April 30, 2020

May 01, 2020

In America, we elect our lawmakers, and the winners are supposed to be supported by a majority of voters. Once elected, leaders from different parties are supposed to come to agreements about policy through informed debate. That system sometimes frustrates people who hold extreme views that they think should be at the heart of our laws. They can’t get what they want through the democratic process, because most people disagree with them. So they try to get their way by threats.

This is exactly what happened today in Michigan, where armed protesters stormed the statehouse. Legislators there were discussing whether to extend Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders past their expiration date at midnight tonight. To stop debate and get their way, men with guns paced the balcony above the lawmakers, some of whom had donned bullet-proof vests. Others, held back by the capitol police, tried to break into the legislative chamber.

Later in the day, Trump tried a more genteel version of the same intimidation. Republican leaders are angry that Democratic states have social welfare systems paid for by taxes, a system they insist hurts the country by redistributing wealth from those at the top of society—the “makers,” who are the ones that truly understand how an economy functions best—to the “takers,” who simply fritter money away. Until the coronavirus, there was little Republicans at the national level could do to bring Democratic state governments like those of New York, Massachusetts, and California to heel.

Now, though, states are reeling as the cratering economy has sapped the tax dollars that make up their main stream of revenue. They estimate they need $500 billion to tide them over until the economy picks back up. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested they should be forced into bankruptcy, which would permit federal judges, many of whom share the same ideology as Republican leaders, to choose which parts of their debt the states would be able to honor. According to former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, they have made it clear that they would not accept any new taxes under such a reordering, and that the first things on the chopping block would be social welfare programs.

Today, Trump tried a new tactic. He told reporters that he would be willing to consider funding for the states—he defines them as “Democrat states”-- but “if we do that we’re going to have to get something for it.”

This is, of course, the same sort of quid pro quo (I hate that term: it just means “something for something, as in, “I do something for you; you do something for me.”) Trump demanded from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. In that case, his effort to use the power of the federal government to force an ally to manufacture dirt on his opponent led to his impeachment for abuse of power.

The Senate acquitted him, but in a remarkably prescient moment, Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan said to the House Judiciary Committee: “Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you lived there and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for? What would you think if that president said, ‘I would like you do to us a favor?’…. Wouldn’t you know in your gut that such a president has abused his office? That he’d betrayed the national interest, and that he was trying to corrupt the electoral process?”

Indeed, Trump is willing to use any means he can to ensure his reelection as polling shows him underwater pretty much everywhere. Big in the news today is that he has asked intelligence agencies to assess whether the coronavirus began in an ill-managed Chinese lab, although scientists say the genetics of the virus indicate it began in bats.

Trump has blamed the World Health Organization for America’s dire straits, and now is blaming China (which certainly was too secretive about whether or not the disease could be transmitted from person to person). He insists he has seen evidence that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab—although US intelligence services deny it—and his administration is talking about demanding reparations from China, a move that can only be seen as propaganda for the upcoming election. (China would never consider such payments, and pushing the issue will likely hurt our ability to figure out how to combat the virus.)

The other big story today is Trump’s attacks on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee former Vice President Joe Biden, designed to inoculate Trump against similar attacks. Trump insists that Biden has mental impairments that make him unsuitable for the presidency, an echo of the many stories of Trump’s own mental impairment. Neither are young men, but Biden’s stuttering is well-known, and likely behind some of his problems speaking. This attack on Biden’s health is similar to the attacks the Trump campaign made on Hillary Clinton in 2016, arguing that she was too ill to serve as president.

Second, Trump and his supporters are hammering on Tara Reade’s accusations that Biden raped her. This accusation would inoculate Trump from the sixteen credible accusations made against him, and is harder for Democrats to address, especially as supporters of Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders have joined in the chorus for Biden to resign in favor of their candidate.

Democrats are torn between their support for the #MeToo Movement in which myriad women related their experiences with sexual harassment and assault, and their concern that Reade’s vague accusation is related to the 2020 campaign, especially since her story has been inconsistent in ways that are unlike the usual inconsistencies in traumatized rape victims. There are a number of smart explications of the Reade accusation that I will link in the notes, most of which suggest there are serious problems with her account, but I thought the smartest approach to these accusations came from women’s health journalist Lindsay Beyerstein.

The problem with the way we approach cases of sexual assault, she says, is that we treat them as if they are uncommon. In fact, they are quite common, and women are as unlikely to lie about them as they are about any other common crime. We should start from a presumption that they are telling the truth, as you would if someone told you they had been mugged. But those claims of a common crime should still be evaluated if they are questioned. If I tell you I was mugged, and you say, “But you were with me the whole time and no one bothered us,” my claims need to be investigated. I am not entitled to be believed automatically.

The Biden camp has been quiet on the issue, determined not to let Trump shape the issues of the 2020 election as he did that of 2016, but as Trump continues to harp on it, it might well weaken support for Biden on the left.

Still, Trump’s narrative is not gaining the traction it might have before the pandemic. Today, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, told reporters that he had the plane with 500,000 coronavirus tests his wife procured from South Korea land at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), rather than Dulles international Airport in Virginia, to make sure the federal government would not seize the shipment. He went on to say the National Guard was protecting the tests at an undisclosed location out of fear that the federal government would swoop in to take them after all. Such a public accusation, based as it is in verifiable other cases of feds taking state shipments, suggest that Republicans so distrust the president they are willing to break with him.

Perhaps even more of a bellwether than Hogan was that one of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s big donors has decided to support Graham’s challenger, Democrat Jaime Harrison, in the 2020 contest. The former chairman and president of Michelin in North America, Richard Wilkerson, said of Harrison on Tuesday that “I am confident that as our next U.S. Senator he will be a tireless advocate for creating well-paying jobs, improving our state’s healthcare system, and training the next generation for the jobs of tomorrow. Jaime is the perfect candidate to bring together South Carolinians from all walks of life. I am proud to endorse Jaime today, and I know first hand he is the change South Carolina needs.” While the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election observer, says that Graham has his victory locked up, Wilkerson’s public shift suggests that Wilkerson thinks the state might flip, and wants to be covered if it does.

A final note: on this date in 1789, George Washington was sworn in as American’s first president. He later wrote to a friend about the new system: “That the Government, though not absolutely perfect, is one of the best in the World, I have little doubt.”

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Notes:

Michigan: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/michigan-armed-protesters-debate-whitmer