APRIL 25, 2019
Meyerson on TAP
Trump Did What Nixon Did, but Today’s GOP Won’t Convict. The story is told of the 19th-century Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who was also a noted trial lawyer, that he once represented a plaintiff in a patent infringement suit. His client, an inventor, was suing a would-be inventor who’d come up with a small machine that was indistinguishable from the plaintiff’s own invention. As the trial ended, Webster’s opposing attorney delivered a long summation enumerating the ostensible differences between the two devices. When he finished, Webster arose, looked at the two machines, turned to the jury and said, “Well, if you can see any difference between them, that is more than I can see”—and sat down. The jury quickly ruled for Webster’s client.
This story (which, like many good stories, may be apocryphal) comes to mind when comparing Richard Nixon’s obstruction of justice—which, had he not resigned, would have resulted in his impeachment and conviction—with Donald Trump’s. And, as Webster supposedly said, if you can see any difference between them, that’s more than I can see.
What’s different today, however, is the Republican Party. In 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment, a number of committee Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to recommend impeachment to the full House. The most conservative Republicans on the committee, however, voted No on those motions. But a couple of weeks later, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Nixon had to release tapes including discussions of Watergate to the committee. On one of those tapes, Nixon said he’d order the CIA to tell the FBI to stop investigating the break-in because it would compromise national security (which, of course, it wouldn’t). When the tape reached the committee, all the Republicans who’d strenuously defended Nixon during its deliberations—including Mississippi’s Trent Lott—announced they were switching their vote to recommend impeachment. All 38 committee members—not just all the Democrats but all the Republicans, too—said Nixon had to go. And Nixon went.
Comes now the case of Donald Trump. Like Nixon, Trump repeatedly sought to stop the investigation of Russian involvement in his election and related matters. He fired the FBI director, who’d refused to pledge that he’d stop investigating possible ties and actual contacts Trump associates had with Russian officials. He ordered White House Counsel Donald McGahn to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He told Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order Mueller to drop the investigation and focus solely on measures to prevent future Russian interference in elections. That Trump’s underlings often refused to do what he’d ordered them to do doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t commit obstructions of justice. It just means that his underlings declined to do what McGahn told Reince Priebus, then White House chief of staff, was “crazy shit.”
So how does Trump’s obstruction differ from Nixon’s? That Nixon’s aides took their boss’s commands more seriously than Trump’s took his is a difference, but not a defense. The Judiciary Committee, like its 1974 predecessor, would have to have figures like McGahn and Priebus testify before it to elicit the same sworn testimony that they gave Mueller, just as the various congressional committees of 1973–1974 heard testimony from such figures as Nixon’s former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman. That’s why Trump is insisting that no present or former administration officials be allowed to testify—an issue sure to be decided by the courts.
Say, though, that they do end up testifying and confirming what they told Mueller’s investigators. Would today’s Republicans, confronted with a clear case of obstruction of justice, do what their predecessors unanimously did, and recommend impeachment?
Of course not. Today’s Republican Party—both its elected officials and its rank-and-file members—is a cult, cordoned off from reality by the walls it has erected against any information that doesn’t come from far-right media, which provides it not with information at all, but with propaganda as fictitious (though not as overtly murderous) as anything that the Josef Goebbels machine once churned out. No such media, save on the fringes, were around in 1974, but they’re certainly around now, bolstering the Republicans by creating an alternative universe where reality seldom impinges. Which is why today’s GOP is not a jury that Daniel Webster, with all the evidence in the world, could sway. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Consequences are only for the 99%.
As proof, Christie is on T.V. and his chief of staff is still blathering about prospective punishment years after the incident.
Trump, Kushner, Don Jr. had nothing to fear from Mueller. The Mueller report was turned into white noise by the attorney general.
Bill Clinton and Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein got a slap on the wrist.
The sentences for those charged by Mueller were light except for Cohen who appears to have provided the most potential damage to Trump, although with no consequence to Trump.
