The Republicans, as they say, told on themselves Monday. Well, Joni Ernst did.

The Iowa senator, who’s up for reelection, explained without meaning to that the Senate’s impeachment trial is now a concerted effort to do what the Ukrainians wouldn’t: create a fake rationale for a fake investigation into fake corruption by Joe Biden.

“Iowa caucuses, folks, Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening,” Ernst told reporters in the Capitol. “And I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus-goers. Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not certain about that.”

“This discussion today” came courtesy of the president’s attorneys, who didn’t bother defending their client so much as put the former vice president on trial. Senators saw, perhaps for the first time, an edited video in which Joe Biden says he threatened to hold up a billion-dollar loan to force Ukraine to get rid of its prosecutor-general.

Missing from the clip, however, is the fact that Biden threatened to hold up the loan to goose Ukraine into get rid of a corrupt senior government official who was too soft on corruption related to the natural gas firm his own son worked for, Burisma. Missing is the fact that Biden wasn’t working for himself, or his son, but for the United States government, the European Union and anti-corruption agencies around the world. Missing is the fact that “corruption” in Ukraine is a byword for being in Russian pay.

Such context, however, undermines the GOP’s bid to smear Biden. Here’s Ted Cruz:

We just saw video, I’d encourage every news outlet here to show it, of Joe Biden bragging how he told the president of Ukraine that he was gonna cut off a billion dollars, gonna cut off a billion dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor. And in Joe Biden’s own words, “Son of a bitch, they fired the guy.”

The legal issue before this Senate is whether a president has the authority to investigate corruption. The House managers built their entire case on the proposition that investigating Burisma corruption, that investigating the Bidens for corruption was baseless and a sham. … That proposition is absurd.

What’s Cruz is saying is absurd. It’s a fire hose of lies.

But it’s more than that. It’s malevolence.

He’s trying to hurt us.

The conventional wisdom among liberal critics, myself included, is that the president and his confederates are trying to convince everyone that everyone else is as amoral as Trump is. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said, while watching the Senate trial that, “This is the core of Trumpism: this nihilistic cynicism and projection that everyone is equally corrupt, everyone acts like Trump.” I made that case myself last week in “A GOP Ensnared in ‘the Russian Story.’” I think we need to go a step further, however.

Think about it. The president’s defense yesterday was rooted in a Kremlin lie — that it wasn’t the Russians that attacked our sovereignty in 2016 but instead the Ukrainians, and that it wasn’t Donald Trump who corrupted the will of the people but instead Joe Biden, who was in league with foreign agents in a conspiracy to elect Hillary Clinton.

Up is down, right is left, wrong is right. Everything is upside down and backward.

That’s why Chris Hayes later on added: “The aggressive disingenuousness really starts to strain one’s sanity.” To which Josh Marshall, the editor of Talking Points Memo, replied: “It really does. I’ve had a number of times when I just have to tune out. Listening to people lie from a position of power becomes enervating over time.”

Hayes and Marshall are a political junkie’s political junkie, but even they shrink away from engagement when lies pile up faster than fact-checkers can keep pace. Why aren’t we talking more often about how a malicious system of lies makes us feel? Who benefits when even political junkies turn away from things making them feel insane?

Lying is one thing. Systemic lying is another. There’s more at work here.

Moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote, in his 2006 book On Truth, that lies “are designed to prevent us from being in touch with what is really going on. In telling his lie, the liar tries to mislead us into believing that the facts are other than they actually are. He tries to impose his will on us” (all italics mine). “Lies are designed to damage our grasp of reality. So they are intended, in a very real sense, to make us crazy.”

Lies, in other words, don’t just deceive.

They injure.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 28 January 2020
Word Count: 771
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I argued last week the Senate Republicans neutered themselves when they voted down amendments creating procedures worthy of “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

All 53 decided against issuing new subpoenas, entering to new evidence and calling for new witnesses. They decided against accountability, transparency and due process.

As a consequence, they created a kangaroo court mocking separation of powers. As a result, they revealed themselves, as one Twitter follower put it, to be “a party of moral relativism, ethical nihilism and legal sophism.” Or, to put it more simply, fascism.

Neutering themselves was the price for loyalty to a president facing the prospect of removal from office. That probably felt like a good trade-off, even for “moderate” senators in bluish-reddish states facing reelection this year. At the very least, standing with Donald Trump, and acquitting him, meant their heads would not be on pikes.

But loyalty to a lying, thieving, philandering sadist was always risky. Turns out the White House knew the Republicans’ carefully planned rationales for defending a criminal president would blow up. The administration knew it was a matter of time before a book by a former Trump official would make fools and knaves of them all.

What’s done is done, though.

Any dog will tell you once neutered, there’s no going back.

