on the progressive side, whereas the centrist vote will be split amongst 5 plausible candidates -- Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg.  So my prediction is that Bernie will win Iowa and New Hampshire, where he is currently leading in the polls.  The momentum from these victories will propel Bernie to a win in the 3rd state, Nevada.  The leading centrist candidate, Biden, is heavily favored in South Carolina, the 4th state to have a presidential primary.  Biden may win there but, at best, it will be an underwhelming victory given expectations.

So, by the end of February, Bernie will be far ahead in the race with Super Tuesday only 3 days away (on March 3 following the February 29 South Carolina primary).  The centrist candidates will be in disarray with Biden on the downswing and no clear alternative.  The short turn-around from S. Carolina to Super Tuesday will help Bernie and put the centrist Democrats into a big hole following Super Tuesday.  It will be at this point that the establishment Democrats rally the wagons and unite behind a single candidate to take on Bernie.

Amy Klobuchar is the only realistic choice for the centrists.  Biden has a ton of baggage at odds with what the voters want.  And he has low credibility as he attempts to twist his record to fit current preferences (Iraq, Social Security, bankruptcy).  Warren's niche was as a bridge from Sanders to centrists, but she burned the Sanders span.  Warren is now one amongst many in the centrist camp, and weak there for her equivocation and flirtation with the progressives.  Buttigieg hasn't caught on as a serious contender for a broad swathe of the party, include blacks and Hispanics.  Bloomberg is a billionaire making a mockery of Democratic ideals.  That leaves only Klobuchar as a viable alternative to Sanders.

Klobuchar is something of a Hillary Clinton clone.  She is a hardline centrist whose major selling point is that she is a feminist.  Certainly there is a large market for this type of candidate in the Trump era.  She has no major negatives, and the centrist Dems will coalesce around her in early March as the best possibility to avoid the Bernie tide.

Fortunately for Bernie supporters such as myself, there will not be much time for a Klobuchar movement to take hold.  Between the S. Carolina primary on February 29 and Super Tuesday on March 3, there are only 3 days, with 1345 delegates in play on March 3.  Another big primary day is March 10, with 362 delegates in play.  Another 577 will be in play on March 17.  The Klobuchar consensus will have to build very fast to hold its ground against an ascendant Bernie, and it seems unlikely that the dysfunctional center will perform well.

When the smoke clears on March 18, there will only be 1532 delegates left in play, as opposed to 2,439 already committed by the early primaries.  61% of the delegates will have been committed by the time the centrists get their acts together.  Sanders' lead may be insurmountable by that time.  Klobuchar will have Clinton rump in her camp, but that will be a negative as well as a positive.

If in fact Sanders does have an insurmountable lead on March 18, it will take a month or two for that to sink in.  Ultimately, Michael Bloomberg may decide to run as a 3rd party candidate.  That would most likely help Bernie as he would then be running against 2 New York billionaires.  The electorate may be polarized, but New York billionaires are not that popular that they will be able to win over the majority of American voters across the nation.  There will be many defectors on both the left and right, leaving the door wide open for a Sanders victory.

So Sanders can possibly be our next president.  If he wins, his job will be very difficult, as he will be trying to govern in the face of great skepticism if not intractable opposition.  If there is a 1929/2000/2008 style stock market bust, that may help him convince more people of the need for great change.  Populists such as Sanders and Trump would not be doing as well as they are if the country was running smoothly.

The Rovian Tactics of the Labour and Democrat Parties

Two lifelong progressives have been smeared in Rovian fashion by their own parties.

• Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.
• Bernie Sanders is a misogynist.

I'll vote again for the Green party if this keeps up.

More here and here.

Warren - Sanders Dustup

• Private conversation between friends which occurred 13 months ago
• 2nd hand report provided to media several weeks before Iowa caucuses
• No context provided
• Out of character for Sanders
• In character for Warren:
• Native American controversy
• Fired for being pregnant controversy

Stupid or Evil?

Klobuchar, Biden, and Buttigieg:  "We cannot afford to cut health care expenditures by 50%."

Warren:  "I won't say whether or not Bernie said that a woman cannot win the presidency (a Rovian assertion that goes against everything Bernie's ever said or done).  But I disagree, a woman can win the presidency."

Biden: "I made a mistake in voting for the authorization for the Iraq war in 2003.  But I won't be fooled again!"

Four Common Weaknesses of Political Thought

Four Common Weaknesses of Political Thought

And Their Implications for the 2020 Presidential Campaign

1.     Racial Reductionism

2.     Racial and Ethnic Nationalism

3.     False Equivalence

4.     Great Man Theory

Reductionism

The inspiration for this section comes from Adolph Reed, in an article entitled

The Trouble With Uplift, How black politics succumbed to the siren song of the racial voice.

