Tag Archives: Republican Party

“Four More Years Are Unthinkable”

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Another Republican admits the truth. He is Miles Taylor, former Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security. His job included trying to keep the president informed about national security issues.

He also expressed his views for The Washington Post:

After serving for more than two years in the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership during the Txxxx administration, I can attest that the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions.

Like many Americans, I had hoped that Dxxxx Txxxx, once in office, would soberly accept the burdens of the presidency — foremost among them the duty to keep America safe. But he did not rise to the challenge. Instead, the president has governed by whim, political calculation and self-interest.

I wasn’t in a position to judge how his personal deficiencies affected other important matters, such as the environment or energy policy, but when it came to national security, I witnessed the damning results firsthand.

The president has tried to turn DHS, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, into a tool used for his political benefit. He insisted on a near-total focus on issues that he said were central to his reelection — in particular building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Though he was often talked out of bad ideas at the last moment, the president would make obviously partisan requests of DHS, including when he told us to close the California-Mexico border during a March 28, 2019, Oval Office meeting — it would be better for him politically, he said, than closing long stretches of the Texas or Arizona border — or to “dump” illegal immigrants in Democratic-leaning sanctuary cities and states to overload their authorities, as he insisted several times.

Txxxx’s indiscipline was also a constant source of frustration. One day in February 2019, when congressional leaders were waiting for an answer from the White House on a pending deal to avoid a second government shutdown, the president demanded a DHS phone briefing to discuss the color of the wall. He was particularly interested in the merits of using spray paint and how the steel structure should be coated. Episodes like this occurred almost weekly.

The decision-making process was itself broken: Txxxx would abruptly endorse policy proposals with little or no consideration, by him or his advisers, of possible knock-on effects. That was the case in 2018 when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced, at the White House’s urging, a “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute anyone who crossed the border illegally. The agencies involved were unprepared to implement the policy, causing a disastrous backlog of detentions that ultimately left migrant parents and their children separated.

Incredibly, after this ill-conceived operation was rightfully halted, in the following months the president repeatedly exhorted DHS officials to restart it and to implement a more deliberate policy of pulling migrant families apart en masse, so that adults would be deterred from coming to the border for fear of losing their children. The president was visibly furious on multiple occasions when my boss, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, refused.

Top DHS officials were regularly diverted from dealing with genuine security threats by the chore of responding to these inappropriate and often absurd executive requests, at all hours of the day and night. One morning it might be a demand to shut off congressionally appropriated funds to a foreign ally that had angered him, and that evening it might be a request to sharpen the spikes atop the border wall so they’d be more damaging to human flesh (“How much would that cost us?”). Meanwhile, Txxxx showed vanishingly little interest in subjects of vital national security interest, including cybersecurity, domestic terrorism and malicious foreign interference in U.S. affairs.

How can you run a huge organization under those conditions? You can’t. At DHS, daily management of its 250,000 employees suffered because of these frequent follies, putting the safety of Americans at risk.

The president has similarly undermined U.S. security abroad. His own former national security adviser John Bolton made the case so convincingly with his recent book and public accounts that there is little to add, other than to say that Bolton got it right. Because the commander in chief has diminished America’s influence overseas, today the nation has fewer friends and stronger enemies than when Txxxx took office.

Txxxx has also damaged the country in countless ways that don’t directly involve national security but, by stoking hatred and division, make Americans profoundly less safe.

The president’s bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic is the ultimate example. In his cavalier disregard for the seriousness of the threat, Txxxx failed to make effective use of the federal crisis response system painstakingly built after 9/11. Years of DHS planning for a pandemic threat have been largely wasted. Meanwhile,  more than 165,000 Americans have died.

It is more than a little ironic that Txxxx is campaigning for a second term as a law-and-order president. His first term has been dangerously chaotic. Four more years of this are unthinkable.

Unquote.

The numbers are getting too big to comprehend, but, as The New York Times reported this week, “the true coronavirus toll in the U.S. has already surpassed 200,000”.

Fixing the Party Can Help Save the World

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Democrats have a terrific campaign issue in the Republican attack on the Postal Service. It isn’t clear the party will make the most of it. As an example, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Democratic chairwoman of the House Oversight committee, has introduced legislation to counter the administration’s actions. She wants the Postmaster General to attend a hearing, but not until September 17th. Waiting that long doesn’t suggest urgency. (Note: This afternoon, the Oversight committee invited the Postmaster to attend an “urgent” hearing on August 24th). 

