The history of the Republican Party over the past seventy years includes battles between the moderates within the party against the extremists to the right. During most of the second half of the 20^th Century and some of the 21^st Century, the moderates were able to seize the presidential nomination. But the far-right Donald Trump steamroller movement seems to have almost crushed the remaining elements of the moderates.

In 1952, the Republican Party was divided between the moderates favoring General Dwight Eisenhower and the deeply conservative (though barely extremist) element favoring Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Eisenhower won the nomination in 1952 as well as the presidential election. The same thing happened four years later in 1956.

The GOP nomination in 1960 went to Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon. At that time in his life, he was actually quite moderate, in part because he was constantly currying the favor of Eisenhower. It was not a certainty that Eisenhower would endorse Nixon until a day before the convention. Nixon was opposed by progressive New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but the former vice-president won the nomination, carrying all eleven states with primaries as well as every other state that did not have a “favorite son” running. Nixon’s ease with winning the nomination did not carry over to the election as he was edged by Democrat John F. Kennedy.

1964 was the first year in which a true right-wing extremist won the Republican nomination. The nominee was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, as he defeated Rockefeller on the strength of his appeal to many voters who were angry about the progressive turns in the Kennedy-Johnson years. Goldwater became famous for uttering in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater wanted to undo much of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as well as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But he carried very few moderate Republicans and was soundly defeated in November. That election, 1964, was the last time that Democrats won in a landslide.

1968 was one of the strangest and most disconcerting years in American history. Lyndon Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not seek renomination. Two other individual seemed to be likely candidates, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. Kennedy was assassinated right after the California primary in early June. Johnson’s vice-president Hubert Humphrey ran as the “proxy Johnson” candidate. He did not enter any primaries, but with the help of Johnson in garnering support from the “party regulars,” Humphrey was able to win the nomination at the disjointed convention in Chicago where on-going violence was taking place in downtown.

On the Republican side, Richard Nixon was able to make a comeback, in large part because of the support that he had given Republican candidates across the country over the previous six years. He was opposed by newly elected governor of California Ronald Reagan and New York’s long-time governor Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon won ten of the twelve primaries and 61 % of the delegate votes. His politics fell somewhere between the progressive Rockefeller and the conservative Reagan. He won the election against Humphrey and third-party candidate Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Nixon governed moderately for his first several years, but as his anger rose, he became more and more conservative.

Even though the Watergate break-in occurred in 1972, it did not impact Richard Nixon’s reelection that year. He carried every state other than Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He had no opposition in the Republican primary that year, and his election race against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was a breeze for him. But he was initially worried that he would have to run against popular Maine Senator Edmund Muskie. The fact that McGovern bested Muskie for the Democratic nomination was due in part to the Nixon “plumbers” who created false and misleading information about Muskie, and they eventually trapped him into appearing very unpresidential in a press conference.

Once Nixon won reelection, his primary focus was on the Watergate cover-up. This brought out a great deal of anger and meanness on his part. It also was consistent with his notion of an “enemies list” and crafting domestic policies to undermine Johnson’s Great Society. By the time that Nixon resigned in August of 1974, his governance was quite conservative.

In 1973, after disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned, Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan became vice-president. He assumed the presidency upon Nixon’s resignation. He was faced with problems of inflation, recession, and an extended energy crisis. He was considered a moderate, in large part because he did not fervently support the right-wing Republican social agenda on abortion, gay rights, etc. Leading to the 1976 election, Ford was seen as vulnerable. He was challenged by the aforementioned former Governor Ronald Reagan of California. The contest was extremely tight as Ford carried 26 states and Reagan 24. Ford won 1,121 delegates and Reagan 1,078. Ford won the nomination, as a moderate, but Reagan had established himself as a national leader and was poised for 1980.

In the 1976 general election, Ford carried a great deal of Nixon’s baggage, including the fact that Ford pardoned Nixon for “all crimes committed or might have been committed.” Ford lost to energetic Democrat, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Carter had a somewhat sluggish presidency as he faced many of the economic and energy problems that Ford did and he was further burdened by the fact that 51 Americans had been taken hostage by Iran during a califate revolution. The 1980 Republican nomination was going to be a prime plumb and Reagan was poised to secure in on behalf of the conservative wing of the party. He carried 44 states to the six carried by moderate George H.W. Bush, who Reagan accepted as his vice-president. Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide. Four years later, Reagan faced nominal opposition for the nomination and then prevailed in another landslide election, this time against former vice-president Walter Mondale of Minnesota.

The race for the 1988 Republican nomination was largely between two party regulars who fell somewhere between moderation and extremism. Vice-President George H.W. Bush battled Kansas Senator Bob Dole. Extremists to the right were represented by Rev. Pat Robertson of Virginia, but he carried only four states. Dole became quite upset with some of the accusations by Bush, whose campaign was managed by one of the greatest masters of dirty tricks, Lee Atwater. The Bush campaign dispensed of Dole rather early in the primary sweepstakes and went on to carry 42 states.

The Democrats continued a habit of choosing weak presidential nominees, this time former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Atwater was incredibly skilled in embarrassing Dukakis, portraying Dukakis as being both soft on crime and weak as a military leader. Bush won in the third straight Republican landslide.

When Bush ran for reelection in 1992, he a tougher race. First, Atwater had died the year before from a virulent form of brain cancer, and his Democratic opponent was a strong one, former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Bush was also challenged from the right within his own party by former journalist and Nixon speech-writer Pat Buchanan. Bush carried all 50 states and the District of Columbia and easily dispensed of Buchanan to win the Republican nomination.

In 1988, Bush had campaigned on a very conservative plank, “read my lips, no new taxes.” He had been able to fulfill that promise until 1992, reelection year. The federal government was running short on money and new taxes were in order. He walked back his pledge, albeit with sound reasoning. But it hurt him politically. Clinton was a breath of fresh air, particularly in the debates where he came across as much more human and compassionate than Bush. Clinton won the election in a three-way race in which eccentric businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent.

While Clinton had a difficult time getting legislation through Congress, he was still popular among voters. Two veterans of previous presidential races were the top contenders for the GOP nomination in 1996, Kansas Senator Bob Dole and Virginia journalist Pat Buchanan. In this case, the moderate, Dole, achieved an overwhelming victory, carrying delegates from 46 states, this, despite losing New Hampshire to Buchanan early in the cycle. Dole was a legitimate moderate who knew as well as anyone how Congress operated, something that was tough for Clinton to do. But Clinton started his campaign well before Dole won the Republican nomination and he carried 31 states plus DC for a 379 – 159 electoral victory. Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of over eight million votes.

The fight for the 2000 Republican nomination featured moderate Senator John McCain against conservative former Texas Governor George W. Bush. While Bush seemed to many to be too naïve and inexperienced for the job, he had an extremely skilled campaign staff, and he was able to capitalize on the growing conservative movement in the country. In the primaries, he won nearly twice as many votes as McCain and carried 45 states.

