Is Trump Willing to Provoke War with Iran?

Posted on January 3, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 3, 2020

President Donald Trump’s New Year’s message to Iran was a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, a Major General in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Soleimani led the elite Quds force whose purpose is to carry out unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations, what most of the rest of the world calls terrorism. He was a sworn enemy of the United States and one of the most powerful figures in Iran’s military. Americans have no reason to mourn Soleimani’s death, but there are questions about how, why, and when it was ordered

We may never know with certainty what went on in President Trump’s mind when he made the decision to target Soleimani after American Intelligence located him on the ground in Iraq. There are a few things we do know, however, that may shed some light on what motivated him. Most illuminating may be words that came directly from Trump himself. On the three different occasions Donald Trump suggested that his predecessor, Barack Obama, would be willing to start a war with Iran to assure his re-election. Following are Trump’s own tweets:

November 29, 2011 – In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.

October 22, 2012 – Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected–be careful Republicans!

September 26, 2013 – I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!

One of the things Trump is best known for is projecting his own attitudes and motives onto other people. The idea that Trump would initiate hostilities with Iran if he believed it would strengthen his political position is hardly new. What’s most interesting is the timing of the drone strike that killed Soleimani.

The president is caught in limbo between the House of Representatives passing Articles of Impeachment and the Senate trial which must follow, and polls have shown that at least half of all Americans want him removed from office. Leaks from the White House have indicated for weeks that despite his denials Trump is extremely angry and agitated, and the hundreds of tweets he unleashed over that time make that description seem like an understatement.

If he was on edge before, new revelations from previously secret emails are strengthening the case for removal. It’s clear now that the order to withhold military assistance funds allocated by Congress for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression were ordered by Trump himself, and that the order was issued well before the July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that started all this. It is becoming more and more clear that Trump did exactly what he is accused of doing – holding back aid to a foreign nation being invaded by one of our enemies in exchange for a political favor that could help his re-election campaign.

Trump’s problem is that mounting evidence of his guilt may begin to affect the political calculations of some Republican Senators who serve as his jurors. The likelihood of sixty-seven Senators voting to convict is still a long shot, but it could only take four defections to force Leader McConnell to change his trial strategy. As damning evidence mounts it will be far more difficult to vote to acquit without first issuing subpoenas for documents and testimony from people like John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, and their senior staffs.

None of that may prevent the Senate from acquitting Trump, but it could do serious damage to his image among independent, centrist voters. The fact that he has defied Congress with unprecedented vehemence, claiming privilege and the right to secrecy in every situation speaks volumes about his political concerns.

And now comes this risky and potentially dangerous drone attack on a senior member of the Iranian government. It was carried out without notification of the bipartisan Congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight who are supposed to be briefed on all Intelligence matters critical to national security, especially any planned activities that could result in international incidents.

Technically, the president has an out for “extraordinary circumstances” which he deems sufficient to limit access to information. Do current circumstances justify risking a major regional war without consulting Congress? That will be determined by people who know far more about them than I do, but all of us can add up we know as facts. Why do you think Trump chose January 2, 2020 to target a potential enemy who has been working in the same capacity for nearly thirty years?

Why now? Could it be the election cycle which is about to begin in earnest?

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Meaningful Progress

Posted on December 26, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 26, 2019

Rather than rely on my subjective memory, I’ve been documenting some important things in detail. I noted after Donald Trump was inaugurated that people who were optimistic about his presidency talked mostly about North Korea, Iran, and the Middle East. No one I knew talked about the economy, because lest we forget, the Obama administration had done an excellent job of creating conditions that would enable a slow but enduring recovery from the economic crisis it inherited from its predecessor.

Today, the economy is the only thing people who remain positive about Trump talk about. Our economy is doing well – not as well as Trump claims it is, but better than most of the world’s. At its core, it continued to build on the foundation Obama’s people implemented. There are more jobs, fewer people unemployed, and near-record stock prices.

Regardless of what political spinners want us to believe, equity markets rose because despite all the tough rhetoric, companies continue to do most of their manufacturing and processing offshore where labor is cheaper, and Trump and the Republican Senate traded our grandchildren’s economic prosperity for a huge tax windfall to corporate billionaires. I don’t mean to sound like Bernie Sanders, but in that regard he’s correct.

Not everyone benefited from the 2017 tax law. Wage growth among average workers lags badly, and the skyrocketing cost of health care and prescription drugs wipes out the savings many people thought they would see from lower tax rates. Millions of reasonably well off middle class people were clobbered with the cap on the amount of state and local taxes they could deduct from their federal taxes, and nothing was done to relieve the unanticipated impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax on middle class incomes. 401-K accounts are up, but they’d better be, because the cost of retirement is going through the roof.