If you’re interested in the world’s future, an article in The New York Review of Books by Joseph O’Neill is important reading. It’s called “Save the Party, Save the World”. It’s a long article behind a paywall. The following 2,500 words are half of it:

Somewhat unexpectedly, ensuring the success of the Democratic Party has become the most important political project in the world. The United States remains the world’s largest economy and superpower, and its constructive international leadership is essential if the climate crisis and other world-historical dangers are to be overcome. This can happen only if Democrats dominate the national government for the best part of the next ten years or so. Republicans cannot be trusted with meaningful power precisely because they form one of the world-historical dangers that must be overcome. Noam Chomsky has accurately described the contemporary Republican Party as “the most dangerous organization in human history.”

The politics that this state of affairs calls for—working to make certain that one party defeats another throughout a series of legitimate elections, in order to avert catastrophe—is a novel one. Canonical political theory doesn’t engage with the scenario. Neither does customary political practice. Even reliably partisan voters don’t feel obligated to be partisan. They reserve the right to calibrate their support for a party in accordance with private criteria that could be trivial or morally serious. It’s a free world, right? But acting in accordance with private criteria, however virtuously, begins to feel absurd at a time when global heating has ripped open the “climatic envelope” that Homo sapiens has occupied for the last six thousand years.1 As for elected officials, their outlook is largely determined by the everyday demands of constituents and donors, by institutional maneuvering, and by personal careerism. Democrats are no exception. They didn’t go into politics thinking of themselves as emergency custodians of the biosphere or as firefighters combating the arson of American democracy. They too find themselves with philosophies and wish lists and time frames that have lost their currency.

Our political situation, then, makes an unfamiliar and potentially repugnant demand on us, namely that we quickly develop a loyalty to the Democratic Party as such. To a degree, this is already happening. The 2018 “Blue Wave” midterms produced an extraordinary partisan grassroots mobilization for a wide variety of candidates. Two years later, Angela Davis and Bill Kristol, whose political views couldn’t be more different, both support the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden. But transpartisan electoral alliances, however useful in the short term, are obviously insufficient to enable the Democratic Party to edge out the Republican Party for the next decade. Much of today’s political energy on the left is not profoundly Democratic or pro-Biden, and it’s not even profoundly anti-Republican. It’s a very narrow negative partisanship—support that is significantly motivated and energized by antipathy against one figure, Donald Trump. What happens to that energy when Trump goes? How will the Democratic Party fare without it?

The long-held approach of the Democratic establishment won’t solve this problem. That approach—to minimize interparty differences in the hope of winning over politically disengaged voters, to crawl upward one step at a time while the escalator is moving downward—has enabled the GOP  [the Republicans] to win most elections for the last twenty-two years. It is self-evidently unfit for the strategic purpose of gaining and exercising long-term power. Recent events have made a return to Democratic government-by-stasis unthinkable. The Black Lives Matter protests and the disastrous Republican response to the coronavirus crisis have budged even the famously stick-in-the-mud Biden into recognizing that a new politics is necessary. If, as seems likely, he wins in November, his administration and its supporters will need a new, broadly acceptable partisan ideology in order to win a series of subsequent elections.

Two clarifications are called for. “Partisan” does not connote gratuitous animosity against one’s political opponents. It refers to embracing a party, and a party identity, as the prime means of advancing a political agenda. It involves identifying the opposing party (rather than its supporters or even its leading figures) as your stated adversary, and waging a perpetual campaign of negative partisanship against that adversary. . . .

Second, “ideology,” in this sense, isn’t exhausted by the concept of a policy agenda. But if Democrats want to win elections repeatedly, they must enact policies that are both effective and popular with Democrats. The emphasis refers to an insight that for years has been mislaid by the left but not by the right: an American political party can’t consistently win elections, midterm and state-level races in particular, without the sustained and vigorous grassroots participation of its base. What about swing voters? They don’t vote much in midterms, and in this polarized era have shrunk to such small numbers that their influence on national elections is much diminished. Swing voters will support you if the big outcomes—jobs and the economy, in particular—are favorable and if your branding strategy (positive and negative) is strong. Base turnout, though, won’t happen unless the grassroots identifies strongly with the party, is united by a common purpose, and is determined to win. What can be done to make this a reality?

