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John Merrow: Education and the 2024 Election

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2024 //
9

John Merrow spent many years as PBS’s education reporter. Now retired, he continues to be a well-informed and well-respected observer of education issues.

Merrow writes:

If Kamala Harris wins the Presidency, public education isn’t likely to be shaken up as much as it needs to be. If Donald Trump is elected and has his way, public education will be turned upside down. But no matter who wins, American higher education is in big trouble….although, as you will see, every crisis is also an opportunity.

If Trump wins in November, the world of education faces rough seas.  His “Project 2025” pledges to abolish the federal Department of Education, without specifying what agencies would be responsible for what the Department now does, such as enforcing civil rights laws in education.  “Project 2025” pledges to abolish Head Start, the preschool program that now serves about 833,000 low income children, send Title One money directly to states (while phasing it out over a 10-year period), and turn over Pell Grant administration to the Treasury Department.   While many in education want the Pell Grant cap of $7,395 per year to be raised (given the cost of a college education), “Project 2025” does not address this.

President Biden has made forgiving student debt a goal, but most of his efforts have been stymied by the courts. “Project 2025” would end the practice completely.

Trump and his team promise to advance “education freedom” by vigorously promoting “school choice.”  In practice, this would provide parents with cash vouchers that can be spent at private and religious schools, as well as federal tax credits for money spent on private school tuition. In simplest terms, Trump and his team want as much of the money that now goes to public schools to go to parents instead, and they want it to be tax-deductible, as it now is in Arizona. 

“Project 2025” calls for restricting free breakfast and lunch to low income students. Doing that would probably bring back separate lines and separate entrances for those paying and those eating ‘for free.’  That practice led some poor kids to skip meals entirely, to avoid humiliation, which is why many school districts have opted to feed all kids. (There’s some evidence that feeding everyone is actually cheaper, because it eliminates the need for special passes, separate accounting, and so forth. Ask Tim Walz about it.)

A significant change that I experienced as a reporter was the treatment of children with handicapping conditions.  Prior to 1975, many of those children were institutionalized or kept at home. “The Education of All Handicapped Children Act” (PL 94-142) moved the revolution that had begun in Massachusetts and Minnesota to the national level. While it’s not perfect today, the federal government contributes more than $14 Billion to pay for services for those youngsters.  “Project 2025” would distribute the money to states directly with few if any strings attached and would ask Congress to rewrite the law so that some money could go directly to parents. That doesn’t seem to me to be a step in the right direction.

All of these provisos and directives seem likely to do major damage to public education, as well as to the life chances of low income students.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run schools, seem unlikely to fare well no matter who wins. They aren’t private enough for most Republicans, and they are too private for most Democrats.

What lies in store for education if Harris wins in November?  The Biden-Harris Administration promised far more than it delivered, particularly in higher education, and its Secretary of Education has been largely missing in action, as far as I could tell. The party’s platform calls for free pre-school, free public college for families earning under $125,000 per year, making college tuition tax-deductible, smaller classes, and more ‘character education,’ whatever that is.

My own wish list would be for an energetic Secretary of Education who would encourage and lead conversations about the purposes of education, and the roles that schools play.  Too often today public schools are merely rubber-stamping the status children arrive with; but schools are supposed to be ladders of opportunity, there to be climbed by anyone and everyone with ambition.

The federal government cannot change how schools operate, but its leadership could and should shine a bright light on what schools could be….and how they could get there.

If I am allowed one wish, it’s that President Harris and Vice President Walz propose National Service, a 2-year commitment for all, in return for two years of tuition/training.  It’s long past time to put the ‘me-me-me’ self-absorption of the Ronald Reagan era in our rear view mirror. Our young people need to be reminded that they live in a great country and ought to show our appreciation by serving it in some capacity.

Whoever wins, Harris or Trump, American higher education’s rough years will continue, because a growing number of young people are questioning the value of, and necessity for, a college education.  This is a genuine crisis, and American higher education is in the fight of its life: Last year nearly 100 colleges shut down, roughly two per week.  While we still have more than 4,000 higher education institutions, many of those may not make it to 2030.  The rising cost of college defies common sense, the rise of Artificial Intelligence threatens some professions that now require a college degree, and many young people seem inclined to opt out of the high-speed, high stakes chase for a credential.  How many of the 31,000,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 will continue to enroll in college this year and next is an open question.  

Of course, colleges aren’t standing pat. For example,  Community Colleges are reaching down into high schools to keep their enrollment up; about one-fifth of all current Community College students are also enrolled in high school. Those institutions also enroll lots of older students–the average age of a Community College student is 28.

