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Showing posts with label impeachment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label impeachment. Show all posts

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Democrats Need a Better Strategy to Defeat Trump in 2020

(Reuters)

“If you're confused about what to do, it's a sign that your enemy is winning.” 
-Toba Beta

The general consensus in the liberal media was that the Democratic Party squandered an important opportunity during the recently televised debates to show voters outside of their base that they have nationally electable candidates. The party instead seemed to move further to the left in the first debate, and spent much time infighting during the second, only serving to highlight that they are a deeply divided and leaderless party. I fear that this observation, made by the most supportive news outlets and friendly commentators is correct and unless the party works to remedy their current trajectory, they are likely to face another humiliating defeat in 2020.

Here are five things Democrats need to do if they are serious about defeating Trump.

One: Democratic National Committee Must Wrest Control of the Debate Process
It is wonderful that the party wants to show that it supports a transparent and democratic process, after the cloak and daggers they were caught doing with Hillary Clinton, but this does not mean that they should have a free-for-all circus. Part of the issue is that to stand out in such a crowded field the candidates have no choice but to resort to positing extremist views.

To remedy this, the DNC needs to change the criteria for the next round of debates, so that only a handful of the candidates are able to qualify. Further, they should hold one debate with the frontrunners - candidates who record double digit support in the polls - and a second for the next five contenders. This way they would ensure a more substantive debate, covering a wider range of issues in more depth than will ever be possible with ten candidates on stage.

The DNC also needs to take control of the format, rather than allow news outlets to determine it. This will prevent juvenile hand raising questions that oversimplify complex issues or childish ones, like CNN’s moderators kept asking in a bid to get candidates to attack each other.

Two: Stop Crying for Impeachment
Saying that she is going to Clorox the Oval Office before moving in certainly provided Kirsten Gillibrand a viral moment, but it did nothing to win middle and low-income voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, who voted twice for Mr. Obama before turning to Mr. Trump. Neither will hysterically pushing the case for impeachment, in a partisan manner.

An NBC News poll found that the support for impeachment had steadily declined among registered voters before Mr. Mueller’s testimony, with just “21 percent of registered voters saying there is enough evidence for Congress to begin impeachment hearings.”  After Mueller’s testimony, which many Democrats had hoped would be a watershed moment, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found that little had changed in voters’ minds on the issue”.  

Even if Democrats in the House find the votes to impeach (they don’t currently have them), the GOP-controlled Senate will likely exonerate the President. Both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are acutely aware that such an outcome, while placating a minority in their base, will also play right into Mr. Trump’s hands. The President has claimed all along that this is nothing more than a naked partisan witch hunt and a Senate trial clearing him will be the final vindication he needs to claim his false victimhood.

Democrats would be wise to stop publicly calling for impeachment and focus instead on the pocketbook issues that people vote on. Privately, they should absolutely continue to pursue the numerous investigations already under way into the Trump administration and his family business and allow these to reach their natural conclusions. There is nothing protecting a President from prosecution once he leaves office.

Three: Build a Rational Case against Trump (not a moral one)
Democrats need to understand that the people did not elect them to be the moral guardians of this country. So instead of feigning outrage and trying to be the moral police, they need to focus their energies more on holding the President accountable for his actions and lack thereof, and less on offensive tweets and insensitive words.

To defeat Trump they should focus on both his numerous broken promises to the working class and farmers, and on his routinely erratic behaviour. They should build a non-partisan case explaining how the President is putting every American’s national and economic security at risk with his shoot-from-the-hip, go-with-his-gut policies.

He has dangerously conflated trade and national security issues with the Huawei case in a bid to score easy concessions in his ill-conceived trade war. The issue is not that he is being tough with China, but that he has picked a fight with the second largest economic and military power in the world without a plan or a long-term strategy, which makes it likely that the outcome will be damaging for American manufacturers and consumers.

