This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Posted in: US Politics
Events in Afghanistan over the last few days have been a long time coming. They may, in fact, demonstrate how President Biden mishandled the drawdown of troops, but they are better understood as what may be the final chapter in an overly ambitious war that flummoxed American policy makers over two decades and four presidential administrations.
In recent weeks, the Republican Party has taken an even stranger, darker and more murderous approach to Covid. While their previous policies led directly to the deaths of Americans because they simply ignored the danger of Covid and resisted medical interventions from masks to social distancing to vaccines, current GOP policy essentially mandates that people directly or indirectly expose themselves to the virus and seeks to punish those who would like to prevent that.
The multiple sexual harassment allegations against Governor Cuomo and the detailed report substantiating these allegations and providing a fuller picture of the extent of Cuomo’s abusive and depraved behavior should disqualify him from continuing to hold public office. However, the entirety of Cuomo’s career, not just what appears to be its final inning, is a model for how the Democratic Party should not do politics in New York, or anywhere else.
Cutting back on activities to save the elderly, the most vulnerable and ourselves in the face of a genuine public health threat was one thing. Staying home in the middle of summer or not sending children to school in the fall because of the beliefs of a deeply deluded, uncaring, selfish and reactionary political party death cult hybrid is an entirely different issue.
Moreover, whether they truly believe this or are doing it for political reasons becomes less important with every passing day. If you perform ignorance, cult-membership, dishonesty and racism for half a decade, you become ignorant, part of a cult, dishonest and racist-and that is the plight of the Republican Party six months into the Biden presidency.
It was somehow appropriate that no sooner had President Biden finished a major speech about the American departure from Afghanistan before political crises erupted in two countries much closer to home. Recent events in Cuba and Haiti are unrelated and different from each other, but they are a reminder that regardless of the intentions of any functioning president, the US cannot ignore the rest of the world.
If the stories about Harris and her Chief of Staff being difficult to work with and occasionally treating other staff poorly are true, that would make her similar to almost every other elected official. A powerful politician not treating staff well is a dog bites man story. However, the questions of why it is being reported and who benefits from these stories is more important.
In 2018 Trump finally found his Roy Cohn, albeit something of a bloated goyishe knockoff of the original, in the person of William Barr. Barr, who Trump nominated to be Attorney General in late 2018 and was confirmed by the Senate in early 2019, was unusual among the members of Trump’s inner political circle and most trusted enablers in that he had impressive legal, professional and educational credentials.
Adams will still have to reckon with a City Council that will likely be to his left as well as two progressive citywide elected officials, Lander and Williams, who will advocate for positions on policing, budgeting and other issues well to the left of Adams. Adams can either find his way to compromising with the political actors or can spend the next four years fighting with his own party while accomplishing little.
The planet is burning; we are only now recovering from a pandemic that killed more American than World War II; mass shootings are a fact of life that too many Americans just shrug off; basic democratic rights to, among other things, vote are being threatened, but it is an obscure, and generally misunderstood academic theory that is dominating the news. This is happening not because a majority of Americans care about critical race theory, but because those who do are overrepresented in our undemocratic political system.
Hoax is an important word in the contemporary GOP lexicon. It is the political equivalent of Charlie Brown pleading with Schroeder “Tell your statistics to shut up!”
Manchin’s fantasy world also extends to a belief that the US Senate is the world’s greatest deliberative body and a serious place where well-meaning and thoughtful people with honest but legitimate disagreements work together to craft compromises and bipartisan legislation. It is difficult to believe that in 2021 any sentient American still believes that, but being sentient is, apparently, not a prerequisite for serving in the US Senate.
In the most recent conflict, it was Republican Christian voices who offered the most full throated and unequivocal support for Israel and corresponding lack of concern for Palestinians. The strongest pro-Palestinian voices, not surprisingly, came from left wing Democrats, but Jewish Democrats, including Nadler, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff and Congressman Adam Schiff offered more nuanced positions balancing concerns about Israeli security with Palestinian human rights.
From Putin’s perspective, this meeting will be very different than his interactions with Biden’s predecessor. Unlike Trump, Biden is not going to trust Putin’s word rather than the findings American intelligence agencies. Similarly, whereas Russia supported Trump and sought to help him in his campaigns in both 2016 and, less successfully, in 2020, Biden has never benefited from the Kremlin’s forays into American domestic politics. In short, Russia has lost a client in the White House and that will frame the entire summit. Accordingly, in addition to the myriad issues and tensions between the two countries, for Biden and his party, there is also a sense, among many around Biden, of there being unfinished business from the 2016 election, the SolarWinds hack in 2020 and the relatively new, but enduring and nefarious, ties between the Kremlin and the American far right. Accordingly, Biden’s primary message Putin should be that “there’s a new Sherriff in town.” That is the kind of message that is best delivered in person, but that also needs to be backed up with meaningful actions.
The problem the GOP faces is not so much that Kevin McCarthy is not well liked, but that none of their attacks on Joe Biden seem to be particularly effective, so a proxy fight between Biden and McCarthy would be a win for the Democrats.
Whatever efforts this administration can make to deescalate the conflict and end this current outbreak of violence must be balanced against the unfortunate reality that there are actors on both sides that have little or no incentive to deescalate and who likely benefit, at least in the short term, from the conflict.
It is possible that it may just take more time for Trump and his supporters to fade away, but it is more likely that, even if the Democrats hold on to their majority in the House, Trumpism will further consolidate its hold on the GOP and continue to be a major and deeply damaging part of American politics for the foreseeable future.
Apparently, the allegation against Giuliani is that he was paid by Ukrainian clients to persuade Donald Trump to fire Marie Yovanovich, the American ambassador to Ukraine, who Trump dismissed in May of 2019. Yovanovich had served in the foreign service for many years and was very broadly respected for her excellent work. However, in Ukraine her strong positions in support of that country in the face of Russian aggression, and her failure to go along with Trump’s hare brained and corrupt scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden, led to Trump firing her. Giuliani has denied all of these allegations while his former client, Donald Trump, with his usual eloquence, has described the investigation of Giuliani as “like, so unfair.”
Thus, the political magic of Joe Biden is that anything he proposes just sounds reasonable and moderate. In the first one hundred days of his presidency, Biden has been able to deploy that magic to move forward the most progressive domestic agenda of any American president since Lyndon Johnson well over fifty years ago. This has left the Republican Party unsure of the best strategy for attacking Biden, and therefore for the upcoming 2022 midterm election.
In the US, the court systems may sometimes function as a substitute for policy or politics, but as demonstrated in the trial of Derek Chauvin, it is a very poor substitute. By looking for justice from a legal system rather than solutions from a political system we all but ensure that the root problems will go unaddressed.