Category: Democrats Disfunction

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 22, 2020

We have a ton of cartoons today, so just a brief comment. Neoliberal economics bears a major responsibility for the pathetic pandemic response by our corporations and government. It encourages efficiency over all other aspects of a complex product/service delivery system. We now see that it is fragile, without the resilience necessary to meet surges of demand/need.

Our CEOs and politicians now think only in terms of equilibrium, when equilibrium is the last thing we need in the middle of a runaway exponential disease process like COVID-19.

We’re seeing how difficult it is to source things like gloves, masks and sterile gowns. The delays procuring those items will pale against the delay in sourcing ventilators and ultimately, a vaccine in sufficient doses to truly stem the tide.

One thing to think about is how nations with authoritarian or collectivist societies have responded to the Coronavirus better than those in the west, where we celebrate the individual, occasionally to the detriment of society. Our way works fine when things are good, but not so well when things turn bad.

What would you expect, given an educational system that doesn’t teach people what “exponential” means?

Finally, imagine Trump if he were FDR right after the attack on Pearl Harbor: Standing in front of Congress declaring: “This Japan thing will go away!” On to cartoons.

Whose responsibility is this?

There’s only one real cure for Trump syndrome:

He’ll never have clean hands:

Sadly, it’s not just his hands that don’t measure up:

Sen. Burr and the others can’t explain their actions. They’re guilty:

 

Let all the people keep the checks, but nothing for corporations:

Dem primaries showed us something:

The core problem for Democrats today:

Work from Home withdrawal setting in:

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Monday Wake Up Call – February 24, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Rainier from Crystal Mountain – 2108 photo by papageorgio120

At lunch this week with a wealthy owner of a commercial construction company who is also a committed Trumper, Wrongo said that the Democratic Party could split into two parties, assuming that the Dems fail to unseat Trump in November.

That’s because neither of the two wings of the party seem likely to gain majority victories in the primary elections over the next few months. That could lead to a weak national candidate heading the ticket. The race remains static, with a progressive Democratic wing led by Sanders and Warren, and a center-right wing, comprising Bloomberg, Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar.

Bernie’s Nevada win indicates that he’s on a path to consistent, 30%-40% finishes in many states. The only age demographic Sanders did not win last Saturday was the 65-and-older vote. We know that the older cohort votes heavily, while younger voters historically have not. If Sanders can bring along a portion of the older demographic, while turning out the youth, he changes the delegate game, and maybe the 2020 presidential election.

On his current track, Sanders could have the delegate lead in July when the Democrats meet in Milwaukee, but since he’s winning pluralities not majorities, he’s unlikely to have the 1991 delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot. Depending on how large his delegate lead is, the other candidates should concede, but none of them have to.

And that means there will be a second ballot, when the dreaded Democratic Super delegates will have their say. We know that the Establishment Democrats are not Bernie fans, and they comprise the majority of the Super Delegates, so we could see a Democratic schism in July.

While Bloomberg looks like a terrible campaigner, he forces the other moderate Ds to compete with each other, because they aren’t going to get much, if any of the voters who are committed to Sanders. And they can’t compete monetarily with Bloomberg. If they all stay in the race and keep going after each other instead of Bernie, it guarantees that Bernie will get pluralities, with few opportunities for majority wins by anyone.

What will the average Democrat do when faced with a choice between Bernie the democratic socialist, and if it comes to that, the 12th richest man in the world? The Democratic Party has always been a coalition of varied interests but in July, Dems could face the choice between either concentrated ideology or concentrated wealth.

Many are concerned that Bernie or any of the center-right Dems, won’t deliver the necessary voter turnout in the fall. But the 2020 election really has two parties, the Trump and the Not-Trump Party. Who really believes that the Not-Trumpers won’t come out to vote?

The Not-Trumpers came out to vote in 2018, when there was no one at the head of the ticket. In 2018, Not-Trumpers won in suburbs, in the cities, in some conservative districts, and in liberal districts.

The Dems running as the 2018 Not-Trump Party ran women, children of refugees, men, black people, white people, gay people, and won some races with all of them. So we know that team Not-Trump will be motivated, but we don’t yet know how motivated Team Not-Socialist will be.