Four-year colleges and universities are fighting to enroll the 40,000,000 Americans who have some college credits but not enough for a degree.  They are also doing their best to attract on-line learners of all ages, and the most ambitious institutions are working hard to enroll (full paying) students from all over the world.  

If Trump wins, his immigration policies might shut the door on foreign students, a cash cow for a large number of institutions.  If Harris wins, federal aid probably won’t be slashed, but that won’t stop the questioning.

Questioning is long overdue. For too long elitists in the Democratic and Republican parties have looked down their noses at those not going to college, ignoring the wisdom of the great John Gardner:  “An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

Every crisis is also an opportunity:Some of those shuttered college campuses might be repurposed for housing for senior citizens, or veterans.  Some of those facilities could become Head Start centers, hubs for small businesses, community hospitals, and so forth. I’d like to see a Harris-Walz Administration embrace the possiblities, with energy and imagination.

So please pay attention. Vote intelligently, and urge your friends and neighbors to vote.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Democrats, Deregulation, Education Reform, Elections, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Funding, Harris, Kamala, Higher Education, Republicans, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education

The Biggest Issue in 2024 Election: The U.S. Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2024 //
13

Jason Linkins of The New Republic writes that it doesn’t really matter what Kamala Harris’s policies are because the Supreme Court is poised to strike them down. its recent decision, overruling what is known as the Chevron doctrine, hamstrings any Democratic initiative.

If Trump should win, he will be able to appoint replacements for the two oldest justices, guaranteeing a rightwing majority for decades.

Linkins writes that “a dark shadow” blights every policy that a Harris administration might want to initiate. That dark shadow is the conservative majority’s decision in a case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. 

Linkins writes:

That ruling, which overturned a doctrine called “Chevron deference,” puts the future of any policy that Harris favors in grave doubt. If you want the Harris campaign to get more detailed on policy, I’m sorry to say that any conversation starts and ends with how they plan to confront a Supreme Court that has torched the separation of powers in the mad game of Calvinball they kicked off during the Trump era. 

The gutting of Chevron deference is not something that the smooth-brained masses of the political media adequately understood when it came down. Chevron deference is essentially the doctrine that allows government agencies to respond nimbly to their congressional mandates; hitherto, the judiciary stayed out of the way, allowing executive branch personnel to use their expertise to interpret ambiguous regulations. Imagine, for example, the technological advancements that have occurred since landmark environmental legislation was passed decades ago. The EPA, given free rein to adapt to this changing landscape, can move more fleetly to remediate pollution thanks to Chevron. The Roberts court, instead, imagines a world where they have to return to Congress each time there is an emergency, to get specific guidance.

The best way of describing what the conservative majority did is to say it gave six unelected right-wing politicians who all enjoy a lifetime appointment a line-item veto over anything a Democratic Congress—and by extension Harris—wants to do, unless they can muster the votes to confront each problem they want to solve with an inhuman amount of hyper-specificity. As Vox’s Ian Millhiser has explained, if the executive branch “can’t regulate without getting permission from a Republican judiciary … then conservatives no longer need to worry about Democratic presidents doing much of anything that doesn’t meet the GOP’s approval…” 

The Supreme Court really is the most critical policy issue in this election. The Trump-installed majority is central to what the right plans for a second Trump term. Beyond the fact that the Roberts court’s ruling in Trump v. United States imbues the chief executive with monarchic levels of unaccountability—a dangerous privilege for, frankly, any president to possess—Project 2025, which is best understood as a massive rollback of individual rights, is something that Republicans simply could never contemplate without their super-legislature in black robes. 

Here, vaporizing Chevron has an asymmetric impact on the ambitions of the two parties. The GOP, having retreated from any part of the policy realm besides Project 2025’s infernal schemes, the furnishing of tax cuts to plutocrats, and deregulating everything under the sun (also a form of wealth transfer to plutocrats), need not worry about Chevron being in effect anymore.
But what makes Chevron crucial to this campaign is that the sledding for Democrats remains rough even if they prevail in November.

Indeed, even if they blow the GOP out of the water electorally, the end of Chevron deference is a fail-safe against Democratic policy, constantly running in the background as long as five of the six conservatives on the Roberts court agree. In this way, Harris and her fellow Democrats are locked out of liberal governance. Since liberal governance will form the cornerstone of anything Harris and Democrats want to do during her time in office, a confrontation with a Supreme Court that’s holding the policymaking apparatus hostage is not a fight they can duck. 

