Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.
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This Week in How Bad Can It Get?
As a writer of horror fiction, it's in my nature to look for how bad things can get, and then to spin it to be a little bit worse. Naturally, without trying, I'm doing the same when considering the prospects for a Donald Trump presidency. It's easy, unfortunately, to imaging things being very, very bad.
In the New York Times, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt pondered the same question, and they're not optimistic. They write:
Among the unwritten rules that have sustained American democracy are partisan self-restraint and fair play. For much of our history, leaders of both parties resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage, effectively underutilizing the power conferred by those institutions. There existed a shared understanding, for example, that anti-majoritarian practices like the Senate filibuster would be used sparingly, that the Senate would defer (within reason) to the president in nominating Supreme Court justices, and that votes of extraordinary importance — like impeachment — required a bipartisan consensus. Such practices helped to avoid a descent into the kind of partisan fight to the death that destroyed many European democracies in the 1930s.
Yet norms of partisan restraint have eroded in recent decades. House Republicans’ impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 abandoned the idea of bipartisan consensus on impeachment. The filibuster, once a rarity, has become a routine tool of legislative obstruction. As the political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have shown, the decline of partisan restraint has rendered our democratic institutions increasingly dysfunctional. Republicans’ 2011 refusal to raise the debt ceiling, which put America’s credit rating at risk for partisan gain, and the Senate’s refusal this year to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee — in essence, allowing the Republicans to steal a Supreme Court seat — offer an alarming glimpse at political life in the absence of partisan restraint.
In other words, they're arguing, since Republicans control Congress and--thanks to their unprecedented obstruction--will get a fifth seat on a divided Supreme Court, and also control the majority of statehouses in the country, it will be incumbent upon them to uphold the norms that maintain our democracy. But they've already demonstrated, over more than a decade, their rejection of many of those norms. They've also demonstrated, throughout 2016, an unwillingness to stand up to Trump. None of that bodes well for our republic.
It's not a done deal. Yet. But we'll need to be vigilant in watching what happens, and outspoken in standing up for civil rights, for decency, and for the democratic process. Given their recent history, we can't count on elected Republicans to join that effort, which will make the work even harder. But it has to be done.
Side Note: When you're thinking about an authoritarian regime, or a dictator, what's one of the first things that comes to mind? A private security force, a Royal Guard, something like that? Us, too. So, there's that.
This Week in the Economy
Donald Trump is inheriting an economy that's thriving, and moving in the right direction for all Americans. There are no indications that he'll continue the policies that are growing it, though; instead, he's giving every sign of pushing for huge tax cuts for the rich, increasing the opportunity and wealth gaps, and forcing spending cuts that will slash necessary services for those left behind.
Economist Robert Samuelson took a look this week at President Obama's greatest accomplishment--one that Trump may try to undo--but even if he can alter the future, he can't change the past, and in the past, Obama saved the country. Samuelson writes, "There is no mystery about Barack Obama’s greatest presidential achievement: He stopped the Great Recession from becoming the second Great Depression. True, he had plenty of help, including from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and from the top officials at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. But if Obama had made one wrong step, what was a crushing economic slump could have become something much worse."
He reminds us just how bad the situation was when Obama took office, and runs through some of the decisions Obama made that changed the course of events. We should remember this, and thank the outgoing president for his calm, cool nature. A Trump presidency will be very different.
This Week in Who to Blame
There are lots of people to blame for the election of Donald Trump. People who voted for him, people who didn't vote, Russians, fake news sites, people who believe fake news... but now we know specifically the two people who probably made the biggest difference, thanks to investigative reporting by the Washington Post. The piece describes a series of phone calls between the FBI and the Justice Department:
Justice officials laid out a number of arguments against releasing the letter. It violated two long-standing policies. Never publicly discuss an ongoing investigation. And never take an action affecting a candidate for office close to Election Day. Besides, they said, the FBI did not know yet what was in the emails or if they had anything to do with the Clinton case.
Remarkably, the country’s two top law enforcement officials never spoke. As Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch could have given the FBI director an order to not send the letter. But Lynch and her advisers feared that Comey would not listen. He seemed to feel strongly about updating Congress on his sworn testimony about the Clinton investigation. Instead, they tried to relay their concerns through the Justice official whom the FBI had called.
Their efforts failed. Within 24 hours of the first FBI call, Comey’s letter was out.