So the questions (that we have asked before) remain:

  • Will the Dem progressive and center-right wings coalesce on a Not-Trump candidate?
  • Will that candidate appeal to all of the Not-Trumpers?

Regardless of which Democrat is the Party’s candidate, the anti-Democrat messages from the Republicans will be unprecedented. That will scare many middle-of-the-road voters, and possibly depress turnout. Whatever the pundits’ and the party establishment’s misgivings, right now, Sanders is clearly doing something right, while the others are spinning their wheels.

Next Saturday’s South Carolina primary will show us whether a different candidate can be a serious challenger to Sanders.

A brokered convention would, and should be hotly-contested. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bloodbath. If it is a bloodbath, that’s on the people who make it one, and they will be the people who break the Democratic Party into two distinct minority parties.

So, it’s time to wake up, Democrats! The divide(s) in the Party are clear: Older candidates vs. younger candidates. Progressive candidates vs. moderate-right candidates.

It’s time for the Party of inclusion to figure out where it’s going in 2020.

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Can Democrats Unite Behind One Candidate?

The Daily Escape:

The Great Western Divide, Kings Canyon NP, CA – photo by enigmo81

Let’s recall a statistic from the New Hampshire primary (NH) exit polling: 15% of Democratic voters said they wouldn’t support the Democratic nominee unless it was their first choice. This has echoes of the 2016 presidential campaign when the divisions between Hillary and Bernie carried over to unwillingness on the part of some Bernie supporters to vote for Hillary in the General Election.

Many of their votes went to the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Vox reports that:

“In Michigan, Clinton lost by less than a percentage point, a deficit she could have recovered from with half of Stein’s votes. Again in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Clinton lost by one point, Jill Stein’s votes would have covered her loss. Had Clinton won all three states, she would have won the election.”

And remember the 2000 election. That year, the Green Party’s candidate was Ralph Nader, who earned 97,488 votes, in Florida, swinging the election to GW. Bush, who won Florida by less than 600 votes.

So will 2020 be another time that Democrats self-immolate? Can Democrats agree to back one candidate with enthusiasm? Can Dems unify to insure huge turnouts that carry the House and Senate as well?

Let’s talk turnout. It’s been underwhelming. The total of Democrat voters in the 2020 Iowa caucus was 172,669. This is almost the same number of voters who turned out in 2016 when Hillary and Bernie were battling it out: 171,109. That’s about 70,000 less than the turnout in 2008 for Hillary vs. Obama.

Doesn’t seem that Iowa showed much Democratic enthusiasm.

In NH, more than 296,000 Democrat votes were cast. This exceeded the 287,542 that voted for Obama and Hillary in 2008. However, there are more eligible voters today than in 2008. That year 29% of the electorate voted in the Democrat primary, while only 26% voted this time.

It gets worse. NH allows crossover voting in primaries. Wrongo lived in NH for 12 years, and on occasion, voted strategically for candidates he had no intention of voting for in the General Election. Charlie Pierce noted this post last Sunday from the NH Journal:

“Bill Kristol, founder of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, confirmed to NH Journal that he is part of the effort, which involves tens of thousands of New Hampshire voter contacts and a six-figure budget. Kristol said:

“Yup. I’m happy to have joined with some others to help remind New Hampshire independents, who might be accustomed to voting in the Republican primary, that this year, they may be able to make more of a difference by voting for a responsible and electable candidate in the Democratic primary….”

Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report calculates NH independents responded to Kristol’s prodding, and some helped Buttigieg and Klobuchar:

Is this Democratic field causing less than expected turnout? What can turn this around? Wasserman’s colleague, Amy Walter, tweeted this:

“Dear Democrats: there is no ‘perfect’ candidate. There never is…”

It’s early in the primary marathon, but the signs are not good. Weak candidates, little enthusiasm, and a significant minority who is unwilling to say they’ll back the nominee, regardless of who it is.

And there’s been more than the two examples of disunity mentioned above. We have to go back to 1972 and the campaign of George McGovern. Nixon shellacked McGovern by a 23-point margin in the popular vote, carrying 49 states.

After McGovern’s defeat, Democrats began running towards the center, even though “the center” has moved further and further to the right with each presidential election.