The New York Times reported the contents of a forthcoming book by John Bolton. In it, the former head of the National Security Council says yup, Trump totally bribed Ukraine to gain advantage at home. He withheld hundreds of millions to aid that country’s war against Russia in exchange for investigations into Trump’s top domestic rival.

Importantly, Trump’s bribery demanded Ukrainian officials turn over “all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton in Ukraine,” per the Times. This is new. More in a moment.

Copies of Bolton’s manuscript had been sent to the White House for standard vetting of classified information. But here’s the thing: the president’s press office didn’t know about the existence of Bolton’s manuscript until it was too late, according to Axios.

While it’s plausible incompetence is creating headaches for the GOP, it’s equally plausible corrupt motives are in play. Given everything we know about how hard this White House worked to cover up Trump’s bribery, it stands to reason it work just as hard to ensure no one saw Bolton’s book until the Republicans acquitted the president.

Why are the Senate Republicans putting their political lives on the line for a president so ready to betray them? I don’t know. Perhaps the Republicans don’t either. For their own sake, they’d better figure it out. The drip-drip-drip of bad news will continue through Election Day. It’s shrewd to fear a party leader threatening to put your head on a pike. At what point, however, does avoiding such a fate end up causing it?

Republicans like Lindsey Graham have nothing to fear, however. The South Carolina senator has threatened, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to open an investigation into Joe Biden and his only living son. Ukraine is awash in corruption, but even that was too much for Ukraine. Not so for Lindsey Graham.

Which brings me back to the Times report.

Up to now, our understanding has been the president held up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a public announcement of sham investigations. State Department officials testified the announcement was the deliverable. Whether it actually investigated was beside the point. But Bolton says Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, wanted Ukraine to turn over “all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to” Biden and Clinton. That new detail is meaningful for two reasons.

One, Trump’s conspiracy theory in which the Ukrainians, not the Russians, undermined our sovereignty in 2016 is not just a conspiracy theory. It is a willful and knowing effort on the part of the president and his confederates to erase the past and replace it with a “new history” in which Trump is the original victim and ultimate hero in a battle with evil Democrats in league with evil Ukrainians attacking the US of A.

Two, Graham, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is positioned to receive “all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to” Biden and Clinton. He is positioned, in other words, to deepen and widen the force of the president’s lies using the power of an investigation by the United States Senate.

The Republicans neutered themselves.

For nothing.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 27 January 2020
Word Count: 758
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On the third day of the Senate impeachment trial, the House Democrats connected the dots I have been longing for them to connect. House Manager Sylvia Garcia, of Texas, said the Trump-Ukraine scandal was about smearing a political opponent. More importantly, she said Donald Trump had been repeating a Kremlin lie — that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that attacked the United States in 2016. She went further to say he is aiding and abetting our geopolitical adversary. Trump is on Vladimir Putin’s side.

For anyone tuning in the first time, this probably seems extraordinary. You know, like, crazy! Well, that’s because it is. The president is involved in an international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people of their right to consent to a president’s rule and weaken Russia’s old enemy from the inside out. It’s just unbelievable! Yet everything we know about the Trump-Ukraine scandal, underscored by every witness testifying during impeachment hearings, points steadily in the Kremlin’s direction.

Garcia and the others explained in lengthy detail why allegations against Joe Biden are not only false on the facts but malign in intent. Biden, as vice president, did put pressure on Ukraine’s prosecutor general but not because Viktor Shokin was being too hard investigating a gas company Hunter Biden worked for. Biden was putting pressure on Shokin because he was being too soft. Biden did not threaten to suspend a billion-dollar loan to Ukraine in order to get Shokin off Burisma’s back. He made the threat in order to get Shokin on Burisma’s back. Shokin was later fired for corruption.

Garcia and the others also explained in lengthy detail why the president keeps repeating the same conspiracy theory about the Ukrainians, not the Russians, violating American sovereignty in 2016. The reason, they said, is because it works for the Russians, who want their enemies blamed for their crimes, and it works for Trump, who fears deeply being seen as a weak and illegitimate president. The conspiracy theory, as I have said before, makes Trump the original victim and the ultimate hero. By extorting Ukraine, he helped himself. By extorting Ukraine, he helped Russia.

“Our own president is helping our adversary,” Garcia said.

The facts are on the Democrats’ side. What do the Republicans have?

Lies. There’s no truth left.

US Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said on Twitter Thursday: “On this day in 2018, Joe Biden bragged that he would withhold $1 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire the prosecutor investigating his son and Burisma. If this is true, under the House Democrats’ logic, wouldn’t it be impeachable conduct?”

It’s not true. The House managers explained that. Blackburn is lying.

US Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri, said on Twitter Thursday: “WOW, House managers make extended argument that Hunter Biden’s work w/ Burisma entirely appropriate & no conflict of interest w/ Joe Biden getting rid of prosecutor that had jurisdiction over Burisma. If we call witnesses, gonna need to hear from both Bidens.”