So those are the two most responsible--James Comey and Loretta Lynch. Why did Comey decide to break policy and release the letter, and why didn't Lynch stop him? The Post's Paul Waldman explains:
One of the points that comes through in Horwitz’s account is that both Comey and Lynch were consumed with fear that they’d be criticized by the Republican outrage machine. Comey worried that if he didn’t immediately go public with the fact that the FBI was looking at these emails, then Republicans would say he was covering up an investigation in order to help Clinton. And Lynch worried that if she ordered Comey to adhere to department policy and not go public, then Republicans would say she was covering up an investigation in order to help Clinton.
So both of them failed to do their jobs, Comey with an act of commission and Lynch with an act of omission. You can sympathize with the pressure they were under and say that hindsight is always 20/20, but the fact is that they failed, and it was because they didn’t have the courage to do the right thing. The next time you shake your head at the sight of Republicans yelling into cameras or talk radio microphones about how terribly angry they are at whatever they’re supposed to be angry at today, remember how politically useful all that noise can be.
That was the turning point, he explains, because emails.
Why can we say that Comey’s decision to go public made the difference? It came at the tail end of an endless media campaign to convince the public that there was literally no issue in the world more important than whether Clinton used the wrong email account — not the economy, not terrorism, not health care, not climate change, nothing. One analysis showed that network newscasts devoted three times as much attention to the email story as to all policy issues combined. By the time the campaign reached its end, the one word Americans thought of when they heard the name Hillary Clinton was “email” (just look at these shocking word clouds from Gallup if you doubt).
Most of them couldn’t tell you what the email story was actually about, but they knew it had something to do with some kind of corruption or other, as Trump kept saying. And any story that had the word “email” in it — like the Russian hacking of John Podesta’s emails, which had absolutely nothing to do with what email Clinton used at the State Department — got mashed in the public’s mind into one big amalgam.
I’m not going to relitigate the email question here. But that was the context in which Comey and Lynch made their decisions. They knew full well that when Comey violated departmental policy to go public with this news, it would result in an explosion of “EMAAAAAIIILLLS!” coverage across every major news outlet in the United States, which it did. And copious evidence suggests that the race turned right then, as Comey’s message reinforced exactly the argument Trump was making about Clinton, late deciders swung toward him, and wavering Republicans came home to their party’s nominee.
Now the Republican outrage machine's biggest blowhard will take his seat in the Oval Office. It'll get worse before it gets better. We think Comey and Lynch deserve heaping helpings of coal in their stockings this year. The damage they've done to America is incalculable.
This Week in "Better is Good"
With one of the least intellectual, least intelligent, least well-spoken presidents ever about to take office, it's refreshing--if sad--to read a conversation between the very smart President Obama and Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of America's foremost public intellectuals. That's what we get in The Atlantic, and it's worth reading every word of. We won't see such an informed discussion of real issues coming from the Trump White House.
Here's a sample:
Coates: You’re supposed to be optimistic!
Obama: Well, I thought I was, but I’m not so optimistic as to think that you would ever be able to garner a majority of an American Congress that would make those kinds of investments above and beyond the kinds of investments that could be made in a progressive program for lifting up all people. So to restate it: I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader’s ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow. Now, we can debate the justness of that. But I feel pretty confident in that assessment politically. And, you know, I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now, and—
Coates: You think we could catch up?
Obama: We were able to make sure that it stayed fair for a long time and that children going forward were not encumbered by some of that same bias of the past, I think it would not take long at all, because we are a talented, resourceful people. Just play this out as a thought experiment: Imagine if you had genuine, high-quality early-childhood education for every child, and suddenly every black child in America—but also every poor white child or Latino [child], but just stick with every black child in America—is getting a really good education. And they’re graduating from high school at the same rates that whites are, and they are going to college at the same rates that whites are, and they are able to afford college at the same rates because the government has universal programs that say that you’re not going to be barred from school just because of how much money your parents have. So now they’re all graduating. And let’s also say that the Justice Department and the courts are making sure, as I’ve said in a speech before, that when Jamal sends his résumé in, he’s getting treated the same as when Johnny sends his résumé in.
Now, are we going to have suddenly the same number of CEOs, billionaires, etc., as the white community? In 10 years? Probably not, maybe not even in 20 years. But I guarantee you that we would be thriving, we would be succeeding. We wouldn’t have huge numbers of young African American men in jail. We’d have more family formation as college-graduated girls are meeting boys who are their peers, which then in turn means the next generation of kids are growing up that much better. And suddenly you’ve got a whole generation that’s in a position to start using the incredible creativity that we see in music, and sports, and frankly even on the streets, channeled into starting all kinds of businesses. I feel pretty good about our odds in that situation.