E.J. Dionne Jr.’s [new book] Code Red addresses this question. . . .

Dionne’s foundational assertion is important: the present moment offers an “opportunity we dare not miss” for progressives and moderates (these are Dionne’s terms) to jointly create “a movement that can and should be the driving force in our politics long after Trump is gone.” Referring to the spectacular exploits of the Democratic grassroots in the 2018 midterms, he writes:

These newly engaged citizens have created an opportunity to build a broad alliance for practical and visionary government as promising as any since the Great Depression gave Franklin Roosevelt the chance to build the New Deal coalition.

A coalition of this kind isn’t fanciful, Dionne argues. The entire liberal-left spectrum is outraged by the Trump presidency and, more deeply, is “appalled by the extremes to which economic policy has been pushed by a radical, deregulatory, anti-tax right.” Furthermore, the political intuitions of Americans have propitiously changed:

The “common sense” of politics…was redefined in the Reagan era as a belief in the supremacy of markets and the futility of government action. Now, our common sense, while still skeptical of government’s competence (after the Trump years, who could not be?), is deeply troubled by economic concentration, the power of corporations, the growth of monopoly power, and the unfairness of the distribution of wealth and income.

Dionne recalls that Democrats were once capable of doing big stuff, quickly:

The years between 1963 and 1966 saw the most extraordinary outpouring of liberal legislation since the New Deal…. Until the 1966 midterm elections put an end to lopsided Democratic majorities in Congress and strengthened conservative voices in the congressional GOP, an era of consensus enabled a large and confident majority to embrace national action expanding opportunities and alleviating needless suffering. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education, new environmental laws, Head Start, the Job Corps, immigration reform—these are among the achievements of [the] period.

How do we get there again? “At the risk of sounding like a perhaps unwelcome counselor attempting to ease a family quarrel,” Dionne stages an intervention that tactfully surveys the viewpoints of the mutually infuriating quarrelers. This is of course a slippery undertaking. Big Tent politics encompasses class politics, movements of recognition and representation, moderation and radicalism, socialism and neoliberalism, cults of personality, boldly structural and incremental theories of change, good ideas and terrible ones. Dionne is at pains to not take sides—or, rather, to acknowledge the discrete merits of all sides. But his bottom line, it’s fair to say, is that moderates must accept that their conservative assumptions have been overtaken by events, and that the Democratic policy terrain has been mostly staked out by progressives. Progressives, for their part, must see that their efforts have been astonishingly effective, and move forward in a spirit of alliance and, if necessary, “visionary gradualism.” (Dionne likes this phrase, which he credits to the theorist and activist Michael Harrington, who founded the Democratic Socialists of America.)

The general tilt leftward is embodied by Biden’s apparent metamorphosis from restorationist centrist to agent of change awake to the new political landscape. His campaign website, “Joe’s Vision for America,” sets out a platform that is conspicuously more progressive, both in its rhetoric and in its practical proposals, than those of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. . .

Dionne is not yet fully persuaded by Biden’s new credentials. Nor could anyone be until a Biden administration, backed by a Democratic Congress, exercises power as progressively and aggressively as circumstances (for example, control of the Senate) permit. Biden’s career has largely coincided with the moral, intellectual, and electoral capitulation of the Democratic Party to the GOP. Like his contemporaries Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he has been programmed to not use power in a way that will anger Republicans or upset bankers or frighten the horses in an imaginary Middle America. It’s a generation of decent but passive people who find it difficult to grasp that their job is to enact meaningful policies that Democrats like and Republicans don’t like. . . .

Vital Democratic causes have been advanced not by the party but by activism, in which Millennials and Generation Z have played a crucial part. . . .

Dionne’s central proposal is designed to meet this challenge. In order to strengthen partisanship across varied standpoints, he argues, Democrats require a moral claim to power that is fresh, clear, and collectively shared. “The galvanizing idea,” he says, “should be dignity”:

A politics of dignity can bring progressives and moderates together and also begin to close the deep social divides that have distorted our politics and torn our country asunder. Opening the way to a new spirit of solidarity requires something else as well: An honest reckoning with the urgency of overcoming the injuries of race and gender but also with those of class.

