Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalMueller Report Vicious Circle
The Mueller Report "did not establish" that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government". Which means they can not prove it happened with full confidence in that conclusion.
They can not prove it happened with full confidence because Trump Obstructed Justice with his witness tampering, using among other things the non subtle dangling of pardons to witnesses who could have helped establish conspiracy and/or coordination with the Russian government: Think Stone and Manaford for starters.
Because "collusion" was thus not clearly established, Barr notes that the Special Counsel did not establish that the President was guilty of an underlying crime. He then notes that the lack of such evidence bears upon the matter of "corrupt intent" on the part of the President, making Obstruction harder to establish, since "corrupt intent" is a key element in proving Obstruction of Justice beyond a reasonable doubt.
Therefore the success of Trump's Obstruction of Justice prevented an underlying crime from being established, and the fact that no underlying crime was established prevents Obstruction of Justice from being proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
At least that's how Barr gets to where he wants to be.
I will state what I hope is obvious. When there is insufficient evidence to support an indictment...
...there should be no indictment. Period. (Note, this is a separate matter from whether a sitting President should be indicted when the evidence does support an indictment.)
I know no more than anyone else about Mueller's report, his decision making process, or whatever possible further indictments may yet be outstanding from other investigations. I have my own semi-informed opinions about who I think it is who likely committed this or that crime, but dozens of incredibly experienced professionals at the top of their fields have spent many thousands of hours conducting the investigation that has now concluded with Mueller's Report. They pretty much know infinitely more than I do about it. And assuming that Barr is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when he affirms that no initiative that Mueller sought to pursue with his investigation was blocked by anyone above him in the Justice Department, that resolves my final lingering concern.
Trump is the one who believes that our system of Justice should be used as a political weapon, not us. He is the one who wants to lock up his opponents because they are his opponents. Trump is the one who is willing to undermine our Constitution and our Bill of Rights in order to pursue his chosen agenda, the law and democratic traditions be damned. It is imperative that Democrats highlight the difference between how we regard and uphold the rule of law compared to how Trump and his Republican lackeys do. It makes us the true patriots, and we have every reason to stand proudly on that ground, and contrast ourselves to Trump while doing so.
OK, for the moment at least, put me down as a "soft" supporter of Warren
I am not fully committed to any candidate. Warren is among several who I am most drawn to for now. In a very real way I am still fundamentally "Undecided". My current plan, actually, is to shift my "Logo" back to Undecided within a week.
So why am I calling myself a Warren supporter today? Glad you asked. I am showing support for Senator Warren for the way in which she is injecting specific policies and issues into our political debate. She is not being given enough credit in general for that in my opinion. She should be being taken much more seriously than she has been. I want Warren's voice to be considered and heard. This is my gesture for her in that regard. When I most likely shift back to Undecided later it will not be (unless I say otherwise at the time) because I am cooling on her as a candidate. Consider this temporary "support" symbolic perhaps, but it is meant as a show of my respect for Senator Warren.
The Electability Argument at This Point is Mostly Political Spin
I wince or laugh (or both) every time I see some pundit on TV (or on DU for that matter) now seriously implore that only this or maybe that Democrat can defeat Trump in 2020. To begin with, there is no track record on earth historically more reliably wrong than the predictions made by political pundits almost two years out regarding who can and who can not win the presidency in the coming election. At this point in 1991 George Bush was viewed as unbeatable for reelection and Bill Clinton was merely an asterisk in an overview of the potential Democratic field of nominees. That example jumps out at me, but the litany of broken presidential crystal balls is endless.
Any Democrat with the wherewithal to make it onto a DNC sanctioned presidential debate stage can plausibly defeat Donald Trump in 2020, and most of them would at the least be likely to. "Likely to" of course is not a guarantee but there are rarely any guarantees in politics. Of course I believe that electability is a crucial factor in picking who Democrats should run in 2020, I just think it absurd for anyone to insist that they know now who can best defeat Donald Trump then. At this point in 2015 who do you know believed that Donald Trump would become the Republican nominee with Scott Walker, Mark Rubio and Jeb Bush all knocked out in the early rounds? Who thought Hillary Clinton wouldn't waltz through all of the Democratic primaries without losing more than one or two of them if any?