For the past 40 years, party leaders and mainstream pundits have invoked McGovern’s name. In 2004, Howard Dean was the new McGovern. In 2008, Barack Obama became the new McGovern. Now in 2020, many think Bernie Sanders is McGovern. From Martin Longman:

“In 1972, we were told that the newly lowered voting age would bring out a surge of youth voters for McGovern. But only half of 18-21 year olds turned out to vote and 48% of them voted for Nixon. In any case, it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d all turned out and voted heavily for the Democrat. Without party unity, McGovern had no chance.”

We’re again hoping for the youth vote to drive turnout, and bring voter enthusiasm. What are the odds? Democrats are on a high risk course, when based on the midterms two years ago, the Party was pretty cohesive. What’s the reason to weaken the coalition that won the 2018 midterms?

Democrats need to think about how to drive their candidates toward agreement on a set of policies and eventually, on a candidate who can unify the Party.

Remember that regardless of who becomes the nominee, that candidate will be running on the most progressive platform of any major party in the past 40 years.

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Turnout Must Be the Democrats’ Election Strategy

The Daily Escape:

St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, LA – December 2019 iPhone photo by Wrongo

So, what’s the Democrats’ 2020 campaign strategy? As usual, they can’t decide. Should they run to the center, again following a “Blue Dog” strategy that will sound a lot like Republican-lite? Should they go big, calling for structural change that expands health care and grows the middle class? Or should they simply run against Trump?

Which of these, or which combination of these strategies, are winners?

Ask any pundit, and they will say that Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania by appealing to white, working class voters who abandoned the Democrats based on Trump’s economic populist messaging. This makes all Dem strategists say the Democratic presidential nominee must run as a centrist.

That was true in Ohio in 2016, where Trump managed to win 50% of the votes. In the others, he won with pluralities. Trump “won” Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan with 47.22%, 48.18%, and 47.5% of the vote, respectively. Why? Because five times the normal number in those states cast their ballots for someone other than Trump or Clinton. In this polarized era, the average vote that goes to a protest ballot is about 1.5%. In 2016, in Wisconsin, 6.2% of voters cast protest ballots.

Most of those third party voters should have been Democratic voters—they were disproportionately young, diverse and college educated—but the Clinton camp made no effort to activate them in the general election.

Instead, Hillary Clinton ran her campaign by trying to appeal to Republicans and the few Republican-leaning independents appalled by Trump. She chose a bland white man, Tim Kaine, as VP. Her messaging and ads were policy-lite. And in the end, most of those voters stuck with the GOP.

Rachel Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University Virginia, says that there are no swing voters, and that it’s useless to design a campaign to appeal to them. Crazy, right? We should take her seriously because she nailed, almost to the number, the size of the Democrats’ 2018 win in the House.

Bitecofer’s theory is that today’s elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote. She says the real “swing” doesn’t come from voters who choose between two parties, but from people who choose to vote, or not. The actual percentage of swing voters in any given national election according to her analysis, is closer to 7% than the 20% most of the media thinks are out there.

Bitecofer’s view of the electorate is driven by Alan Abramowitz’s concept of “negative partisanship,” the idea that voters are more motivated to defeat the other side than any particular policy goals. Abramowitz says that American politics has become like bitter sports rivalries, where the parties hang together mainly out of sheer hatred of the other team, rather than a shared sense of purpose. Republicans might not love the president, but they absolutely loathe his Democratic adversaries.

Bitecofer says that negative partisanship makes the outcome of our elections highly predictable.

For what it’s worth, Bitecofer’s model has a yet-unnamed Democrat winning 278 electoral votes with 68 electoral votes still rated toss-up. From Bitecofer:

“In short, the 2020 presidential election is shaping up as a battle of the bases, and the Democrats’ base is simply bigger. When their demographic advantage combines with an enthusiasm advantage and heightened party loyalty fueled by negative partisanship, they hold a significant structural advantage. Turnout in 2018 was about 12 points higher than 2014 turnout and higher than any midterm in decades…. It is not infeasible that turnout in 2020 will exceed 65%.”

This means that Democrats have to harness the anger of Democrats, and that is more important than using policy to energize them, and then TURN THEM OUT.

Wrongo isn’t sure what to think about this. Intuitively, the “bitter sports rivalry” makes sense. But at the 30,000-foot level, hers may just be another plea for driving higher turnout.