Back to what Trump supporters talked about in 2017, let’s take North Korea first, since it was the subject most Americans were anxious about back then. After summit meetings, love letters between Trump and Kim Jong Un, and terrifying brinksmanship over nuclear missiles (remember the panic in Hawaii when Civil Defense authorities thought NK missiles were headed there?) where are we? Our relationship with South Korea has deteriorated, and today, former National Security Advisor John Bolton told Axios, “We’re now nearly three years into the administration with no visible progress toward getting North Korea to make the strategic decision to stop pursuing deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Our withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal set that nation back on the path to developing nuclear weapons of its own. Our European allies who were signatories to the deal are left hanging and powerless, and Iran has shown itself willing to suffer our economic sanctions to pursue its goals. Among the information that constantly leaks from this administration is the growing fear among military leaders that Trump will use escalating danger from Iran to spark armed conflict if he thinks his re-election is in doubt. There’s nothing like a nice hot war to make voters nervous about change.

The Middle East? With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unable to form a new government under indictment for corruption and bribery, it’s clear that his hawkish attitude toward Palestinians and the rest of the Arab Middle East no longer has majority support at home. It’s even clearer that Jared Kushner, who Trump appointed to fix the Middle East has accomplished nothing, though the president didn’t help matters by making contradictory statements about the often discussed Two State Solution.

Not only have we backslid in all our major foreign policy initiatives since Trump took office, we  seriously undercut international attempts to alleviate the effects of climate change, and despite all the fakery, rust belt workers are no better off now than in 2016. Trump’s highly touted promises to restore our domestic steel and coal industries have gone nowhere.

As we enter what may be the most critical election cycle of our lives, voters need to look closely at their own personal journeys during the Trump years. Ronald Reagan used to ask voters if they were better off than they were four years ago. It’s more complicated for us because we’re dealing with an administration that runs on lies and “alternative facts.” Remember that it was Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to Trump who coined that phrase with a completely straight face.

Please, take the time to reflect on your own truths, not Trump’s, Fox News’s, or CNN’s. Remember where you were three years ago and where you might have been today if the outcome of the 2016 election had been different. Then go out and vote.

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The Conservative View of Impeachment

Posted on December 21, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 21, 2019

Because I believe that all Americans have the inalienable right to a roof over their heads, nutritious food on their tables, and access to basic health care, many people “accuse” me of being a Liberal (whatever that means.) Yet, I found a real affinity for the man who was the purest Conservative in the Senate until this year, Jeff Flake. It’s hard to argue with someone who describes the roots and basis of Conservatism as respect for truth and fidelity to the basic ideals and values on which our Constitution rests.

Senator Flake chose not to run for re-election last year because the president’s base was targeting him in the primary election and the polls suggested that Trump would win that fight. I wish Flake had made a different choice, since subsequent events show Arizona going purple and possibly blue, surely not a bastion of Trump support if it ever was. But that ship has sailed.

Republicans and Democrats both have a huge stake in preserving and restoring the Republican Party to what it was. Whether or not you agree with Conservative dogma, drowning it out with lies, racist hate-mongering, and bluster cannot possibly be healthy for our nation. The principles Jeff Flake espouses are essential to who we are as Americans. Policy differences are simply details to be negotiated in a bipartisan manner.

The horror show of the impeachment of President Trump had a clear light shone on it yesterday when Jeff Flake published an open letter to his former colleagues in the Senate. He appealed to them to recall how their better selves would have reacted if not steeped in the chaos created by this president. He reminded them that their duty to the Constitution was to act as Republicans, not as Trump’s lackeys. To me the most meaningful lines in Flake’s letter were:

“…the danger of an untruthful president is compounded when an equal branch [of government] follows that president off the cliff, into the abyss of unreality and untruth.…Call it the founders’ blind spot: They simply could not have envisioned the Article I branch [Congress] abetting and enabling such dangerous behavior in the Article II branch [the President.]”

If the long, drawn out, nearly impossible to watch impeachment hearings and the accompanying political spins have left you frustrated or lost in the weeds, let those two statements remind you what this is all about. The people who wrote our Constitution (Alexander Hamilton, et al,) feared two things above all. One was allowing our young republic to fall back into an autocratic monarchy. The other was our vulnerability to foreign interference.

The two Articles of Impeachment drafted by the House Judiciary Committee address those fears directly. More than half of America believes the president abused his power and that he was willing to put his own lust to remain in power over our national security. I applaud Jeff Flake for taking on the role of Congressional Conscience.