“Dignity” refers to the enlightened idea that all persons are inherently valuable and worthy of respect. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” At the moment, dignity figures only peripherally in American liberal-left discourse, but as Dionne points out, Democrats from Biden to Ocasio-Cortez to Senator Sherrod Brown make regular use of the concept in their public remarks. They do so because dignity synthesizes issues of justice and recognition, tax and economic policy, family values, environmental policy, even statehood for the District of Columbia. It also links struggles associated with working-class white Americans to struggles associated with American minorities. If unifying the Big Tent requires finding a generalizable, unsullied, and instantly useful focal theme, the principle of [human] dignity is as actionable and inspiring as any. . . .

The difficulty . . . is that an ideology of partisanship isn’t something you can exhort into existence. In order for Democrats to cohere around the principles of dignity and grassroots power—the two are closely related, if you think about it—commitment in the abstract won’t be enough. It must be embodied by party relations, structures, and deeds. Specifically, it requires appropriate action by the three main stakeholders: the Democratic Party apparatus, in particular the [Democratic National Committee]; Democratic elected officials; and, finally, the (potential) supporters of the party who are ordinary civilians. Of these stakeholders, the institutional ones have the most immediate agency—the power to generate partisan coherence by action. It’s pretty clear what they must do: gain the trust and loyalty of the younger, more progressive cohort; keep the trust of the more centrist party faithful; and make swing voters trust Democrats more than they trust Republicans. The following steps must be taken.

First, embrace the principle of dignity as a central partisan theme. That will help unify and energize the party through this campaign season and provide a powerful and protective narrative for future partisan action.

Second, appoint figures trusted by the left to senior positions in the Biden administration and in the party organization. The progressive (younger) wing of the party is almost completely without representation in the congressional and DNC leaderships. That is a scandal, and must be fixed right away. The Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces (entrusted with producing policy recommendations in a variety of areas) are a very good step in this direction.

Third, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress must take the strongest legislative and executive action possible to do what Democrats, younger ones in particular, want them to do. A Green New Deal—with a substantial jobs component, not a pro forma one—will be crucial. Taxing the rich a lot more will be essential, as will a historic leap forward in health care. Doing stuff that Democrats like will be much more powerful in creating partisan loyalty than saying stuff that Democrats like.

Fourth, substantiate the narrative of dignity by reforming the police and ICE, fixing voter suppression, and fast-tracking immigration reform. Such measures are supported by the majority of Americans and are urgently awaited by party loyalists of color. A narrative of dignity—which is also applicable to the economically progressive measures outlined above—will enable a wide range of liberals to support these measures.

Fifth, enact reforms that will correct the dangerous electoral advantages enjoyed by the GOP. Statehood for D.C. is a no-brainer, as is restoring the reach of the Voting Rights Act. Scrap the Senate filibuster rule if need be. Criminalize intentional voter disenfranchisement. Expand the Supreme Court as necessary.

Sixth, start thinking about the 2022 midterms on day one. Because midterms and special elections are won by base turnout, Democrats must internally rebrand their party as the party of grassroots organizers. That entails more than a PR campaign. It will require funding, empowering, and privileging grassroots organizations, and putting the DNC apparatus at their disposal. Primary challenges should not be discouraged. Factional disputes should be viewed as good-faith differences of opinion—unless they undermine the shared partisan purpose and the mutual respect that an ethos of dignity requires.

Finally, stoke negative partisanship. Americans—whether they’re swing voters or party activists—must go to the polls in 2022 and 2024 with a strong (and valid) fear of letting the GOP back into power. Thus, always be negatively branding the GOP in the eyes of swing, or persuadable, voters. Exactly what approach to take in a branding operation is a complex question, but suffice it to say that it must be undertaken, and that the master narrative is: The Republican Party can no longer be trusted with power. Repeat this at every opportunity, then verify this narrative by investigating and bringing to light all Republican misdeeds. Brand them as Republican Party misdeeds, not as aberrant Trumpist corruption.