As Bitecofer sees it, we shouldn’t be thinking about the Democratic or Republican “base.” Rather, there are Democratic and Republican coalitions, the first made of people of color, college-educated whites and people in metropolitan areas; the second, mostly noncollege whites, with a smattering of religious-minded voters, financiers and people in business, largely in rural and exurban counties.

She may be right accidentally, rather than because her model is great. But focusing voters’ anger at Trump is better than saying that “Trump voters are stupid” (or racist, or deplorable)and  seems smart.

Huge turnout is key. Voter turnout in 2016 was around 50%. If that can be increased by 10-15%, all things become possible for the Democrats.

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IOWA = AWOL

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Mt. Hood, OR – 2020 photo by JustinPoe

AWOL means “Absent Without Official Leave”. What’s really AWOL is the Iowa vote tallying on Monday night. Yves Smith:

“The Democrats have lurched from their self-inflicted wound of the botched impeachment effort to the self-inflicted wound of the embarrassing fail of Iowa caucus result-tallying, thanks not just to the use of a newly-created app that failed in prime time, but also the lack of any sort of fallbacks.”

On Tuesday night, Iowa released a partial result:

Buttigieg: 26.9%

Sanders:  25.1%

Warren:  18.3%

Biden:     15.6%

Based on 62% of the votes, these are the viable candidates. It’s useful to point out that Klobuchar was next at 12.6% of the delegates. In Wrongo’s review of counties that had yet to fully report, but where Klobuchar was in first or second place, she will not gain enough votes to make the 15% cutoff for delegates. Maybe, by the time you are reading this, all the votes will have been counted.

How can it take more than 18 hours to tabulate 105,400 votes? That implies that, when fully counted, the total vote will be about 170,000. That’s about as many total voters as a mayoral election in a medium-sized city. Iowa has said since Monday night that every vote had a paper trail. If so, how can they still not have a final count?

Don’t you think that football’s San Francisco ‘49’ers wish that the Super Bowl ended when it was 62% complete? This is absurd.

Is it wrong to point out that the Dems also botched the software roll-out for the Affordable Care Act?

Some random thoughts:

  • The Iowa caucus was administered by the Iowa Democratic Party. Luckily for Iowans, the November election will be administered by state and local election officials.
  • Nevada Democrats also had plans to use the same mobile reporting app for their caucuses set for Feb. 22, but now they say they won’t be using it. The NY Daily News reports that Nevada won’t gamble on the vote results app that derailed the Iowa caucuses: (brackets by Wrongo)

‘What happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada,’ William McCurdy, the [Nevada] state party chairman, said in a statement. ‘We will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus.’”

  • In Iowa politics, maybe like politics everywhere, the six degrees of Kevin Bacon works perfectly. Shadow is the software firm that botched the vote tally. It is owned by Acronym. The Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow $60,000 in November and December 2019. Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who both worked for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, co-founded Shadow. Shadow collected $153,768 in 2019 from Iowa, Nevada and seven different Democratic campaigns, mostly for technology, software and subscription services like text messaging. Among them were the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. Tara McGowan is CEO of Shadow’s parent company, Acronym. Her husband is a Buttigieg campaign strategist. Her brother-in-law is the Buttigieg Iowa state communications director.

If this happened in Venezuela, or Greece, or Indonesia, there would be worldwide mockery along with comments like, “well, what did you expect?”

This goes beyond satire. The only question is whether it’s staggering incompetence, or something deliberately orchestrated. Wrongo votes for the former, because the people running the Democratic Party are too inept to do something like this on purpose. Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

Sabotage is the least likely explanation.

In California, it can take weeks to process election results and they often turn out to be different than the estimates on election night. Better to get it right, than end up with what happened in Florida in 2000.
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Monday Wake Up Call – January 27, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, West End Overlook, Pittsburgh PA – photo by Kevin Simpson Photography

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected….Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins….This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.” ― G.K. Chesterton

Remember that Chesterton was British, and he died in 1936.

Wrongo’s really dreading the prospect of looking down a double barreled shotgun of Biden vs. Bernie. This confession is brought on by the WaPo, who reported on its poll with ABC News:

“Nationally…the competition has moved in the direction of Biden and Sanders, with Warren, Buttigieg and others now clearly behind. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters, Biden is favored by 32% with Sanders at 23%…In both cases, those percentages are slightly better than what each received in an October Post-ABC national poll.