Reed's long and academic essay boils down to a denunciation of identity politics, and of racial identity politics in particular: 

The politics thus advanced is profoundly race-reductionist…  if American racism is an intractable, transhistorical force—indeed, an ontological one, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has characterized it—then it lies beyond structural political intervention…  Coates and other proponents of reparations seem unconcerned with the strategic problem of piecing together the kind of interracial popular support necessary to actually prevail on the issue… Winning anything politically—policies or changes in power relations—is not the point. That is why the jeremiads offered by contemporary racial voices so commonly boil down to calls for “conversations about race” or equally vapid abstractions like “racial reckoning” or “coming to terms with” a history defined by racism.

Implications for 2020: Focus on economic issues for the majority.  Briahna Joy Gray:

Barack Obama’s two campaigns are a powerful model for what a presidential pitch centering economics, rather than race, sounds like. As Michael Gerson, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Bob Dole observed, Obama’s 2012 stump speech was “very much an FDR Democratic class-warfare speech … He’s very much running on economic populist themes in tough economic times.” Highlighting class, Obama was able to win decisive numbers of white voters in crucial midwestern states. Despite his own identity, he won. Twice. Democrats should not let Trump’s racism drive them away from that effective strategy. 

Reed and Gray oppose reducing complex matters to racial foundations.  Rather, they favor interracial politics addressing concrete societal issues.

Racial and Ethnic Nationalism

Inspired by Norman Finkelstein, in an article entitled

Why the UK Labour Party should not adopt the IHRA Definition or any other definition of anti-Semitism.

Racial nationalism is related to race-reductionism.  Reed opposes reductionism in which a nation is seen as the sum of its constituent races.  Finkelstein opposed racial nationalism in which race is equated with national identity.  Reed's essay was about race and politics in the United States focusing on black-white relations.  Finkelstein's essay is about race and politics in the United Kingdom, focusing on relations between Jews and gentiles and the state of Israel.

Prodded by the anti-Corbyn Jewish Labour Movement, the (Labour) Party’s leadership poured into the code a mass of verbal sludge that polluted the venerable principle of free speech. Now British-Jewish elites are terrorizing Corbyn to accept a purported definition of anti-Semitism that, one, is and couldn’t but be gibberish, two, exemplifies ethnic special pleading, three, is not just pointless but also stifles vital debate, and, four, has nearly nothing to do with anti-Semitism and nearly everything to do with shielding Israel from deserved condemnation...

“A man curses,” Malcolm X surmised, “because he doesn’t have the words to say what’s on his mind.” Something similar can be observed about he who reflexively reaches for epithets like anti-Semite and racist. It’s an impoverished, ignorant, slovenly substitute for rational dialectic. If he is so blessed as to possess the mental tools to engage in such a dialectic, it’s also inexcusable.

Implications for 2020:   The U.S. Democrats are comparable to the U.K. Labour Party.   Boris Johnson is comparable to Donald Trump.  Ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism tore apart the Labour Party and helped Boris Johnson win.  Accusations of racism, including those of anti-Semitism, are often reductionist, reducing complex issues and motives to simplistic stereotypes. 

Simplistic stereotypes are prevalent in U.S. foreign policy these days, on both sides of the political aisle.  Trump, Netanyahu, Pompeo, and Bolton on matters of foreign policy beat the war drums with regularity, often supported by Democrats (with regard to Venezuela and Iran, for example).  Democrats treat Putin as the devil incarnate, and take a tough military line in the new Cold War and it's current hotspot of Ukraine.  Rational discussion takes a back seat to epithets such as Moscow Mitch or Assad-lover.

Israel's racial nationalism may be a reaction to the German racial nationalism which brought us the holocaust.  Religious nationalism and ethnic nationalism are variations of this disease.  Nationalism, aka tribalism, is positive and necessary at some level.  It is generally good to bring one's group together behind a common set of values and goals.  Democrats can be successful by keep the focus on our group -- the United States -- and not being distracted by foreign affairs of only tangential interest to our voters.

We are multi-racial and multi-ethnic empire, and our success requires that we transcend race and ethnicity, both in our domestic affairs and our foreign allegiances. 

False Equivalence

Inspired by:

David Katz, in an article entitled
The “Double Genocide” Theory, The New And Official Form of Holocaust Denial

and

Mike Davis

On the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism

Let's talk about socialism.  Bernie Sanders is a socialist, and he is one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Democrats will need the votes of his supporters to win the presidency in 2020.  Yet many Democrats fear the socialist label, seeing it as providing the Republicans with a lethal weapon. 