Comey, Russia, CAP, Facebook and Hillary’s campaign staff helped Democrats lose the 2016 presidency. All are doing fine.
Virginia Gov. Grifty got off. Robert Kraft will get off.
Obama betrayed the people of Flint and democracy by betraying public education, he didn’t pay a price. His people are now with Biden’s campaign.
For the umpteenth time, the judge is upset with Roger Stone for violating her orders and he continues.
Even if there’s a stray judge out there who is not persuaded by wealth and influence, the ball of justice will bounce into Roberts Court and the rich will be exonerated.
The Mueller report was turned into white noise by the attorney general.
That is beautifully put! Exactly. And this:
the ball of justice will bounce into Roberts Court and the rich will be exonerated.
It’s awesome to encounter really good writing in these random blog comments!
Bob,
During the period when you weren’t posting there was a sense of loss. We missed your comments which elevate the discussion, set the tone for civility, and give the blog, its heart.
Very kind of you, Linda. Thank you.
I agree with Linda. We need Bob’s Erudition, humor and civility.
Linda,
Thanks for being frank. I’ve been investigating what happens to campaign contributions. Good gawd, if the public only knew. There are all kinds of ways to keep campaign contributions or divert them to friends who in turn literally launder the money.
The fact the elections cost so much money and goes on forever is totally disgusting. Nothing is gained except more crimes.
What GALLS me is how stupid most Americans are re: elections and the great American hype.
Yvonne, I was thinking the same thing that you were-
People willingly closed their minds.
A young man described his father’s dramatic change after he became a Fox viewer- the haunting is dangerous to all that we value for the nation’s children and their children.
Yvonne, It’s been going on for a very long time. I really started to see it during the Bill Clinton years and I always wondered why no one noticed? It used to be putting a toe over the line in the sand, then it became a whole foot. Now it seems that it’s just accepted practice to break the rules. It’s all very transparent and out in the open and no one dares to take a stand against it? My feeling is that they (politicians in general) ALL will be caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s shameful. I truly detest liars and cheaters.
LisaM,
What “rules” did Bill Clinton break while in office? Do you mean the extramarital affair?
Compared to Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2 it seems as if Clinton was not flouting the law. I didn’t like all of his policies and I despised some of them, but that is very different than taking the country to war under false pretenses or making deals with foreign countries to thwart Congressional law because you want to arm Contras or outing a CIA agent and endangering many lives because you are angry that her husband told the truth.
There is no comparison between the two parties. And did Obama break laws or lie to the American people the way Republican administrations have?
Yvonne perhaps you, like I do, consider election campaign reform as the most primary issue out there. We need (a)publicly-funded election campaigns, (b)legislative workaround of Cit-United decision, & (c)reform of the 501(c)3&4 laws which currently encourage dark-$ politics. To my mind, it is the swiftest way to cut off big$ corruption at the knees, & start turning the cruise ship of inequality around. The rich-poor divide has been created by deregulation (& intentional underfunding of oversight by SEC & Congress, & winking at antitrust laws), which put big-$’ed interests in the position to dictate policy that greases their wheels. I am happy that the new Dem Congress addressed some of this in their HR-1. At least it brings the discussion to public view.
Here’s another commentary from today’s NY Review of Books:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/23/robert-mueller-report-trump-indictment/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Mueller%20misogyny%20Indonesia&utm_content=NYR%20Mueller%20misogyny%20Indonesia+CID_c9e0f2df7244c4186281140caebab4f9&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=An%20Indictment%20in%20All%20But%20Name
If only Individual-1 could experience what Otto Warmbier did:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-approved-payment-2-million-bill-north-korea-172749608.html
One more from the most talented political journalist of the past 50 years, Elizabeth Drew:
To get rid of Trump and put him where he belongs, in a high-security prison without parol and long enough that he won’t get out alive, and not a country club prison, we the people, the majority, will have to get rid of the GOP first.
