How can changing the rules after the debate season starts possibly be acceptable?The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced Friday afternoon that the criteria for making the debate stage will no longer include a requirement about individual donors—allowing Bloomberg, whose campaign is largely self-funded, to join the candidates if his polling numbers reach the new threshold.
[...]
Candidates will need to earn at least 10% in four polls released from Jan. 15 to Feb. 18, or 12% in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina, in order to participate in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas. Any candidate who earns at least one delegate to the national convention in either the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary will also qualify for the Nevada debate.The rules change caught Democrats by surprise.
[...]
The Intercept's Ryan Grim, citing Federal Elections Commission data, noted Bloomberg donated $325,000 to the DNC in November 2019.
"Totally normal system," said Grim.
Common Dreams
Also...The debate rules have been a source of contention throughout the primary process, with some former hopefuls like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro questioning the restrictions on polling and donors as prohibitive to their campaigns.
Progressive strategist Tim Tagaris wondered what could have been different if not for the qualifications.
"How much money did candidates like Julián Castro and Cory Booker have to spend chasing donor thresholds that could have been spent building organizations in early states?" said Tagaris.
Comedian and writer Jack Allison took a wry look at the changes and what they mean about the party.
"Remember when they wouldn't even think of changing them for like Cory Booker," Allison tweeted. "This is what we mean when we talk about the DNC cheating, obviously and out in the open."
They used to have brokered conventions and real democratic primaries instead of bullshit "superdelegates".A small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention.
In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.
[...]
Even proponents of the change acknowledge it is all but certain not to gain enough support to move past these initial conversations. But the talks reveal the extent of angst that many establishment Democrats are feeling on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.
Sanders is surging and Joe Biden has maintained his lead nationally, but at least three other candidates are widely seen as viable. The cluster raises the specter of a convention requiring a second ballot.
Politico
Yeah, we'll see.Following the publication of this report, Perez responded on Twitter: "Absolutely not. We put in the work to ensure power was returned to the grassroots, we will be following the rules set forth by the DNC. We will not bend on this, we will not change our rules."
That's great. It's like Trump's impeachment lawyer replaying Adam Schiff's parody of the Zelensky call. Voters get to hear the bad shit about Trump again.GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is running for reelection in Kentucky. So why is he running TV ads in Florida?
Like most everything in Republican politics, the answer has to do with one person: President Donald Trump.
With Trump planning to go to his Mar-a-Lago club for Super Bowl weekend, Massie, a four-term Kentucky congressman, is purchasing TV advertising time in South Florida on the president’s favorite channel, Fox News. Massie’s goal: Communicate to the president that his Republican primary challenger, attorney Todd McMurtry, is a “Trump hater.”
[...]
Massie’s new commercial aims to turn the tables on McMurtry, who is branding himself as a staunch Trump ally in lockstep with the president ahead of the May 19 primary.
“He’s even worse than a Never Trumper. Todd McMurtry is a Trump hater,” says the ad, which opens with a photograph of Massie and Trump flashing grins and thumbs-ups.
[...]
Massie’s commercial then highlights a handful of critical comments McMurtry made about Trump on Facebook, mostly in 2017, the first year of Trump's presidency.
“Sad but true. Trump is the epitome of a weak male,” said one McMurtry post, read in classic attack-ad fashion by the narrator.
“Trump is an idiot,” says another.
Politico
If he wins, I hope he has a Democratic challenger who uses this as a hammer come November: The guy who wants to be your representative presents his case to Trump instead of you. He wants to be Trump's lacky, not your representative.“Hillary is right,” McMurtry writes in another comment. “He is temperamentally unqualified to be president.”
Massie’s commercial concludes by tying his primary opponent to Hillary Clinton: “Siding with ‘Crooked Hillary.’ That’s Todd McMurtry, the Trump hater.”
Jesus, they're throwing away our democracy. They won't be getting a king, though. They'll be getting a dictator, whose ass they'll have to kiss every day of their lives or have their head on a pike.Republican contests in areas from the Philadelphia suburbs to Fort Worth, Texas, are hinging on a simple factor: whether an incumbent House Republican has been sufficiently supportive of the president.
Just embarrassing.The McMurtry campaign responded to the ad by pointing to several pieces of legislation and recent votes on which Massie broke with Trump, including a resolution aimed at curtailing the president’s ability to wage war with Iran.
“Every time President Trump needs him, Massie stabs him in the back,” McMurty campaign manager Jake Monssen said.
[...]
Running in a district that Trump won by more than 35 percentage points, McMurtry has vowed there will be no daylight between him and the president. Earlier this month, he tweeted out a picture of the Trump Hotel in Washington.
“Hoping to see my favorite President,” McMurtry wrote.