The House managers made no such defense. Hawley is lying.

US Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, told the Newshour’s Judy Woodruff Thursday “that so far most of what he’s heard is a defense of Joe Biden who Scott believes is ‘indefensible.’ Scott also said Democrats should have fought for documents in the court rather than pushing for a trial,” according to Yamiche Alcindor.

Again, the House managers made no such defense. Scott is lying.

But this kind of misrepresentation of reality isn’t benign. It is vicious. It is malign. It isn’t meant only to deceive. It is designed to harm — to injure — the republic. There are no other options for them. They have become fully ensnared in “the Russian story.”

On the second day of the impeachment trial, lead House manager Adam Schiff said:

The Russian storyline, the Russian narrative, the Russian propaganda, the Russian view they would like people around the world to believe is that every country is just the same, just the same corrupt system. There’s no difference.

It’s not a competition between autocracy and democracy. No, it’s just between autocrats and hypocrites. They make no bones about their loss of democracy. They just want the rest of the world to believe you can’t find it anywhere.

Why take to the streets in Moscow to demand something better if there’s nothing better anywhere else? That’s the Russian story.

The Republicans have more than lies on their side. They have fear. CBS News reported a Trump surrogate warned if they vote against him, “your head will be on a pike.”

They have nihilism, too.

They cannot believe the Democrats are right on the facts. They cannot believe the Democrats have the Constitution and morality on their side. The Republicans cannot trust their own eyes. They cannot believe the Democrats are acting in good faith.

They cannot believe, because they have no faith.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 January 2020
Word Count: 813
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In their defense of the president, the Republicans are focused almost entirely on the first article of impeachment in which Donald Trump is accused of abusing the power of his office for personal gain. The Republicans have said the allegation is baseless given there is no underlying crime. If there’s no crime, there’s no need for removal.

Impeachment and removal do not require law-breaking, and everyone who knows anything about legal precedent, constitutional law and American history knows this well. Involving a foreign government in an international conspiracy to defraud the American people of their right to informed consent to the governance of the president is a violation of the public trust. Impeachment and removal are the only constitutional remedies for a person who cheated to win in 2016 and plans to cheat again in 2020.

But there is an underlying crime in the first article. That crime came to light after the House voted to indict the president. It came to light after civil lawsuits pending during last year’s impeachment inquiry finally worked their way through the courts. As a result of those lawsuits, we know the president broke federal law when he held up over $400 million in military aid Ukraine needed badly in its war with Russia. As a result of those lawsuits, a nonpartisan government agency confirmed Trump’s law-breaking.

The Government Accountability Office did more than that. Its report found the president’s excuse for withholding the money was irrelevant. The White House said Trump blocked the funding in order to push Ukraine’s government into doing more about corruption. But that decision wasn’t Trump’s to make alone. The United States Congress appropriated the money. Trump had no say in how or why it was spent (other than vetoing or signing the appropriation in law, which he did). If anti-corruption were a legitimate reason for holding the aid, he first had to take it to the Congress.

That he held the money and didn’t go to the Congress means the president violated the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. (He did release the money eventually but only after public knowledge of what he was doing.) The ICA was passed in response to Richard Nixon’s refusal to spend on federal programs he didn’t like. The law affirmed perhaps the most important authority granted by the Constitution, which is the exclusive right of the Congress to wield “the power of the purse.” The Congress always had the right, but not until Nixon did a president challenge it. The ICA codified tradition into law.

My point here is less about Trump’s criminality than about the second article of impeachment in which the president is accused of obstructing the Congress. The White House has told every government agency involved in the Ukraine scandal to refuse cooperating with the Congress, even when lawfully subpoenaed. The result has been unprecedented obstruction of not only statutes, but the will of the people. Yet almost no one, not even the Washington press corps, is fully paying attention to that article. In light of Trump’s criminality, it may be the most consequential of the two.

If the Senate finds the president not guilty of obstructing the Congress, I don’t see why future presidents would feel constrained by the Congress when it comes to virtually anything, but specifically when it comes to how and why to spend public money. The Constitution grants the Congress the power of the purse. The Impoundment Control Act affirms that authority. But if the Senate finds Trump innocent of the obstruction charge, the Congress will have in effect surrendered its authority over the executive.

The current president wants to build a wall on the southern border. Thus far, the courts and the Congress have constrained him from redirecting money appropriated for things like the general welfare and national defense to building his campaign boondoggle. But if the Senate acquits Trump for obstruction, it will have declared any future president can obstruct. The executive will be free to spend public money as he sees fit. And if the executive can ignore the Congress, why not ignore the courts, too?