We can debate whether Trump’s actions rise to the level of impeachable, but we cannot sanction Senators openly declaring their political bias and blocking testimony from the people in the best position to tell the truth to the American people. As Flake implied, that would make Congress culpable in undermining the most important provisions in the Constitution. Every American with an open mind must hear what John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney have to say, and presidential privilege be damned.

If Flake’s admonition is ignored, what use are laws and the judiciary? If the Constitution can be flagrantly violated by an egomaniacal, paranoid president with no moral or ethical compass, what becomes of the precedents on which our laws are based? And if Congress succumbs to political blackmail and becomes a rubber stamp for the president…you fill in the blanks.

That’s not the America I grew up in. It’s not the America I want my grandchildren to grow up in. I urge you to read Senator Flake’s letter and give it the honest consideration it deserves. Flake says in the clearest possible terms that whether or not each individual Senator believes the president deserves to be impeached, the notion that he did nothing wrong as the House Republicans unanimously claimed is unsupportable. He doesn’t specifically come down on the side of impeachment, but he decries the possibility of acquitting the president without considering the facts.

The real issue, of course, is next November’s election. Americans need to know who they’re voting for next year. They need to see for themselves what he did so they can decide whether he deserves another term in office.

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We’re Still Fighting the Civil War

Posted on December 15, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 15, 2019

It’s been 154 years since the Civil War ended – or has it? In 2008, I naively interpreted Barrack Obama’s victory to mean we had finally outgrown the hatred and prejudice that grew out of a century and a half of slavery. When Hillary Clinton was nominated in 2016 I naively believed we had turned the corner after three centuries (a couple of millennia if we reach back through world history) of treating women as second-class citizens.

Though I loved what they symbolized about how the country had matured, I wasn’t a particular fan of either Obama or Clinton when I voted for them. Despite Obama’s eloquent and charismatic commitment to the ideals I believe in, the idea of voting largely for charisma scared me – until Sarah Palin left me no choice. Likewise, Clinton would not have been my choice, especially after the Democrats rigged the nomination process for her. When push came to shove Donald Trump left me no choice.

The problem was that my premise was dead wrong. As Roger Ailes and Donald Trump have clearly demonstrated, more than a third of us haven’t changed. That third, the core of the base of Trump and Fox News think it’s perfectly all right for Trump to have picked White Supremacist Stephen Miller to manage his immigration policy. They rose up in righteous indignation against the scandalous realization that a black president saved the country from the near economic collapse of 2007-2008 which resulted from the greed and corruption of the white, male banking industry. Even worse, he overcame massive opposition to begin the process of assuring universal health care for Americans.

Recently, a friend turned me on to a daily newsletter written by Heather Cox Richardson, a History Professor at Boston College who studies and teaches about post-Civil War America. Her December 14th letter spells out the root cause of what we’ve been seeing for three years, namely a revolt against law and the Constitution by a Republican Party that has been hijacked by angry, rich white men. Republicans were once the party that defended the Constitution – that’s what Conservativism with a capital “C” means. Yet today, they deal in lies and distortions, and flout the Separation of Powers mandated by the Constitution to prevent the president from becoming an autocrat.

Why? Professor Richardson explains the modern roots of Trumpism this way: “When a Republican Supreme Court unanimously decided that segregation was unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the way was clear for these men to argue that an active government was not about protecting equality; it was simply a way to give benefits to black people, paid for by white tax dollars.” She further pointed out that this argument had lain dormant since the days of Reconstruction, just waiting for the repressed anger it generated to boil over.

Thus we had the Tea Party, which not coincidentally was founded weeks after Obama took office. The Tea Party may have signaled the beginning of Trumpism. Masquerading as a party fighting to lower the tax burden on all Americans, a summary of the things they fight for reveals their goals as racist, elitist, and misogynistic. Trump’s candidacy was the perfect storm that catalyzed the coalition that would rather undermine our Constitution than share their wealth. The very phrase “for all Americans” is anathema to them. For Trump’s base America means themselves, and any action or statement that secures their wealth and power is acceptable.

As we proceed down the impeachment road, there’s no need to wonder why, with the exception of a handful of individuals who fear backlash from their own bases, the Republican Senate has predetermined the outcome. For the Senate Majority Leader to announce on Fox News that there is no chance that the Senate will convict the president is appalling. It marks a blatant disregard for the most solemn and sacred responsibility outlined in the Constitution. They don’t even have the decency to pretend to be objective.

