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tom harkin
Debating Democrats, Please, No Fighting in the War Room
Direct your artillery at the real enemy, not each other.
Aug 02, 2019
I'm not one of those people who insists that every kid on the T-ball team receive a group participation trophy, sweet as that may be. But equally, my teeth grind when I see a flurry of post-debate articles headlined, "Winners and Losers." They reduce this most important presidential campaign of our lives to a game where a single swing or a miss matters more than the heinous presidency we're enduring or any of the issues vital to all of us terrified about the future for our families and ourselves.
I'm also annoyed by the debate format perpetrated by cable news networks more interested in creating conflict and melodrama than a legitimate discussion. The feigned gladiatorial confrontations CNN hyped in its promotion and then attempted to foment during the actual event serve no one.
Whether Kamala Harris and Cory Booker beat up on Joe Biden, or Elizabeth Warren made a pudding pop out of former Rep. John Delaney is, in the long run of the commonweal, not that important - although I hand it to Sen. Warren, "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for," was an inspired response.
Thoughts: On Tuesday night in Detroit the much-heralded battle between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders was a non-starter; each was too smart to fall for that hype. And the attempt by so-called moderates to bring the two of them down quickly sputtered out.
As for Wednesday, featuring the second group of ten candidates, maybe I was just debated-out by then, but the evening seemed a fizzle. My friend Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect tweeted, "Only partly due to CNN's idiotic rules, it was a Hobbesian debate: a war of each against all; nasty, brutish and short." Maybe, but to me it felt more like an intramural squabble fought with water pistols; nasty, brutish and squirt.
You can read plenty more in-depth analyses of the evenings elsewhere, but to my mind, as we winnow down the field, Warren, Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have performed the best of the frontrunners--but that much already was true after the first pair of debates in late June. Biden was stronger this time around, even with all the knives aimed at him; Harris was not--she seems better in her professional prosecutor mode than when put on the defensive.
As in June, I thought Julian Castro, Booker and Jay Inslee acquitted themselves well. I had hopes for new entrant Montana Governor Steve Bullock but much of what he had to say seemed packaged and when responding to women on the stage, felt uncomfortably like mansplaining. Exception: justifiable pride in the campaign finance reform he's championed in his home state.
And surprises? In the first round on Tuesday, as others have noted, it was New Age spiritual healer Marianne Williamson. When she made her opening statement, I couldn't tell if she was campaigning for president or a Golden Globe. By evening's end she had made thoughtful statements on guns, racism, reparations and campaign finance reform.
"The issue of gun safety, of course, is that the NRA has us in a choke hold," she said. "But so do the pharmaceutical companies, so do the health insurance companies, so do the fossil fuel companies, and so do the defense contractors. And none of this will change until we either pass a Constitutional amendment or pass legislation that establishes public funding for federal campaigns." Hey, stop making sense.
On Wednesday, it was cyber entrepreneur Andrew Yang who got the crowd's attention. "We need to do the opposite of much of what we're doing right now, and the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math," he said in his opening statement, to laughter and applause. Later, he said that rather than measure the economy by Wall Street highs and interest rates, "The way we win this election is we redefine economic progress to include all the things that matter to the people in Michigan and all of us, like our own health, our well being, our mental health, our clean air and clean water, how are kids are doing. If we change the measurements for the 21st century economy to revolve around our own well being then we will win this election."
For those confused by the discussions of Medicare for All and the cascade of candidate proposals, the debates continue to illustrate how complicated and frustrating the issue of healthcare is - just ask Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, who once produced a healthcare reform flow chart so complex it made the Manhattan Project look like the TV Guide crossword. But this remains a substantive and critical dialogue to be having and as weeks go by, fingers crossed, and with the field growing smaller, all may be clearer. But as mentioned more than once this week, it is vital as well to keep the spotlight on Trump's attempts to completely eliminate the Affordable Care Act, placing millions at risk.
Essential, too, to keep immigration policy at the forefront, although based on what was heard this week, you'd be hard-pressed to realize that almost every one of the Democrats has a comprehensive, immigration reform plan (Keep reminding voters of that--and of the Trump administration's relentless assault of the undocumented and the fact that there was a comprehensive bill in 2013 that passed in the Senate but died in the then-GOP House).
As was said more than once in this week's debates, any one of the Democratic candidates is trustworthier and better qualified for the White House than its current occupant. What's more, as Pete Buttigieg noted, "It is time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say."
