Mueller Time Again

When Attorney General William Barr - whom everybody keeps calling "Bob Barr," confusing him with Bob Mueller and ironically naming a former Republican congressman from Georgia who supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton - released the Mueller report (with redactions) on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, we found out some interesting facts.  First Trump campaign officials made overtures to Russian nationals, some of whom were believed to be Americans because they contacted them through the Internet. (The Russians pretending to be Americans were sending out anti-Hillary propaganda and operating out of building in  St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg, Russia, not St., Petersburg, Florida.)  Robert Mueller's report offers a caveat that, while there were many contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians while the Kremlin was hacking computers, including that infamous June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and Russians operatives over possible "dirt" on the opposition, there was no agreement of collusion between the two parties.  There was no collusion . . . but only because there's no evidence that Paul Manafort and a Putin operative met at a hotel in Prague or Bratislava or wherever and hashed out a plan to sabotage Hillary Clinton.

"While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign," Mueller wrote, "the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal. And our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting and WikiLeaks' release of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign-finance violation."

Trump also tried to have Mueller fired or at least reined in, and he even asked then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withdraw his recusal.  Sessions may be a bigot, but he's not dishonorable; he refused to listen to Trump.  ("Death before dishonor," as they say down in Sessions' native South.)  Many more White House officials stopped Trump from committing any act that could be perceived as a crime; in instances when they failed to do so, Trump himself didn't commit a criminal act only because he didn't know what the hell he was doing.  Because justice was not obstructed - mainly because Trump himself never actually tried to stop Mueller, preferring that someone stop Mueller for him - Mueller decided there wasn't enough evidence to accuse Trump of obstructing justice, but because of all the obvious examples of how Trump wished to impeded the investigation, that was why he could not exonerate Trump either.

Barr has since declared that Trump has been cleared, twisting the facts to suit Trump's argument while leaving out all of the evidence and the charges pointing in a different direction.  Trump, in fact, figured that the jig was up when Trump, upon hearing the Mueller would investigate Russian interference in the election, said, "Oh, my God.  This is terrible.  This is the end of my Presidency.  I'm f--ked."

This is all bad news . . . for the Democrats.

What???  The intent of the Mueller report is to avoid the issue of accusing Trump of any wrongdoing; rather, it is meant to provide Congress a guide for how to proceed.  He wrote that there should be a process where the evidence is weighed, the charges are made through Congress rather than through an indictment (you apparently can't indict a sitting President), and the accused defends himself.  But with enough cherry-picked conclusions to allow Trump, his supporters, and the whole goddamned Republican Party (one honorable exception: Mitt Romney) to claim exoneration at a time when most Americans don't have the stomach for a Watergate-type investigation, the Democrats have two choices, and either way they could give Trump an advantage in the 2020 elections.  If they investigate Trump in the House and possibly vote on impeachment, it will anger the Republican base and turn off swing voters more interested in health care and living-wage jobs than shenanigans in the White House.  If they don't investigate, they let Trump get away with everything he's done up to now . . . and will do later.

I've been told that the Democrats can focus on the issues for 2020 and still investigate Trump - "walk and chew gum at the same time" - but this is a party that famously blows it when faced with dealing with Republican scandals.  The Iran-contra affair should have been a boon for Democrats in the 1988 presidential election, but it was their third straight loss despite Vice President Bush, who won the Presidency over Michael Dukakis, having had more to do with that scandal than he was willing to admit.  How far back do you want to go?  The Teapot Dome oil scandal that occurred under President Harding and was uncovered after Harding's death in office in 1923 put Republicans in an embarrassing position going into 1924, but they kept the Presidency after the Democrats took 103 ballots at their convention to nominate one John W. Davis, an esteemed diplomat, to oppose President Coolidge, who won a full term.  (To be fair, Coolidge had nothing to do with the Teapot Dome.)  And those scandals were nothing compared to the Trump White House, a scandal in and of itself; the Teapot Dome scandal involved illegal profiteering on government oilfields and Iran-contra was an earnest attempt by President Reagan at détente with the Ayatollah Khomeini gone awry when renegades in his own National Security Council hijacked it to benefit right-wing mercenaries in Central America.

What we have going on now is even more serious than Watergate.  If the Democrats can't figure out how to capitalize on this level of corruption while still promoting a positive agenda for 2020, then they're finished as a party.