This is what Trumpism stands for: there are too many non-white people in this country, women have too much power, and the “unalienable Rights [to] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” that Thomas Jefferson described in the Declaration of Independence from the British crown were intended to be the province only of wealthy, white men.

That is how the Republican Party was hijacked, and it is what we will see play out in the farce in the Senate in coming weeks. We can’t prevent it from happening, but we can assure it never happens again. Remember this next November.

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The Mockingbird is Dead

Posted on December 12, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 12, 2019

The House of Representatives’ attempt to impeach President Donald Trump and have him removed from office has gone from reality TV to surreal madness. Watching the two sides fight over every detail, like kids in a schoolyard, is simultaneously frightening and boring. If I can’t stand to watch any more, what does that say about the average American?

Watching House Judiciary Committee Chairman Gerald Nadler is like watching a robot read from Roberts’ Rules of Order. You can buy a copy for $0.99 on Google Play and save yourself the agony. Watching the scripted process of interruptions, points of order, and other delaying tactics led by Republican Ranking Member Doug Collins is above all, woefully depressing. I want to scream, “Grow up!” at my TV. After the hearings conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, what was the point of these Judiciary Committee hearings, and why, for God’s sake are the media giving them minute-by-minute coverage?

Some people are referring to the whole disgusting process as sausage making. Not a single word spoken by either side in the Judiciary Committee hearings told us anything we didn’t already know. I find the spectacle of the House displaying its dirtiest laundry for the world to see horrifying. Is this what our Constitution and our alleged democracy have degenerated to? The distressing process of debating and voting on articles of impeachment could have been done in private in a couple of hours if there were no TV audience to play to.

We’re going to be in for more of the same when the gavel is turned over to Mitch McConnell for the Senate trial. McConnell announced yesterday that there are two options, get a simple majority of Senators to vote to refuse to try the president, or hold a truncated trial consisting of a formal reading of the charges followed immediately by a vote to convict which will surely fail. So after all this pain, Trump will either get to claim vindication and exoneration, or the whole thing will come crashing down like the proverbial lead balloon. And that’s beyond sad.

The question of whether our president acted to further his own interests at the cost of degrading both our national security and the sanctity of our elections has become moot. By turning the conversation into a debate about whether Trump’s actions are impeachable, the House has forever obscured the real significance of his actions. The process in the House is pure hypocrisy. The question is what sort of precedent that sets for future administrations.

The Republicans are correct when they argue that impeachment was a foregone conclusion before there was any presentation of factual evidence. Many of the freshman Democrats in the House were elected based on a campaign promise to impeach the president. From the beginning of this term, Speaker Pelosi was engaged in a holding action to prevent a premature rush to judgment. Have we learned nothing? What are we to conclude from this mess except that our Congress is even more dysfunctional that we feared?

Donald J. Trump, who has done more as president to worsen America’s standing in the world and degrade the institutions on which our country was founded than any of is predecessors, will walk away claiming victory. His base will raucously cheer that he defeated the deep state, and intellectually lazy, misinformed Americans will continue to believe everything they read on Facebook. Could this have ended any worse?

I’ve had a surreal feeling about it all because it seemed so familiar. I didn’t realize why I felt that way until I heard Mitch McConnell speak yesterday, and I realized it was like listening to the foreman of an all white jury discussing the pre-ordained fate of a black defendant in mid-twentieth century Alabama or Mississippi. Where is Atticus Finch when we need him?

Don’t hold your breath. Donald Trump’s version of reality TV is nothing like the movies in which unlikely, unexpected heroes emerge to save us from ourselves. I never understood the meaning of the title, “To Kill a Mockingbird” until I looked it up. The mockingbird was a symbol for innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. In turning a blind eye to Trump’s guilt, by not considering for a moment whether he’s fit to lead our country, his supporters in the House and Senate are destroying whatever remains of our naïve innocence as Americans.

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Trump’s Worst Offense

Posted on December 7, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 6, 2019

I started this blog shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration. I was disturbed by the 2016 election, and by Trump, personally. His behavior during the campaign was despicable, the worst I have ever witnessed in a presidential election campaign, and I’ve lived through nineteen of them. My disgust was not in the least political. I was not a fan of Hillary Clinton, though I voted for her – after all what choice did I have? The issue was Trump himself who has behaved as he has in office throughout his life.

Since I was a New Yorker who grew up where Trump did during the same years, he was always an annoying, offensive presence in my life. His narcissistic hunger for attention, his lack of scruples in business, his disregard for truth and the rules the rest of us live by, and his willingness to hurt countless others in pursuit of wealth and influence mirror his performance as president perfectly.