Also, why aren’t Democrats questioning the invisible line between affairs of state and the President’s personal business? It is clear that Mr. Trump draws no distinction between self-promotion and official business; family members regularly accompany him on state visits to places where the Trump enterprise has business interests. This should be a legitimate concern for all Americans, who need to understand that when foreign policy decisions are made based on personal motives, they will never align with the interests of the country and its citizens. So much for America first because it seems more like Trump first.

Another issue Democrats should be raising is the fact that there has been a marked drop in the number of warning letters issued by the FDA under this administration. These letters have long been considered a vital tool to protect consumers from unsafe drugs and food products, and a way to ensure the safety and quality of medical devices. At a time when we are facing rising healthcare costs and increasing corporate abuse, peeling away these protections will likely lead to dangerous health and safety consequences for all Americans.

Even our foreign policy is in complete disarray. From Venezuela to Iran and Syria to North Korea, beyond bullying allies, touting his personal charm and creating photo ops, it is clear the President again has no game plan. Democrats would do well to remind Americans that the last time a US president winged it and went it alone on foreign policy; we wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars on two wars with no tangible results.

Four: Present a full-throated defense of Capitalism
If government were in the business of running businesses, we would all be raving about the DMV’s ease and efficiency, and the TSA’s world-class customer service. Visit any government website - federal, state or local and let me know how simple the language is, and how easy the process to do anything is - from registering a small business to filing a claim.

Take the example of the US department of education. Their stated mission is to promote student achievement. In the thirty-six years they have been a cabinet-level agency, their taxpayer funded total annual budget has increased from approximately $14 billion in 1980 to $70 billion in 2018, while improvement in student test results has been negligible. For 17-year-olds, math scores have improved by only 1.6 percentage points from 1982 to the most recent test. In reading, scores are up 0.4 percentage points since 1980.”

Now think about who finances all government enterprise and consider how much accountability, transparency and results we get for our tax dollars from federal, state and local agencies – do you truly believe that MORE government is the answer to our problems?

There is no question that there are many things that are broken with our current system of Capitalism, but the solution is not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, we need to focus our efforts on improving the systems and processes that are not working and to rebuild trust in public and private institutions by creating greater transparency and demanding more accountability from elected and unelected officials. We also need to use the law to prosecute those who have misused power; from abusive cardinals to errant CEO’s.

John Delaney put it best when he suggested in the first debate that Democrats should be the party “that keeps what’s working but fixes what’s broken”.

Five: Don’t Ignore a Winning Strategy
Winning more votes in California is completely pointless. The path to defeating Trump requires winning the Electoral College and the only way for Democrats to do this is by appealing to a broader cross-section of voters beyond their base. Consider that 35% of Americans describe themselves conservative, 34% moderate and 4% refuse to identify themselves according to Gallup. Only 26% call themselves liberal. Given this, I cannot fathom why the majority of Democratic candidates seem hell-bent on alienating 76% of the voting population.

As I have written before, the most valuable lesson learned from the 2018 midterms is that Democrats can successfully flip Republican districts and turn red strongholds blue when they campaign as centrists. The majority of Democratic newcomers who scored surprising victories in historically red districts said they were tired of the partisan gamesmanship. They promised to solve problems like healthcare costs and income inequality by reaching across the aisle, not by going it alone. Importantly, not one of these candidates ran on the promise to remove the President from office. The majority of them won.


Wednesday, November 7, 2018

2018 Midterm Election Results: A Non-Partisan Commentary

 
(Image: thepawprintdaa.com)
 “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Neither side was humiliated; both can claim victory to some extent, which is extremely rare for a midterm election, especially one with such a polarizing and unpopular President. However, both parties should feel a sense of humility and that means it was a good night for America.

There was no blue wave as Democrats not only failed to flip the Senate but actually lost seats, and while they made some gains in Governor races, they came up short in key swing states like Florida and Ohio. Also, the majority of House seats they picked up were in districts that Hillary Clinton won, meaning there was already a built-in anti-Trump voting block there. They failed to flip many of the districts that Obama and Trump both carried, which a blue wave would have done. Meanwhile, Republicans were also sent a clear message by the electorate that people want a check on this President and a return to balance of power in Washington. No more one party rule.