Call the disastrous Republican economy that Biden will inherit “the disastrous Republican economy.” Call the Republican pandemic crisis “the Republican pandemic crisis.” Always be trumpeting the success of your initiatives, always be talking about the danger of letting Republicans back into power. On no account repeat the mistakes of 2008–2010, when Democrats apologized for the Affordable Care Act and took ownership of the Republican financial crisis. If Democrats comport themselves like the natural party of government, they will be perceived as such and win more elections.

Biden will be crucial in all of this. He has spent fifty years accumulating bipartisan political capital. He is broadly viewed as an exemplar of personal honor. If he responds to this moment of historic need and opportunity, there could be no more credible messenger of the demise of the GOP nor a more reassuring leader in an era of transformative and partisan legislative action. It will be challenging, of course. Many of the steps outlined above will not be possible without having both the Senate and House under Democratic control—but then again, many will be. The challenges can be overcome—but only if Democrats, [all kinds of Democrats], start thinking and acting as partisans.

Txxxx’s Success Makes Perfect Sense, Part 2 (the Mob Perspective)

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From the foreword to Disloyal, the new book by Txxxx’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen:

. . . Let me say it the way Dxxxx Txxxx would: He wouldn’t mind if I was dead. That was how Txxxx talked. Like a mob boss, using language carefully calibrated to convey his desires and demands, while at the same time employing deliberate indirection to insulate himself and avoid actually ordering a hit on his former personal attorney, confidant, consigliere, and, at least in my heart, adopted son.

Driving south from New York City to Washington, DC on I-95 on the cold, gray winter morning of February 24th, 2019, en route to testify against President Txxxx before both Houses of Congress, I knew he wanted me gone before I could tell the nation what I know about him. . . .

Heading south, I wondered if my prospects for survival were also going in that direction. I was acutely aware of the magnitude of Txxxx’s fury aimed directly at my alleged betrayal. . . . Txxxx’s theory of life, business and politics revolved around threats and the prospect of destruction—financial, electoral, personal, physical—as a weapon. I knew how he worked because I had frequently been the one screaming threats on his behalf as Txxxx’s fixer and designated thug. . . .

For more than a decade, I was Txxxx’s first call every morning and his last call every night. I was in and out of Txxxx’s office on the 26th floor of the Txxxx Tower as many as fifty times a day, tending to his every demand. Our cell phones had the same address books, our contacts so entwined, overlapping and intimate that part of my job was to deal with the endless queries and requests, however large or small, from Txxxx’s countless rich and famous acquaintances. I called any and all of the people he spoke to, most often on his behalf as his attorney and emissary, and everyone knew that when I spoke to them, it was as good as if they were talking directly to Txxxx.

Apart from his wife and children, I knew Txxxx better than anyone else did. In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.

There are reasons why there has never been an intimate portrait of Dxxxx Txxxx, the man. In part, it’s because he has a million acquaintances, pals and hangers on, but no real friends. He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Txxxx has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them. . . .

As you read my story, you will no doubt ask yourself if you like me, or if you would act as I did, and the answer will frequently be no to both of those questions. But permit me to make a point: If you only read stories written by people you like, you will never be able to understand Dxxxx Txxxx or the current state of the American soul. More than that, it’s only by actually understanding my decisions and actions that you can get inside Txxxx’s mind and understand his worldview. As anyone in law enforcement will tell you, it’s only gangsters who can reveal the secrets of organized crime. If you want to know how the mob really works, you’ve got to talk to the bad guys. I was one of Txxxx’s bad guys. In his world, I was one hundred percent a made man. . . .

In the pitiful sight of Republicans throwing aside their dignity and duty in an effort to grovel at Txxxx’s feet, I saw myself and understood their motives. My insatiable desire to please Txxxx to gain power for myself, the fatal flaw that led to my ruination, was a Faustian bargain: I would do anything to accumulate, wield, maintain, exert, exploit power. In this way, Dxxxx Txxxx and I were the most alike; in this naked lust for power, the President and I were soul mates. I was so vulnerable to his magnetic force because he offered an intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives. To Txxxx, life was a game and all that mattered was winning. In these dangerous days, I see the Republican Party and Txxxx’s followers threatening the constitution—which is in far greater peril than is commonly understood—and following one of the worst impulses of humankind: the desire for power at all costs. . . .