As you watched the House of Representatives slip and slide toward impeachment, did you shake your head like I did and ask yourself how we got to this point? Nancy Pelosi never wanted to go down this road, but as we look back on three years of Trump’s presidency it seems inevitable. Since the day he took office, Trump has violated every norm and every rule, under the guise of needing to “shake up Washington and drain the swamp.”

To use Trump’s vernacular, that’s complete bulllshit. As his adoring base has said repeatedly, he was just being Trump. It’s how he operates. He always has.

Since he announced his candidacy in 2015, Trump lied shamelessly whenever it suited him and bragged about treating women as objects of his own pleasure. He relentlessly attacked the courts and the media, and demonstrated a complete lack of compassion, much less understanding of the plights of refugees seeking asylum, millions of people hoping to immigrate, and most egregiously, the millions of “Dreamers” who are innocent of any wrongdoing. He viciously attacked everyone who refused to kneel to him in fealty, obstructed legal, constitutional investigations every step of the way, and sought to have hostile foreign governments meddle in our elections for his sole benefit.

Underlying all this has been one constant theme. Like the ignoble Senator Joseph McCarthy, six decades ago, Trump views the presidency as his own personal playpen. He considers himself above the law, as he recklessly attempts to tear down institutions and values that are the basis of our Constitution and our republic. You can almost hear Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s henchman and consigliere to organized crime bosses whispering in Trump’s ear. “Just do whatever the hell you want, Donald. No one will be able to stop you because the system wasn’t designed to handle someone like you.”

To our great misfortune, Cohn was right. Trump’s opponents for the 2016 Republican nomination were like children having their candy stolen. And the last three years have demonstrated that most of our government and the leaders of our traditional allies were no better equipped to deal with him. The only people who seem to have known exactly how to manipulate and influence him were the leaders of our most dangerous adversaries – Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

In my view, Trump’s presidency is a clear and present danger to the future of our country. All the above aside, his most serious offense doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of a high crime or misdemeanor. Trump has reshaped what was once a respectable, principled party by forcing out everyone who placed his or her oath of office ahead of loyalty to the president and seduced the rest as surely as the serpent seduced Eve. The Republican Party now shamelessly plays by the same rules Trump learned from Roy Cohn. Truth is irrelevant, the Constitution has become an obsolete piece of paper, and all Trump’s allies care about is helping create a Trump dynasty with coattails they can ride.

The party Trump hijacked is incapable of compromise because its only agenda is blindly charging ahead with the Trump doctrine. They won’t stop until someone forces them to. Trump’s behavior compelled the Democrats to impeach him. He played them like a fine violin, knowing there was no chance he’d be convicted in the Senate.  A normal person would fear for his legacy, but in Trump’s alternate universe, truth is what he says it is. He will claim total exoneration when the Senate fails to convict him even if a majority of Senators think he’s guilty.

Trump has subverted the role of Congress, effectively negating Article 1 of the Constitution. The legislative branch is literally incapable of functioning unless it rubber stamps what he wants. That is precisely what our founders feared. They never imagined that 534 lawmakers would be trapped in hopeless gridlock, because one side chose to renege on its constitutional responsibility. Whatever your political leanings this has to concern you. Only we the people can collectively change things next November.

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The Winter of Our Discontent

Posted on December 1, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 1, 2019

We exit the Thanksgiving weekend thankful for time spent with family and friends devoid of politics. That was especially true in my own family, as thirty people with views all over the political spectrum got together to just enjoy being with each other a few miles from where we all grew up in New York. Though no one uttered a word about it beforehand, there was a tacit understanding that the holiday would not be tainted by the toxicity of the state of our nation.

Today, two things are apparent in most of the country. It’s only December 1st, but winter has clearly begun. And the new week will start with Gerry Nadler gaveling the House Judiciary Committee into session to consider whether the president has committed acts worthy of impeachment. Knowing how Donald Trump has behaved throughout his life, no one will be shocked if the weeks preceding the Democratic primary race are even more hate-filled, divisive, and vicious than the previous three years have been.

A clear majority of the country disapproves of this president. They don’t like his behavior, his values, or his performance in office. But with only eleven months remaining before the next election it should be clear to everyone that whether Trump remains in office until next November is almost a moot point. The American people will then get to decide his fate, which is as it should be. I wish the word impeachment had never been raised, but that ship has sailed.