The country is changing. The GOP will have to change as well, or it will soon be history. We are experiencing the darkness before the dawn.
I certainly hope that you are correct…..and I hope that the DNC will give “we the people” what we want/need in a presidential candidate. So far the Democratic pool hasn’t been promising except for Sanders and maybe Warren. I think the perfect ticket would be Sanders/Warren. We need to get rid of the corporate Dems as well as the mean spirited Republicans.
The Repugnicans are desperate to limit voting access because they know that the young people are against them and that this is becoming a non-white-majority country, and they can’t stand that. Trump is the ugly before picture. Don the Con. An example to all of what not to be.
Feel the Bern!
LisaM,
Can the ticket be Warren/Sanders?
^^^Also, did you just call the Republicans “mean spirited” and the democrats “corporate”?
You do know that the Republicans are ALL corporate while only some of the Dems are, correct?
LisaM: I am more pragmatic. I can’t imagine Sanders/ Warren beating Trump, even tho they are my favorite 2 Dem contenders. I imagine Biden as the guy who can woo back enough rust-belt et al Trump converts, w/a strong, younger backup VP candidate to assuage age concerns. Leaning toward Kamala Harris, who has deep political background in justice system, strong social-welfare chops, & might rally folks of color to get out & vote.
bethree5
“the guy who can woo back enough rust-belt et al Trump converts,”
I think that may be a miss understanding of what actually happened in 16. And I am the Blue collar populist on this page who has railed against the corporatist policies of Clinton / Obama NDC/DLC Democrats. If the argument is that 70k and perhaps a lot more voters turned to Trump in 3 Midwest States; that in fact may be true. What it does not explain is that the vast majority of millions of his supporters had experienced no recent economic stress. The Rust Belt was rusty before Bill Clinton came to office with NAFTA and China trade policy. Take the UAW for instance which at its peak had 1.4 million members in 1979. By 92 it had only 750k. Yet had Perot not been in the race Bush would have easily defeated Clinton.
From a 1992 NYT piece.
“But privately, union leaders say they are not surprised by Mr. Perot’s popularity. Linking Decline to G.O.P.
Rank-and-file support of Democratic candidates has been difficult to muster since 1980, when many union auto workers, especially white men, voted for Ronald Reagan and then for George Bush. Indeed, the disenchantment of union voters with the Democratic Party has been an important factor in the party’s poor showing in the last three Presidential elections.”
It goes deeper than that. In 68 just weeks before the election. Internal polling showed Wallace with 33% union support in Michigan. The only reason that support evaporated by the election was Wallace’s pick of Curtis LeMay as VP. LeMay telling the Nation Nuclear war wasn’t so bad.
That Trump voter has been there ” Forever”.
Wisconsin Michigan and Pennsylvania were lost in Detroit in Flynt in Philly and in Milwaukee, those were the economically distressed voters and they did not show up in 2016. Republicans knew they wouldn’t; which is why they did nothing to appeal to those voters.
Democrats have to concentrate on bringing out Democratic voters which does include economic messages that appeal to Blue Collar workers. But there is no way to reach the overwhelming majority of voters who voted for Trump.
edit button – misunderstanding
Thanks for saying that Bob, because I really need to hear it today.
I think the current leadership of the GOP knows the country is changing and that those changes will not favor the GOP’s extreme alt-right agenda. The GOP of today is now doing all it can to stop those changes anyway they can.
That is why the GOP is doing all it can to turn over the public sector to the private sector so they can mold the country into what they want it to be and take it out of the hands of future generations to correct their greed based insanity.
It will be up to “Never Trump” conservatives like George T. Conway to leave the GOP and launch a new political party that represents their values and not the extremists of the Alt-Right, ALEC supported faction that also supports constipated MAGA Man Donald Trump.
I think he belongs impoverished after paying back all the people he ripped off as a “business” entity, lives he made miserable, finding himself and the rest of his family homeless, begging on the street in front of what had been his “tower.” Lloyd,
I’ll settle for what you want though.