If you look at the graphic below, the visual shows a balance between red and blue, across the board. These mixed results tell me two things.
First, and most importantly the country rejected Trump’s dangerous vilification of immigrants (which was his closing argument on the campaign trail) by giving Democrats the power to stop unconscionable policies like separating and detaining children. Second, while even his supporters disagree with the President’s most extreme policies and sharp elbows, they are willing to support initiatives that make sense like re-negotiating trade agreements to better protect US wages, infrastructure spending to create jobs and efforts to bring down the ridiculous cost of life-saving prescription drugs. And Democrats would do well to remember that if the majority of the electorate supported blind resistance to this President, there would have been a blue wave flipping many more states and local races.

Democrats should also consider that midterms are historically a rebuke of the President and the majority party and much less a vote of confidence in the opposition. So the party that had been hollowed out under Obama, losing the US Senate, the House, the majority of Governorship's, and state and local legislatures, will now need to work to regain the trust of the electorate, based on their actions leading up to 2020, and not by simply being blindly partisan or obstructionist.

The other important factor to support my conclusion is that the majority of Democratic congressional candidates who won campaigned as centrists. Majority are newcomers who said they were tired of the partisan gamesmanship and were running to fix Washington by reaching across the aisle. Importantly, not one of these candidates ran on the promise to remove the President from office or ever mentioned impeachment.

What we are seeing from albeit a divided electorate is a mandate for both parties to work together and low tolerance for blind partisan resistance and political payback. They want their elected representatives to find solutions to non-partisan issues that are important to all Americans. Frankly, I believe government works better when both sides are forced to compromise and neither has a complete majority; it seems many Americans agree.

I was glad to see Nancy Pelosi strike a conciliatory tone after seeing the results described above. She talked about unifying the country by working together with the President for all Americans, while ensuring they would also be a check on his worst instincts. The President also called Ms. Pelosi to congratulate her and Mr. Schumer, expressing a desire to work with Democrats.

Now Ms. Pelosi will need to ensure that her caucus shows the same maturity and steers clear of frivolous subpoenas and investigation like Benghazi, or wasting taxpayer money trying to impeach the President (unless Mr. Mueller finds something incriminating). Instead, Democrats need to focus on delivering on the promises that their young and historically diverse group of Congress women and men made to their constituents – that of working with the President to secure the future of DREAMERS, funding infrastructure to create jobs and fixing Obamacare once and for all, issues that a majority of Americans agree on.

Of course, none of this means that the President will change his behaviour or that both parties will forgive, forget and put aside ideological differences and divisive rhetoric. However, I believe that the party that makes an effort to reach across the aisle and is genuinely seen to be fighting for all Americans will reap the rewards in 2020.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Four Dangers to Democracy Greater than President Trump


"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." 
John Adams 

John Adams words are prescient for what is transpiring in America today. I understand that people are genuinely scared of Trump and while some of those fears are nonsensical, like comparing him with Hitler, others are genuine and based on his own words, bombastic tweets and wildly erratic behaviour. Yet, despite these realities we cannot ignore the fact that he is still the democratically and freely elected President of the United States of America.

For all the never Trumpers, it is important to remember that our system of checks and balances is designed to withstand the shock of rogue actors (not to prevent one from being elected) and we must put our faith in democracy to curtail Trump whenever he strays, but never break rules to fight him; or we will just play into his hands and prove his refrain that the rules are changed when liberals do not get the outcomes they desire.

So it is really important that no matter what people think of him personally, or how much they fear his actions, that we never circumvent due process, bypass checks and balances or colour outside the lines of democracy (especially when he does) in a bid to foil him, because our actions will have grave consequences and weaken our democracy for the long-term.

At the moment, I am seeing four dangerous trends, behaviours and precedents being adopted by the Democratic Party and the so called liberal “resistance” to Trump, and they must stop. The end result of continuing down these paths damages our democracy far more than any errant President can in four years.