Now, sitting alone in an upstate New York prison, wearing my green government-issued uniform, I’ve begun writing this story longhand on a yellow legal pad. I often wrote before dawn so not to be disturbed in my thoughts when my fellow inmates awoke. I had to report to the sewage treatment plant where some of us worked for a wage of $8 a month. As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Txxxx will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Txxxx wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Txxxx knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Txxxx I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. . . .

Watching Txxxx on the evening news in the prison rec room, I almost feel sorry for him. I know him so well and I know his facial tics and tells; I see the cornered look in his eyes as he flails and rants and raves, searching for a protector and advocate, someone willing to fight dirty and destroy his enemies. I see the men who have replaced me and continue to forfeit their reputations by doing the President’s bidding, no matter how dishonest or sleazy or unlawful. Rudy Guiliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner and Mike Pompeo are Txxxx’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the Boss. All this will be to no avail. Txxxx doesn’t want to hear this, and he will certainly deny it, but he’s lost without his original bulldog lawyer Roy Cohn, or his other former pitbull and personal attorney, Michael Cohen . . .

Otisville Federal Prison, Otisville, New York, March 11, 2020

Unquote.

Like I said recently in a post about Casino, the true crime book about Las Vegas, mobsters are used to lying and exaggeration. But I think Cohen is telling the truth about the mob boss millions of Americans (and an antiquated election process) put in the White House.

Txxxx’s Success Makes Perfect Sense

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From Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies, for The New York Review of Books:

“As time went on, it became clear that the sickness was a feature, that anyone who entered the building became a little sick themselves,” wrote the journalist Olivia Nuzzi in March 2018 of the Dxxxx Txxxx White House and those who serve it. For a century, those who have worked closely with authoritarian rulers have shown the symptoms of this malady: a compulsion to praise the head of state and a willingness to sacrifice one’s own ideals, principles, and dignity to remain in his good graces, at the center of power.

In his relationship with Republican political elites, as in other areas of endeavor, President Txxxx has followed the model of “personalist rule” used by leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Some of these rulers destroy democracy, and others, like the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi, govern nominally open societies in undemocratic ways. Yet personalist rule always concentrates power in one individual whose own political and financial interests and private relationships with other despots often prevail over national interests in shaping domestic and foreign policy. Loyalty to this head of state and his allies, rather than expertise, is a primary qualification for serving him, whether as ministers or bureaucrats, as is participation in his corruption schemes.

While some authoritarians have political parties of their own creation at their disposal, Txxxx had no ready-made vehicle for his political ambitions before 2016. He had to win over the Grand Old Party to gain credibility and access to its machine and gain the collaboration of its elites. “Co-optation” is the term political scientists use for the way authoritarians bind individuals and groups to them through buy-offs or intimidation. It can also be considered a form of corruption, given the ethical compromises and changes in personal and professional practices that cooperating with amoral individuals entails.

The journeys that high-level enablers like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Senator Lindsey Graham have taken at Txxxx’s side since 2016 have different motivations. Some saw Txxxx as a means to accomplish their own goals . . . . But collectively, they have contributed to the consolidation of an authoritarian political climate in today’s America, marked by fealty to a personalist ruler who holds his senior associates in thrall through complicity and intimidation.

The Republican Party, and the robust media universe that supports it, had been ready for a far-right, rule-breaking, and polarizing personality like Txxxx. A 2012 assessment by the political scientists Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann captures the crucial elements of an illiberal move that had, by 2016, primed Republicans to accept Txxxx’s candidacy: 

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

This retreat from bipartisan governance is why Txxxx’s open intention to be president of only some Americans . . . was not a deal-breaker for the GOP during the campaign . . . Nor were Txxxx’s many actions that promised a decidedly anti-democratic future for America . . .

Still, the aspiring president needed access and credibility from establishment figures like former Senator Jeff Sessions, who joined the ranks of history’s first-hour enablers—along with Priebus, Txxxx’s first White House chief of staff. These individuals back the extremist when he most needs it—and are often later discarded. Sessions, in particular, is the perfect case history of this phenomenon.

