Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

Apres L’acquittement

Most significantly, there is little indication that anything that has happened in the last weeks has done in any way moved any Republican Senator towards voting to convict and remove Trump from office following his inevitable impeachment by the House. Even the initial concerns raised by Republican Senators like Mitt Romney of Utah have faded away as the inquiry has continued. For this reason, it remains almost certain that Trump will be acquitted on essentially a party line vote by the Senate.

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Republicans No Longer Concern Themselves with Governing

In addition to using the presidency to pursue his twin goals of enriching himself and his close family while staying in power, Trump has emerged as a kind of gadfly in chief. His Twitter feed and public appearances frequently include criticisms of other elected officials, observations about how bad various problems are, crackpot theories about who is to blame and speculation about what might happen in the future. In this regard, Trump sounds much more like an outsider, albeit a cranky, angry one with a tenuous relationship with reality, rather than a president who has the ability to address these problems. In an odd way, Trump has responded to being one of the most powerful men in the world, by retreating to a self-imposed powerlessness.

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Donald Trump at the World Series

It should also be remembered that while baseball touts itself as America’s pastime, it is not equally beloved by all demographic groups. Baseball fans skew whiter, older and more male than the overall American population, although the sport is extremely popular with some Latinos in the US, notably Dominicans. Moreover, not everybody can afford World Series tickets that cost hundreds of dollars. This was reflected in the crowd at the game on Sunday night. It was an affluent, older, white, male crowd watching the game the day after a despised terrorist was killed by the US. This should have been a home run for President Trump, instead it was a humiliation.

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Trump and the Return of the Foreign Policy Establishment

The Trump presidency has pushed many Democrats not so much to the right, but towards supporting the foreign policy establishment of the last half century or so. While the trauma of the Trump presidency has made any comfortable alternative seem better, it does not follow that returning to the foreign policy status quo is the best approach. There is a reason why Trump’s promises to extricate America from foreign wars and his “America First” policy, despite, and for some because of, its ugly anti-Semitic pedigree, resonated so much with the electorate. By 2016, most Americans had realized that the foreign policy establishment was no longer serving them well. Accordingly, while structures and institutions of American foreign policy need to be restored, returning to policy choices of that establishment is a questionable electoral and governing approach for any Democrat.

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The Long Reach of the Ukraine Scandal

What was once a question of whether or not the President sought to withhold military assistance for an ally unless they agreed to investigate Joe Biden, is now a scandal about corruption within the Trump administration that is so widespread that impeachment seems like only the beginning of a long judicial process. It is a scandal that ties together the avarice and greed of Trump and his cronies with their disturbing willingness to pursue policies that support Russia’s interests while simultaneously revealing their continued contempt for America election law, mores and processes.

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Mitch McConnell’s Dilemma

There is no question McConnell possesses a keen legislative mind that is not hindered by any notions of integrity or consistency. This approach has allowed him to thrive and succeed as the leader of his party in the Senate, but he is now being tested like never before. The dilemma McConnell faces is that as the evidence against Trump mounts, and as public opinion begins to turn even more firmly against the President, McConnell may have to choose between his President and his Senate majority.

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Donald Trump Might Survive Impeachment, but will the Republican Party

As the impeachment inquiry heats up it still remains unlikely that Donald Trump will be removed from office by the Senate, but the motivations and goals of some of the major interests are becoming clear. Donald Trump, as has been the case for much of his presidency, is in survival mode. The crisis might be more acute now, but the basic framework is the same. Trump must, and will, fight with all his power to stay in office because removal by the Senate leads to humiliation, a lifetime of legal hassles and very possibly jail time for him and several members of his family.

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Impeachment Revisited-Four Things We Know and Two We Don’t

The biggest political question is what impact a House impeachment and Senate acquittal would have on the presidential election. There is no way to tell, but we know that impeachment proceedings would last well into 2020, and the political impact well beyond that, thus making it very likely that the campaign would not primarily be about climate change, health care, education, guns or any other issues that are good for the Democrats, but about impeachment. That might help the Democrats, but it seems apparent that there is no guarantee of that. In fact, it may be precisely what Trump wants.

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Three Takeaways from the Democratic Debate

These debates have a modest impact on the nominating process because there are so many debates and because the first votes will not be cast for more than four months, but debates provide some insight into the state of the race and what we might see in the coming months. The race now looks like one where the frontrunner is flawed and perhaps out of touch ideologically with both the Democratic Party and a majority of the American people, but also where second tier candidates are struggling to break through in such a crowded field, and where the progressive vote is largely split between Sanders and Warren. Some of this may sort itself out in the next few months, but the large and impressive field, could make this a long primary season.

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Three Questions that Should be Asked at the Debate-But Won’t

On Thursday night, ten Democratic candidates will gather for the third official debate of this primary season. This debate will only be one night and include only ten candidates, so it should be smoother and more useful for potential voters. However, it is still likely that much of the debate will be taken up by detailed discussions of policy proposals on issues like health care, gun regulations or the environment. These discussions are worthwhile, interesting and give a good sense of what the candidates believe, but the emphasis on details belies the reality that presidents don’t make policy. They are merely part of a process along with congress and in many cases the states and the courts. These detailed discussions of policies seem like the right subject for the debate, but there are other bigger picture questions that are probably more important. Below are three questions that Democratic voters should be asking their candidates, but that might not be raised on Thursday night.