In the November general election, Democrat Al Gore of Tennessee, the sitting vice-president won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. The electoral victor depended on the vote from Florida where there was considerable confusion and malfeasance, particularly with the use of “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County. At first it appeared that Gore would carry Florida; then Bush, whereupon Gore conceded. But as the Florida vote tightened up again, Gore rescinded his concession. Virtually all components of the Florida race were thrown into the courts which resulted in numerous precinct recounts. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that resulted in Bush winning the election. It was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later said that she thought that she made a mistake in her vote. But Bush won and what happened in the country was quite different from what would have happened with an Al Gore presidency.

Gore graciously accepted the Supreme Court’s decision, and Bush was inaugurated as president. It remains an open question as to what Bush and the Republicans would have done had the Court ruled in Gore’s favor.

It was on Bush’s watch that nine-eleven occurred. Many scholars believe that had Gore been president, he may well have paid more attention to the CIA’s warning about Al Qaeda during the first eight months of his administration and perhaps would have been able to prevent the attack from happening. Had nine eleven occurred on his watch, it is unlikely that he would have invaded Iraq for specious reasons as Bush did.

In 2004, Bush had the most nominal of opponents in the Republican primary. In the general election, he won the popular vote by over three million votes and the determinative electoral count, 285 – 251.

Most people remember the 2008 election because of Barack Obama’s nomination win over Hillary Clinton, and then his win of the presidency. But Republicans had a very competitive race for their nomination. Eventually Senator John McCain of Arizona won the contest, winning the races in thirty-seven states. But former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won eleven contests and nearly five million popular votes to McClain’s ten million. Both McCain and Romney were seen as moderates.

Two other candidates in the race were former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who was on the far-right of the evangelical wing of the Republican party, and Texas congressman Ron Paul who was more of a libertarian than a Republican. In 2008, the moderates in the GOP clearly carried the day.

2012 was another year in which the moderate wing of the Republican Party prevailed. Romney won going away with 42 states and over 52% of the popular vote. His nearest competitor was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum who was an extreme right-wing religious candidate. Also on the race were Ron Paul again as well as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who in many ways was the father of the modern right-wing Republican Party.

Romney won the nomination but lost the general election to Obama. Even though Obama won reelection, he was being stymied with his legislative agenda, particularly with the obstinance of Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.

Charles Darwin would have liked the 2016 Republican race, as it was clearly an exercise of survival of the fittest. The fittest won the nomination and eventually the election, but as was clear to many when he first announced his candidacy in June of 2015, Donald Trump was not the fittest to govern.

He won the nomination against fifteen other candidates who took the stage on at least one of the televised Republican debates in the 2016 cycle. Most Republicans thought that Trump’s candidacy was a “joke,” but as more and more of the other candidates dropped out of the race, Trump became more of a concern, and then a favorite. The other candidates learned rather quickly that it was not wise for them to cross swords with Trump. He had ways of humiliating others while responding to attacks on him with more vicious rebuttals on his opponents. He dispatched in quick order with some of the previously favored candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Santorum, Paul and Huckabee. Even before the primaries began, well-known Republicans such as former New York governor George Pataki, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Some of those who dropped out were moderate (Kasich and Bush) but most were extreme right-wingers. The last person standing before Trump clinched the nomination was extreme right-winger Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Trump attacked Cruz by insinuating that his father had been part of a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy, and that his wife was unattractive. When the Republican delegates assembled in Cleveland, Trump had nearly three times as many delegates as Cruz. Trump organized the convention to in many ways be a “hate-fest” as he and his supporters lambasted Republicans who did not agree with him as well as anyone with a ‘D’ (Democrat) after their name.

If the Trump – Clinton race has occurred in virtually any other democracy, Clinton would have won solidly, with nearly three million more popular votes than Trump. But this is the United States, and it has the anachronistic Electoral College. In that arena, Trump prevailed 306 – 225, and thus was declared the next president of the United States.

By 2020, Trump was so popular within the Republican Party that his only opposition was the not-well-known former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, a genuine moderate. In the primaries. Weld won only 2.35 % of the vote while Trump essentially won the rest. Trump won the nomination and then went on to lose the general election to former vice-president and senator Joe Biden of Delaware by seven million popular votes, and in the Electoral College, 306-225, the same margin by which he had won four years previously. However, now, twenty months after the election, Trump still does not understand that he lost, nor do many of his supporters. That in itself exemplifies how far to the radical right the Republican Party currently sits.

The main difference in the 2022 Republican Party is that it’s virtually impossible to find a moderate Republican. Where are the Dwight Eisenhowers, Nelson Rockefellers, Gerald Fords, George H.W. Bushs, Bob Doles, John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the Republican Party? It seems that somewhere between the time that Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination in June of 2015 and the time that he won the nomination in July, 2016, it became virtually impossible to be a moderate in the GOP without getting verbally demolished by Trump.

Following the testimony of White House Chief-of-Staff aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the January 6 committee on June 28 of this year, it seems that Trump is not a shoo-in to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But the mostly likely opponents are current “Trumpsters” such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, former vice-president Mike Pence of Indiana, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. If there is a well-known moderate in the party, it would be Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney. In reality, her views on most issues are strongly conservative. Where she differs from the others is in her integrity, as show so vividly in her role as vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee.

As we see from the chart above, Republicans have won eleven of the eighteen races since 1952. Had the winner been based on the popular vote, the split would be nine each. The Republicans have won the popular vote only once in the last eight elections (W. Bush in 2004). Theoretically the Democrats should be on a roll.

But Republican extremists seem to have captured the party, though it was only ten years ago when the party nominated a moderate (Romney in 2012). Under fair and equal rules, the Democrats may have a bright future. However, the conservative Supreme Court is actively undermining democracy, and at the present time, all bets are off.

The post Are moderate Republicans dying with a whimper; or will there be a resurgence? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Barack Obama was clearly one of the most cerebral and well-spoken presidents that the United States has ever had. But as odd as it may seem, two slips of his tongue may have led to the rise of the two worst dictators so far in the 21^st Century.

In 2011, Obama spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner. One of the guests was Donald Trump. Obama showed little mercy when while looking at Trump, he said, “No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like: Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” Obama also included a fake video of his birth and an artist’s rendition of what the White House would look like if Trump was president, further embarrassing Trump.

You can see the five-minute video here:

As you might expect, Trump was not pleased by being the butt of the jokes. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Trump was “pissed off like I’d never seen him before.”

Trump had played around with the idea of running fore president before the 2011 Correspondents Dinner. But the events that evening truly crystallized his hate towards Obama as well as any Democrat who held him in low regard. In June of 2015, Trump announced that he was running for president in 2016. He decimated the rest of the Republican field of candidates and then lost to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million popular votes, but won the outdated and undemocratic Electoral College.

The second faux pas by Obama came in 2014. In March of that year, shortly after Vladimir Putin and Russia had invaded Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, Obama called Russia a “regional power.” Specifically, he said, “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.” Obama describes in in more detail in the following 50-second video:

Knowing what we know now about Putin, it is no surprise that he would be humiliated and outraged at the thought of Russia being called a regional power. After all, his dream as president of Russia was to re-establish the old Soviet Union, with all seventeen republics. He felt that Russia and the Soviet Union had a long and proud history of being a global power and he want to reassert what had been lost at the end of the twentieth century when Mikhail Gorbachev orchestrated to collapse of the Soviet Union in order to give more autonomy to each of the republics.