The Republican “leadership” knows exactly who they are dealing with in 45, they just don’t care. They see this as an opportunity to pack the courts so that any progressive ideas that pass a future Congress and signed into law will be struck down. They are only loyal to their wealthy benefactors, rather than the people they are supposed to represent. That is where their loyalty resides, not to the Republic. Talk about what it means to be un-American…. ?
Bingo
The modern Republican Party is made of an old Nixon man, Roger Ailes. When Ailes went to make Fox, he did so as only one of many followers of Nixon who subscribed to the idea that Nixon did nothing that all the rest of Washington did. If I have heard that from the general public over the past 45 years once, I have heard it a thousand times. They all do it. Politicians are all crooks. Its all about power. Nixon should have fought it.
When Ailes gave voice to old Nixon people on Fox, he started a revolution that has pushed us close to a precipice. A good friend who grew up Hungarian in Brazil before coming to America worries that Trump will leave such an intractable legacy that democrats will be tempted to destroy the constitution to rectify the damage he has done to the body politic. This was, of course, the way of Nixon. No lie was too big for the candidate, Nixon to tell. He campaigned in his Navy uniform for the House (Illegal, but no one called him on it). He called Helen Gahagan Douglas a Communist, a charge that was laughable. He rode the Alger Hiss affair to the White House along with a good dose of southern strategy borrowed from the same southern politicians who beat Tom Watson by splitting poor southerners, white and black, from each other. How was he so different from Trump?
And yet, even Nixon did not move the country so far to the right. His health care proposal, serious or not, was to the left of Obama’s. He carried out the raproachment that changed our relationship to China. And so fr as I can tell, he never pardoned anybody who occupied militarily any US government property the way Trump did when he issued a pardon for those anti-Americans who occupied and tore up Malheur NWR.
An excellent summary, Roy. Imagine a Repugnican, now, instituting price controls! Like Trump, Nixon stood for one thing and one thing only, for Nixon. Whatever works on Tuesday.
And this is exactly why the propaganda from the left that there was no difference between HRC and Trump was so damaging.
The Republicans are packing the courts. It is a disaster that we have not even begun to experience. It could render meaningless the election of a progressive President who is stymied at every turn. It could render the election process itself meaningless as we have people in positions of great power who do not believe in the basic tenets of democracy.
I cannot believe we live in a time where the very act of voting is considered to be a “partisan” issue where Republicans look to make it as hard as possible for people who might not vote for their candidates to vote.
There is simply no equating the two parties. Some Democrats may be corrupt, but the democrats as a party believe in democracy. That’s why candidates like AOC could win. That’s why Bernie had a voice and his ideas were incorporated into the platform instead of what has happened in previous primaries where the losing candidates’ ideas were completely ignored.
It never occurred to Bill Clinton to simply ignore Ken Starr even though a Republican — Robert Fiske — had already thoroughly investigated Clinton’s land deal and could find no crime. Ken Starr convened an entirely new investigation and spent years looking for anything and came up with a completely legal extramarital affair and the “cover-up” not of meetings with Russians offering dirt but a cover-up of an extramarital affair.
The Democrats and Independents like Bernie Sanders are politicians as usual who might do favors for constituents but believe in democracy even when it means the other party wins.
The Republicans have become proto-fascists who want power and control and don’t care how they get it.
The threat is bigger than Trump. It’s the Koch’s.
UnKochMyCampus.org has a petition opposing the contract between Supreme Court Judge Kavanaugh and the Koch owned George Mason University- a public school. UnKoch reports that a Federalist Society executive controls $20 mi. from an anonymous donor to Mason’s school of law.
Kavanaugh will receive an undisclosed amount to teach a course at Mason. The GMU Law and Econ Center’s stated goal is to reshape the federal judiciary for years to come.
The Federalist Society is synonymous with a corporate owned judiciary.