We often say the president’s impeachment trial is the height of a slow-motion constitutional crisis. It might be more accurate to say we haven’t seen anything yet.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 23 January 2020
Word Count: 710
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John Roberts made headlines this morning. The reaction among Democratic partisans was understandable but I think missing a more important point. Manners of speaking and choice of language aren’t the problems. The problems are the Republican Party’s corruption, the president’s criminality, and the impotency of the United States Senate.

The chief justice of the US Supreme Court, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, said both parties needed reminding they were presenting their cases for and against the president in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

“It is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and the president’s counsel … to remember they are addressing the world greatest deliberative body. One reason it has earned that title is because its members avoid speaking in a manner and using language that is not conducive to civil discourse.”

That got a lot of backs up, understandably. How can Roberts be talking about language conducive to civil discourse when we’re talking about the president’s crimes and the Republican Party’s effort to cover them up? But I tend to believe Chris Murphy.

The US senator from Connecticut was in the front row behind the House managers. He said in an early-morning Tweet everyone was getting “chippy and personal.” To be sure, Murphy is my senator, but he’s an honest broker too. He said: “I’m alarmed at how often the parties are directly addressing each other. Neither the managers nor the president’s lawyers are on trial. Trump is. Good for Roberts for stepping in gently.”

The Washington press corps is using Roberts’ admonishment to frame the opening day of the president’s impeachment trail. Both sides are fighting so hard and with so much rancor that even the chief justice had to step in. But while the press corps focuses on conflict, as it is wont to do, I was focused on the other bit. The Senate earned its reputation as a deliberative body because it deliberated, slowly and painfully, so much so its other, less charitable, reputation is being a place where bills go to die.

Deliberation isn’t what we saw Tuesday. Deliberation isn’t what we’ll see during the rest of the trial. Just as he rammed through one mirror-fogging judicial nominee after another without complaint from his conference, the Senate majority leader is stuffing a month’s worth of deliberation (at least) into three days. He is turning “the greatest deliberative body” into the world’s fastest kangaroo court. Roberts’ admonishment was met with howls of derision. It should have been met with howls of laughter.

Our sympathies should be with the Democrats. They were not asking the Senate to convict Trump (though they argued strenuously for his guilt). They were asking senators to behave normally by subpoenaing records, entering new evidence, and calling new witnesses. They were asking for transparency, accountability and due process. They were asking for normal things, things you see on “Law & Order.” But instead of behaving normally, instead of living up to their reputations, every single Republican (53 in all) voted down half a dozen and more amendments creating rules and conditions rising to the Senate’s title as “the world’s most deliberative body.”

But they did something else. Before they have determined whether the president is guilty of charges against him, they have decided to surrender their power to even ask the question. The US Constitution gives the Senate, and only the Senate, the sole power to prosecute a president. By voting against normal and ordinary due process, however, every Senate Republican has said they have no such power. They have muzzled themselves. They have neutered their institution. They have created anti-democratic and anti-republican grounds for future presidents to declare themselves untouchable.

Why not allow due process, then come to a conclusion, even if that conclusion is not guilty? Why not allow due process? One answer is that due process would reveal the president’s guilt to the American people. The solution is getting the trial over with as fast as possible to allow memories to fade before Election Day. But there’s a better way of understanding this.

Due process is the quintessential American way. But due process, for Trump and his GOP, is getting in the way. In other words, it’s the problem.

There’s a word for individuals who not only flout the rules but attack their legitimacy. There’s a word for individuals who not only break democratic norms but undermine the institutions enforcing them. That word isn’t republican. Nor is it Republican.

It’s fascist.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 22 January 2020
Word Count: 750
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Someone needs to invent an expression to describe the experience of being surprised by the surprise of others. Maybe the Germans have a long word for what I’m feeling. To me, it seems pretty clear Mitch McConnell does not care about the Constitution. He does not care about the rule of law. He does not care about the common good or commitments to a democratic covenant. These are nice things to pay lip-service to. These are impediments to get around. The point of politics is power. Power is all.

That the Senate majority leader is doing everything possible to create procedural conditions with which to expedite Donald Trump’s acquittal should not be surprising. It should be expected, especially by serious and sober intellectuals engaging in public affairs. And yet, on this opening day of the Senate’s impeachment trial, these same people seem to be downright shocked — shocked! — to witness McConnell’s cold-blooded and cynical moves to protect the most criminal president of our lifetimes.

But, even as I expect the worst from a fascist Republican Party, I don’t feel hopeless. The same people expressing shock also claim democracy is doomed if the president is exonerated for cheating. He will surely cheat again! Yes, indeed, that’s what lying, thieving, philandering sadists do. But that doesn’t mean the end of our democracy. That’s merely more of the same. As Jerry Nadler put it, Trump “welcomed” foreign interference in 2016 and he “demanded” it for 2020. Undermining the will of the people is treasonous, but that’s nothing compared to Vladimir Putin’s approval.