“I have a man who is respected by everybody here… I’m becoming mainstream,” crowed Txxxx, as he introduced Sessions as a surprise guest at a February 2016 event. . . . Sessions beamed and dutifully donned the red MAGA hat handed to him as he left the stage. A year later, he resigned from the Senate position he’d held for twenty years to take up the position of attorney general in Txxxx’s administration that was the reward for his loyalty.

Txxxx also needed people who would lie for him and keep his secrets. Corruption is a process, as well as a set of practices. It involves gradual changes in ethical and behavioral norms that make actions that were once considered illegal or immoral seem acceptable—whether election fraud, lying to the public, treasonous conduct, or sexual assault. The discarding of accountability as an ideal of governance makes keeping the fundamental pact of personalist rule—staying silent about the leader’s incompetence and illegal actions—a lot easier. . . .

The successive purges—FBI director James Comey, US attorneys, government scientists, senior diplomats, inspectors general—the targeting of American intelligence and the press, the attempt to manipulate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to Txxxx’s impeachment in 2019… all of it was made possible by the careful enforcement of a covenant of loyalty and silence taken by the GOP leadership. . . .

Txxxx’s acquittal on impeachment charges by the Senate in February 2020, following a trial in which no witnesses were heard who might give damaging evidence, was another stark example of the GOP’s complete subordination to the needs of a personalist ruler. . . . Senator McConnell, a man with “no ideology except his own political power,” as his biographer . . . puts it, stage-managed the non-trial to safeguard Txxxx’s presidency, a cause he has made his own from the beginning.

From the era of interwar fascism onward, one principle of authoritarian–­elite collaborations holds true: once those close to power sign on to protect the leader, they tend to stick with him until the bitter end. Even the June 2020 revelation that Txxxx knew Putin had been putting a bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan and said nothing—the ultimate betrayal by a commander in chief, and a treason unthinkable under any prior Republican (or Democratic) administration—did not move the dial, even with Senator Graham, whose political brand was once a hard-core patriotism and hawkishness toward Russia.

Graham’s conversion from fervent Txxxx critic to fanatical Txxxx defender has puzzled many. Seen from the perspective of authoritarian history, though, Graham is no anomaly. He fits the profile of the individual who has led a life of seeming rectitude and now experiences the thrill of partnering with an amoral individual. “Is there no bottom?” legions complain on Twitter . . . It is precisely this absence of a bottom that draws many to leaders, like Txxxx, who think big, make the unthinkable possible, and are open about their desire to exercise power without limits or restraints. Breaking the rules, and getting away with it, is at the center of the ethos of macho lawlessness that underpins strongman rule.

Politicians like Graham need only contemplate the fate of their former peer, Jeff Sessions, to know what happens if they break ranks. During his confirmation hearings for attorney general, Sessions behaved in conformity with the omertà around Txxxx’s illegal actions, swearing under oath that he had had no contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. After the news subsequently broke that he had, in fact, met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, contradicting his congressional testimony, Sessions recused himself from the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russian interference with the election.

Sessions continued in office but had to endure months of Txxxx’s repeated ridiculing of him, including calling him a “dumb Southerner.” By the time Sessions handed in his resignation, in late 2018, Txxxx had already scouted out a more suitable co-conspirator. He found one in William Barr, a man whom Txxxx pointedly calls “my attorney general.”

Then forced to run for the Senate seat he’d held for so many years, Sessions entered the most delicate phase of the authoritarian leader–follower drama: the quest for forgiveness and a return to grace. “Out of the 100 United States Senators I was the very first one to stand with @realDxxxxTxxxx and I will keep fighting for him and his agenda,” Sessions tweeted in November 2019. To a strongman, though, such a display of weakness only warranted further humiliation. Txxxx loudly endorsed Sessions’ opponent . . . Txxxx dealt Sessions a death blow by tweet: “Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions. He let our Country down.” Sessions responded sourly,“Perhaps you’ve forgotten… I did my duty & you’re damn fortunate I did. It protected the rule of law & resulted in your exoneration,” forgetting that feeling grateful to others is alien to leaders like Txxxx. . . .

“Congress no longer operates as an independent branch of government, but as an appendage of the executive branch,” former House [Republican] Tom Davis told The New York Times in January 2020. Four years after Txxxx won the Republican nomination, the GOP has become a personalist ruler’s dream: a party solely dedicated to defending and promoting the leader, no matter what he says and does. No price, even the mass death of Americans from the president’s willful mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, seems too high to pay to keep the pact of silence about the leader’s criminality and unfitness for office that maintains him in power.