Trump won in 2016 because he was the storyteller in the race. The story was a lie, but he had one: “I started with nothing–a small loan from my father–and turned it into billions. I’m a great businessman. A country is a business. I can fix this. I can put you back to work again. I’m the only one who can do this for you.” All lies. But storytelling works. Don the Con is not smart, but he has the grifter’s ability to tell a tale: “Step right up, for one thin dime, and see the Amazing Alligator Lady. . . .” Trump offered a vision. It was utter bs, but it was a vision.
The Democrats, in dramatic contrast, always think wonkishly. In place of vision, they substitute a political calculus. Let’s go with the “safe” candidate–the moderate one. But the moderate one does not have a clear, appealing, galvanizing story to tell–a story that will bring people to the polls who wouldn’t otherwise vote–and that’s the real problem that the Democrats have; they have far more voters than the Repugnicans do, but many of those voters stay home because they are disaffected and aren’t going to vote for just another establishment candidate who will blah, blah, blah about social policy while pushing policies to enrich bankers and insurance companies.
If the Dems go with a moderate without a galvanizing story to tell, they will lose again. Biden will excite no one. If he has any chance at all, that will rest on the long shot that disgust with Trump will be enough to bring out those stay-at-home Democratic voters.
The Dems will start winning again only when they come forward with a clear new vision–when they unapologetically go all in, when they have a story to tell that isn’t the same old blah, blah, blah.
Feel the Bern.
What the Democrats lack, and the reason why they continue to lose despite their greater numbers, is political bravery. They say they want everyone to have healthcare, and they have the existence proofs before them of superb single-payer, universal healthcare systems worldwide, but they worry about pushing an agenda that is “too radical,” and so they adopt a Repugnican program–Romneycare–and it sort of works and sort of doesn’t, and protecting it is not exciting enough to bring people out to the polls. They say they want to do something about climate change, but the Democratic Party doesn’t run television ads on the subject that take their inspiration from Johnson’s daisy girl commercial because they are afraid of alienating someone somewhere. Instead of going to war with the Repugnicans on ideas, they namby pampy themselves to death.
And this is not all just inability to think clearly. No. Many Democratic politicians are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They like keeping things vague because then they can talk about belonging to the party that’s on the side of ordinary, working-class men and women while actually supporting legislation to create charter schools and water down bankruptcy protections and whatever else their big-money donors require of them.
But Trump’s story is loaded. It’s not only both a narrative and a disruption of narrative, but it’s a profound assertion of America as a business. Independence and freedom translated into capitalist terms, and even diversity as well. That’s the real downfall, that in desperation enough of America buys that, and that enough of America becomes that. Money/resources is a necessity, not an end. And the resulting inequity from this myopia and greed and desperation or paranoia is and has been tragic, for us and the world. There is a learning curve here, but it involves character and identity.
Paragraph #2. The real reason we have an orange bafoon residing in the White House. HRC would have been an extension of 8 yrs of the Obama administration. There was great hope with the election of Obama part I and then the great recession reared it’s ugly head and Obama decided to bail out big business and the banks at the expense of” we the people”. Was it a foolish mistake or was it a calculated maneuver?….who knows….maybe both. We got Obama part II because at least we all knew what we were getting when we placed our vote. I don’t think the country wanted to deal with part III in the form of HRC so people casted their vote by not voting at all. Most definitely, HRC was the better candidate between the 2, but she didn’t inspire enough people to walk into the polling booth (and yes, she won the popular vote, but our system wasn’t designed to work that way!). For 8 yrs we lived with the promise of Hope & Change yet not much Hope or Change materialized. How could the DNC expect voters to want another 4 yrs of the same bland policies that only seemed to enrich those that didn’t need any more enrichment. The DNC condemned Bernie for “the safe” HRC. I’m feelin’ the Bern!!….and so many young people are feeling the same. The DNC needs to get it right this time.
When Obama announced his cabinet, and it was filled with bankers from Goldman, Sachs, I thought, “Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.”