We cannot say that Obama’s demeaning remarks about Russia caused Putin to bully and ultimately further invade Ukraine in 2022, but it certainly did not help. Putin was also irritated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who repeatedly criticized Putin and Russia for the lack of fair and democratic elections.

Generally, Barack Obama measures his words as well as anyone. You can see it, particularly in his press conferences, when he often pauses between phrases to make sure that the next thing that he says is precisely what he is thinking and not something that he will later regret.

Life is full of ironies, and the fact that Barack Obama may well have significantly contributed to the rise of dictators Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin can be considered unexpected and certainly unfortunate. It is further evidence that we all make mistakes, even when we try our best to avoid them.

The post How Loose Lips from Obama Hurt America and the World appeared first on Occasional Planet.

About 6 months into the Trump Presidency, I was ready for it to end. Well actually I was ready for it to end before it even began, but in July of 2017 I started thinking about what that end might look like. I remarked on what seemed like the 12 most plausible endings for Trump’s 1st term. You can read that piece here. A lot has happened in between now and then, the Mueller report came and went, there was the impeachment that wasn’t, we discovered only Trump could go to Korea, and Democrats won the House. However even with so much uncertainty, made worse by a global pandemic, it would seem that there are still a few plausible endings left and it’s worth exploring them further.

“4. Democrats Nominate a “Bad” Candidate: Everyone by now acknowledges the role that Russian interference played in 2016’s presidential election, and had it not been for James Comey’s last minute letter to Congress, Hillary Clinton would almost certainly be President. Now that that’s out of the way…. there’s no excuse for there having been so many undecided voters and Hillary Clinton failing to reach 50% in polling averages at any point after winning the nomination. Maybe it was sexism which ultimately kept Clinton from breaking that highest glass ceiling, but maybe it was something else. I supported Hillary Clinton, but even she would acknowledge that even if she was right on the issues, perhaps she wasn’t the strongest candidate because of perception problems alone. The Democrats have a bad tendency to either over-correct or change nothing when faced with defeats. If the party over-corrects, and takes hard left positions and nominates a candidate who sounds like Eugene Debs, then they’ll end up losing mainstream Democrats. If the party changes nothing, and recreates an Obama era platform and nominates a corporate backed third-way Democrat (I’m looking at you Cuomo), then so-called “Berniecrats” will once again either vote third party or not at all. If he can rely on a continued split in the Democratic Party and lack of loyalty among liberal leaning voters, then re-election is more likely than we’re willing to admit.”

At the moment, Joe Biden appears poised to lead Democrats into the general election (although I’ve still got my eye on Cuomo in case Biden falters). It is apparently bad politics to comment on Biden’s presentation, but politics is mostly presentation as voters are incongruous in their policy preferences. It would seem Biden has lost a step and his disappearing act during the first days of the pandemic was not exactly a profile in courage. When voters challenge him on his policy record he’s called them “fat”, “a lying dog faced pony soldier”, “full of shit”, and told them to “vote for Trump”. Maybe that doesn’t matter and it’s part of his appeal, for some it absolutely is. There are millions of partisan voters who will vote for anyone not named Trump and maybe that will be enough. However maybe it won’t be, in an upcoming piece I’ll explain how Trump will run against Biden and how it could be effective. Regardless, it at least seems plausible especially given rising approval numbers for the President in the face of a national crisis that Biden might not be the candidate for the moment.

“5. Trump Continues to Divide the Country, and it Works: Thanks to an archaic system from the 18th century, Donald Trump doesn’t need to win a majority of votes to be re-elected. Trump’s base has shrunk somewhat from election day until now. The number of Americans who “strongly support” the President has seen a not so insignificant decline. But Trump, for all of his shocking inadequacies not just as a President but like as a human being, has captured the American id. When given an effective foil he’s able to motivate his supporters, whether it was “Low Energy Jeb”, “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “Crooked Hillary”, and ultimately “Fake News”. Donald Trump doesn’t have to accomplish his legislative agenda (it’s so unpopular that perhaps he’s better off if he doesn’t), he can blame all of his failures on the media or Democrats. Let’s also assume that Trump’s support for voter suppression is at least moderately successful, and the restrictions from 2016 are either kept or expanded, that only helps him. It won’t matter if Democrats win in Congress or if the destructive GOP health care becomes law, because Trump is independent of the GOP. Trump doesn’t claim failures, he puts them off on Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell, and his voters are okay with that. If Trump can manage to continue on his current paths, with no serious deterioration from the present, then he’ll survive another 4 years.”

As of the writing of this article, President Trump’s approval rating according to fivethirtyeight is 45.8% and in the days after his inauguration it was 45.5%. That’s remarkably steady and has been consistent throughout this term, his best approval numbers and his worst are separated by less than 10 points. For context, for Obama and Clinton it was more than 20, for Bush it was more than 40. The President could very well lose the popular vote, perhaps by a larger margin than in 2016, but it may not fundamentally matter. The President is still competitive in the upper Midwest against both Sanders and Biden. Florida seems to be burdened with a less than effective state Democratic party and the great Sunbelt hopes of Arizona and Texas may once again fail to materialize. Voters know how they feel about Trump and it’s mostly static. There has been some cross-over, many well educated and well to do white voters who voted for Romney voted for Democrats in 2018 and a likely equal number of working class voters, especially whites but also Latinos, have put their faith in the President. If nothing has fundamentally changed with voters, then we shouldn’t be surprised if our election results don’t change either.

“7. Republicans Enact Their Agenda, It Goes as Expected: You don’t have to be Larry Sabato to predict what would happen if 22 million people suddenly lost their healthcare. Whether you believe that voters are more receptive to a progressive message or a conservative message is largely irrelevant, because in regard to policy, too much movement in either direction will result in pretty spectacular backlash. Voters don’t want a border wall, they don’t want Medicaid cuts, they don’t want Social Security cuts, they don’t want tax cuts for the rich, they don’t want to cut the EPA, and they don’t want to roll back women’s reproductive freedoms. If Trump goes along signing and supporting every part of the GOP agenda, he’s going to end up motivating democratic voters and demoralizing his would-be voters (literally killing them in the case of the ‘health care’ bill). This assumes Ryan and McConnell are able to whip votes effectively in their respective chambers, which so far they’ve been able to do. The AHCA didn’t actually fail, it was pulled from the floor, and then passed. If the same happens with the Senate version, then we have no reason to believe that this won’t be the expected route of all bills for the next four years.”

The fundamentals of the economy were weak before the pandemic and the pittance that is being billed as relief will not be enough for nearly anyone. This crisis will end, and millions of Americans will be left to pick up the pieces of their lives and wonder how things got so bad. This crisis has exposed the failures of the Trump administration in a tangible way that voters can see with their own eyes. Most people don’t sit down every evening and have Rachel Maddow talk at them for an hour while some former civil liberty abusing intelligence type turned resistance hero gives them “expert analysis”. They spend their waking hours making a living, going to school, or raising a family. That has been disrupted, millions are unemployed, schools are online, and the country is social distancing. People lack access to affordable healthcare now when they need it most and the social safety net has been cut. Will voters blame Trump and the Republicans? It’s hard not to after Trump has taken credit for what was until very recently, positive economic growth. It’s not hard to imagine Trump being punished electorally for the misery of the American people as Hoover, Carter, and Bush sr. were.