The Democrats have already boxed themselves into a corner somewhat by governing on the basis of what the Republicans will say as opposed to what is best for the country.  Thus, for example, Obamacare was crafted not as an efficient healthcare financing system, but rather as something that the Republicans wouldn't be able to discredit as socialist.  Now the Democrats are in the position of defending an inefficient, Republican system (originally developed by Republicans for Mitt Romney in Massachusetts).  And that didn't stop the Republicans from tarring Obama as a socialist.  (Obamacare was better than what we had before, and Democrats wouldn't have had the votes to institute a Canadian style system.  But they could have tried to do the right thing, and then fallen back on what became "Obamacare" as a compromise.  It could then have been termed Blue Dog care.)

So we Democrats should try to do the right thing, as opposed to being driven by what the Republicans will say.  What is the right thing with regard to socialism?  How can we Democrats be united in facing the inevitable charges the Republicans will make equating Democratic policies with Stalinism and Venezuelan government?  The truth is that democratic socialism works remarkably well in western Europe.  We have many socialist type programs in the U.S. such as universal, free public education through grade 12, Social Security, Medicare, the highway system, etc.

Implications for 2020:   Many socialist programs are very popular and successful in the United States and elsewhere.  The Democrats should speak up about these, while rejecting the name calling behavior.  The label is not so important as is the record of various social programs.  Republicans will be clearly engaging in false equivalence when they compare Democratic policies to those of Stalin or Hugo Chavez.  There is a vast difference between Norway and Stalinist Russia, for example. 

At a deeper level, the articles referenced above (The Double Genocide and On the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism) explore catastrophes such as the Holocaust, and famines in capitalist and socialist countries.  In particular, Nazism is making something of a resurgence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Centrists, including Democrats, have been getting uncomfortably close with Nazis in places such as Ukraine.  Democrats should not only steer clear of Nazis, but should speak out forcefully against Nazi activity.  Trump voters are not in general equivalent to Nazis, but there are real Nazis about including some we've supported in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.

There are some political issues where outrage is genuinely appropriate.  In addition to Nazism, fake news by the mainstream media is another, in my opinion.   Quoting myself from Ranking Outrageous Behavior on a Societal Scale:

Outrage is warranted. The establishment, led by the intelligence community, now lies brazenly about matters of war and peace. There is no investigation or reporting of these lies. This is worse than Vietnam and Iraq 2003, in my opinion. As hard as this may be to take, Trump's talk of fake media is true, in my opinion, and therefore the outrage supporting Trump's abominable presidency is somewhat justified. So don't hate your neighbor. Rather pull together behind the need to reclaim an honest press and an honest discussion of foreign policy, including the role of intelligence agencies in domestic politics.

Great Man Theory

The Adolph Reed article mentioned above (under Reductionism) got me thinking about how we often deify individuals and downplay political movements.  Slavery in the U.S., for example, wasn't ended by the heroic exploits of any one person, black or white.  Rather it was a combination of people of both races in a political alliance.

My friends worry about Bernie Sanders' age, and this is certainly reasonable.  Bernie's campaign slogan, Not Me. Us., addresses this, I think.  Suppose Bernie is elected president, yet dies in office or becomes debilitated.  Would everything he stood for be for naught?  I don't think so.  I think he would have a capable vice president. I think he would have expanded the nation's consciousness as to what is possible in terms of dealing with the serious problems facing our nation and world.  I think he would have made some good appointments, and that future leaders would step up to fill the void created by his incapacitation.

It's not about Bernie or any of the candidates.  It's about political movement -- getting people together to address real problems. 

"America's" Achilles Heel

Now that the U.S. has attacked Iran, the Iranians are deciding how best to conduct war against the United States.  The answer, to me, is fairly obvious.  The way to defeat the United States is to harm the domestic political viability of the U.S. president.  Make the U.S. suffer in such a way that the president will be blamed.  If successful, this will result in a new U.S. administration and a likely retreat from war.

Thus, the Iranians (and other Trump/U.S. adversaries such as the Chinese) will likely be engaged in a battle for public opinion -- U.S. public opinion to be precise.  (The attack on Iran has already helped Iranian leaders in solidifying Iranian public opinion behind the current rulers.)   While I belittle the theory that the Russians affected the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I think it plausible that Iran, in a more active war with the U.S., can affect the 2020 elections.

The table is set for Iran due to the fact that America is greatly divided against itself, with Trump being hated by a large percentage of the U.S. electorate.  They would be wise to find the wedge issues in U.S. politics, and try to break these wide open.  Trump himself is the biggest wedge.  By making their war with the U.S. a war with Trump, the Iranians will find many Americans receptive to their perspective.

The obvious targets, then, are related to Trump personally.  Attacking his properties and personal allies could be somewhat popular amongst the American electorate, and extremely divisive.  Would Dems and never-Trump Republicans rally behind him?  Doubtful.  An even more efficacious approach would coordinate such attacks with China, Russia, and other "resistance" countries.