We could be entering a period of authoritarian democracy, similar to what’s happening in nations like Russia, Turkey, Hungary and the Philippines. We could see a return of a variation of apartheid, in which popular democracy isn’t popular but instead enjoyed legally by whites only. But those extremes would require deep structural change — like amending the US Constitution and abandoning federalism. A reelected Donald Trump would be a disaster with years of painful consequences, but the republic will live on.

Anyway, cheating doesn’t mean winning for the president — or for the Senate Republicans. So far the Democrats are focusing on why Trump should be removed. But I’d expect them to quickly shift focus to the corrupt process of the Senate trial. The more the Democrats highlight its fundamental unfairness — no new witnesses, no new evidence, presentations jammed into 12-hour slots lasting well into early morning hours — the more they draw attention to McConnell, especially members of his conference seeking reelection. The more the Democrats highlight corruption, the more ammunition Democratic challengers have in knocking off GOP incumbents.

Focusing on the Republican Party’s corruption does something else. It creates a true oppositional binary. As long as the Democrats focus on why the president is guilty, the Washington press corps will report proceedings as a fight between equally powerful and equally legitimate political parties. However, accusing McConnell of unfairness forces him to explain why he’s fair, which, of course, he can’t do. He’s already on his heels defending an indefensible president. The Democrats could tip him right over.

This, I think, is the Democrats best move. They should be otherwise prepared to lose the trial over Trump. They should not be, as some pundits have urged, demanding Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rule in their favor, forcing the Republicans to call witnesses, etc. The Democrats can say Roberts could choose not to play by McConnell’s corrupt rules. That would highlight Roberts’ corruption. (The high court, as Samuel Moyn said, is not and will not be a friend to equality and justice.) But liberals shouldn’t want him to interfere in constitutional combat. Liberals should accept that democratic institutions won’t save the republic. Only politics will.

This is probably what most shocks serious and sober intellectuals engaging in public affairs — that even the United States Constitution itself can’t stop a criminal president abetted by a major political party with help of a global right-wing media apparatus. If the Constitution and all the institutions built up around it can’t stop Trump, surely our democracy is doomed. That, however, is putting too much faith in institutions and not enough faith in people, especially people willing to fight for a more equitable America.

Uncritical faith in democratic institutions, even the United States Constitution itself, actually gives a fascist Republican Party an advantage it deeply desires. Fascists hate institutions getting in their way. They love institutions serving them. Corrupt institutions accelerate the trend toward authoritarian democracy. Preserving them enables that trend. Asking John Roberts to interfere is to legitimize an institution — the US Senate — bent on undermining the power of the people to set things right.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 21 January 2020
Word Count: 777
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There’s a gun rally going on in Richmond, Virginia, today. It’s not about guns. Thousands, I suppose maybe tens of thousands, of Americans have gathered in defense of the Second Amendment. It’s not about the right to bear arms or self-defense.

The rally is about the freedom of some Americans to carry lethal weaponry in civil society for the purpose of intimidating humans being “deserving” of intimidation. More importantly, the rally is a representation of the bifurcated nature of our moral and legal system in which white men are protected by the law while everyone else is punished. There is one set of rules and norms for “us.” There is one set for “them.”

They are separate, and unequal.

There is ample documentary evidence to underscore my point. Hop on Twitter to see gangs walking around the former capital of the Confederacy wearing combat fatigues and carrying semi-automatic rifles, some of which are the same AR-15s used in one mass murder after another. The truth is obvious. Virtually all of them are white men.

That the rally is occurring on Martin Luther King Jr. Day is no accident. Indeed, it is appropriate given that the point is intimidating human beings “deserving” of intimidation. King and his allies fought to democratize America fully. They struggled to complete a 100-year process of liberalization that began with the Emancipation Proclamation.

But for many Americans, democracy isn’t for “them.” Democracy is for “us.” Equality isn’t an ideal to aspire to. Equality is a transgression worthy of punishment. People demanding things they don’t deserve get what’s coming to them. In the distant past, it was enslavement. In the near past, it was mass incarceration. On MLK Day 2020, it is the feeling of terror in knowing the state might not protect them from white violence.

The irony is King was a gun owner. He owned lots of guns. “An arsenal” is how a visitor put it. King came from a conservative black tradition in the Jim Crow South borne of practical need. If a white man pointed a gun at you, you pointed one back.

King is remembered now for his faith, liberal values and commitment to nonviolent protest. But that commitment arose from a context, and that context was a fierce debate between opposing camps in the civil-rights movement. One camp favored nonviolence. One favored armed resistance. King and others made a pragmatic choice.