Donald Trump is a historically unpopular President no matter how you look at it. Women are the majority of the electorate and Trump does horribly with women, much worse in polling now than he did in 2016. The demographic shift long underway in America will be 4 years further along in 2020 than it was in 2016. Trump barely squeaked through a pin hole of a path to winning the Electoral College in 2016, and Democrats surged back during the midterms (which historically are better years for Republicans than Presidential election years) in the States that Trump squeaked through with in 2016.
Any Democrat who captures the imagination and enthusiasm of the electorate stands an excellent chance of defeating Trump in 2020. I would argue that no Democrat can capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the general electorate without first doing the same with Democrats. It is excitement that generates interest, and whoever excites on the Democratic side in the runoff to the Democratic Convention will be bestowed with national excitement and interest beyond just Democratic ranks. Right now serious arguments are made that Beot O'Rouke might just be that person. I accept the potential legitimacy of those arguments. But who among us could even conceive that Beto O'Rouke might be our best bet for defeating Donald Trump for President back back in March of 2017? No one. I repeat, no one.
A Hillary Clinton presidency loomed big at this stage in the 2008 race. A Hillary Clinton presidency loomed big at this stage in the 2016 race. She would have made an excellent President either time, not my personal ideal president but excellent still the same. In 2015/2016 one of the arguments used by Clinton supporters against Bernie Sanders was electability. I knew many personally and read many others here who admitted back then that they preferred Sanders on the issues to Clinton, but believed that Sanders could not win a General Election. This despite the fact that many polls found him running stronger against Trump than Clinton did. This despite the fact that Sanders favorability numbers were among the best of all national politicians while Clinton's were among the worst.
Hillary Clinton would have won the Electoral College in 2016 were it not for James Comey and the Russians. Agreed. But she was running against a deeply flawed and generally unpopular opponent in Donald Trump. Who knows how well Sanders would have done instead? That can be debated endlessly but none of us will ever really know. It was a very unusual year in politics. The old guard in the Republican Party, Jeb Bush and the like, certainly did not have the force with them that year. When it came to Democrats, to what extent was that a factor as well with Independent voters, who make up a larger bloc than either Democrats or Republicans?
One thing is certain. 2020 will not be the same as 2016. No two elections are ever the same and the mood of the public seldom stays fixed for long. All of this is just a long way of saying that I don't have the faintest idea now which of our potential Democratic candidates will seem most "electable" when the 2020 General Election is upon us. Anyone who expresses certainty on that point I am tempted to simply tune out. I am fine with all who make arguments in favor of why this or that candidate might be the more electable option, as long as they are not delivered as the Gospel Truth. We will all know a lot more by December, and a whole lot more by next March. To call America's politics volatile right now is an understatement of epic proportions.
I am for the moment very open to arguments in favor of this or that candidate on her or his merits. Electability? Not so much. Our most electable candidate could well end up being someone tried and true like Vice President Joe Biden. Or it could be the strongest shake up the system candidate out there, potentially a Bernie Sanders. Or a charismatic young new star candidate. Or a charismatic former prosecutor turned Senator female candidate. Or whoever else manages to bottle lightning between now and then.
Yes I will be assessing electability when it comes time to cast my primary ballot. That is over a year away.
Yes it's FOX News. Yes it's Right Wing Radio. But mostly it's the Republican Party
It's been centuries since our American democratic system evolved into a two party state. It's is not a coincidence that for all practical purposes the term "bi-partisan" is taken in many cases to mean exactly the same as "non-partisan." Two political parties by default are the guardians of our Democracy. Because 90% of American political activity is directed too flow through one of those two channels, there has been an unspoken presumption that each of them is broad based enough to resist becoming a mere front for deeply anti-democratic and extremist views.
True American extremists have historically usually been relegated to organize through shadow organizations and fringe political parties. At times they have tried to capture one of America's two reigning political parties. Racists have made serious runs in the past to control the Democratic Party, sometimes wholly succeeding at the State level. Fanatical "anti-Communist" right wingers moved to control the Republican Party with Joseph McCarthy as their spearhead, and they gained quite a foothold in it at the time. Ultimately more responsible elements within each Party fought back and pushed back the extremists. The 1968 National Democratic Convention was noteworthy for many reasons, but one of them was the floor fights to prevent segregationist oriented Party delegations from being seated at it. William F. Buckley and others aligned with him famously led a (then) successful effort to delegitimize the John Birch Society within Republican ranks.