One: Rogue Government Employees
When the parks department sent out a tweet showing larger crowds at Obama’s historic inauguration in 2008 versus Trump’s in 2017, most people viewed this as an innocuous act or laughed at Trump’s expense. However, what was at issue was not a single errant tweet but that of breaking a sacred rule – one where a government agencies should never show a partisan face in public. In the days after, we saw a slew of rogue twitter accounts springing up from within government agencies, from the EPA to NASA, that were clearly designed to humiliate Trump’s administration. The problem with this behaviour is that it compromises the integrity of each agency for the long-term by putting a doubt in people’s minds about government employees' abilities to do their jobs, irrespective of which party is in power.

Second, the manner in which Sally Yates (the acting Attorney General) acted was also wrong. First, let me be clear that I fully agree with Ms. Yates stance against President Trump’s ill-conceived travel ban, but my issue is the way in which she took action. The professional thing for her to do would have been to resign.

She had every right to protest the order by resigning, but it was wrong for her to refuse to fulfil her job responsibilities. By doing this, and even more worryingly, by ordering her subordinates not to do their jobs, she signaled to all Justice department staff that they too are free to disobey direct orders based on personal or partisan whims, rather than expected to always act in a professional manner and follow protocols.

We must consider the flip-side of government employees taking unilateral actions that disobey direct orders. For the short period that President Trump’s travel ban was in effect, there were numerous reports of US Customs agents harassing and detaining people that were not covered under the order. Like Ms. Yates did, these men and women might also justify their unprofessional behaviour and rule breaking as a moral obligation to protect the nation and keep all Americans safe.

We also saw a senior Secret Service agent publicly post that she did not want to take a bullet for the President because she supported Hillary Clinton. Imagine what would happen if police across the country started to behave in the same manner (the majority of local law enforcement supported Trump) and decided that they do not want to intervene when a riot broke out in a Democrat leaning district; this is a very slippery slope. Government employees going rogue, acting insubordinately and refusing to do their jobs, rather than using proper and professional protocols of redress must never be excused or condoned on either side.

Two: Loss of Credibility of the Fourth Estate 
There is little doubt after the last election that the majority of the mainstream media skews liberal and favours democrats. We can argue this but all you need do is look at the sources all liberals use to make their arguments on social media and you will find the usual suspects.

That there is some bias in the media is not an issue; all publications lean one way or another. The issue arises when respectable mainstream media outlets go out of their way to play judge and jury, and do it through a blindly partisan and subjective lens. This is NOT the job of the media. We rely on them to hold a mirror up to society by reporting the facts, and to do so objectively after taking the time to verify the credibility of their sources.

 At the moment, we have a new leak from deep within the government almost every day. These leaks are suspiciously designed to embarrass Trump’s administration or target a particular official within it, and all conveniently cite ‘unnamed sources’. I am not defending Trump or his combative relationship with the media, but no matter how a President behaves, it is still the duty of the fourth estate to rise above juvenile and vindictive behaviour and to fairly and accurately investigate, find and follow the facts of every story. This is the only way the media can start to regain their credibility and, more importantly, hold the President accountable for all his actions. Otherwise they will continue to be seen by a growing majority as part of the rigged and corrupt system that Trump says they are.

It is most certainly NOT the job of the media to fill their pages with conjecture, baseless and hysterical opinion pieces, stories supported entirely by unnamed sources and “unverified facts” and even total falsehoods. The media seems to have forgotten that the biggest loser of the last year’s election was not Hillary Clinton but the mass media. Gallup found that Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history…”  

While there is no question that sites like Fox news and MSNBC are heavily biased and driven by political agendas, at least the majority of Americans trusted venerable institutions like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal because they upheld basic ethical standards in their reporting. Now these institutions are further eroding the scant trust Americans have in them by behaving like hysterical children. If they don’t start doing their jobs and once more act as the credible bridge for both sides by focusing on and ascertaining all the facts, they will be responsible for destroying a crucial check and balance and seriously weakening our democracy.