Why pragmatic? Because armed resistance was a good way for black activists to get killed. (Chicago police, after all, murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton. The Black Panthers broke from King’s movement. They advocated armed resistance.) More importantly, choosing armed resistance was accepting “the demise of civil society, to admit that we have no better solutions, and that we are little better than our past,” wrote Simon Balto in 2013. Balto’s essay for the Washington Spectator, back when I was its managing editor, was so powerful and so moving, I have never forgotten it.

At the time, some white liberals argued the Trayvon Martins of the world are going to be accused of carrying guns even if they are not, so they may as well carry one for self-defense. But that idea was missing something huge, Simon Balto wrote. “There is no salvation, no endgame, in the proposition,” he said. “It leads nowhere but a society of seemingly infinite arms and limitless danger. Much of black America recognizes this.

There’s a reason that, in spite of the fraught and often racist history of gun control, African Americans still overwhelmingly support it. It is because black communities know terribly well the burden of life in a society premised around fear, and in which the state vacates or fails in its responsibility to keep its citizens safe. That is, after all, a significant thread of our country’s racial history — one that’s been weaving for many generations now. … To accept that idea would be a monstrous, awful thing.

King chose nonviolent protest, but it must be said armed resistance was resisting something, primarily a state unwilling or unable to protect black people from white violence. Today’s gun-rally participants say they are resisting too. They are not. The state not only protects white people from violence, but it protects white people’s “freedom” to commit violence. That’s what so-called Stand Your Ground laws are.

Gun-rights advocates say they are resisting the tyranny of the state, but that rhetoric masks a simpler and truer purpose. If “gun control is Jim Crow,” they are the victims. If they are the victims, who is doing the victimizing? A state that’s no longer the exclusive preserve of white men, a state fully and faithfully committed to King’s dream. Equality isn’t an American ideal to aspire to. Equality is a transgression worthy of punishment.

It’s no surprise a gun rally is happening on MLK Day.

It’s no surprise, because that’s the point.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 January 2020
Word Count: 812
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Robert Hyde is a businessman and former Marine who’s running against Democrat Jahana Hayes for the 5th Congressional seat in Connecticut. He’s the newest entry of the dramatis personae of the Trump-Ukraine saga. Text messages released by the House suggest Hyde was stalking Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine.

Lev Parnas, who turned over the messages, says he never took Hyde seriously. In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Parnas maligned Hyde’s character, saying he never saw him when he was not drunk. Parnas is one of Rudy Giuliani’s goons. In one way or another, he has been at the center of the president’s conspiracy to smear Joe Biden and rewrite the history of 2016 so that Ukraine, not Russia, is the enemy. Parnas is now under indictment for violating campaign-finance laws. He’s coming forward with what he knows about Donald Trump in an apparent bid for leniency.

Parnas has corroborated with direct material evidence what we already know about Trump’s conspiracy. But we shouldn’t be gullible. When Parnas says he never took Hyde seriously, bear in mind there are few if any moral or legal barriers to this president’s desires. Given his record, it seems plausible, at least, for Trump to have permitted, at least, a goon like Robert Hyde to stalk an ambassador who’s getting in the way of extorting Ukraine’s president in order to defraud the American people.

For his part, Hyde denies having stalked Yovanovitch. On Eric Bolling’s program airing on TV stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, Hyde said he barely knew Parnas. He said they were exchanging “colorful” messages while “smoking a couple of cigars somewhere out in the world.” He told Bolling: “I thought we were playing. I didn’t know he was so serious.” Bolling asked: Did you track Yovanovitch? “Absolutely not,” he said. “Are you kidding me? I’m a little landscaper from fucking Connecticut.”

Turns out the little landscaper from fucking Connecticut spent considerable time in Trump’s entourage and on Trump’s properties. He was prolific on Twitter, posting pictures of himself with well-known Republicans, including Giuliani, Parnas and the president. Emilie Munson is a reporter for Hearst Connecticut Media covering the 5th Congressional race. She asked about the selfies. Hyde was coy, but later sent Munson even more photos of himself with Giuliani, Parnas and Igor Fruman (Parnas’ partner, also under indictment). For two goons saying they barely knew each other, there happens to be lots of photographic evidence suggesting they knew each other.

It turns out the little landscaper from fucking Connecticut has a record of stalking. Eliza Fawcett led a team of reporters from the Hartford Courant to reveal today a Republican consultant won a temporary protective order against Hyde in late May of last year from a Superior Court judge of the District of Columbia for “demonstrating an inveterate pattern of monitoring, tracking and surveilling her location.”

According to Fawcett and her team, court documents show Hyde “kept close tabs” on the woman’s “personal and professional whereabouts” and “would surprise her with unsettling visits” at business events. Over a period of months, Hyde sent her “various forms of social media, text messages and emails,” the woman alleged, “with the intent of instilling fear.” Hyde also contacted her clients. The woman, whom the Courant did not identify for her safety, “became a dysfunctional disaster” who suffered from “extreme and prolonged fear, harm, continued emotional distress,” per court papers.