Less mentioned but just as important is the finding that the Russians tried (successfully, alas) to sow division, influence voters, and promote chaos and discord in the 2016 presidential election, interfering in what Mueller called a "sweeping and systematic fashion."  Even if Trump had lost, as was expected, Russia would have still divided people enough to make a Hillary Clinton Presidency a nightmare for Hillary herself.  Maybe the Russians weren't involved with WikiLeaks as much or as closely as suspected, and maybe the Democratic National Committee should have gotten a better firewall for their servers,  but even the most die-hard Julian Assange fan or the most ardent Jill Stein voter (again, I voted for Dr. Stein out of a personal dislike for Hillary that goes back long before Russian interference in our elections was an issue) has to admit that Vladimir Putin was up to something.  After all the evidence of Russian malfeasance not involving collusion or obstruction of justice, there's no other conclusion anyone can come to.  

As I believe I said once before on this blog, the twenty-teens have been a disastrous decade for the nation.  It began with Citizens United and is ending with citizens divided, with all sorts of social, political and cultural failures in between.  And no one has been able to get away with so much and profit over the polarization of Americans than Donald J. Trump.  How his Presidency unfolds and what ultimately happens with it could tear this country up eve n more.  Or it could be a catharsis preceding a rebirth and renewal of America.  On this Holy Saturday, I'm not optimistic of the latter possible outcome coming to pass. 

You Don't Fit the Suit

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez (below) said he was going to do something about Trump when he took over his party's chairmanship, and today he filed a suit against the Trump campaign, the Russian government, Wikileaks, and Paul Manafort for hacking the DNC's e-mail server and releasing those unflattering e-mails about Hillary Clinton that Perez says tipped the scales for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Wait a minute - I thought he said he was going to do something about Trump.

So let me see if I have this straight.  The Democrats are suing numerous entities on charges of a conspiracy that Robert Mueller has not yet proven existed, with little thought toward coming up with a message that will resonate with voters in this year's midterm elections, and they're going to spend exorbitant amounts of money - even as the national committee struggles to keep the party from going bankrupt - on this suit instead of on support for Democratic candidates and for get-out-the-vote operations in November . . . and they're doing it to send a message to the Russians and warn them not to tamper with the midterms (a problem state election boards should be doing something about) and also to fire up a Democratic base to vote for candidates in the general election who more often than not will be candidates favored by the Clintons while the party tries to stop progressives in state and local primaries - even, I believe, in states and districts where progressives can actually win - and continues purging progressives from positions of power.  

Does this all make sense to you?  Because it sure doesn't make sense to me.

Even more nonsensical is how the DNC has a lot of damn gall to sue anyone for rigging the system when the DNC itself was so good at rigging the 2016 primaries and caucuses to prevent Martin O'Malley from gaining any traction and to prevent Bernie Sanders from getting anything with the traction he actually gained.  One progressive by the name of Amir Amini summed up this hypocrisy on Twitter quite nicely: "So the DNC is suing a foreign country for being unfair to the Hillary Clinton campaign in an election in which the DNC was caught undermining democracy itself, violating its own rules and colluding with the [Clinton] campaign and the [mainstream media] to stop Bernie."

And Martin.

Next time the DNC wants to rig a primary process and collude with the press and a corporate presidential campaign to put the least winnable presidential candidate forward in the general election, maybe they should consider getting a better firewall for their server.   

Also, DNC factotums should think twice before firing off any e-mails that may make someone like Hillary "look bad."

But then, Hillary didn't need any help with that.

Many progressives seem to agree that this suit is a way for the Democratic establishment, which backed Hillary Clinton to the hilt, to get back at those who stood between Hillary and the White House while continuing to refuse to acknowledge that it was a mistake to nominate her for President in the first place.  In other words, they're trying to . . . exact revenge?  Oh no, you don't, DNC!  After you screwed my candidate, you don't get to avenge being screwed yourself!  You don't have to leggo my Eggo, but keep your filthy hands off my Pop-Tarts! ;-)    

The Crash Years

The United States is the Howard Cosell of nations. That is, we're so wrapped up in our own self-importance that we have no idea how much the rest of the world hates us, at least until we elect a dim-bulb conservative to be our President - then we get a sample of such antipathy.