“12. President Trump Plunges America into Authoritarianism After a Terrorist Attack: On September 10th, 2001 President George W. Bush’s approval rating sat at 51%. Just a week later his approval rating soared above 80%. In between those two polling periods 9/11 happened and nearly 3,000 Americans died at the hands of radical jihadists. Bush’s approval didn’t dip below 50% for nearly 900 days after the attacks, and during that period Congress passed the USA PATRIOT ACT as well as a number of laws aimed at curbing civil liberties, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and the President was given the authority to go to war in Iraq. America has never been the same, and strangely enough the only thing that might have prevented the country from spiraling into outright authoritarianism was that the people in government, as corrupt and power hungry as they might have been, still had respect for our institutions as well as some principled view of what America should be. That does not exist within the Trump administration. If an attack on the United States occurred on the scale of 9/11, and Trump was able to harness the energy from the rally around the flag effect that would surely follow, dark times would follow. The free press could cease to exist, people could be rounded up and put into camps, Congress might give Trump sweeping authority, and who knows what else. This is a constant threat and we can’t gauge the odds of it happening because terrorism is itself fairly unpredictable. But if it did happen, God help us.”

Coronavirus was the unknown unknown. What is happening in this country is without precedent and our norms are being tested. Postponing an election was impossible until it happened. Halting the machines of industry and purposely challenging capitalism in America was unfathomable, and then it happened. States ordering their citizens to stay in their homes seemed like a scenario possible in some faraway land, and then stay at home orders became more common than not. We are witnessing a massive expansion of executive power that will have consequences. The President has said that he wants the economy to reopen and a return to normalcy (whatever that meant in the Trump era), however this is almost certainly the end of the beginning and not the beginning of the end. The economy is in free fall and infections are increasing at an exponential rate, what would the government do to save the country it governs? I imagine they might do quite a lot and we’ve seen how fear can materialize into policy during war time. President Trump has some authoritarian tendencies, this crisis may bring them to the surface and the country might be forever changed.

A lot can and will happen between now and November, we should be prepared for everything.

The post Revisiting “12 Possible Endings for Trump’s 1st Term” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

After Super Tuesday it seems clear that the Democratic Establishment learned a valuable lesson from the Republicans after 2016. You can’t beat an insurgent candidate with a divided field, which necessarily means some candidates are gonna have to take one for the team. That’s what happened in the hours leading up to the grand event when moderates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg ended their campaigns to rally around their fellow moderate Joe Biden. The result was what you might expect, Biden picked up the lion’s share of those votes which equaled narrow plurality wins in Texas, Minnesota, and Maine. This was a result that we should’ve been more prepared for and if we think about the Democratic Party as an institution it makes sense.

Democrats are the party of government; they respect its legitimacy to have authority and believe that it can be used as a tool to improve people’s lives. Republicans are the anti-government party; they believe that the private sector is often more effective than government and in fact government limits liberty not increases it. The media watched the Trump phenomenon in awe and believed they recognized something universal in the American voter, an abiding anger at the system as well as a desire to disempower it. This was only reinforced when Donald Trump exceeded all expectations to become President of the United States defeating a candidate who was well financed and well credentialed but nevertheless the human manifestation of Washington. So, the logic went, populism overtook an established political party once so therefore it can happen again.

But what that fails to understand is that Democrats are not Republicans. Democrats have not been primed in the same way for a generation through media and mainstream politicians to have the same distrust of the status quo and our institutions in the way that Republicans have. Some Democrats have, those on the left have been skeptical of our institutions since before Vietnam but they are a minority. Therefore, a candidate running against the systems, systems that most Democrats still fundamentally believe in, was going to have very limited upside. That is unless a disproportionate amount of independents with the same skepticism were drawn into the process. It remains to be seen if that will happen, but so far Democrats are showing that they believe the problem is the Republicans and not any kind of institutional failure. That’s what Biden is running on, that the government isn’t functioning because of Republican obstructionism but it used to work before, and it can work again if Republicans do the right thing. Of course, that erases the experiences of several different communities including but not limited to Blacks, Latinos, indigenous people, and of course most people not identifying as straight or male. Nevertheless, so far it appears to be a winning message because it is consistent with a century of ideology.

But while we’re speaking about ideology, it seems to be more complicated than policy. It also seems to be wrapped up in culture, and if were being completely honest Sanders is the counterculture and Biden is the mainstream. Often the counterculture wins in the long term, but it is still the counterculture and does not win in the immediate term. This is fine if we’re talking about political movements, but it is not ideal for presidential campaigns who need to win elections as they happen. You may be familiar with the “beer track“ and “wine track” analogy used in politics, where beer candidates are authentic outgrowths of the working class while wine candidates appeal to a more suburban educated voter. In most parts of the country, save for areas with more Whole Foods and Nordstrom’s than low income housing, the beer candidate wins. This dynamic plays out fairly regularly in general elections, on occasion two wine track candidates face off and the incumbent tends to fare better. But rarely do two beer track candidates face off which is what is happening with Biden and Sanders. Twenty years ago, perhaps Biden and Sanders would fight to a draw or Sanders would be narrowly favored. However, the Democratic Party is witnessing a rapid change in its coalition to include scores more of traditional wine voters, many former Republicans, and they are wielding their influence. The choice is Sanders who is openly contemptuous of the kind of inequality that wine voters have been able to take advantage of and don’t see as inequality versus Biden who has wine voter sympathies while speaking the language of the beer voter. Wine voters and many beer voters seem to have decided on Biden, the results of that decision will have enormous consequences.

There are a lot of voters with Biden in spite of his policies not because of them. Voters aren’t necessarily with what Biden is saying, but how he says it. Sanders is attempting to combat a problem not totally related to policy with a policy argument. That’s probably not going to work because it hasn’t already, Biden has a very long and very problematic policy history hat is public record. As a Sanders supporter it’s difficult for me to say this, but if you can’t defeat Joe Biden with his many failures of policy and presentation, then it’s hard to imagine you defeating Donald Trump who is a much more capable competitor. Of course, the party and the media and donor class have put up countless roadblocks, but that was always going to happen and Sanders experienced it first-hand 4 years ago so he should’ve been prepared. If Sanders wants to win, if he can win, he will need to stop expecting the party to come to their senses. Sanders is going to need to attempt to talk in ways outside his comfort zone. Sanders has clearly won the party on policy, but ironically not on himself. It is going to be necessary to thread the needle on exposing more voters to what is wrong with the system while proposing a more positive, perhaps less caustic, way forward.

There’s a long way to go until July and many votes to be counted, anything could happen. But there’s a lot of history working against Sanders that he should attempt to understand because that will be pivotal not just for his prospects as a candidate but the overall success of his movement.

The post Why Bernie was always a longshot appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Is Bernie Sanders channeling Teddy Roosevelt? Having recently re-watched Ken Burns’ in-depth biography, The Roosevelts, I am struck by the similarities—both in substance and in style.