Warren is currently running third but has seen a significant drop in her support nationally, falling from 23% in October to 12% in the new poll…..she is the only other candidate for the Democratic nomination in double digits.”

Here’s the placement of the rest:

  • Bloomberg: 8%
  • Yang: 7%
  • Buttigieg: 5%
  • Klobuchar: 3%

The WaPo indicates Democrats are motivated in this election. An amazing 73% said that they are certain to vote in their state’s primary or caucus, significantly higher than the 59% who said the same in January 2016. Importantly, 9 in 10 Democrats who named a candidate said that while they are enthusiastic about their choice, 53% still would consider another candidate.

Warren has slipped particularly among women, where her support fell from 26% to 12%. But while she trails Biden and Sanders as the first choice among Democratic voters, she does well when people are asked who their second choice is.

Overall, 23% name Warren as their second choice, slightly higher than either Sanders or Biden. When first and second choices are combined, Biden leads at 48%, followed by Sanders at 41%, and Warren at 35% percent. No other candidate is within 20 points of this combination.

But, this eye-catching poll is based on a very small sample. The Post-ABC poll only sampled 388 Democrats nationally. It includes 349 who are registered voters. Most important, the margin of error is ± six percentage points.

It’s also important to remember that Warren got the endorsement of the Des Moines Register, which probably means more than her earlier co-endorsement by The Times. Nate Silver notes that despite the WaPo poll, Warren is closer in Iowa:

“…the Des Moines Register endorsement tonight could actually matter. Historically, it helps the endorsee by 3 points which matters in a race where the top 4 candidates are separated by ~5 points.

https://t.co/L8iMGV5hPH— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 25, 2020”

It’s unlikely that 3 points would make Warren the winner of the Iowa primary, but it does seem likely to keep her above the critical 15% threshold for delegates. That would probably keep Iowa from making this a two-man (literally) race.

Wrongo doesn’t know who he’d support if it comes down to Biden vs. Bernie. Wrongo doubts that Bernie would be a good president. Would he be able to get much done? It’s easy to imagine Trump beating Bernie to death with Marxist-Socialist epithets.

Biden would probably be able to staff a professional administration. But his lack of an ambitious progressive agenda means that even if he were elected, his presidency might not amount to much either. OTOH, he may help other Democrats for House and Senate more than Bernie can. Bernie’s “Our Revolution” movement endorsed about 80 candidates in 2018, and just 6 of them were elected.

Warren seems to be a better choice than either, and it’s really depressing that she can’t get much traction with voters.

All of this means that there is a distinct possibility Trump gets reelected in a replay of 2016 no matter who is the ultimate Dem candidate. They all have serious weaknesses. Each has a core group of enthusiastic supporters, and a core group that says that candidate underwhelms them.

Can whoever is the nominee eventually become a consensus candidate?

Wake up America! A lot of people like Biden because they want the politics out of politics. They want “the people in DC to cut out the political shit, and just work together to do what’s right for the country“.

But as Chesterton said, this is just another example of our traditional American way of really wanting to keep the politics IN politics.

The Parties like things just the way they are.

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Saturday Soother – “Where’s the Impeachment?” Edition

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Shuksan, North Cascades NP, WA – 2018 photo by sluu99

As Atrios says:

“You go to impeachment with the Mitch McConnell you have, not the one you want.”

We need to remember the history of how Democrats created the Mitch we have. To do that, we must go back to November 21, 2013. Here’s the WaPo from that day: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.

Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.

The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.”

Back then, the main combatants were Harry Reid (D-NV) the Majority Leader, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The vote for the “nuclear option” was 52 to 48, with all but three Democrats backing the move, and every Republican opposing it. After the vote, Obama said that Republicans had turned nomination fights into a “reckless and relentless tool” to grind the gears of government to a halt and noted that “neither party has been blameless for these tactics.” But, he said, “today’s pattern of obstruction…just isn’t normal; it’s not what our founders envisioned.”

Fast forward to 2019. The Senate is split 53-47 now, with the Republicans in charge. Mitch has used Harry Reid’s rule change to appoint two Supreme Court justices, 50 appeals court judges, and 120 district court judges in less than three years.