On Tuesday night, Kamala Harris declared, "We have a predator in the White House." But on Wednesday, there was way too much Obama bashing and not enough pummeling of Trump and delineating the daily disgrace of his presidency. Reports of disarray among the Democrats, of splits within the party, arguably play into the hands of the GOP. But there is still time, and history tells us there will be unforeseen plot twists and turns ahead worthy of a Dickens novel.
On November 12, 1991, a year before Election Day, I attended the first Democratic presidential candidates debate of the '92 campaign. It was at the national AFL-CIO convention, and like this week's, held in Detroit.
I sat in the second row and remember thinking that none of them performed very well, that not a single one of them particularly impressed or would make an outstanding commander-in-chief. In fact, I thought the "winner" was the potential candidate who wasn't even there and who eventually wound up deciding not to run at all - New York Governor Mario Cuomo, father of the state's current governor, Andrew Cuomo.
There were six candidates on the stage that afternoon, some of whom you may not even remember--Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, former Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, former Governors Jerry Brown of California and Doug Wilder of Virginia.
And, oh yeah, one other guy: Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. When the smoke cleared all those weeks and months later, despite scandals surrounding his draft status, marijuana use ("I did not inhale.") and infidelity, he was the president of the United States. Who'd have thought?
A couple of lessons from that story: First, in the immortal words of the late screenwriter Bill Goldman, nobody knows anything. Ignore the pundits and enjoy a happier life.
Second, don't panic. There's still a long way to go, more than 450 days--many more weeks to Election Day than there were the day of that 1991 AFL-CIO debate.
If a week is a lifetime in politics, fifteen months is a millennium--or two. Fasten your seatbelts and hold on tight. You ain't seen nothing yet.
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The Midterms Prove It: Progressive Ideas Are Now Mainstream
Candidates who promised to stand up for working people, challenge powerful interests and shake up a rigged political and economic system won up and down the ballot
Nov 14, 2018
Americans marched to the polls last week and validated a Democratic message that is a sea change from where the party stood just a few election cycles ago. The center of gravity within the Democratic Party and the general electorate has dramatically shifted in the direction of bold economic populism.
Up and down the ballot, Democrats won by positioning themselves as advocates for working people -- willing to challenge power and shake up a rigged political and economic system in order to make a tangible difference in the lives of their constituents. This reveals a clear path to victory for any Democrat thinking about running for president in 2020.
Gone are the days of 2013, when a respected Democratic president could propose cutting Social Security benefits by decreasing promised cost-of-living adjustments for seniors. Gone are the days when the Democratic solution to the disastrous Citizens United decision was merely a Disclose Act that would make more transparent the corporate buying of our democracy. And gone are the days when those proposing to fundamentally challenge Big Insurance company power were laughed out of the room.
Researchers from the Progressive Change Institute analyzed how every winning Democratic candidate for the House campaigned in 2018 -- including their campaign ads, websites, social media and many debate performances. The resulting data shows that 65 percent of the incoming House freshman class embraced some version of Medicare-for-all or expanding Social Security benefits. Almost 80 percent embraced lowering prescription drug costs by challenging Big Pharma. And 82 percent favored challenging corporate power in our political system by rejecting corporate PAC money, passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United or passing campaign finance reform such as public financing of elections.
As Vox's Matthew Yglesias reported, this stands in stark contrast to "what a moderate Democrat looked like in the very recent past." In 2014,a typical moderate Democrat "bragged about voting with John Boehner a majority of the time, and ran against cap and trade and the Affordable Care Act."
Nothing better encapsulates this change than the shifting Democratic consensus on Social Security.
In 2013, President Barack Obama proposed a "grand bargain" with Republicans that would reduce future Social Security payments to seniors in exchange for higher taxes on the wealthy. Many congressional Democrats were willing to go along, despite the fact that the Republican positions on both Social Security and taxes were unpopular.
Progressives realized that if the entire scope of debate on Social Security was cutting benefits or doing nothing, the most we would ever win is nothing. So instead, we worked with former senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) on legislation that would expand benefits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) delivered a shot in the arm for the idea in November 2013 with an impassioned speech that endorsed expanding Social Security.
Corporate-backed Democrats immediately lashed out. Leaders at Third Way, a think tank predominantly funded by Wall Street executives, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to warn Democrats not to follow Warren "over the populist cliff." They called expanding Social Security "exhibit A of this populist political and economic fantasy."
But they were too late -- a seismic shift was happening. Warren partnered with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on legislation to expand Social Security benefits in March 2015 that won support from 42 of 44 Democratic or Independent senators who voted. In 2016, Hillary Clinton called for expanding Social Security in debates and in her national convention speech -- and many House and Senate Democratic candidates followed suit.