I started thinking about this comparison as I watched Burns’ old-time film snippets of Teddy Roosevelt—particularly those documenting him on the campaign stump. Roosevelt, known affectionately as TR, was a fighter. In the film clips, his body language shows a man leaning into his arguments, gesticulating for emphasis, speaking forcefully and intently—all of this in a less-than-Adonis-like body.

The similarity to Bernie Sanders’ outspoken, forceful, vigorous and passionate campaign persona is uncanny.

But, of course, there’s more to this comparison than style. Teddy—the leader of the Republican party of his day, became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the US in the early 20th century—and Sanders has adopted that mantle 100 years later.

I’m not a historian [although I do occasionally binge-watch Drunk History]. So here are some of the similarities noted by people who know much more than I do:

In a 2016 article, The Observer observed:

Both [Sanders and Roosevelt] are strongly skeptical of corporate power, and live in periods in which the power, influence, and abusiveness of these institutions (in the view of the general public) is considerable and growing. Teddy’s major domestic agendas (trust busting, environmental stewardship and national parks, consumer protection) are at odds with significant corporate powers of their respective times, insofar as these interests collided with those of everyone else.

… both intended to save capitalism from self-inflicted injuries driven by greed. Teddy Roosevelt did it by busting up the big trusts of his day. Bernie is focused on the banks that are too big to fail. He wants to break them up before their reckless gambling collapses the economy again as it did in the Great Recession of 2007-2010.

…In 1912, when Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency as the leader of the Progressive [Bull Moose] Party, he laid out one of the most progressive platforms in American history. The party backed, among other policies:

• Limits on campaign contributions
• An eight-hour work day
• A commission to regulate securities markets
• A workers compensation program
• A “national health service”
• Passage of the 16th Amendment to allow for a federal income tax
• Infrastructure through “the early construction of National highways;”
• An estate tax

Roosevelt explicitly expressed his desire to increase the share the wealthy paid in taxes in his “New Nationalism” speech:

I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

Sanders’ 2020 platform–like that of 2016– is, of course focused on issues more modern than creating a national highway system–although Teddy would undoubtedly support the modern call for a vast upgrade to our crumbling infrastructure. Clearly, Sanders is continuing the Roosevelt legacy of progressive populism, and, like Teddy, he, willing to stump—tirelessly—for what he believes in, and is focused on matters of corruption and the abuse of power. You can take the Roosevelt platform and, almost point-by-point, correlate it with what Bernie Sanders is proposing 100 years later.

I see that as good news.

The bad news that, more than a century later, we are still not there on these issues. We’re still fighting for the basic tenets of a progressive, equitable society. And it’s just sad that a presidential candidate who is fighting back against democracy-killing corporate greed is regarded as out of the mainstream.

What would Teddy think?

[Note: Voice recordings of Teddy Roosevelt are rare, but here’s one that gives you a flavor of his speaking style, and of the substantive nature of his speeches.]

[Editor’s note: This post first appeared here on Occasional Planet in 2016, when Bernie Sanders emerged  as a presidential hopeful. We are republishing it because of its new relevance in the 2020 election.]

The post Is Bernie Sanders the new Teddy Roosevelt? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I’ve been trying to figure out why our current political moment feels so familiar and the answer has been there the whole time. We never stopped fighting the 2016 campaign, the names of the characters have changed but the dynamics haven’t, nor have the issues. The Democratic candidates have their Republican parallels, I’ve done my best to figure out who they are. I’ve found that the description for each candidate fits fairly well whether you’re thinking about 2016 or 2020.

Cory Booker is George Pataki

He’s running a campaign on ideas that the party doesn’t really want. As an elected person representing a populous north eastern state you’d think he’d be more formidable because to be frank he knows where the money is. He is the happy warrior and he wants to talk about American renewal and love. But here’s the thing, voters are angry and have been this entire decade and if you didn’t know that then you were destined to lose. Overall he’s running a “goober” campaign that despite the resume, lacks gravitas.

Tulsi Gabbard is Chris Christie

They once had a promising future in the party, but made a political decision that upset the elites and torpedoed that future. Now they only exist to get bad press coverage and attack weak candidates who haven’t faced real scrutiny. They probably would’ve been better off not running but they don’t have a stellar track record for good decision making. They have theoretical bipartisan appeal, or so we hear from political analysts who seem to have never met a person without a Master’s or makes under $165,000 a year.

Beto O’Rourke is Jeb

We know he’s not running anymore but we can’t believe it all fell apart so quickly. He began his campaign with so much promise and institutional support. After losing the last election the party got together and tried to understand why the last nominee failed and thought they optimized the winning formula with him. But he never had a natural constituency or performed well in debates, so he started to fade. Originally he was loved by the media and then they turned on him. Now he’s universally disliked by the opposition and not especially loved by his own party so now he kind of just wanders aimlessly.

Amy Klobuchar is Carly Fiorina

The media keeps waiting for her to surge but it doesn’t seem to be happening. She’s had some decent moments during debates, but never has broken out of the single digits. She’s still running but it doesn’t seem like it’s for President anymore, yet she’s maintaining that she has a special electability argument. She also has a reputation for “complicated” relationships with staff.

Andrew Yang is Rand Paul

He’s libertarian who is running for the nomination of one of the major parties. He’s saying some things that make a lot of sense and there’s real enthusiasm there. It doesn’t seem like any of his competitors are taking him seriously which is rude considering he polls even or better than many of them.

Kamala Harris is Marco Rubio

They made sense on paper and was promoted as the future of the party. They performed great during debates by challenging the front runner, they had a natural case for electability in possessing several qualities the last nominee didn’t have, and they’re well known in the party. However, they haven’t lived up to expectations and have only seen their polling decline recently. They now seem unlikely to win any primaries, and almost certainly will lose their home state where they were just popularly elected to a different office. This campaign badly damaged their brand and they might be stuck in the Senate forever. To add insult to injury they don’t even poll well with the voters that they campaigned on being able to attract.

Pete Buttigieg is John Kasich

We didn’t really know him at first but now it seems like there’s two profiles about him a week in major magazines. He won’t stop talking about the Midwest and winning elections despite winning fewer votes in his re-election campaign than both his immediate predecessor and successor did in their first campaigns. He isn’t popular with a core constituency in the party which almost certainly makes his campaign a non-starter, but he’s going to unconvincingly pitch to them anyway because he has fundraised enough money from the worst people you don’t know to last until June. Right now, he’s hoping for a brokered convention to win on a fourth ballot or at the very least something to get him the hell out of Indiana.

Elizabeth Warren is Ben Carson

For a little while there it really seemed like they were running away with it! They become the leader in national polls and state polls and had the highest favorable ratings in the party! But increased scrutiny hasn’t been their friend and some voters are questioning their sincerity on some major issues, others don’t think they’re electable anymore. Yet they still represent a large chunk of the party and do reasonably well in polls. Not that long ago, it would have been hard to imagine someone like them leading a major party but there was a politician who looked like them before who shattered the glass ceiling. It’s hard not to find them endearing even if how they deliver speeches is often lacking in energy. People are also whispering about controversial things they did in their youth that would come up in a general election campaign but they built their mythology around it, so they pretty much brought it on themselves.