All Democrats need to join in this fight, and constantly raise the salience of the Supreme Court and its attendant corruption. It would be a good idea for any policy discussion to note that the Roberts court is the primary antagonist to making things better, easier, safer, and fairer for ordinary Americans; they are despoilers of the land and pilferers of our wealth. Harris should continually remind voters that turning things around will require a Democratic president to be on hand to appoint any replacements that may be needed, and prevent the oldest conservative justices from escaping into retirement, which would allow Trump to replace them with young members of the right’s lunatic lower-court farm system.

Is it time to revisit court-packing? I think the institutionalist case against it completely collapsed by the end of the court’s last term, but I doubt Harris has the stomach to revive the idea over the next several weeks. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court will remain the rock in the road that Democrats must find a way around if they want to improve our lives. Anything you might want an ascendant Democratic administration to do faces the judicial veto of right-wingers who can’t be voted out of office. It’s true that Harris is probably not going to deliver, or even champion, the most ambitious policies that progressives favor. But whether you’re a progressive fan of Medicare for All, or a centrist dedicated to means-tested, watered-down bullshit, you’re all in the same boat, so grab an oar.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Justice, Republicans, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Russian Campaign to Destroy Our Democracy

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2024 //
9

In this post, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes about the Russian effort to buy the voices of rightwing “influencers,” as well as the right’s apologetics for Nazism.

She writes:

One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.

In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​”They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 

“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”

According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 

SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 

YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 

Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.

Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 

The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 

Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 

Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 

He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.

Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 

Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​

Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       

One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Funding, International, Media, Republicans

Jennifer Rubin: Brave Republicans and Those Who Are M.I.A.

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2024 //
10

Jennifer Rubin was a solid conservative journalist and lawyer who was hired by the Washington Post to express the conservative view on politics in a column called “Right Turn.” After Trump’s election, she became increasingly critical of him and eventually reversed her ideology. She is today one of the most incisive critics of the MAGA movement. In this column, she chastises Prominent Republicans for remaining silent in this election.

She writes:

One of the most uplifting parts of last week’s Democratic convention was the presence of so many Republicans, such as former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. Both decided to put country over party and self.

“I know Kamala Harris shares my allegiance to the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy, and she is dedicated to upholding all three in service to our country,” Kinzinger said. “Whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency and of fidelity to this nation.” Likewise, Duncan said, “Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching: If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.”

The day after the convention, a dozen former lawyers from the three Republican administrations before Donald Trump’s published a letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. They wrote, “Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election proved beyond any reasonable doubt his willingness to place his personal interests above the law and values of our constitutional democracy.” They argued that returning Trump to office “would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country.” Then, a four-star general who served under President George W. Bush and hundreds of former Republican staffers endorsed Harris.

So, the question remains: Where are the rest of the Republicans who understand Trump is an existential threat to democracy? Most of the big names still refuse to follow Kinzinger and Duncan’s lead.

Former president George W. Bush must be in a witness protection program; he has virtually disappeared. Former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney courageously stood up to Trump when he tried to stage a coup. But, sorry — if you pledge to do everything possible to prevent Trump’s return to power, you have an obligation to endorse Harris, the only person who can beat him.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who shredded Trump in the primaries, previously objected to endorsing President Joe Biden because of Biden’s age. (“President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date.”) What is his excuse now for refusing to endorse the new, 59-year-old Democratic nominee?

Paul Ryan, a Fox board member and former speaker of the House, was quoted in May as saying, “Character is too important for me. … [The presidency] is a job that requires the kind of character [Trump] doesn’t have.” But Ryan too lacks the nerve to support the only viable alternative. When he rationalizes his refusal to endorse a Democrat on the grounds that he differs on “policy,” he is telling us that preserving democracy is not a high policy priority for him.

The list goes on: H.R. McMaster (actually commending Trump’s foreign policy in the Atlantic!), Jim Mattis, Condoleezza Rice. Moral cowardice, or craving for access in future Republican administrations, seems to have silenced even those most vocal on America’s defense of Ukraine and other allies. History will not treat them kindly.

Certainly, getting some Republicans to refrain from voting for Trump is helpful. But if they are as devoted to democracy and as committed to the international world order as they say, there is no moral argument for refraining from going the rest of the way to endorse Harris, especially after such a robust affirmation of her foreign policy views.

Biden gave up the presidency for the sake of our democracy. Can’t these Republicans give Harris their votes?

Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom, Harris, Kamala, Republicans, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Has Remade the GOP in His Image

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2024 //
31

Historian Heather Cox Richardson weaves together the events of the past few days and demonstrates the submission of the Republican Party to one angry man. At the Republican National Convention, the party’s elders were notably absent. No Bush or Cheney; no Romney. Trump put his daughter-in-law, Lara, in charge of the Republican National Committee. It’s the Trump party now, and he controls all its levers of power. Note below that he hasn’t stopped hawking merchandise, even in the middle of his campaign. If you can open a tweet, this is an example of Trump turning his campaign into a money-maker for himself.