Obama was a very capable leader. No question about that. Light years beyond IQ45. But consider how he structured the bailout after the housing crisis. He could have structured it so that the funds passed to the banks through the accounts of those whose homes were in risk of foreclosure, so that the funds flowed through them to the banks and protected ordinary people’s ownership and equity. He could have made receipt of those bailout funds contingent upon restructuring people’s loans to make them affordable. But he didn’t. Yes, he pulled us back from the brink, but . . . . a lot of ordinary Americans lost everything, and nothing was done for them. Many entered the rental market. Rent costs skyrocketed. Equity firms bought up billions of dollars worth of houses at mid-crash prices. A lot of wealthy folks got a big payday.
WRONG! Obama, for all of his faults regarding public education, did not bail out the banks and corporations with TARP.
TARP was a $700 billion bailout legislation package signed by President G. W. Bush with no plans to have the corporate recipients pay back the bailout. In 2010 new legislation while Obama was president reduced Bush’s TARP to $475 billion.
By the time Obama was sworn in and moved into the White House, more than $300 billion had already been handed out with no requirements the bailout money had to be paid back.
President Obama froze the bailout giveaway signed by G. W. Bush and set up a payback program.
George W. Bush
TARP to The Rescue. In October 2008, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was signed into law by President George W. Bush. TARP was born out of this act, which was initially proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.Feb 1, 2018
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Who+signed+TARP
Thanks to Obama stepping in and requiring the bailout money be paid back, CNN Business reported in 2014, that U.S. ends TARP with $15.3 billion profit.
There was also a profit from the auto industry bailout that was signed by Obama after he was president and that came from the fact that GM and Chrysler didn’t get free money. Those auto manufacturers had to give the government stock to get the bailout money and after the fed sold that stock a few years later, the government made a profit.
https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/news/companies/government-bailouts-end/
You will NEVER hear the truth from the lying, alt right media machine that is led by the FOX misinformation media machine. In fact, before Obama took the oath and became president, Limbaugh had already started blaming him for the TARP bailout and kept repeating that lie for years and probably still is. That helps why I keep reading people that think that OBAMA was responsible for TARP.
Lloyd,
Your facts will not be accepted by people who say there is no difference between the “mean spirited” Republicans and “corporate” Dems. (FYI — the successful right wing propaganda often repeated by people who claim to be progressives but spend all their time trying to convince voters that Dems are corrupt is that Republicans are “mean-spirited” or “orange haired” but they are just mean to those nasty libs so it’s okay, but the Dems are doing Wall street’s bidding and are against the little guy.)
I don’t think this over the top idealizing of Bernie Sanders is a good thing. I like Sanders, but making this about him being so different than all the other Democrats is just not true. He stands for some more progressive ideas in some cases, but so did the entire HRC platform and frankly, Warren is taking time to do homework and think about how to enact policies. I will certainly support Bernie 100% if he is the nominee but I will also support whoever wins the democratic primary. Bernie is great but he is not perfect as his unaccountable unwillingness to criticize “public charters’ and instead give them progressive credibility and endorse DFER candidates should show us.
HRC lost the election for the same reason that John Kerry, Al Gore, and Mike Dukakis lost the election. They got smeared with propaganda from the right that the so-called “liberal” media helped by pretending that all those candidates had very questionable character problems and none of them could be trusted.
Obama did not get smeared by the media. They did not attack his character, ever. There weren’t numerous articles about how HRC’s supporters in the primary did not “trust” this corrupt man and how there were endless “questions raised” about Obama’s character and how corrupt he was. But that happened with all of the above losing candidates.
This election — like every election — is going to be about TRUST. HRC lost because voters did not “trust” her enough to come out to vote, PLUS there was a very targeted effort to get democratic voters off the rolls and make it very difficult for them to vote in those states where the vote was very close.