Bernie Sanders is Ted Cruz

He is supported by the activist base and not well liked by elected officials in his own party. His candidacy represents the natural evolution of the party, many of his positions have been adopted by the field, and he has led national discourse the last few years. He and the front runner clearly don’t like each other, but somehow they like everyone else running even less. He’s ideologically rigid which endears him to many voters, but it angers his colleagues. His plan for the nation is less about policy, although the policy is there, and more about a revolution of kinds to remake America. He makes the most sense as a nominee but it likely won’t happen because of institutional barriers but in spite of that, he’s more motivated in stopping the opposition than stewing over what might’ve been. People never doubt his authenticity because he’s been consistently for the same things forever and so he’s become the standard bearer for his wing of the party.

Joe Biden is Donald Trump

Ever since he announced he’s been the front runner. He’s objectively out of step with the direction the party has been attempting to go and he’s unpopular online. The media doesn’t get it and they desperately want him to fail if the coverage is to be believed. You might think there’d be stronger candidates considering his gaffes, old school ideas, and scandals but it seems like voters are kinda into it. They’ve known of him for the last 40 years, but they really got to know him the last 10 because of his relationship to Barack Obama. We keep waiting for him to falter but about one third of the party seems to be sticking with him. Sure, other candidates rise and fall but typically only ever to second place because nothing has been more consistent this campaign than his dominance in the polls. He’s the favorite to be the nominee and yet we’ll still be surprised when it happens because “I don’t know anyone who voted for him”. Also, what’s going on with his son? Is he alright?

Honorable Mentions:

Steve Bullock is Mike Huckabee

If it were 1988 he’d be President. But his political career didn’t line up with our current political moment and so he’s languishing at the bottom of the pack. He’s the Governor of a state that had ancestral roots in his party but has been long gone in this century. Why didn’t he run for Senate?

John Delaney is Bobby Jindal

Is he seriously running for President or is this a mix of mid-life crisis, boredom, and trying to find work as a talking head on CNN? Regardless he’s shockingly easy to meme and you’re not even sure if he’s still running.

Michael Bloomberg is Michael Bloomberg

He’s a Republican running in the wrong primary.

Deval Patrick is Jim Gilmore

Who? He’s running for What?

Julián Castro is Rick Santorum

He missed his chance to be President in the last cycle. It turns out that being out of Government for four years renders you essentially irrelevant to the voters unless you’re a Clinton.

The post The 2020 Democrats as Their 2016 GOP Counterparts appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 2012, Republican strategist Grover Norquist described his ideal president. In 2017, he got his wish: a president with enough “working digits to be able to hold a pen.”

And this idiot-with-a-pen philosophy, I have come to believe, is as good an explanation as any for why Republicans stick to Trump no matter how blatantly ignorant, unhinged, racist, inappropriate, infantile and illegal he reveals himself to be. They’ve made their deal with the devil–as long as he gives Republicans what they want–which is abortion, guns, anti-immigrant policies, white supremacy and freedom to weaponize Christianity against anyone or anything they don’t like, they’ll support him and let his bullying run wild.

Here’s what Norquist cynically fantasized about and shared at the annual CPAC meeting in 2012:

Here’s what I wrote about the Norquist doctrine back in 2017:

Norquist’s dream became reality on Trump’s first day in office. Republican Congressional leaders ginned up an executive order —an order that Trump probably didn’t understand [did anyone?]—and handed him a pen. As per Norquists’ prescription, Trump didn’t think it up or design it. They just put it in front of him, at a hastily arranged signing/photo op, at which he also rotely signed executive orders waiving decades of precedent preventing military officers [Mattis] from assuming Cabinet positions within seven years of having left the military .

According to the New York Times, the ACA executive order’s “broad language gave federal agencies wide latitude to change, delay or waive provisions of the law that they deemed overly costly for insurers, drug makers, doctors, patients or states, suggesting that it could have wide-ranging impact, and essentially allowing the dismantling of the law to begin even before Congress moves to repeal it.”

Judging from the look on Trump’s face when he signed it, he did not know what was on the piece of paper handed to him by his chief of staff, Reince Preibus. [He gave it a cursory look, as if to appear to read it, but unless he is a super speed reader, he didn’t.]

Look for more orchestrated signings like this over the next four years. Game, set and match to Grover Norquist.

The post Trump is Grover Norquist’s fantasy president: an idiot with a pen appeared first on Occasional Planet.

John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book (with much help from speechwriter Ted Sorensen) , Profiles in Courage, focused on eight white men (yes, no women and no minorities) who stood up for principle at the expense of continuing their political careers. With one exception (James Comey), there seems to be no one who has served the administration of Donald Trump who would remotely qualify as a profile in courage.

Even before Trump was anointed president by the antiquated and anachronistic Electoral College, F.B.I. Director James Comey took unpopular stands in defense of what he thought was right. It was within the jurisdiction of his agency to investigate Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unconventional method of storing e-mails. Comey was caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place. One option was to stay silent and let Attorney-General Loretta Lynch announce that no indictment would be forthcoming. However, Comey knew that Lynch’s credibility was tainted. She had recently hosted a 30-minute private meeting with Bill Clinton on her plane at the Phoenix airport. With Lynch compromised, Comey took option two, stepping up to say that while there was not sufficient evidence to indict Clinton, her conduct had been “extremely careless.”

He irritated the Clintons and many of their supporters, but his honesty shined through when he recognized that he was in a conundrum and he spoke openly about not having any simple answers.

When Donald Trump became president, Comey utilized the same balanced thinking that made him such a straight shooter with Clinton. If Comey had not previously been aware of Trump’s emotional and mental inadequacies to be president, he learned quickly upon having private meetings in the White House. Donald Trump clearly did not understand the role of the F.B.I., of the Department of Justice, and how the White House related to both. More importantly, Trump gave no indication that his top priority was the well-being of the United States and the world in which we live. Rather it was his personal aggrandizement.

Once Comey met Trump, his primary concern was the well-being of the country. He had the audacity to take contemporaneous notes from his meetings with Trump. Ultimately, he shared them with a friend, who at Comey’s request, leaked to the media. Comey wanted American citizens to know about the dangers that lurked while Donald Trump was president. With this knowledge, he wanted Congress, and possibly the president’s cabinet, to consider legal actions to reduce or eliminate the threat that he presented.

In contrast to Comey, there is a man named Mad Dog. You may know him as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis. He was one of Trump’s original cabinet appointees and by all regards, acquitted himself well at the Pentagon. But by the end of his second year as Secretary, he resigned, saying that he objected to Trump’s precipitous withdrawal of American troops from Syria.

His departure from the Cabinet was very disturbing to those Americans who had serious concerns about Trump. Mattis was considered to be one of the adults in the room. Presumably he could talk truth to power, and if necessary, implement, or not implement, Trump orders in a way that minimized danger to the country.

Once Mattis left the Cabinet, and Trump’s position of Chief of Staff was filled with Trump worshipers, a huge vacuum was evident. There was no one in the higher reaches of government who could straight-talk Trump, and if necessary, leave the administration on principle.