And my point has always been: We’re so far from that. Why are we even having the abstract conversation when we’ve got a big fight on our hands just to get strong, universal antipoverty programs and social programs in place, and we’re still fighting to make sure that basic antidiscrimination laws are enforced, not just at the federal level, by the way, but throughout government and throughout the private sector? And those are fights that we can win because—and this is where I do believe America has changed—the majority, not by any means 100 percent, but the majority of Americans believe in the idea of nondiscrimination. They believe in the idea that Jamal and Johnny should be treated equally. They believe in the idea that a child shouldn’t be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth. Now, in practice, in daily social interactions, etc., there may be all kinds of biases and prejudices that are unspoken, that people aren’t aware of, that affect who’s hired, and who gets loans, and how kids are treated in school. But it’s a powerful thing if you have on your side an idea that the overwhelming majority of people believe in because that’s how you can build a consensus that’s lasting. And that’s how you avoid an argument that “I’m being treated unfairly because you are treating somebody differently than me.” Everybody potentially can make the claim that we should all be treated fairly. As opposed to getting into arguments about, well, these folks have been treated fairly so now we’re going to be doing things that, very easily in the minds of a lot Americans feel like, “Now I’m being treated unfairly.”
This Week in What You Never Thought You'd See
Full Frontal's Samantha Bee sat down with a reformed Glenn Beck, who admits what we here at TWiA have long claimed--his rhetoric was dividing Americans, not uniting them. But Beck and Bee are united against Trumpism. Watch their bizarre mating ritual here.
This Week in America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM
America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM has apparently never heard the phrase "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." This week, he hit himself with the door about a dozen times during an hour-long press conference devoted to the results of his nonsensical birther "investigation," which "found," to absolutely no one's surprise, exactly what he wanted it to. President Obama's birth certificate, according to AMCSTM, is a forgery. We suppose the birth announcement in the August 13, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser was planted there, part of a decades-long conspiracy to elect--by overwhelming margins--a fraudulent president. Fiendishly clever, those Obamas.
Or mind-numbingly stupid, that AMCSTM. He can't leave soon enough.
This Week in Heroes
With the Trump administration taking over in a few weeks, we expect the news to rank highly on the bad-to-worse scale for some time to come. We're already tired of writing about the outrages Trump is inflicting on the country, and he hasn't even taken office yet. So we're going to do our best to pepper TWiA with stories about exceptional, inspiring heroes, whether human, canine, feline, or ursine. And we start this week with Cindy Stowell.
Cindy, a 41-year-old science content developer, snatched the Jeopardy championship away from a 7-time winner. Her episodes were recorded in August, but didn't air until December. Over the next 5 episodes, she kept winning, eventually racking up $105,803 before being beaten her 7th time out.
What Cindy, the Jeopardy producers, and Alex Trebek knew, but her competitors and the TV audience didn't, was that when Cindy auditioned for the show, she had Stage IV colon cancer. She knew she was dying, and she didn't want the money for herself--anything she won would be donated to cancer research. Thanks to her trivia genius, she was able to give away a nice chunk of change.
Cindy died on December 5, a week before her first episode aired.
Cindy did what she loved, and did a good thing with it, despite what must have seemed like an incredible obstacle. She's a hero.
This Week in Bears
The New York Times Magazine ran a feature on important figures who died in 2016. Included in that list was Pedals the Bear. We honor and appreciate Pedals, and remember him fondly.
A letter to the editor that ran in the New Jersey Herald this week was critical of NJ Gov. Chris Christie for the annual bear hunts he's approved while in office. It says, in part, "Six hundred thirty-six beautiful bears' lives were savagely taken by individuals who find amusement and pleasure in maiming and killing animals. Six hundred thirty-six majestic bears, who cherished their lives and families, just as we do ours, had their homes invaded and were killed by deadly archery weapons, muzzle-loaders and shotguns. Can you imagine the fear, the pain, the suffering?"
State Senator Ray Lesniak is trying to pass a bill to end the bear hunts, called Pedals' Law. If you live in New Jersey, please sign the petition and support the bill.
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Cartoonist Holly Hindle tackles difficult topics, like depression and anxiety--and she does it while drawing herself as a bear. Check out Bearly Functioning, her Tumblr.