What is still to be determined is whether our Congress emerges from winter with a shred of dignity and integrity intact. That is the essential question for the future of our country. The events of the last decade have brought the viability of our two-party system into serious question. Approached objectively, it’s difficult to imagine how it will survive unless some as yet unforeseen cataclysmic event changes it. As moderates in Congress continue to abandon ship, the partisan impasse can only worsen. If our Congress were a single person, I’d recommend hospice care.

Which brings me to Michael Bloomberg, who at this moment does not appear to be helping the situation. That’s really a shame, because he’s one of a small number of Americans who could make a difference. We need more of his generally common sense centrist politics, but a failed presidential bid will only throw the Democrats’ chance of defeating Trump into even further disarray than they already are. If Bloomberg wants to fix the system, he’d be far better off spending his billions of dollars founding a moderate third party that can capture thirty or forty seats in the House and Senate.

Another thing that’s apparent to everyone except the people who most need to acknowledge it, is that it’s time for most of the Democrats running for president to drop out. I can’t name them all without looking them up, which is all I need to know. Be realistic. Mayor Pete’s a likable articulate guy, but America is not ready to elect a gay man president, period. Kamala Harris’s star has faded, as she has shown herself unable to manage an effective campaign. And Cory Booker, as impressive as he can be at times, won’t gain the traction he needs this year.

The other also-rans should say goodbye now while there’s time for the party to get its act together. Only then will viable candidates with moderate views find an open lane to compete in, and in that regard I’m looking at Amy Klobuchar. She’s the last woman in the field except for Elizabeth Warren, and one we need to hear more from. A tough prosecutor with impeccable academic credentials, (Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School,) this could be her time to emerge from the second tier if the others get out of her way.

Klobuchar is popular in the northern Midwest, especially the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin and Michigan, which the Democrats must win. I like the ticket of Biden and Klobuchar because aside from being someone with the strong moral character who is the perfect antidote to Trump, Biden will win Pennsylvania, and that should seal the election. Is Biden too old, too establishment, not in touch enough with young people? Is there a “perfect” candidate out there? Please, Joe, make amends with Anita Hill and move on.

Why Biden and Klobuchar? Because Elizabeth Warren, brilliant and courageous as she is, is simply wrong, as is Bernie Sanders. While most Americans support the ultimate goal of universal health care, trying to implement Medicare For All in one step would blow up our economy. The phased approach supported by Biden and Klobuchar is the only one that makes sense. What makes sense today is…

…Go Ravens! Go Seahawks!”

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Two Weeks Of Impeachment Hearings

Posted on November 23, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 23, 2019

Twelve witnesses, dozens of hours, and a few surprising revelations by witnesses who were, on the whole, professional and nonpolitical have left us precisely where we were six months ago in terms of the likelihood that the Congress would remove President Trump from office.

The main difference between the hearings conducted by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and the ones that resulted in President Nixon’s resignation wasn’t the “smoking gun tape,” in which Nixon was heard ordering CIA Director Richard Helms to get FBI Director L. Patrick Gray to terminate his investigation of the Watergate burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters. That tape convinced Nixon’s Republican supporters that he had indeed committed a crime worthy of impeachment. Schiff’s most notable accomplishment may have been to elevate the legacies of the Barry Goldwater-led Republicans who ultimately chose country over party loyalty.

We don’t need a smoking gun tape to prove what Trump did. He told us with his own mouth. He not only admitted trying to get Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, he openly suggested that China do the same. The testimony of eleven of Schiff’s twelve witnesses simply corroborated what Trump and his acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney brazenly bragged about, and supplied some rather chilling details about the way the president went about undermining the norms of diplomacy and his own State Department.

That is the “crime” which should upset most Americans, because the rules of diplomacy and the committed professionals in all nations who abide by them are probably what has kept us from obliterating life on this planet. It was failures in those diplomatic norms that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, which triggered the first Gulf War. That Trump lumps traditional diplomacy into what he regards as the Washington Swamp is yet another indication of his ignorance and by itself is enough to demonstrate how dangerous his narcissism-driven willfulness is to the nation.

The partisan divide we suffer from today existed in 1974, too. What’s different today is the almost unfathomable willingness of Trump’s partisan supporters to invent lies and  conspiracy theories that persist well after Trump’s own administration debunks them. Therein lies the most insidious danger of Trump-style politics.

The president learned from his mentor Roy Cohn that the best defense against facts is muddying the waters and obscuring the lines between truth and fantasy. The evidence against Trump is every bit as clear as the evidence against Nixon. But Trump’s four-year-long attacks on the media and the courts, and a campaign described by senior advisor Kellianne Conway as propagating alternate facts (what the hell does that mean, anyway?) have given his allies the cover they need to defend him at any cost.