That was then this is now. When our Constitution was written it was believed that our legislative branch of government would jealously guard its ceded authorities from encroachment by the Executive branch. When our Constitution was written we did not have political parties, so the President was not predicted to someday be universally viewed as the leader of a standing political bloc. Political parties in essence have become the unofficial fourth branch of American government, nowhere to be found in the Constitution but everywhere to be seen in practice. Political parties as institutions are not literally sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. But it is through political parties that all American Presidents for centuries have been vetted and presented to the American people as viable potential leaders of our democracy.
Political actors such as David Duke have repeatedly in the recent past been repudiated by both of our major political parties. When a true extremist in recent years has managed to somehow secure a major party nomination, that party has broken ties with that person and urged their defeat at the ballot box. In that way our two party system had worked as a check on radical extremism.
What is happening today with the Republican Party is a new and very dangerous development for our democracy. The national Republican Party has turned over one of the only two current sets of keys to the White House to a racist, deeply self serving individual with no loyalty to the principals that underpin our freedoms and our grand experiment in self government. They fervently shy away from any efforts to uncover the depth of this President's own corruption. The Republican Party had a choice, and it has chosen to swear allegiance personally to an aspiring despot hell bent on creating a cult of personality around him, rather than to the U.S. Constitution. In so doing they provide Trump with the cover he requires to subvert the very same Constitution that Republicans have long ingenuously claimed to honor. This is on them.
It is too soon to call for impeachment, but it's time to openly call Trump a threat to our Democracy
I'm not trying to be coy, or to play word games. I accept that it is not yet the most opportune time to begin literal impeachment procedures. House hearings need to pick up steam, criminal investigations at the state and federal level need to proceed, and further word from Mueller is awaited. Strategically we should have the discipline to allow all of that to perk a little more, especially since Democrats can't impeach Trump on our own. The stronger the legal case for impeachment that can be made, the harder it will be for Trump's defenders to frame it as Democrats over reaching when we begin the formal process to impeach him.
But the groundwork for successfully impeaching Trump can best be prepared by emphasizing now how much of a threat Donald Trump poses to the very fabric of our Democracy, with or without substantial proof of him having colluded with Russia or any other criminal offense Trump may be guilty of. That is the theme we all must hammer on, and that includes the national media. It took the national media almost 18 months before it was comfortable with boldly describing Trump as a flat out liar. Before that they mostly commented on how often he uttered "falsehoods". It was a short but crucial step for them to start literally calling him a liar rather than simply someone who lied in this or that instance.
Now the media is still stuck in describing how Trump is violating presidential norms, again in this way or that. They talk about how this or that policy of his may not be constitutional, and how this or that policy of his may not be well grounded in facts. They point out times when Trumps goes against the counsel of most of his senior advisors, or never even consults with them to begin with. And they talk about how the constant flood of toxins that he emits serves to divide Americans rather than unite us. They do not however yet talk about him presenting a clear and present danger.
Now it is time to draw the obvious conclusion. Whether or not he is impeached and removed from office before the 2020 Presidential elections, Donald Trump the man poses an existential threat to our constitutional Democracy as well as to our national security. He literally is destabilizing the fabric of our society and unraveling the ties that bind us together as Americans. He is at heart an autocrat with no intrinsic respect for Democratic institutions or the truth. We may have to wait a little longer to impeach him, but we can't afford to wait another day in speaking the truth about the Man in the Oval Office. And by doing so we bring his removal from office, one way or another, ever closer.
A simple observation about some who support Sanders.
Bernie Sanders is commonly identified as the furthest left of the major possible Democratic candidates for President. That has various policy implications for sure, but it also has political implications as to who might be drawn toward supporting him and why. As with all candidates, Sanders has supporters who align themselves closely with the positions he takes and the manner in which he seeks to advance them. But as the candidate viewed as occupying the edge of one side of the viable political spectrum, Sanders also draws support from some who may not so much feel closely aligned with Sanders specifically as much as they view him as the closest thing to a true "leftist" running, as they define that term.
Sanders by default inherits the support of most of those to the left of him who for whatever reason want to influence who wins the Democratic nomination. And yes that extends all the way out to some who many may be tempted to define as "the fringe". As a life long social justice and anti-war activist, I know that type well. To be frank they often have been the bane of many of my organizing efforts. As John Lennon once put it;
"But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."
Many many fine people are drawn to grass roots social justice organizing efforts in general. But back in the day I always knew that members of the Revolutionary Communist Party would show up at our rallies also. Which is not necessarily to say that none of them were "fine people" too, but they had their own agenda which was not always on the same page with the goals of our protests. They were there to make their views known loud and clear and they were not much concerned about triggering off a backlash among the public who encountered them. I could fairly have been called a part of "The New Left" back then, but I no more thought that the Weather Underground represented me at the time than I did the KKK.