This year, Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) was perceived as a "moderate" when he won a special election in a nearly 20-point Trump district. But his TV ads focused on protecting Social Security and Medicare from cuts, rejecting corporate PAC money and fighting for workers. In September, he led 150 congressional Democrats in launching the Expand Social Security Caucus -- serving as co-chair with Warren and others.
Even Third Way did an about-face -- recently calling for the government to supplement Social Security with private savings accounts. (Of course, this proposal helps Wall Street, but this nonetheless cedes the shift from cuts to expanded benefits.)
The trajectory is clear, and corporate Democrats are in denial, arguing in a Post op-ed that progressive populism was "close to shut out" in last week's midterms and that "mainstream Democrats" won. They are right about one thing, though: Mainstream Democrats did win in 2018.
Candidates who promised to stand up for working people, challenge powerful interests and shake up a rigged political and economic system won up and down the ballot -- including more than 300 candidates supported by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Bold, progressive, economic-populist ideas are the mainstream. They won. And they are key to defeating President Trump in 2020.
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When Obstruction of Justice Is Glaringly Obvious
"It's a safe bet that acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker—like Robert Bork before him—will be the cat's paw Trump will use to halt or impede Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe."
Nov 10, 2018
Jeff Sessions is out as attorney general, replaced by a bootlicking Trump stooge named Matt Whitaker. Given that President Trump openly said on national television in 2017 that he fired then-FBI Director James Comey to try to stop the Russia investigation, it's a safe bet that acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker -- like Robert Bork before him -- will be the cat's paw Trump will use to halt or impede Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.
This would be obstruction of justice.
Let's examine Whitaker's career up to now. Before serving as Sessions' chief of staff, he was a U.S. attorney in Iowa from 2004 to 2009. He mounted a campaign for Democrat Tom Harkin's Senate seat, and lost to Republican Joni Ernst. Afterwards, he joined the board of a company called World Patent Marketing. What did this company do? The Washington Postreports:
The company was shut down earlier this year amid an FTC probe that accused it of being a sham group that cheated inventors by falsely promising them help with marketing their ideas in exchange for exorbitant fees. "For the last three years, Defendants have operated an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars," the agency alleged in a recently unsealed court filing. "In truth and in fact, Defendants fail to fulfill almost every promise they make to consumers."
At one point in 2015 Whitaker sent a threatening email to a complainer boasting of his U.S attorney record, writing, "I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you." (However, he was not personally accused of wrongdoing by the FTC.)
Before going to the Trump administration, Whitaker had a cushy job at a conservative nonprofit funded by dark money. In 2017, he published an op-ed on CNN's website arguing that the Mueller probe "is going too far," because it was looking into Trump's personal finances. (Heaven forfend!) He also tweeted an article calling this probe a "lynch mob."
Finally, he is good friends with Sam Clovis, a witness in the Mueller investigation due to his communication with George Papadopoulos (who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI). In an ethical government, that alone would probably make Whitaker recuse himself as Sessions did. But more fundamentally, any Trump selection for attorney general, acting or otherwise, should recuse himself because Trump is the subject of the investigation. The conflict of interest is inherent and inescapable.
In U.S. law, obstruction of justice includes "endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due administration of justice." In more plain language: "A person obstructs justice when they have a specific intent to obstruct or interfere with a judicial proceeding." For a concrete example, John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, and John Erlichman were convicted of obstruction of justice for (among other things) paying bribes to the Watergate burglars in an attempt to keep them quiet.
Whitaker's argument that Mueller doesn't have authority to investigate Trump's opaque personal finances is ridiculous. Whether you think he should or not, it is indisputable that Mueller does have wide powers: He has been tasked with investigating "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and any individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump," and "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," and then prosecuting any federal crimes he deems "necessary and appropriate." (Incidentally, it seems pretty clear the probe could go for a decade straight and not run out of people to prosecute.)
President Trump has already almost certainly committed obstruction of justice by firing Comey (he admitted he did it to stop the investigation on TV!) but directly shutting down or meddling with the investigation itself could not possibly be anything but obstruction. It would be the subject of a criminal investigation using his political authority to slow or stop that investigation. That is obstruction of justice.
Though they will surely try, not even the Trump hacks at The Federalist could come up with a definition of impeding or obstructing "the administration of justice" that doesn't include that. House Democrats, and the nation as a whole, better be ready to face up to this reality.
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