Republican attack dogs Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan continue to shamelessly spout nonsense that Trump’s entire security apparatus long ago disproved. Jordan was a professional wrestler before he became a politician, and it shows. He acts like a thug, and he’s as phony as the profession that nurtured him for years. Jordan and Nunes exemplify what the Trump presidency has wrought. Reality TV in place of reality. Crafted screenplays supplanting hard news and facts.

There’s still a possibility that people like former Trump National Security Director John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Vice President Mike Pence will suffer epiphanies and come forward to tell the truth. There’s even a small probability that hearing them could awaken a sense of duty in enough Republican Senators that they act to remove this president.

But here’s the thing – we hear ad nauseum that impeachment, like the twenty-fifth amendment is a political process. It was designed by our founders, albeit imperfectly, to give the rest of the government a peaceful means of removing a president who clearly acts against the interests of the nation he was sworn to defend. Forget the semantics about crimes and misdemeanors – the real issue is whether the country can tolerate a president who behaves as Trump does.

As I and many others have said for months, impeachment is almost surely a losing battle. The Democrats let themselves be suckered into launching a formal impeachment review when they could have conducted the same investigations without ever uttering the I-word, the same way the Watergate investigation that caught Nixon started. It was a worthwhile goal to gather evidence and make it public before the 2020 election, but doing it the way the Democrats did simply gives the Republican Senate the opportunity to acquit the president, which will allow him to claim he was exonerated.

That’s the way Vladimir Putin stays in power. Are Americans dumb enough to buy it or will they remember all this next November?

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Happy Days are (Almost) Here Again

Posted on November 6, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 6, 2019

Embedded deeply in my philosophy is the belief that baseball is an excellent metaphor for life. When the Washington Nationals completed their unlikely fight to win the World Series two weeks ago, their radio voice, Charlie Slowes said, “Remember where you were and what you were doing today. You may never see anything like this again.” He wasn’t suggesting that the Nationals would never win again, but that their fight for the championship, (in May they were given only a 1.5% chance to make the playoffs,) was one for the ages.

The team’s response to being invited to the White House was itself a metaphor. Seven players declined to attend in protest of the president’s policies, while most went along silently and two notably spoke in praise of the president. I was honestly in pain when team captain Ryan Zimmerman, my favorite Nationals player for fifteen years and a man generally regarded as a class act, praised Trump. I don’t know whether he was just being polite or he really meant what he said, but that too speaks volumes about the state of the nation. How many of us have had to question our relationships with friends and loved ones because of Trump?

After yesterday’s election results, I must reiterate what Charlie Slowes said. This moment will live in my memory as the day Trump’s decline began in earnest. I still remember where I was and what I was doing when John F. Kennedy faced off against Nikita Khrushchev in the Caribbean waters off the coast of Cuba; likewise, the day Kennedy was murdered. I remember where I was and who I was with when Apollo 11 touched down on the moon, and when the Amazing Mets won their first World Series the same year. Today is even more momentous, an inflection point in our history, changing our national trajectory from Trumpism back to the principles on which America was founded.

Matt Bevin lost the Kentucky governor’s race to Andy Beshear in the reddest of red states for a number of reasons. Bevin ran for re-election as a Trump sycophant, and lost despite a last minute Trump rally in Lexington the night before the election. He lost because he attempted to govern like Trump while lacking the singular talent Trump possesses, the charismatic ability to sway masses of people without ever uttering a word of truth.

Beshear’s victory (I’m certain it will survive a recount) is yet another metaphor for American life. Like Trump, Bevin attacked the basic cornerstones of our values. He attempted to trash the financial well-being of teachers, police, and other civil servants, and denigrated our legal system. But even in a state Trump won by thirty points in 2016, Kentuckians proved their mettle yesterday. They showed that they understand that their future depends on public education and safety.

Imagine the plight of a teacher who has devoted her life to educating young people; someone who accepts twelve-hour workdays earning far less than comparably educated professionals in almost every other career path; someone who never expects to live in a fancy house or drive a Mercedes, because teaching is her chosen calling. And in a state like Kentucky, she has to deal with regressive attitudes that restrict academic curricula, especially in science. She’s down with all that, until her Trump-wannabe governor tries to trash her retirement system. Kentucky teachers saw it happening, and they said, “No.”

Virginia, once a highly coveted swing state, turned completely blue on Tuesday. For the first time in twenty-five years, Democrats control both the governor’s mansion and the state legislature. Virginia remains polarized on issues like gun control and health care, but Tuesday showed that its majority sentiment is to end the hate-inspired nativism and divisiveness that has characterized Trump’s time in office. And Virginia values its teachers.