From January to April, Hyde stopped contacting the woman. It was during this time, he contacted Lev Parnas via Whatsapp about Yovanovitch. “If you want her out, they need to make contact with security forces.” “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.” “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money … what I was told.” “Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in [sic] that.”

On his return, he ambushed the woman on April 1. He waited for her to finish dinner at the Trump Hotel in Washington. In May, she canceled a trip to Trump’s Doral resort in Miami knowing Hyde would be there. Also in May — and this is somewhat curious — the Republican National Committee called “to tell me they believe I am in danger.” By the end of the month, the woman had won a temporary protective order against Hyde.

It’s one thing to say he wasn’t serious about stalking Yovanovitch. It’s another to say he’s wasn’t serious while having done that very thing back home. Criminals, it turns out, will “joke” about committing crimes before the moment they commit them.

As for Trump, no one is saying he knew about Hyde stalking Yovanovitch, but Lev Parnas is saying the president was aware of everything he was doing to smear Biden and defraud the American people. The president might not have said yes to stalking. But he might not have said no either. After all, Trump said in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, Marie Yovanovitch was “going to go through some things.”

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 17 January 2020
Word Count: 837
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Last night saw the final debate between candidates running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Naturally, this morning’s papers are full of claims about winners and losers. As I have said often here at the Editorial Board, “winners and losers” with respect to debates is a political fiction. What’s real is the human desire for a victor rising to the top. We need one so much our press corps invents one for us.

My argument isn’t empirical. History may offer numerous examples of clear outcomes. But if there’s any clear outcome we can draw from this cycle’s Democratic debates it’s the Democratic debates made hardly any difference at all. Ever since the former vice president announced his candidacy, he has been in the lead, according to the aggregate of public opinion surveys. Even when Joe Biden was pronounced a “loser,” as when Kamala Harris challenged his mixed Senate record, he came out stronger than ever.

Something is happening. I don’t think it’s because everyone and his mother chose to run. I don’t think it’s because the Democratic National Committee decided against using its own polling as criteria for who gets to participate in the debates. The top three or four candidates have been the top three or four candidates for months. Polling has been so consistent as to be remarkably predictable. There’s a reason why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warrens stuck knives into each other over the weekend. They need to do something to break the deadlock. But there may be nothing they can do.

Last night’s debate was the first to feature an all-white panel. Cory Booker dropped out this week. So did Julian Castro at the turn of 2020. Kamala Harris left the trail last year. The conventional wisdom is the Democratic Party isn’t as woke as it seems to be. The conventional conclusion is Democratic voters want a “moderate” like Joe Biden.

This interpretation is understandable yet simplistic. It’s also color-blind. It does not take into account who is standing behind Biden. The majority of his supporters are not white working-class voters who went for Donald Trump last time. His base is black. Biden isn’t leading despite saying some kinda sorta racist things offending the wokest Democrat. He’s leading because of them. Many black voters believe if he can win over some racist white voters, he can defeat the most racist president of our lifetimes.

Some pundits argue that liberals are out of touch with the Democratic base. That may be true but it’s not because the base is more conservative than liberals would prefer. The base is just more risk-averse. That’s my understanding of writers like Theodore Johnson, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. He says we’re undervaluing the role of black pragmatism. It may be true black voters want candidates like Harris and Booker, but what they want even more, Johnson argued, is “voting out the president.”

“A viable Biden campaign is likely to remain the practical choice for most black voters,” Professor Johnson wrote for the Washington Post in June. “Pragmatism may not inspire, excite or check all the boxes on voters’ wish lists, but it may be what transforms Obama’s second-in-command into the country’s commander in chief.”

Black pragmatism may be misguided, but it’s shrewd. Bill Clinton did his share of race-baiting during the 1992 presidential election. He went out of his way to demonstrate to white working-class voters Democrats were not a black party. He signed into law punitive sentencing measures. He pushed cuts to welfare. He did things harmful to African Americans. Yet he did enough to protect hard-won gains in civil rights for Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison defended him against Republican attempts to remove him, calling Clinton “the first black president.”

The Democratic Party is a black party, of course, in that winning the nomination is impossible without the support of a majority of black Democrats. That leaves Bernie Sanders in a pickle. He does not have the penumbra of Barack Obama. He’s certainly a risky choice. Put these together to see why he’s trailing Biden, and why his long-shot strategy is cobbling together a base of power inside and outside the Democratic Party.

That he has no chance of taking Biden’s voters means he has to take Warren’s, and that means hyping the differences between them when there is, in terms of substance, not much difference between them. Contrary to popular belief, and to the branding of his campaign, Sanders is not a socialist. He’s not a democratic socialist. He’s not a social democrat. He’s a very liberal liberal in FDR’s mold. Though FDR rejected right-wing accusations of being a socialist, Sanders has succeeded in reclaiming the epithet. But success has limits. Black voters might support him if not for calling himself a socialist.