With the authoritarian’s personal needs and desires setting the tone for political life, it is all too tempting to focus all blame on him. And that is routinely what happens when such rulers inevitably exit office. Yet, as the former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his new book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Dxxxx Txxxx, it would be a mistake to conclude that Txxxx had somehow simply hijacked the GOP. The Republican Party had already become a laboratory for American autocracy, a vehicle for power combining a base of white supremacists and gun-rights extremists with leaders like McConnell who had long approved of subverting voting rights and other democratic procedures to maintain their privileges and authority.

The GOP was already becoming “Txxxxian” even before Txxxx himself appeared to complete its self-destruction as a democratic party. Enticing and intimidating individuals into becoming their worst selves as willing collaborators is what authoritarians do best. On this count, Txxxx has succeeded magnificently.

Attacking the Post Office Means It’s Time To Impeach the Bastard Again

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Title 39 of the U.S. Code says:

The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.

Title 18: says:

“Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail, or any carrier or conveyance carrying the mail, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

The Washington Post reports:

President Txxxx says the U.S. Postal Service is incapable of facilitating mail-in voting because it cannot access the emergency funding he is blocking, and made clear that requests for additional aid were nonstarters in coronavirus relief negotiations.

Txxxx, who has been railing against mail-in balloting for months, said the cash-strapped agency’s enlarged role in the November election would perpetuate “one of the greatest frauds in history.” Speaking Wednesday at his daily pandemic news briefing, Txxxx said he would not approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service, or $3.5 billion in supplemental funding for election resources, citing prohibitively high costs.

“They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess,” Txxxx said. “Are they going to do it even if they don’t have the money?”

Quoting Paul Waldman of the Post:

The White House made sure that grants for the Postal Service would not be included in previous coronavirus pandemic rescue packages (“We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it,” an administration official told The Post in April), and as the problems at the Postal Service worsen seemingly by the day, Txxxx is sending the same message about any new rescue bill Congress might pass.

. . . Txxxx’s partner in the project to destroy the Postal Service is Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the GOP megadonor who has given millions of dollars to the Txxxx campaign and the Republican Party, and has been on the job for just two months.

Soon after taking office, DeJoy ordered a series of changes in policy that shocked postal employees. He banned overtime and told carriers to leave mail behind at distribution centers, causing it to pile up day after day. Employees also report that sorting machines that help speed mail processing have been removed from postal facilities. The inevitable result has been slower delivery, with letters and packages arriving late and many Americans simply not getting their mail every day. You’ve probably noticed it yourself.

The implications for the election, with unprecedented numbers of Americans wary of going to polls in the midst of a pandemic, quickly became clear. As The Post reported last month, “Postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by [DeJoy] are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting” . .

In 34 states, including the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, ballots can’t just be postmarked by Election Day to count. It has to be received by Election Day. If you mail it three days before, thinking you did everything right, but it doesn’t arrive at the board of elections until the day after the election, it’s tossed in the trash.

This has all the makings of an election nightmare purposefully engineered by Txxxx and DeJoy. As they know full well, due to Txxxx’s relentless campaign to convince people that mail voting is inherently fraudulent (unless Republicans are doing it), Democrats are now far more likely to say they’re going to vote by mail.

This is election theft in progress. And as awful as that is, it’s made even more despicable by the fact that to rig the election, Txxxx is trying to murder a national treasure.

Unquote.

Txxxx swore an oath to faithfully execute his duties as president. If Congress can’t agree to do anything else, the House needs to impeach him again and the Senate needs to hold another trial. That will give this issue the publicity it deserves.

But since the federal government is now partly run as a criminal enterprise, if you can’t put your ballot in the mail weeks before the election, hand-deliver it to county officials or vote in person, like Sylvia Smiles, a 77-year-old retired teacher from Charleston, S.C., is going to do. I hope she also contacts her representatives in Congress!

Noam Chomsky called the Republican Party “the most dangerous organization in human history”, given it’s denial of climate change. We have an opportunity to damage it for years to come. Maybe we can even put it out of its misery. Together, let’s get it done this November.