She writes:

…Trump began the day by posting an advertisement for the fourth “series of Trump digital trading cards,” or NFTs (which are unique digital tokens) featuring heroic images of Trump. People who buy 15 or more of them—at $99 apiece—get a physical trading card as well. Trump said that the physical card has a piece of the suit he wore at the presidential debate, and Trump promises to sign five of them, randomly. Up to 25 people who buy $25,750 worth of the cards with cryptocurrency will be invited to a gala next month at his Jupiter, Florida, golf club.

In the ad, Trump made it a point to emphasize his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency, an emphasis that dovetails with Trump’s recent promotion of an “official” cryptocurrency project. He linked to a Telegram channel run by his sons Don Jr. and Eric that, at the time, was called “The DeFiant Ones” but has been renamed “World Liberty Financial.” While there is little public information about the project, the channel has almost 50,000 subscribers.  

Hawking merchandise was an odd move for a presidential candidate, and it suggested his focus is elsewhere than on the election. Also today, Trump announced that he plans to make former Democrats Robert Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom have endorsed him, honorary members of his transition team. Kennedy told right-wing personality Tucker Carlson that he would “help pick the people who will be running the government…” 

And then, this evening, Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman of NPR explained the story behind the surprising photos of Trump on Monday giving a thumbs-up over a grave in Arlington National Cemetery. The reporters wrote that “[t]wo members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official” at the cemetery, where “[f]ederal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities.” When a cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering the section where the grave was located, “campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside.” A Trump campaign spokesperson said the official who tried to prevent the staff from holding a political event in the cemetery was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.” 

The elephant in the room these days is that most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal presidential candidate. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself.

It’s hard to look away from the reality that the Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term, at the very least by voting to convict Trump at his first impeachment trial. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” Republican senators nonetheless stood behind Trump. “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” then–majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

When the Framers wrote the Constitution, they did not foresee senators abandoning the principles of the country in order to support a president they thought would enhance their own careers. Assuming that lawmakers would jealously guard their own power, the Framers gave to the members of the House of Representatives the power to impeach a president. To the members of the Senate they gave the sole power to try impeachments. They assumed that lawmakers, who had just fought a war to break free of a monarch, would understand that their own interests would always require stopping the rise of an authoritarian leader. 

But the Framers did not foresee the rise of political partisanship. 

In the modern era, extreme partisanship has led to voter suppression to keep Republicans in power, the weaponization of the filibuster to stop Democratic legislation, and gerrymandering to enable Republicans to take far more legislative seats than they have earned. The demands of this extreme partisanship also mean that members of one of the nation’s major political parties have lined up behind a man whom, were he running this sort of a campaign even ten years ago, they would have dismissed with derision. 

Finally, devastatingly, the partisanship that made senators keep Trump in office enabled him to name to the Supreme Court three justices. Those three justices were key to making up the majority that overturned the nation’s fundamental principle that all people must be equal before the law. In July 2024 they ruled that unlike anyone else, a president is above it.  

In May 2016, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham famously observed: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Republicans Are the Party of Cruelty

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2024 //
74

Thom Hartmann is a keen observer of American politics. A prolific writer, he sees issues in historical perspective. He knows that your grandfather’s Republican Party was conservative and imbued with a sense of devotion to community and tradition. Conservatives conserve, not destroy. That party today is devoted to disruption, to destroying communities and their public schools, to protecting the billionaires, and to mocking the weak. It is not your grandfather’s Republican Party.

Thom Hartmann writes:

During the 1950s, Republicans were the party that promoted labor unions, Social Security, and a top 91% income tax bracket and 70% estate tax on the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower successfully campaigned on what we’d call a progressive agenda for re-election in 1956.

During the Reagan years, Republicans embraced Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism with its free trade, opposition to unions, ending free college, and tax cuts for the fat cats. They called themselves “the party of new ideas.” They may have done more harm than good, but for most Republicans it was a good-faith effort. 

Today, they’ve pretty much given up on all of that.  All they have left is cruelty.

When Governor Tim Walz gave his heartwarming acceptance speech Wednesday night here at the DNC in Chicago, his son Gus was caught on camera proudly proclaiming, through tear-streaked eyes, “That’s my dad!” 

The response from Trumpy Republicans was immediate: Ann Coulter wrote, “Talk about weird.” Rightwing hate jock Jay Weber posted, “Meet my son, Gus. He’s a blubbering bitch boy. His mother and I are very proud.” Trumpy podcaster Mike Crispi ridiculed Walz’s “stupid crying son,” adding, “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.” Another well-known podcaster on the right, Alec Lace, said, “Get that kid a tampon already.”