America has a truncated political spectrum. Virtually all of our elected politicians are more or less centrists by world standards. For one thing essentially every one of them is willing to swear to uphold our Constitution. Personally I am fond of our Constitution in general, I think it is pretty darn good as far as constitutions go but that doesn't make it perfect. There are many other models for how the politics, freedoms and economies of nations can be organized other than the one America functions with. Some are to the right and some are to the left of ours. And some people feel at home operating at the fringes of a society that fails to embrace their world view, while others don't like being relegated to the outskirts. The latter sometimes choose to engage with people closer to the center. Some seem to do so skillfully, and others can come across as obnoxious to non true believers.
Personally my pragmatic politics are best represented by the left flank of Social Democrats. That is the base from which I believe I can still have a hand in directly influencing the direction of our national elections. But I am a life long Collectivist. Frankly, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" seems like a good starting point for discussions in my view. So does "Tax the Rich to feed the Poor". I believe in worker self management. I believe in bottom up decision making structures. I believe in a model for society that coexists in places with our mainstream culture but differs substantially in parts from it. But we need to control the Presidency and Congress today in order to avoid disastrous wars and to effectively confront global warming, and so much more. I can't wait for some utopian social order to first emerge, I have to be active in this one.
All my life I have shared protests rallies and marches with those on the left who scorn working with the establishment in one way or another, to any of varying extents. I know those people. Some of them vote, some of them don't. Some of them vote third party when they do, and some are willing to entertain voting for whichever left of center politician is as left as one can get and still have a chance of actually getting elected. It is, as they say, a free country. Bernie Sanders stands near the left pole of accepted American mainstream politics. Knowing that dynamic well, I know enough not to judge Sanders by the worst case examples of those further left than him who refuse in any way to play nice with those they consider centrists.
Here is a strong statement by our President on the terrorist attack.
"At some point countries will have to open their eyes & see what is really going on. This kind of sickness & hatred is not compatible with a loving, peaceful, & successful country! Changes to our thought process on terror must be made," Trump tweeted.
Oh wait, I got confused. Trump tweeted that comment after an ISIS supporter stabbed some people in Paris a while back. His administration also issued this statement at the time:
"The United States strongly condemns yesterday’s terrorist attack in Paris. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with the French people and their government against this vicious act of terrorism, and pledge any assistance needed. Acts like this only strengthen the resolve of the global coalition to defeat ISIS and drive it out of existence," said the statement from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
In THAT attack (that killed one and wounded four) the victims weren't Muslims. See, that's a lot different than a White Nationalist slaughtering 49 Muslims and wounding about 50 others. Why would Trump see any need to drive white supremacists out of existence?
Trump doesn't have to threaten a Coup, or anything close to it
He just has to signal that there might be some violent "unrest" and then wait for someone to appease him sufficiently so that he won't push more in that direction.
It worked in the 2016 presidential election. All of Trump's claims that the election would be "rigged" helped make the FBI bend over backwards to avoid giving him any fuel for those claims. They assumed Hillary would win so they thought the prudent course was to go hard on her and soft on Trump in public. It seemed "safest" to head off any "trouble."
Too many in this nation, who actually know better, still handle Trump with kid gloves rather than risk "poking the bear". They think America can ride out his storm without confronting him head on. Two more years, or six more years at most that line of thinking goes, and then we can have our politics/nation/society back.
Denying Trump power now will result in violence, the only question is how much. Crazed individuals can lead to the death of dozens, or hundreds, or even possibly thousands. But they can't take down America, they can't undermine our Constitution on their own. If most responsible Americans of every political stripe stand firm against Trump's intimidation, any and all possible terrorism or even insurrection he may seek to stoke will briefly flare and then be crushed. The real danger is what we may do ourselves to weaken America out of desperation to avoid that possible scenario.
RE: Trump, Democrats and Jews. Ponder this for a nano second...
Trump claims Democrats condone antisemitism and "hate Jews" because one Democratic member of the House of Representatives made a comment that some interpret as a concern that some Jewish voters may show some degree of dual loyalty both to the U.S. and to Israel.
And then "our President" follows that assertion with an argument for why Jews should vote for him... because he has been "so good" to Israel and that he is so popular in Israel.
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