Three: Abuse of State Apparatus
If you followed the sequence of events that led to the resignation of Michael Flynn, the facts clearly show that someone high up in the government leaked highly classified information to the Washington Post. The Post first published the article about Flynn possibly being compromised based on a “… call and subsequent intercepts, FBI agents wrote a secret report summarizing ­Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak.” 

It may well be that Flynn is compromised but that is not the issue; what is concerning is what Eli Lake points on Bloomberg News about the leak itself: Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.” Once again this is another example of a very dangerous precedent being set in a fundamentally misguided haste by Obama era appointees to take down Trump’s administration.

As it turns out Flynn did not break any law and the FBI has confirmed that they don't believe Flynn intentionally misled them during an interview last month and they are not going to press charges. So it would seem that the media furore that led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation was an orchestrated political assassination from people within the government, who selectively leaked highly sensitive information. I am not defending Flynn - he lied and was rightly fired by the President. The point is that again this is a line that should never have been crossed. Once state power is abused and targets individuals, for purely political reasons, there is nothing stopping opponents from doing the same when the tables are turned.

Four: Democrat’s Blind Obstruction vs. Debating Issues
Democrats seem to have a short memory. Until recently they were decrying the Republican Party’s obstructionism during Obama’s tenure and now they are doing exactly the same with Trump. I encourage and expect both sides to challenge every President’s nominees, but it is wrong to attack anyone’s character; as Elizabeth Warren did with Jeff Sessions (and was rightly censured for doing so). I am not a supporter of Mr. Sessions, but Ms. Warren lost my sympathies and respect when she mounted a personal and subjective attack, rather than go after Mr. Session’s record and actions during his tenure in office. There is no excuse for such behaviour; this is the United States Senate, not third grade.

I was equally vehement when the likes of Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal attacked Obama personally, rather than his record and failed to address policy disagreements with him. John McCain is the only politician in recent times that showed character in refusing to let a woman at his rally personally attack Obama, when running against him in 2008. There can be no room for public personal attacks in politics; it only lowers the standard of discourse, leads everyone into the gutter and ensures that all Americans lose.

Also, Democrats did a great disservice to another check and balance when they permanently changed the rules in the Senate “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 super majority that has been the standard for nearly four decades. “ This is a necessary check to ensure that candidates from both parties are only confirmed after the necessary hearings and debates are held to evaluate and convince a majority of the Senators to support them. This is how democracy works - by driving consensus across the aisle.

Thanks to Democrats, we are now left with a lopsided rule that hacks democracy and allows any party, with a simple majority, to advance their picks without sufficient debate. Such measures are short-sighted and only weaken democracy by removing safeguards designed to protect it.

Finally, the Democrats would do well to remember that “obstructing” is not a winning strategy. The GOP learnt this lesson only after the total annihilation of their party; one that ended with a hostile takeover by Donald Trump. Democrats need to win voters based on the strength of their ideas and not blind obstruction. And this is the only way to succeed because unlike Communism, Capitalism is about ideas, not ideology. If Democrats do not heed this warning, they will suffer the same fate as the GOP did after George W. Bush.

The bottom line is that no matter how people feel about Trump, the election is over, and they have no choice but to abide by the results and live with the consequences for the next four years. That is democracy and there are no exceptions; otherwise, we must stop calling ourselves a democratic society.

For all those who believe that Trump is evil and must be removed from office, they are entitled to their views, but have only two options to get rid of him, one entirely out of their hands. They can vote him out of office in four years and use the mid-terms in two years to elect Democrats to both houses that can curtail his power and stall his legislative agenda.

The other is to wait for Trump to commit a crime that leads to his impeachment and subsequent removal from office; Clinton was impeached but this does not automatically lead to removal from office. There is no other way to get rid of a democratically elected President that does not involve a military coup, which is never good for democracy.

This does not mean we need to rollover and accept everything the President does, or not fight back when his administration strays. We must hold every President to task like we did with Watergate, the Iraq War, domestic surveillance overreach, etc. However, respecting our democracy also means we never simply get to remove a President because we find him distasteful or vehemently disagree with his views – that is anarchy.