Compassion for a learning-disabled child is dead on the right: all they have left is cruelty.

Ronald Reagan helped shepherd through Congress the most consequential border bill in American history, and when it needed updating Oklahoma’s Republican Senator James Lankford worked with Democrats to update it in a meaningful way. Trump demanded Republicans kill the legislation, invoking the memory of his tearing over 5,500 babies away from their mothers and trafficking them into fly-by-night “adoption” schemes (around 1000 are still missing) and his demand that the border patrol shoot immigrants in the legs.

Trump’s acolytes in Congress don’t even pretend any more to have a border policy: all they have left is cruelty.

President George HW Bush worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to unwind the USSR in the hope of creating a democratic Russia. Neither expected Vladimir Putin to turn that nation into a virtual concentration camp where gays are routinely murdered, child pornography is legal (and they’ve kidnapped over 700,000 Ukrainian children), and dissenters are tortured, poisoned, and sent to brutal Siberian gulags. Donald Trump celebrates Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy,” handing Putin’s ambassador a western spy and top-secret information in his first month in office, and trying to abandon America’s traditional role as a moral leader in the world.

Trump’s GOP has abandoned our founding principles: all they have left is cruelty.

During the 2020 election, Trump followers tried to run a Biden/Harris campaign bus off the road in Texas, threatening to kill the occupants (which they believed included Kamala Harris). A crazed Trump supporter broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer. Trump tweeted a picture of the bus being attacked, writing below it, “I LOVE TEXAS!” and repeatedly makes jokes about the attack on Pelosi, as if to encourage future attacks on the families of other Democratic politicians.

Not a single elected Republican (as best as I can find with a pretty thorough web search) has condemned either: all they have left is cruelty.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis turned down federal money that would have fed 2.1 million low-income children in his state; he was one of 13 Republican governors to do the same, in a nation where one in seven children — over 11 million every year — go to bed hungry.

We are literally the only developed country in the world with a massive child hunger problem because all Republicans have left is cruelty.

When President Obama succeeded in passing and signing the Affordable Care Act, it offered every state funds to expand Medicaid to give healthcare coverage to all their low-income citizens with the federal government covering 90% of the cost. To this day, ten states under Republican control have refused to accept the money, leading to millions of preventable illnesses and early deaths.

Republican states could have joined all the Blue states and every other developed country in the world by providing universal healthcare, but refuse to because all they have left is cruelty.

 When a 10-year-old girl was raped and impregnated, Republicans like Congressman Jim Jordan, Governor Kristi Noem, Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Jesse Waters, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost ridiculed the claim. When the rape and pregnancy were proven and the girl fled Ohio to a state where abortion was legal to terminate the pregnancy, Indiana’s Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita promised to launch an “investigation.”

Rokita didn’t investigate the rape, however: he instead went after the physician who performed the abortion. Because cruelty is all Republicans have left.

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes, he sent a violent mob against the US Capitol. As they tried to murder the vice president and speaker of the house, covered the walls of the building with feces and defaced priceless paintings, Trump gleefully watched on live television for over three hours while refusing to call in the national guard or take any other meaningful action.

Five civilians and three police officers died as the result of his sending that murderous mob because all he and his GOP have left is cruelty.

This week Americans saw Democrats display compassion, care, respect, and reverence for our democracy. We saw the best of this country, hope for the future, and actual plans to improve the lives of Americans.

Last month, in sharp contrast, we watched the Republican convention and saw, instead, a cavalcade of anger, bile, grievance, hate, and, of course, cruelty.

Because cruelty is all Republicans have left.

Note to Thom:

Some things you didn’t mention.

The red states that have repealed or loosened their child labor laws so that teens can work in hazardous jobs at younger ages.

The red states that overturned local laws requiring regular water breaks for laborers working outdoors in hot weather.

The red states that are defunding their public schools.

The red states that have abolished all gun laws and allow open carry of guns without a permit.

The red states oppose free lunches for children.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Closing schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Republicans

More than 200 Staffers for Bush, Romney and McCain Endorse Kamala Harris

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2024 //
20

A long list of people who worked in the campaigns or government offices of George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and John McCain issued a statement endorsing Kamala Harris yesterday. The full list appeared in USA Today. Many, but not all, of the group opposed Trump’s re-election in 2020. No comparable group of Obama-Biden alumni has endorsed Trump.