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The Danger of the Insider Resume Candidate

When told that Biden, or any other candidate, is electable, we should remember that while some broad trends about electability, such as the danger of Democratic insider resume candidates, can be discerned, electability is often a very slippery concept, that usually also falls victim to intellectual laziness and tautology. Candidates are electable because they win, so once a president is elected a backstory about electability is filled in. For example, we now “know” that Hillary Clinton was unelectable, but if 80,000 or so votes in a few key states had gone differently in 2016, the pundits would have explained that Hillary Clinton was electable because of her experience, centrist policies and calm temperament and that Donald Trump’s bigotry and mental instability scared off too many voters and made him unelectable. The problem with this approach to electability is that it is not predictive. It is not a theory; rather, it is essentially just political kibitzing both before and after the election.

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The State of the Race as Summer Winds Down

In the last few weeks, Seth Moulton, John Hickenlooper, Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee have dropped out of the Democratic primary campaign for president. Hickenlooper and Inslee both had resumes that in previous elections could have made them frontrunners for the nomination, but their campaigns never got any traction this year. Both also immediately turned their attention to other elections. Inslee will seek a third term as governor of Washington while Hickenlooper will run for the Senate in Colorado against Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. Moulton, like Eric Swalwell a few weeks earlier, has decided to run for his safe congressional seat rather than continue a presidential campaign he had almost no chance of winning. Gillibrand will return to the Senate.

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Right Wing Fear of 1619

While some have lauded the series, many conservatives have been critical of The 1619 Project, asserting that it is racially divisive, partisan or forces them to confront aspects of American past they would rather continue ignoring. These conservatives have also accused the New York Timesof engaging in propaganda rather than news reporting. While the 1619 series is not news reporting in the sense of telling readers about the events of the day, or of even analyzing the events of the day. It is a longform essay of the kind that we see in many newspapers that are seeking to be a little more interesting and yes, economically viable, in a time when media is changing. However, it is not the length of the series or the fact that it examines historical events that infuriates conservatives. Rather, it is that the 1619 series challenges shibboleths on which the US was founded, and is a reminder that the white supremacy that is rearing its nefarious and pathetic head once again in places like Charlottesville, El Paso and the White House, has long been part of American life.

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Democracy and the Second Amendment

The debate around gun regulations has an unusual dynamic. Supporters of gun regulations make arguments around public health, saving lives and data that shows that limiting access to guns reduces murders and mass killings. Opponents give lip service to opposing these points, but more frequently refer to the Second Amendment, which they interpret to mean that the state cannot pass any laws limiting access to guns. Gun advocates use the Second Amendment not only as a rationale for their views, but as a way so squash any debate on the subject, particularly those grounded in data. Seeing gun advocates cite the Second Amendment in the face of every guard arguments brings up memories of Charlie Brown’s response when confronted with the dismal state of his baseball team.

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State Facilitated Domestic Terrorism in Trump’s America

The typical mass shooter in the US is a heavily armed white man who is angry about something. The specific roots of that anger are not always the same, but in many cases the targets of that anger are Latinos, African Americans, Jews, Muslims, LGBT people or some combination of those groups. These acts of domestic terrorism are increasingly not simply meant to kill random Americans while frightening all of us, but to kill specific groups of Americans while sending a message to members of those groups that we are no longer safe in the US.

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American History 2020

As the 2020 election approaches, we will inevitably encounter more commentary reminding us how the future of the US is at stake. That is clearly true, because if Donald Trump is reelected the pace of democratic rollback will be accelerated, perhaps irrevocably, while a Democratic victory may just reverse that rollback and make it possible to rebuild a cohesive and democratic country. However, despite the future being at stake, the election itself will largely be a debate about the past.

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The Dangerous Buffoonery of Donald Trump

Sinclair Lewis may or may not have written that "(w)hen fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Regardless of who said it first, that sentiment has captured the revulsion many Americans have long felt when far right leaders cloak their bigotry, cruelty and anti-democratic policies in false patriotism and Christianity. As the tragedy of the Trump administration continues, it is evident that Lewis’s sentiment, while still resonant, should be modified somewhat. Under Trump, democratic rollback is wrapped in a clown suit and is carrying a smartphone.

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The Debates-Who Won, Who Lost and Who Needs to Drop Out

The Democratic presidential debates on Wednesday and Thursday nights were without precedent. Twenty potential nominees, which did not even represent the full field, debated with each other over the course of two evenings. This field of twenty will be winnowed in the next months with a nominee emerging somewhere between April and mid-July of 2020. The debates are only one component of what will be a long campaign, but they are the most important and high profile to date.

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The Disingenuity of Robert Mueller

The consensus that has emerged from Mueller’s statement his that rather than indict the President, he has given Congress a mandate to pursue impeachment. This allows Mueller to present himself like an institutionalist, suggesting that our Constitutional processes can kick into gear and right the wrongs of the Trump campaign administration. The problem with this ostensibly patriotic notion is that anybody who has been paying attention knows that congress will never remove Trump from office because there will never be 67 votes in the GOP controlled Senate to convict him. Thus, by pushing the responsibility to Congress, all Mueller really accomplishes is to create a political conundrum for Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House and leader of the Democratic Party in Washington. If Mueller was not aware of this, it is not because he eschews politics, but because he is appallingly ignorant. For that reason, it is likely he was aware of the consequence of what he was doing, which raises the question of why he did it.

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The Real Electabliity Questions

Over the last few election cycles we have learned pretty definitively that we know a lot less about electability than we think we do. Our last two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, were both viewed as axiomatically unelectable when they began their campaigns for the White House. Moreover, most candidates have both positive and negative and electoral traits so their overall electability becomes a post facto assessment rather than having any predictive value. For example, in 2016 Hillary Clinton was very electable until she wasn’t. Similarly, had John Kerry beat George W. Bush in 2004, the punditry would have explained that as a war hero with years of experience he was the perfect candidate, but he lost narrowly, so we have been told he was a northeaster liberal with limited charisma and therefore a week candidate. Given this, when somebody tells you they think a particular primary candidate is electable, what they usually mean is simply that they are supporting that candidate.

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