Ironically, Donald Trump is causing antipathy among European nations for having no idea how important we are to them.  He's had to have Cabinet members like Defense Secretary James Mattis, quickly becoming the jewel in the tin crown of an administration (though I'm willing to give Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the benefit of the doubt for now, and new national security adviser H.R. McMaster looks to be a sensible guy), assure European leaders that the Trumpster will not pull back from the NATO alliance in the face of Russian expansion.  Oh yeah, and we're not out to grab Iraqi oil either.  

Also, Vice President Mike Pence went to Munich over the weekend to reassure fellow NATO members that the alliance is strong.  The fact that he's a heartbeat away from ultimate power couldn't possibly have reassured the Europeans, though, because whereas Trump is a vulgarian, Pence is just a rube.  He denies climate science and evolution, and he tried to regulate women and preserve legalized homophobia as governor of Indiana.  European leaders tend to be rather sophisticated, like a gourmet meal.  Mike Pence is the political equivalent of ham and raisin sauce. 

While the United States tries to avoid a collision with its own allies (can you really call them "friends"?), the Democratic Party is trying to avoid an internal crackup - a crackup that, I believe, is as inevitable as Hillary Clinton's perpetual campaign for the Presidency if Clinton stooge Tom Perez is chosen as the Democratic National Committee's (DNC's) chairman.  Perez will undoubtedly push the party toward the Clintons' corporate agenda and split the party down the middle.  Diana Price of Inquisitr.com made this point quite acidly in a recent column in which she also noted that, while the Russian government may very well have colluded with the Trump campaign, the Democratic e-mails uncovered, whether leaked by the Russians or by WikiLeaks acting alone, showed how the party establishment favored Hillary and was pulling every possible trick to ensure her nomination at the expense of other candidates, including Martin O'Malley and the front-running anti-Hillary, Bernie Sanders.

"It's the height of hypocrisy," Price wrote, "for the corporate Democrats and the DNC to complain about election manipulation when the DNC emails leaked verify that the DNC - and former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in particular - was gaming the primaries for Hillary Clinton."  Not only were debates limited, but - and this kills me - there was widespread voter disenfranchisement by reducing the number of polling sites in some areas and many voters were purged from the primary and caucus registers. Among other things.  Now that the election is over, Hillary backers in the party establishment are not only unrepentant, they keep ignoring O'Malley and disrespecting Sanders.  They even got angry at Sanders for proposing that less expensive Canadian drugs be legalized for importation into the United States, a bill amendment that every Republican and also thirteen Senate Democrats - including the heir apparent to the Hillary faction, New Jersey senator Cory Booker - refused to support.  Also, Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison. the "Sanders Democrat" in the DNC chairmanship race, has actually demanded that Sanders give his mailing list to the party establishment, which would most certainly be against the wishes of Sanders supporters.

So, imagine what will happen if Perez is chosen as the party chairman?   

So, even if the Russians worked in concert with the Trump campaign - and that is a very serious charge, and one that is grounds for impeachment should it be proven - that doesn't change the fact that whoever leaked these e-mails only proved that the Democratic establishment, by trying to silence the anti-Hillary members of their party and getting them to hold their noses and vote for Hillary in November, is more to blame for Trump's victory than the Kremlin.  If Sanders or O'Malley had been the Democratic presidential nominee and WikiLeaks or the Russians or the Trump campaign or whomever found evidence that the Democratic primary process was fair and clean and that rank-and-file Democrats were happy with the nominee, there would have been nothing for Trump to capitalize on, and, likely thus, no Trump victory.     

Price sums things up nicely:

"With the huge grassroots following behind Bernie Sanders, do you really want to push that argument that Sanders is not someone you want helping shape the Democratic Party, and, in fact, Sanders is someone who offers voters an alternative party to Democrats? This is yet another example of the arrogant thinking by the DNC that voters have to choose either their chosen corporate Democrat juiced into lobbyist interests or choose a Republican. Apparently, the DNC and establishment Democrats don’t realize they are promoting a mass exodus and the demise of their own party with that argument and are incapable of learning their lessons."

A Democratic National Committee chairman who serves the interests of the Clintons rather than the interests of the rank-and-file party members will surely trigger such a mass exodus the same way Whig squeamishness over slavery triggered a defection of its northern and western members to the nascent Republican Party in the 1850s.

At which point Martin O'Malley will do what Abraham Lincoln did in 1856 - tell his old party to screw themselves and join a new party, in the present case a party that Sanders will have already formed.