Now we learn that General Mattis has written a book which includes accounts of his service in the Trump Administration. Unfortunately, he fails to include in the book or in any of his recent magazine articles and on-air interviews that Donald Trump was putting America further at risk.

Perhaps Mattis was not the adult in the room who we thought that he was. Perhaps his comfort zone is adhering to military protocol and following the line of his commander-in-chief.

To many “adults outside the room,” it is very disappointing that Mattis has not offered legitimate criticism of Trump. Instead, he is going on to be a lobbyist.

There are many on the left who hold a grudge against James Comey because his actions clearly hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming president. This may be true, but he stood alone among those who have “served” Donald Trump, because he publicly talked truth to power. Had he not, we probably would not have had a Robert Mueller and all the misdeeds revealed in his investigation. If only Mattis had been a little more like Comey.

The post A Tale of Two Jameses appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s not a hoax. The recently released (July 25, 2019) Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election makes that very clear. All you have to do is read it. It’s only 67 pages, and about a third of it is blocked out. But, of course, Donald Trump didn’t do that, nor did he listen to briefings that would have left no doubt that Russians not only tried, but succeeded in breaking into election databases in all 50 states—that they continued their efforts during the 2018 mid-terms, and that they’re on track to do it again in 2020, perhaps on a much larger and more damaging scale.

He doesn’t want to know. But I do, and I imagine so do many others. So, I read the report and copy/pasted some highlights, so you don’t have to. Here they are. Sub-headings in bold are my interpretations, not from the report. The excerpts are in the order in which they appear in the report.

Why they did it: Just to let us know that they can?

“While the Committee does not know with confidence what Moscow’s intentions were, Russia may have  been probing vulnerabilities in voting systems to exploit later. Alternatively, Moscow may have sought to undermine confidence in the 2016 U.S. elections simply through the discovery of their activity.”

Should we have heard more about it? Maybe not.

“In 2016, officials at all levels of government debated whether publicly acknowledging this foreign activity was the right course. Some were deeply concerned that public warnings might promote the very impression they were trying to dispel—that the voting systems were insecure.”

What were they doing, exactly? Checking to see if we’re home. Maybe they’ll come back later.

“One security expert characterized the activity as simple scanning for vulnerabilities, analogous  to somebody walking down the street and looking to  see if you are home. A small number of systems were unsuccessfully exploited, as though somebody had rattled the doorknob but was unable to get in…[however]a small number of the networks were successfully exploited. They made it through the door.”

“What  it mostly looked like to us was reconnaissance…I would have characterized it at the time as sort of conducting the reconnaissance to do the network mapping, to do the topology mapping so that you  could actually understand  the  network, establish a presence so you could  come back  later and actually execute an operation.

How widespread were the attacks? Very.

“By late August 2016…the Russians had attempted to intrude in all 50 states, based on the extent of the activity and the apparent randomness of the attempts. “My professional judgment was we have to work under the assumption that they’ve tried to go everywhere, because they’re thorough, they’re competent, they’re good.”

“Several weeks prior to the 2018 mid-term election, DHS assessed that “numerous actors are regularly targeting election infrastructure, likely for different purposes, including to cause disruptive effects, steal sensitive data, and undermine confidence in the election.”

Did they change any votes? Probably not.

“Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards.  DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”

Illinois was hit first. The attack reached deep into voter information files. Be afraid.

“In June 2016, Illinois experienced the first known breach by Russian actors of state election infrastructure during the 2016 election. As of the end of 2018, the Russian cyber actors had successfully penetrated Illinois’s voter registration database, viewed multiple database tables, and accessed up to 200,000 voter registration records. The compromise resulted in the exfiltration of an unknown quantity of voter registration data. Russian cyber actors were in a position to delete or change voter data, but the Committee is not aware of any evidence that they did so.”

“The compromised voter registration database held records relating to 14 million registered voters. Records exfiltrated included information on each voter’s name, address, partial social security number, date of birth, and either a driver’s license number or state identification number.”

“Russia would have had the ability to potentially manipulate some of that data, but we didn’t see that.” …The level of access that they gained, they almost certainly could have done more. Why they didn’t…is sort of an open-ended question. I think it fits under the larger umbrella of undermining confidence in the election by tipping their hand that they had this level of access or showing that they were capable of getting it.”

They were ballsy.

“The Russian Embassy placed a formal request to observe the elections with the Department of State, but also reached outside diplomatic channels in an attempt to secure permission directly from state and local election officials. For example, in September2016, the Secretary of State denied a request by the Russian Consul General to allow a Russian government official inside a polling station on Election Day to study US. election procedures.”

They had a Twitter campaign ready, to question the results, if Hillary Clinton had won.

“Russian diplomats were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results…and that pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter  campaign on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s victory.”

They got access via a phishing scam.

“After a county employee opened an infected email attachment, the cyber actor stole credentials, which were later posted online. Those stolen credentials were used in June 2016 to penetrate State4’s voter registration database. The actor used the credentials to access the database and was in a position to modify county, but not statewide, data.”

They were playing a long con, and still are.

“Russian intentions regarding U.S. election infrastructure remain unclear. Russia might have intended to exploit vulnerabilities in election infrastructure during the 2016 elections and, for unknown reasons, decided not to execute those options.”

“Alternatively, Russia might have sought to gather information in the conduct of traditional espionage activities.”

“Lastly, Russia might have used its activity in 2016 to catalog options or clandestine actions, holding them for use at a later date…Russia’s activities against U.S. election infrastructure likely sought to further their overarching goal; undermining the integrity of US elections.”

“It is classic Russian espionage….They will scrape up all the information and the experience they possibly can, and “they might  not be effective the first time or the fifth time, but they are going to keep at it until they can come back and do it in an effective way.”  -Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director.

Tampering with voting machine is hard. Causing election day chaos is a more achievable goal.

“While any one voting machine is fairly vulnerable, as has been demonstrated over and over again publicly, the ability to actually do an operation to change the outcome of an election on the scale you would need to, and do it surreptitiously, is incredibly difficult.”

“A much more achievable goal would be to undermine confidence in the results of the electoral process, and that could be done much more effectively and easily….A logical  thing would be, if your goal is to undermine confidence in  the U.S. electoral system— which the Russians have a long goal  of wanting to put themselves on the  same moral plane as the United States… one way would be to cause chaos on election day.”

“How could you start to do that? Mess with the voter registration databases.”

Here’s how voter-registration tampering would play out on election day:

“So if you’re a state and local entity and your voter registration database is housed in the secretary  of  state’s office  and it is not encrypted  and it’s not backed up, and it says Lisa Monaco lives at Smith Street and I show up at my [polling place] and they say ‘Well we don’t have Ms. Monaco at Smith Street, we have her at Green Street,’ now there’s difficulty in my voting. And if that were to happen on a large scale, I was worried about confusion at polling places, lack of confidence in the voting system, anger at  a large scale in some areas, confusion, distrust.”  -Lisa Monaco, US Homeland Security Advisor to President Barack Obama.

Changing elections on a large scale would be difficult, but there are ways to make a significance difference.