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Extremism, Republicans, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: What the Democratic Convention Revealed about Both Parties

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2024 //
13

Jennifer Rubin, columnist for the Washington Post, was at the convention in Chicago with her colleagues. She made a sage observation. The Democrats have a strong bench of new and young faces. The Republicans do not.

She wrote:

It has become evident during convention week that Democrats are blessed with three groups of leaders. The wise first group — Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, former speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and now Biden — has guided the party for the past generation, nationally making strides and keeping the Democratic coalition together. The domestic accomplishments they have collectively made would stand up to any other generation’s output. The second group’s time has come: Harris, Gov. Tim Walz (Minn.), Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Gov. Josh Shapiro (Pa.). They are more media savvy than many in the older generation and better able to reach voters who are younger and more diverse. This second group’s challenge will be putting a stake through the MAGA movement and charting a path forward for a sustainable, center-left governing majority. The third, and most interesting, group includes the future stars, two of whom (Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (Tex.)) lit up the convention on Monday night. Other less flashy but equally compelling figures have the governing chops to win legislative battles and keep the party from straying too far left. These include Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Va.), who is running for governor; Rep. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), who is running for Senate; Rep. Mikie Sherrill (N.J.); and Rep. Dan Goldman (N.Y.), who distinguished himself by going toe-to-toe with Republicans who ineptly and corruptly tried to investigate the Bidens.

Republicans have nothing comparable. Trump has hollowed out and disgraced the party. Any rebuilding, if Trump loses, will likely have to fall to a new generation. Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and a flock of House and Senate extremists have dominated the GOP, turned off a great many voters and done immense damage to comity, the rule of law and good governance. One of the most attractive features of a possible Harris victory: Many prominent Republicans will be swept aside. We can only hope a better crop replaces them.

Note that Trump and his acolytes have driven the next generation of Republicans out of the party. Trump himself campaigned to defeat any member of Congress who voted to impeach him. Trump-aligned governors have “primaried” moderate Republicans. To be successful in today’s Republican Party, a candidate must pledge to defend The Big Lie. That hollows out good people like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.

Categories Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Trump

The Bulwark: A Great Night for Harris, a Bad Night for Trump

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2024 //
65

The Bulwark is a Never-Trumper site, made up of angry Republicans. They have terrific content. Here is Bill Kristol, former editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, praising Kamala’s fabulous speech.

Kristol wrote:

Success.

Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech last night was a success. It capped a Democratic convention that was a success. That convention, in turn, capped Harris’s first month as a candidate, which was a success.

All that success was by no means inevitable.

One really has to tip one’s hat to the vice president and her campaign, and say: Not bad. Not bad at all. Pretty damn impressive, in fact.

Of course past performance is no guarantee of future results. Still, it does seem that a certain amount of optimism—guarded and hard-headed optimism—is warranted. We now have a reasonable likelihood of defeating Donald Trump, and electing as our next president a vigorous and centrist leader of a healthy and mainstream political party.

The convention has sought, for the most part, to present such a party. And last night’s speech presented such a leader.

The speech began with a very effective biographical section. Harris’s mother, Shyamala Harris, was central to her narrative. The tribute to her mother ran like a red thread through this part of the speech, and indeed the speech as a whole, allowing Harris to humanize herself while deftly avoiding the grandiosity and pomposity that often mar such efforts.

Having introduced herself to the nation, Harris formally accepted the nomination of her party. But it was a remarkably nonpartisan acceptance of a party’s nomination:

And, so, on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks. On behalf of my mother, and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey. On behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with—people who work hard, chase their dreams and look out for one another. On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.

The tone of that paragraph laid the groundwork for the rest of the speech. Harris spoke more as an American than as a Democrat; as a patriot, not a partisan; and as someone grateful not aggrieved, future-oriented but not at all hostile to our past.

And so Harris continued:

And let me say, I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.

The invocation of America’s fundamental principles, in turn, laid the predicate for a criticism of Trump as threatening them:

In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

And the critique of Trump led into the last half or so of the speech, which consisted of a pitch for more-or-less centrist domestic policies— including the bipartisan border bill that Trump torpedoed—and a robust endorsement of America’s necessary and distinctive role in the world.

Overall, the vision was kind of Bill Clinton (with a touch of Jack Kemp) at home, and John McCain abroad, with a hefty dose of John F. Kennedy-Ronald Reagan patriotism throughout. Harris even offered a striking endorsement of American exceptionalism:

I see an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world . . . We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American.

With this speech, and with this convention as a whole, we have come a long way—the Democratic party has come a long way—from the identity and grievance politics of the left. Harris and Tim Walz have laid the predicate for a center-oriented, optimistic, and patriotic campaign. Consider the final tally. The terms America, American, Americans were uttered 34 times; country or nation, 20 times; freedom, 12 times; opportunity, 6 times; Democrats or Democratic party, 0 times.

