Posts by Delaware Dem

Josh Marshall says the DNC race cannot devolve into score settling.

It seems to me that Democrats are now involved in a pointless proxy battle between what we might call a "deep causes" explanation of the 2016 loss (strategy, ideology, candidate) and one focused on illegitimate outside interventions: Russian hacking and subversion or James Comey's week-out intervention in the presidential race. Any effort to hold these two explanations as alternatives, as though one obviates the other seems either dishonest, pointless, distracting or simply silly. […] Everybody who wants to be vindicated by Clinton's defeat won't stand for anything that doesn't place the matter 100% on her shoulders and those who supported her. Much the same applies to Clinton's historically large popular vote margin for someone who lost the presidency. There's no reason you can't trumpet the fact that Clinton was the popular choice while also noting that consequences all stand or fall by engineering wins through the math and logic of the electoral college. Which brings us to the other clarifying point. Hillary Clinton will never be the Democratic presidential nominee again. The intricacies of her emails or James Comey's decisions about the investigation into them will never be campaign issues again. Whatever you think about the Clinton Foundation will never matter again in a presidential campaign. That means that figuring out the future of the Democratic party just has nothing to do with any of those things. I'm tempted to say Russian hacking won't happen again. But frankly, I'm not so sure. They already appear to be pulling the same thing with Angela Merkel. In any case, external subversion, cybersecurity just belongs to a separate conversation and realm. The truth is it shouldn't have been close enough for these outside interventions to have allowed Trump to win. But it was. Was that because Clinton was a terrible candidate and Sanders should have been the nominee? Maybe. But I doubt it. At a minimum I don't think it is so clear as to be treated as a given. Clinton always had serious liabilities - some tied to her personally and others of historical circumstance. Sanders lacked many of Clinton's liabilities. He also had numerous other liabilities that no money or real adversary was ever put up to exploring and exploiting. But again, personalities ... I guess it's somewhat more possible that Sanders will run for President than Clinton. But I highly doubt either will.

Hear Hear! It is time to move on from this fight. I know, I am one to talk, right?

Jonathan Chait: “Donald Trump’s surprising (though not unforeseeable) election has provoked a wave of fear and anger among his opponents. But much of it has been misdirected into denial or despair rather than effective channels of political mobilization. The clearest symbol of this misplaced energy is the campaign to persuade members of the Electoral College to deny Donald Trump the presidency.” “The first thing to note about this effort is that it is utterly hopeless… Second, and more important, denying Trump the presidency through an Electoral College coup is not a procedurally legitimate response… The final problem is that the campaign to prevent Trump’s election has turned the hopeless Electoral College gambit into a substitute for political organizing.” “But there are better measures of horror at Trump and Trumpism than support for a hopeless and questionable tactic. The correct response should involve the protection and engagement of normal politics.”

Matt Yglesias:

Democrats have a deep, dark worry that they can’t express publicly. After long, frustrating years of trying and failing to get congressional Republicans to agree to do some fiscal stimulus to boost the economy, they’re worried that Trump is now going to get the cooperation they couldn’t. Enormous tax cuts will widen the deficit and stimulate the economy, and the cuts will be paired with a substantial infrastructure program that further boosts growth. “Well, sometimes you have to prime the pump,” Donald Trump told Time magazine, explaining blithely how he plans to brush aside years of conservative anti-Keynesian rhetoric. The hypocrisy here is truly stunning, though in a sense conservatives have consistently (since the Reagan Era) adhered to the view that big deficits are good if and only if there’s a Republican in the White House. But, beyond hypocrisy, the bad news for America — albeit good news for Democratic Party politicians — is that it won’t work. Which is too bad, because there is reason to believe stimulus could work and help raise wages and put a few million extra people back to work. It’s just that to make it work Trump would have to make some additional changes that there’s no indication he wants to make.

The RNC “is overseeing an expansive whip operation designed to lock down Donald Trump’s Electoral College majority and ensure that the 306 Republican electors cast their votes for the president-elect,” Politico reports. “Two RNC sources familiar with the effort said the committee — with the assistance of state Republican parties and the Trump campaign — has been in touch with most of the GOP electors multiple times, and has concluded that only one is a risk to cast a vote against Trump on Dec. 19, when the Electoral College meets.” Which is why I have been dashing any liberal or progressive dreams that somehow the GOP electors will vote their conscience. These people are usually GOP partisans and party regulars. So they don't have one.

The Economist: “These latest revelations have probably not changed any minds at all. Republicans [and certain leftists] who hate Mrs Clinton are still delighted that she was defeated. Democrats who loathe and fear Mr Trump have one more reason to dislike him. Outside Washington, red-blooded Americans who mostly rather dislike President Vladimir Putin, according to polls, seem to be shrugging off the latest allegations: President-elect Trump was loudly cheered by spectators when he turned up in Baltimore on December 10th to watch the Army-Navy football game, an annual pageant of patriotism.” “And that is what is, or should be, so unsettling. Russian interference in elections across the Western world is like a nasty virus, attacking the body politic. Normally, America is protected by powerful, bipartisan immune responses against such a menace. It also boasts some of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence and cyber-defenses, and when spooks tell the Republicans and Democrats who lead Congress and sit on the House and Senate intelligence committees of hostile acts by a foreign power, love of country generates a unified response. That immune response is not kicking in this time.” “This squabble does matter. When the next president of America takes his oath of office in January, officers of Russian intelligence can savour a historic win. And that astonishing, appalling fact has divided, not united, the two parties that run the world’s great democracy. That should be enough to unsettle anyone.”