“The level of effort and scale required to change the outcome of a national election would make it nearly impossible to avoid detection.”

“Nationwide elections are often won or lost in a small number of precincts. A sophisticated actor could target efforts at districts where margins are already small, and disenfranchising only a small percentage of voters could have a disproportionate impact on an election’s outcome.”

Some people don’t want to talk about Russian interference at all and want the press to shut up.

“Many state election officials emphasized their concern that press coverage of, and increased attention to, election security could create the very impression the Russians were seeking to foster, namely undermining voters’ confidence in election integrity. Several insisted that when ever any official speaks publicly on this issue, they should state clearly the difference between a “scan” and a “hack,” and a few even went as far as to suggest that U.S. officials stop talking about it at all.

To talk about it or not: a dilemma for the intelligence community.

“We know that the Russians had already touched some of the electoral systems, and we know that they have capable cyber capabilities. So there was a real dilemma, even a conundrum,  in terms  of what do you do that’s going to try to stave off worse action on the part of the Russians, and what do you do that is going to…[give]the Russians what they were seeking, which was to really raise the specter that the election was not going to be  fair and unaffected.” –John Brennan, former director of the CIA

Potential problem: Only a few companies make voting machines.

“The number of vendors selling voting machines is shrinking, raising concerns about a vulnerable supply chain. A hostile actor could compromise one or two manufacturers of components and have an outsized effect on the security of the overall system.”

Some states don’t want help: They fear “a federal takeover of elections.”

In an August15, 2016, conference call with state election officials, then-Secretary Johnson told states, “we’re  in a sort of a heightened state of alertness; it behooves everyone to  do everything you can for your own cyber security leading up to the election.”

“But states pushed back. A number of state officials reacted negatively to the call.  Secretary Johnson said he was surprised/disappointed that there was a certain level of push back from at least those who spoke up…The push-back was: This is our responsibility and there should not be a  federal takeover of the election system.”

Elections are critical infrastructure.

“We should think of the electoral infrastructure as critical infrastructure…it’s just as critical for democracy as communications, electricity, water. If that doesn’t function, then your democracy doesn’t function. That is the definition of critical.”

The post I read the Russia election-tampering report. Here are some highlights. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Mueller report is out: No further indictments have been recommended. The full contents of the report aren’t yet known, but we know at a minimum that the most fanciful conspiracies about Donald Trump and Russia were without merit. Donald Trump did not knowingly collude with the Russians.

That is the result we should’ve hoped for. There is no situation in which American democracy is better off because our President is the Manchurian candidate. So why aren’t liberals happy? Why does the Morning Joe and Pod Save America crowd continue waiting for this other shoe to drop that seems to have never been hanging in the first place? Well, it’s complicated.

Liberals really wanted the Russia collusion story to be true. It’s not as if some element of it wasn’t true, there still are dozens of indictments, and a lot of Trump associates are going to jail. There are still ongoing investigations in the DOJ and the Southern district of New York. and of course we still haven’t seen the full Mueller report. But liberals were waiting to find out that Donald Trump plotted with a foreign power and successfully upended the democratic process. Liberals got sucked into this fantasy where we were a part of this spy novel, that we could connect the dots and solve this giant mystery. If we just watched enough Maddow and read enough Washington Post write-ups, we would get the smoking gun. Some of us even branded ourselves members of “The Resistance” as we sat in our cafes as if we didn’t look like members of some bourgeois rebellion.

The election of Donald Trump was a traumatic event for liberals that lead many of us to an extended period of denialism. Many of us still have not accepted that Donald Trump was elected President, and we are stuck in the hysteria of election night, still waiting for a recount in Michigan that is never coming. The Russia collusion story allowed us the comfort of believing that America didn’t actually change. If Trump conspired with Russia, then that meant that the country actually didn’t reject Hillary Clinton and the last eight years of Barack Obama. If Trump colluded with Russia, then our friends, relatives, and neighbors weren’t actually complicit in Trump’s white supremacy: They were just tricked and could be forgiven. If Trump colluded with Russia, then the country would unite together and restore us to normalcy.

What has happened to many liberals since 2016 is almost identical to what happened to many conservatives after 2008. Conservatives could not believe that their America had elected a black man, and not only was he black, but he was well liked and defied every stereotype they’d had about minorities. Conservatives were aghast that their America, the America of Ronald Reagan and John Wayne had been ceded to those people. So we were introduced to Glenn Beck and his conspiracy chalkboards. Suddenly, Barack Obama wasn’t born in America, therefore his election was illegitimate, and we could take to the streets to oppose him. Barack Obama was a secret Muslim; he hated America, and ACORN and everyone else were conspiring to enact some Marxist agenda.

This time, liberals could not believe their America had been turned over to those people. Liberals could not believe that people they’d assumed lost the culture war and not so subtly looked down on, had elected the manifestation of everything we don’t like about America. It felt personal, and we couldn’t process it, and many of us still can’t understand it. So we fell into conspiracies, we didn’t question the Steele dossier or why we’d only referenced it, but there didn’t appear to be a credible counterpart from an actual intelligence agency. We raved about pee tapes and compramat and Moscow and used terms we’d only seen in Tom Clancy novels. We didn’t check back in on those scandalous stories from the New York Times or the Washington Post, or perhaps we’d have seen the dozens of corrections on their Russia reporting which turned out to be dubiously sourced. We, without any irony, became die-hard supporters of the FBI and CIA in spite of the long record of those institutions not being exactly friendly to our causes (see Martin Luther King Jr.).

It’s not that Trump isn’t cartoonishly corrupt: He is clearly an amoral individual who seems to have not a had a year where he was not breaking the law. We’ve got Trump University, we’ve got tax fraud, we’ve got Stormy Daniels, we’ve got hiring undocumented labor, and probably crimes we’ve already forgotten about. But none of those things explained his victory or absolved America, so liberals didn’t lean into them. So now we are left in a not unfamiliar situation, undefended by a detached Democratic leadership, informed by an elitist media, and lead by a government without competence.

In 2003, we were readying ourselves to defeat George W. Bush after losing the electoral college in the last election. The facts were on our side, the people were on our side, and the international community was on our side, yet we did not rise to the occasion. We lost focus and thus we lost the presidency. This time can be different, and we should let history be our teacher. It will not be enough to run against Donald Trump and copy the spirit of his rhetoric, just as it was not enough to run against George Bush and unconvincingly wrap ourselves in the flag, as the Republicans had shamelessly done.

It is without doubt that the Russians interfered in our election on behalf of Donald Trump, and the effect of their efforts are incalculable. There should be no dispute that there was and continues to be a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy. However, the Mueller report has stated there was no collusion. There are almost certainly other behaviors worthy of impeachment that should be investigated, but if Mueller couldn’t find collusion then there likely is none. We are going to have to defeat this President through the electoral process. The cavalry isn’t coming, and the Republicans were never going to save us. This isn’t 1974. Howard Baker and his party are dead. It’s time for liberals to come together and provide a real alternative to four more years of…whatever the hell this has been. Mueller was never going to make the argument for us, so we’re going to have to make the argument ourselves.

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