It won’t be smooth sailing ahead. Trump and his campaign will go after them. And the left won’t simply be quiet. So there will be challenges aplenty.

Still, the prospects for the next two months seem pretty good to me.

But enough of all this unaccustomed good cheer. We need to start worrying about the debate. It’s only two-and-a-half weeks away.

While Kamala Harris was giving her terrific speech last night, Trump was live-tweeting on his favorite site. He was outraged!

Andrew Eggers wrote:

When things are going well and he’s feeling good, Donald Trump can sometimes be cajoled by his team into something resembling discipline. When things are going badly, he’s much more prone to publicly venting some spleen.

So perhaps the greatest measure of the effectiveness of Kamala Harris’s convention speech was the truly unhinged content bender it sent Trump spiraling into last night.

It started on Truth Social, where Trump informed us he had “assembled a small group of people, GREAT PATRIOTS ALL,” to watch Harris’s “puff piece.”

At first, Trump was jocular: “A lot of talk about childhood,” he wrote as Harris told her personal history, “we’ve got to get to the Border, Inflation, and Crime!”

Soon, though, the wheels were coming off. “These Prosecutions were all started by her and Biden against her Political Opponent, ME!” Trump fumed as Harris turned to his legal troubles. “IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?”

A random sampling of what followed:

  • “LYING AGAIN ABOUT PROJECT 2025, WHICH SHE KNOWS, AND SO DO ALL DEMOCRATS, THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH!”
  • “She just called to give all Illegals CITIZENSHIP, SAY GOODBYE TO THE U.S.A.! SHE IS A RADICAL MARXIST!”
  • “Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.”
  • “SHE HAS LED US INTO FAILING NATION STATUS!”
  • “WHERE’S HUNTER?”

But posting, it turned out, wasn’t enough to soothe Trump’s jangled nerves. After the speech, he dialed into Fox News for still more free-associative complaining, bowling right over Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum’s attempts to get in specific questions, seemingly pressing phone buttons with his face as he talked. They eventually had to cut him off mid-sentence to wrap up their show.

Not to worry, though: When they pull the plug on you on Fox, there’s always Newsmax. So Trump picked up the phone again. “I will tell you, I just watched it,” he told Greg Kelly and Mercedes Schlapp a few moments later. “She didn’t talk about many things, like interest rates, China, fracking anywhere, let alone Pennsylvania, crime, poverty, trade deficits, child trafficking, woman trafficking, drugs, the border—she didn’t talk about the most important things.”

Did he get the bile out of his system? Trump’s rallying in Arizona this afternoon; I guess we’ll find out then.

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Republicans, Trump

The Status Kuo: Why Tim Walz Drives MAGAts Crazy

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2024 //
16

I wrote a post on Monday about the relentless GOP attacks on Tim Walz and his wife. They claim his 34 years of service in the National Guard was tarnished; they say he’s not really a coach; they say he and his wife are left wing radicals; they say the Walz family is worth almost $200 million; they say Tim is possibly a spy for China. All lies. Trumpian lies.

In his blog The Status Kuo, Jay Kuo explains why the GOP is aiming their insults at Walz, not Kamala, and why it’s a good thing.

He writes:

There’s a strange phenomenon occurring with the terminally online right. Ever since Vice President Kamala Harris announced that Gov. Tim Walz would be her running mate, many of the right have acted with fury. They’ve attempted to “Swift Boat” his 24-year service record in the Army National Guard. They’ve called him a racist for talking about “white guy tacos.” And they’ve drudged up a nearly 30-year old DUI—for which he took accountability and after which he stopped drinking altogether—to prove he’s somehow not so perfect a role model.

What they haven’t been able to do is make any of this stick. And yet, Walz continues to draw fire, which could otherwise have been directed at Harris.

In other words, Walz is turning out to be a shrewd pick. At net 11 points positive favorability in polls, Walz is immensely more popular than his counterpart on the GOP ticket, JD Vance, who is underwater by nine. And as they continue to rail against him, the right keeps making his fundamental point about them: They are just really weird.

In today’s piece, I explore some theories about why Walz brings out the worst impulses of the right just by being who he is. Then I’ll lay down some political tarot cards and prognosticate about where I think this leads.

Politico Uno Reverse

By most identity measures, Walz should be one of the MAGA right. He’s a midwestern white dude in his late 50s. He loves to hunt and is a sharpshooter. He served for decades in the military and achieved the highest enlisted rank of Command Sergeant Major. He was a football coach who helped lead his team to the state championship.