Furthermore, we now know for a fact that the Russians were hacking voter information. I bet if that happened and Bernie lost the election in a close vote that progressives would be a little more concerned about that. I don’t understand how the same people who believe e-mails between low level staffers at the DNC demonstrate the entire primary was a fraud then turn around and dismiss the power of targeted propaganda and the truly corrupt efforts in which so many Democratic voters were struck off the voting rolls and all the other efforts (shutting polling places in Democratic areas) to try to disenfranchise voters in those very places where voters didn’t show up in 2016.
If staffers at the DNC had met with Russians offering to help HRC with her campaign by providing dirt on Bernie and then staffers from the DNC gave targeted voter information to Russians who started a widespread propaganda campaign about how Bernie Sanders was racist and corrupt and other ugly things about him, do you think progressives would say “oh that’s all okay, we’re fine with all of that, we would only be concerned if two DNC staffers e-mailed one another and said something negative about Bernie but as long as all they did was meet with Russians offering to help the campaign, later give them voting data, and then Russians help destroy Bernie’s character, we know the election was “fair”. That would be absurd, but that seems to be what they do when they defend the Trump campaign’s conduct in this election as perfectly fine, but attack the DNC as corrupt.
The real danger is that no one fall for the right wing propaganda that attacks the character of whichever democratic primary candidate ends up as the nominee. And that propaganda may come from people claiming to be progressives or moderate Dems, but they will have only one goal – defeating whichever Democrat wins.
Whichever candidate wins — Bernie included — will have their character attacked. Every candidate will have done something in their past that can be twisted to convince voters to believe they are untrustworthy IF the disaffected voters of losing candidates help promote it. We must resist.
Bernie Sanders has a burden to overcome. That burden is his age. In September 2020, he will turn 79.
The oldest president the U.S. has ever elected was Ronald Reagon and he was almost 70 on January 20, 1981, when he took the oath of office, almost a decade younger than Sanders.
The United States is a country that worships youth and not older citizens like Sanders.
Trump is already taking advantage of the ages of Sanders and Biden while he runs around lying repeatedly (as usual) that he is youthful compared to them.
The 2020 Trump campaign’s goal will be to hammer that age difference not to get Never Trump voters to vote for MAGA Man, but to influence them to stay home and not vote.
The only way Trump can win in 2020, is to convince Never Trump voters to not vote. That is what the Russians did in 2016 and it worked.
Even if Sanders and Biden are healthy in body and mind compared to Trump; who cannot be healthy in mind and body no matter how much he lies and says he is healthy, wealthy and wise, most Americans are going to start thinking about Sander’s age in the run up to the election because of the Alt-Right misleading media machine led by Murdock’s Fox and Sinclare Media.
I think the Democrats must run a younger candidate between the ages of 40 and 60. Then Moscow’s Agent Governing America will have to find something else to lie about to make them look bad, and that might not be as easy as the AGE factor.
That is a very interesting idea. The campaign with the best story wins. True or False, the story wins.
Abe Lincoln: Log cabin, rail splitter, champion of the small farmer
Dwight Eisenhower: avuncular general who saved you from Hitler
Frankiln Roosevelt: I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Man of the people
Seems like a good evaluation to me. It is about stories. True or not
Persuasion is always about the story.
I think hindsight is 20/20
What was the “good story” about George HW Bush? What was the “good story” about Bush 1 or even Trump?
I loved the “good story” about Mike Dukakis, son of immigrants, served in the army, turned around Massachusetts. I can still remember being so excited watching his “great story” at the Democratic convention in 1988. He ran against a man who was born with the silver spoon.
It doesn’t matter what kind of “good story” one has if the right wing propaganda destroys that story. John Kerry and HRC also had a good story and if they had won, people would say it was because of their good stories but since they lost, it was because they didn’t have one.
I don’t think Bernie has a particularly good story. He will win because 1. he offers ideas that voters like and 2. he has not been smeared by propaganda as a corrupt candidate who can’t be trusted.