Even Mississippi, which elected a Republican governor by a nine point edge, was part of the negative response to Trumpism. The last governor’s race in Mississippi went to a Republican by a margin of two-to-one.

While I strongly believe yesterday’s election was a tipping point, more precisely an extension of the trend begun in the 2018 Congressional election, this is no time to fall asleep at the wheel.

Democrats have the momentum they need to reverse the evils of the last three years, but they can also blow it if they’re not careful. The message is clear. Democrats will win with centrist candidates. In the current Democratic primary field, that means people like Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar. While I have great respect for Elizabeth Warren, her long-time advocacy for what most Americans regard as socialism make her the wrong candidate for 2020.
Happy days aren’t here again yet, but I plan to spend today rejoicing anyway.

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Mitch’s Choice

Posted on November 3, 2019 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 3, 2019

Ask 100 Americans what they think about the partisan divisions in our country, and ninety-nine will decry how awful they are, and how, if allowed to continue, they could destroy what remains of our democracy. Ask them in the context of the House impeachment inquiry, and the results would change only in that they would be more intense, which places Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell right at the fulcrum of the most critical decision the Senate has had to make in nearly a half century.

McConnell is the quintessential political animal of his generation. Immediately after Barrack Obama’s first inauguration, McConnell said his job was to assure that Obama would be a one term president, at a time when the nation’s economy was teetering on the brink of collapse. Obama put politics aside and retained the services of President Bush’s economic brain trust to provide continuity in a crisis instead of blaming them for causing it.

Until a few weeks ago I was still writing that impeachment was a huge mistake, that there was virtually no chance that the McConnell led Senate would ever vote to remove Trump from office. Nothing would be gained except further rancor and division. But then two things happened. A whistleblower in the Intelligence community accused Trump of using his power as president to blackmail a foreign country to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, who national polls said had the best chance of defeating him in next year’s election. Then the president ordered American military forces out of Syria at the behest of Turkey’s President Erdogan, whose troops were poised on their border with Syria to wipe out the Kurdish allies who had destroyed the ISIS Caliphate for us at a cost of 11,000 of their own fighters.

As it became clear that the whistleblower’s complaint would be corroborated by testimony from nonpolitical career diplomats, House Democrats felt they had no choice but to formally pursue impeachment. At the same time, key Senate Republicans, notably Lindsey Graham and McConnell himself pointedly attacked Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds to Turkey which if not stopped might carry out the ethnic cleansing it had been threatening for decades.

When it was clear that the fate of Trump’s presidency would soon rest in the hands of the Senate, McConnell showed that he retained a shred of the statesmanship we expect from someone in his position. His condemnation of Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds against the advice of literally everyone who understood the situation answered the question of what it would take to end Republicans marching in lockstep with the president.

The game suddenly and unexpectedly changed. No longer can Trump count on blind loyalty from the Senate, which again poses the question, “What will it take?” We still don’t know, as every Senator weighs self-interest against sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. Republican Senators had to weigh the same decision in 1974, as a clear bipartisan majority of the House was poised to impeach Richard Nixon. Presidential historian David Greenberg discussed this in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Greenberg noted that the situations are not the same, as the Congress was far less polarized back then. However, he made some interesting observations about what might motivate Senators today. In 1974 the investigation into Nixon’s crimes dragged on for more than a year, and for most of that time it seemed as unlikely that the Senate would convict him as that they’d convict Trump. But McConnell’s counterpart, Barry Goldwater decided to disregard politics when it became clear that Nixon had lied and attempted to cover up his abuses of power, and just like that, Nixon was done. Miracles do happen.

Greenberg asked when Republicans might decide to jump ship. He relied on history, noting that the Republicans who took an early stand against Nixon were generally viewed as heroes both in the years immediately following his resignation and still today. The president had committed felonies in office that threatened the integrity of our electoral process, and the leaders of his party acted to defend the nation. On the other hand, Republicans who jumped on the impeachment bandwagon only when the outcome was clear, with few exceptions found their political careers ruined.

That surely puts impeachment in a different light. Today’s Republican Senators not only have to weigh the dangers of angering Trump’s base against their personal duty as guardians of the Constitution, but history says their timing has to be right, too. If they act now and Trump is acquitted their own re-election chances might be shattered. If they act too late and Trump is convicted, history will write them off as self-serving cowards.

Sounds like a tough choice — except it really couldn’t be simpler. Congress is elected to serve the American people, not themselves. Now’s the time to let everyone know where they stand.

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