And yet, despite all these identity markings, Walz in an unabashed progressive. He is for reproductive rights and an ally and protector of gay teens. And there isn’t a bigoted bone in his body. It’s as if when Harris picked him, she played, as writer Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman succinctly described it, a “political uno reverse.” The Walz card threw it right back at them, as if to say, “I’m a guy just like you, but without any of the weird baggage.”

The MAGA GOP’s base is supposed to include white guys like Walz. But here is living evidence that they don’t have all of them or the best of them. That’s why they’re so eager to discredit him, because if they don’t, as psychologist Julie Hotard notes, then Walz will stand instead as a model of what is possible. On many levels, an appealing, white, male Democrat is a far bigger threat to their sense of identity than even a biracial woman candidate for president.

The 2004 playbook

All this helps explain why Republicans have trained their fire upon Walz and are so determined to sink him. To do so, they tried an old play that Walz and the Harris team saw coming for miles.

In an election 20 years ago, Republican dirty trickster and campaign strategist Chris LaCivita created the “Swift Boat” controversy to tarnish John Kerry’s otherwise unblemished military record. It was character assassination from a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and it worked—even though there was no basis in fact for any of it. As NPR recently summarized,

“Their accusations are widely understood to be false. Military records (released by Kerry’s campaign) backed up his combat claims. And while most of the swift boat veterans who spoke out against Kerry did not serve with him directly, the ones who did publicly supported his version of events….The swift boating undercut Kerry’s momentum coming out of the Democratic National Convention, and turned one of his greatest strengths into a liability….“

Now LaCivita is back as senior advisor to the Trump reelection campaign, as are attempts to impugn the military record of Walz, another veteran turned politician. The Trump campaign claimed, for example, that Walz resigned from the military in order to avoid the fighting in Iraq, making him a coward with “stolen valor,” but the timeline doesn’t match up. Walz retired months before his unit received any deployment orders to active duty overseas.

This time, however, Democrats were ready for the bad faith attacks, and reporters (outside of the Fox ecosystem anyway) appeared unwilling to take the bait. So far, the swiftboating of Walz is fading fast from the headlines.

Attacking Mr. Nice Guy

For the past two decades, the GOP has shifted markedly toward being a party of cruelty, of “owning” the libs and drinking their tears, and of being as unpleasant and in-your-face as they can be. That kind of behavior has been rewarded with appearances on Fox and other right wing media, fundraising dollars from the MAGA base, and a spot at the side or in the tweets of the ex-president himself.

As author Patrick S. Tomlinson observed, Walz represents what shouldn’t be an extraordinary notion: that you can be a nice guy, supportive of women, embracing of gay people, and still be all the coded masculine ideals of soldier, football coach, hunter and father that the MAGA right believed it had a lock on. Plus, you can be all those things without ever asking weird questions about menstrual cycles, chromosomes and genitalia.

The right even tried to make a big deal about Walz’s efforts as governor to ensure free tampons were available to girls in school. Rumors circulated that schools had been required to also put tampons in boys’ bathrooms, but those claims turned out to be untrue, while demonstrating how off kilter the right becomes over sexuality and gender. The “Tampon Tim” moniker didn’t stick. On the contrary, there are probably many moms and dads grateful for a governor like Walz who is thinking about their daughters’ needs.

For a party accustomed to attacking its enemies, the GOP is now at a loss over how exactly to attack Walz next. Their latest meltdown over his “racist” comment about eating “white guy tacos” exposed them further as the very “snowflakes” they decry, delicate creatures who don’t understand the basic difference between racism and self-deprecation. And really, don’t they have anything better to do than whine about one of their own making a joke about spice tolerance levels? It’s all very silly, but also bogs them down in their own angry stew. 

And in that obsession to bring him down, the right is walking right into Harris’s trap. Every day that Walz draws their attention is one more day Harris moves closer to the presidency end zone, without anyone getting close enough to tackle her. For his part, Walz appears perfectly happy to distract her would-be assailants.

It’s a play an experienced and successful defensive coach like Walz would appreciate.

The fact is that the GOP hasn’t figured out how to attack Kamala without being racist or misogynistic. Trump has called her “Laughing Kamala,” “Crooked Kamala,” “Lying Kamala,” but none of his schoolyard bully taunts has stuck. He has said she is “low IQ” and the “worst Vice-President in history,” but that didn’t stick either. He also called her a “communist,” but no one takes him seriously. So the empty headed MAGA crowd sticks with “Tampon Tim,” which assumes that none of them have teenage daughters. The girls are grateful to Governor Walz.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Ethics, Fake News, Harris, Kamala, Lies, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump, Walz, Tim
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