Well, probably not. Part of Sanders’ appeal is hostility toward the Democratic Party. Part of his problem is by attacking the Democratic Party, he’s attacking the base necessary for winning the Democratic Party’s nomination — that is, black Democrats. This factor combined with the literal, physical threat of a fascist president to Americans of color leads to a rather predictable conclusion. What we learned during this year’s Democratic debates is that the Democratic debates hardly mattered at all.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 January 2020
Word Count: 875
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I argued yesterday Nancy Pelosi has more leverage over the form and integrity of the Senate impeachment trial than most people think. I argued Mitch McConnell has less. One of these people must bear the onerous weight of a lying, thieving, philandering sadist making a fetish of exoneration, and that person is not the speaker of the House.

More importantly, the drip-drip-drip of bad news for Donald Trump is affecting GOP senators facing reelection this year. There are more Senate Republicans running for reelection in this cycle than there were Senate Democrats in 2018. The difference is the Democrats aren’t yoked to the weakest, most unpopular president of our lifetimes. The weakest, most unpopular president of our lifetime has now been impeached.

It would seem I was wrong. Pelosi announced last week she intended to ask Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to draw up a resolution for sending articles of impeachment to the upper chamber. (The full House will vote on that resolution Wednesday.) That would seem to be capitulation, as if Pelosi were caving. But that was before CBS News reported, and others have since confirmed, Pelosi’s gambit worked out pretty much as intended, forcing the GOP’s hand.

Yamiche Alcindor, of PBS Newshour, wrote: “Confirmed: A source tells me White House officials increasingly believe that at least four Republicans, and likely more, will vote to call witnesses at the Senate impeachment trial including Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and possibly Cory Gardner” (my italics).

The veteran White House reporter added: “As first reported by CBS News, a source tells me the White House views Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky as a “wild card” and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as an ‘institutionalist’ who might vote to call witnesses. That shows Trump is increasingly aware that the trial could be damaging.”

If public opinion is pressuring vulnerable Republican Senators to call for witnesses, McConnell will allow it. There’s very little the Senate majority leader cares about more than keeping his Senate conference in the majority. To be sure, he cares about holding the White House. But Trump isn’t worth the cost of a complete wipe-out in November.

It remains to be seen whether Romney and others actually vote for witnesses, and even if they do, it remains to be seen which witnesses are called. Hugh Hewitt and Byron York, influential “conservative” pundits, are urging the Republicans to demand testimony from the anonymous whistle-blower. Others are demanding testimony from Hunter Biden and even his formerly vice presidential dad. Getting the Senate to call witnesses isn’t the same as fair. Even so, things seem to be going where they should.

Things are going where they should for another reason. The fight has been so far only between the chambers of the US Congress and between the political parties. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have called on the judicial branch to interfere. That’s as it should be. The Constitution gives the judiciary no meaningful role. It has a bit part. The US Supreme Court’s chief justice presides over a Senate trial as a judge would preside over a court of law. But even that role is perfunctory. John Roberts won’t even be calling balls and strikes. He won’t be making any meaningful judgments at all.

That the Constitution gives no role to the judiciary doesn’t prevent people from arguing in good faith it should have one. We have recently seen a spate of articles, in the run-up to the Senate trial, saying John Roberts could compel witnesses if he wished to or the Supreme Court could legally review Trump’s conviction if that were to happen. Like I said, all of these arguments seem in good faith. All of them are bad.

The last thing we should want is for the high court to settle a fight that can only be settled by partisan conflict in the US Congress. The last thing we should do is cede the sovereignty of the people to nine unelected jurists. The last thing we should do is repeat what we have been doing: turning the high court into a jurisprudential fetish.

It may seem politically neutral to call on the court to settle constitutional crises like the one we are now experiencing, but in effect, it’s the opposite. It’s incredibly political, and not the kind of “political” any democratic republic should want. To call on the court to settle a constitutional crisis is an exercise in authoritarianism. It’s empowering people whose small number — nine — should never command that kind of power.

Again, so far neither party has asked for the court’s interference, and hopefully they never will. Politics is about conflict. Politics in a republican democracy is about persuasion. Pelosi, by delaying articles of impeachment, appears to be persuading otherwise recalcitrant Republicans to reconsider the wisdom of a fair and impartial trial. That’s what we should want. Especially, that’s what liberals should want.

John Stoehr is the editor and publisher of The Editorial Board, a contributing writer for Washington Monthly and the former managing editor of The Washington Spectator. He was a lecturer in political science at Yale where he taught a course on the history of modern campaign reporting. He is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and at Yale’s Ezra Stiles College.

Copyright ©2020 John Stoehr — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 14 January 2020
Word Count: 819
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