Today, 20% of judges on all of the federal courts, and 25% on the appeals courts are Trump appointees. On the same day that Trump was impeached, the Senate confirmed 13 new district court judges.

Suddenly, Democrats are waking up to the reality that Trump’s judges will shape American law with a conservative bias for 30-40 years to come.

We can blame Harry Reid and Barack Obama for not thinking ahead.

You ought to be thinking ahead to the weekend, and all of the little things that you need to do so that Santa can do his job next week. It’s at least as challenging a task as locating the missing Trump Impeachment.

Before you shift into drive and start on that big to-do list, it’s time for a Saturday Soother, a brief few moments when you relax, and try to center yourself in the calm before the storm.

Start by brewing up a mug of Coffee and Chicory coffee ($6.70/15oz.) from New Orleans’ own Café Du Monde. Now sit back in a comfy chair and watch and listen to a Holiday Season flash mob by the US Air Force Band at the National Air and Space Museum in 2013:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Pelosi: We’re Making It up as We Go

The Daily Escape:

Hat tip – A. James

“When you’re born into this world, you’re given a ticket to the freak show. If you’re born in America you get a front row seat.” –George Carlin

Donald Trump was impeached on Wednesday. Wrongo sees Trump as dangerously incompetent and personally corrupt. But the way Democrats have gone about the impeachment isn’t winning the hearts and minds of independents, a group of voters they need if they are to take back the Presidency in 2020 and hold on to the House.

It’s helpful to remember that the only reason the impeachment is going forward is that the 2018 midterms gave Democrats a significant majority in the House. Even with uncontested evidence that the president abused his power, Republicans have demonstrated no interest in holding Trump accountable. It is clear that if they were still in the majority, none of this would be happening.

A side note on Tulsi Gabbard, the only person who voted “present” on both impeachment motions: Wrongo has kind of admired her principled political stands. He’s agreed with a few of them. But voting “present”? Apparently she couldn’t decide on the two motions. She’s a presidential candidate. The ability to decide and lead are core competencies of the job. She has disqualified herself.

It’s always been clear that Trump wouldn’t be convicted in the Senate. It seems that, as with the Mueller investigation, the Dems were unclear about the likely outcome of their efforts. Did they expect Trump would simply resign in shame, or maybe run a half-hearted campaign in 2020? Trump is a fighter and a blockhead, so they should have known he would love the chance to talk about impeachment from now until next November.

The move that caught everyone, including reporters at the hearing, by surprise, was Pelosi’s statement that she had not set a time for sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. This was surprising since they had been saying all along that they’d impeach Trump by Christmas. They sounded as if they were eager to move the process forward.

Is this a political calculation? It runs the risk of making them look either too clever by half, or worried about the impeachment fallout with voters. After all, voter approval of impeachment peaked in October. Support for it has now fallen, and Trump’s approval ratings have risen since then.

Pelosi seems to be saying that the delay is because they are tussling with the openly partisan Mitch McConnell over the rules for the hearing. There is something to that if you consider that with the Clinton impeachment, the Senate impeachment process was negotiated in private between the Parties, and was approved by a 100-0 vote when Republican Trent Lott was Majority Leader.

That isn’t happening with Mitch in charge. This time, the Republicans want a quick trial, and then to declare victory.

Wrongo thinks that Trump deserves to be impeached, but as someone who was around for the Nixon and Clinton impeachment efforts, it seems as if the Democrats have made the same mistake this time that the Republicans made with Clinton: The Ukrainian case is just too small an offense. Guilt isn’t the issue, but to the average person, the punishment doesn’t match the crime.

With Clinton, 79% of the public thought Clinton was guilty. But the vast majority thought that lying about consensual sex was too small a crime to merit impeachment.

Democrats have a similar problem today. Trump did it, or at least, tried to do it. He’s incorrigible, too. He won’t have any hesitation about abusing his office again if it means gaining some personal advantage.

But because the Trump impeachment case has been so tightly limited to the Ukraine episode, the Democrats have lowered the stakes. People shrug: Ukraine got its aid eventually, and the Ukies aren’t investigating Hunter Biden, so….whatever.

Public support for impeaching Trump is about 50/50 and hasn’t moved appreciably in months. As much as Trump is a terrible president, Dems have managed to make him look borderline acceptable in this case.

Most of our DC politicians live in the beltway bubble. You can be sure that in 2016 many Dems said “It’s going to be a landslide. No woman or minority is going to vote for him.”

Then, the Dems were shocked by the Mueller report non-event.

Now, they’re flummoxed that impeachment is becoming less popular. They were sure it was going to popular with even the few Republican moderates and most independent voters.

Where do Dems go from here?

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Saturday Soother – December 14, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Lover’s Leap, New Milford CT after this week’s snow – December 2019 drone photo by Quadco Joe

The House Judiciary Committee voted to send two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the full House. The vote took just two minutes, and as Wrongo said yesterday, it will be portrayed as the party line vote it was, with 23 Democrats in favor, and 17 Republicans against.

It was a tribute to the political polarization in today’s America, with striking diversity on the Democrats’ side, as well as lack of diversity on the Republicans’ side. From Marcy Wheeler:

“The Democrats who voted in favor included 11 women, and 13 Latinx and people of color (Ted Lieu missed the vote recovering from a heart procedure). Three (plus Lieu) are immigrants. One is gay. These Democrats voted to uphold the Constitution a bunch of white men, several of them owners of African-American slaves, wrote hundreds of years ago.”

All the Republicans who voted against were white, and just two were women. They voted to permit a racist white male President to cheat in order to get reelected, in violation of the rule of law.

This is a clash between the America that is coming, and its past. It’s unclear who will win this battle, but the stakes are high, and will become even higher in 2020.

Wrongo believes that rushing to an impeachment finding was a strategic error by Democrats. This should have been moved along slowly. House Democrats needed to go through discovery on all the obstruction of justice, Constitutional emoluments and separation of powers violations, campaign finance violations, and bribery violations. They should have taken the time to use their Article I power to get the oversight disclosure and testimony they have been denied by the Trump White House.

But, no. The House Democrats didn’t do any of that. Instead, they focused on one phone call when there was little reason to rush, and plenty to be gained by keeping Trump on the defensive for the next year.

A deeper dive into the issues could have made an Impeachment Resolution with a more effective result. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the vote in a Senate trial. But it would have provided continuing education to the public, along with fuel for effective articles and ads about Trump’s lawlessness.

With the weekend upon us, it’s time to contemplate all that must get done between here and New Year’s. Wrongo’s list is too long, but somehow, he hopes everything is done by then. However, let’s start by kicking back and forgetting about the list, the Impeachment and budget deal. Let’s clear our minds, and have another Saturday Soother.

Start by brewing up a large cup of Mexico Chiapas Dark Roast ($13/12oz.) with its notes of dark chocolate, hints of molasses and brown sugar. It’s from Sacred Grounds Coffee in Sherman CT, who we’ve featured here once before.

Now, listen to Nocturne “Reverie Op. 19” by Giulio Regondi. Regondi was a Swiss-born classical guitarist, and composer active in France and (mainly) the UK. It is played by Drew Henderson:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 3, 2019

(Sorry for going dark, but we lost internet here at the Mansion of Wrong for two days. It’s back, but since it is supplied by Spectrum, it’s very slow, despite Wrongo paying for a premium pile of megabits.)

The WaPo reports:

“Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through…”

Apparently, they’re using a battery-powered Sawzall, like this one that you can order from Home Depot:

It can cut through the bars of steel and concrete in a few minutes, if equipped with specialty blades made with diamond grit. The blades sell for less than $15. The Trump administration has so far completed 76 miles of the new barriers that are now being breached by Mexican smugglers. These are the sections of wall that Trump boasts are “virtually impenetrable”. He has called them the “Rolls-Royce” of walls that border-crossers cannot get over, under or through.

Who knew that for $100, and a few $15 blades, you could defeat the wall that will eventually cost us $10 billion?? On to cartoons.

Al-Baghdadi was killed. Trump said he died like a dog:

Republicans are now trying to smear a military hero to protect a draft dodger. Trump equates dogs with cowards, while an actual military dog served heroically, without claiming Paw Spurs.

Trump says he’s moving from NY to FL. New Yorkers cheer:

Dems are placing way too much faith in the process:

It is looking like the Boeing 737 MAX should never fly again:

Signs of the season won’t go away:

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