The fact that they're allowing this to be the only impeachment trial without witnesses already colors them. Do they think delaying the inevitable for a couple of days will win them some points?Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has postponed a final vote on articles of impeachment against President Trump until Wednesday in the face of opposition from Senate GOP moderates to his plan to wrap up the trial Friday or Saturday without deliberations.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), emerging from a Senate GOP conference meeting, said senators now will return to the impeachment trial at 11 a.m. Monday to deliberate with a final vote on convicting or acquitting Trump set for Wednesday.
[...]
The pushback from moderate Republicans derailed McConnell’s plan to acquit Trump late Friday or early Saturday after a marathon round of votes on Democratic procedural objections.
[...]
Moderate Republicans who pressed McConnell to guarantee a vote on subpoenaing witnesses and documents after phase one of the trial rose up to scotch his plans to acquit Trump without deliberations, according a GOP senator familiar with internal discussions.
The Hill
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the landmark separation of powers fight over access to President Trump’s financial records on March 31, the court announced Friday.
The dispute involves separate efforts by House Democrats and New York state prosecutors to obtain years of Trump’s financial records and tax returns.
A blockbuster ruling on the extent of presidential immunity in the face of congressional oversight and state prosecutorial power is expected by late June, just months ahead of Election Day.
The Hill
Yeah, Bolton didn't set it up.More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president’s impeachment defense.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to ensure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton’s account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.
[...]
In a statement after this article was published, Mr. Trump denied the discussion that Mr. Bolton described.
“I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of N.Y.C., to meet with President Zelensky,” Mr. Trump said. “That meeting never happened.”
NYT
I think if we're going to compare truthfulness between Bolton on the one hand and Giuliani and Trump on the other, we can be fairly certain what did happen.[Giuliani] was adamant that Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Mulvaney were never involved in meetings related to Ukraine.
“It is absolutely, categorically untrue,” he said.
And here's another instance of the Stalin syndrome infecting the White House:Mr. Trump also repeatedly made national security decisions contrary to American interests, Mr. Bolton wrote, describing a pervasive sense of alarm among top advisers about the president’s choices. Mr. Bolton expressed concern to others in the administration that the president was effectively granting favors to autocratic leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China.
They're at the stage of firing, smearing and destroying people's careers. How much longer until they're at the stage of jailing people who speak out against them? Already they've got 50 Senators afraid to.After pushing out Ms. Yovanovitch, Mr. Giuliani turned his attention to other American diplomats responsible for Ukraine policy. During the Oval Office conversation, he also mentioned a State Department official with the last name of Kent, whom Mr. Bolton wrote he did not know. Mr. Giuliani said he was hostile to Mr. Trump and sympathetic to George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has long been a target of the far right.
[...]
Mr. Bolton left the Oval Office after 10 minutes and returned to his office, he wrote. Shortly after, two aides came into his office, saying Mr. Trump had sent them out of a separate meeting on trade to ask about Mr. Kent, Mr. Bolton wrote.
And, Lisa, you are at the nadir.“I worked for a fair, honest, and transparent process, modeled after the Clinton trial, to provide ample time for both sides to present their cases, ask thoughtful questions, and determine whether we need more.
“The House chose to send articles of impeachment that are rushed and flawed. I carefully considered the need for additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings of its process, but ultimately decided that I will vote against considering motions to subpoena.
“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.
“It has also become clear some of my colleagues intend to further politicize this process, and drag the Supreme Court into the fray, while attacking the Chief Justice. I will not stand for nor support that effort. We have already degraded this institution for partisan political benefit, and I will not enable those who wish to pull down another.
“We are sadly at a low point of division in this country.”
KEYT News
This is a richly filled piñata of crimes and impeachable offenses, and not just on the part of the president*. Cipillone was inches from obtaining a clean getaway for his client—and, very likely, a considerable upgrade in his hourly rates. Now, he's is in the grinder as a possible witness to the fact that, as even Lamar! conceded, the president* is as guilty as John Wilkes Booth. This means that, throughout the Senate trial, Cipollone has been misrepresenting himself and the facts of the case right there in John Roberts’s grill for two weeks. Do that in muni court and you can feed your license to the pigeons in the plaza outside.
Charles P Pierce
What a bunch of unmitigated bullshit. How about if I rob a bank, and one of my motives is to get rich and the other is to donate something to feeding starving children? Can I go free?“If President Trump had more than one motive for his alleged conduct — such as the pursuit of personal political advantage, rooting out corruption and the promotion of national interest — how should the Senate consider more than one motive in its assessment of Article 1?”
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She said she was asking the question on behalf of herself as well as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, two other Republican lawmakers viewed as key swing votes in the Senate trial.
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“If there is something that shows a possible public interest and the president could have that possible public-interest motive, that destroys their case. Once you’re into mixed-motive land, it’s clear that their case fails,” Philbin said.
Marketwatch
Not perhaps.If it’s really true that a mixed motive can’t be the basis for removal, then the senators need only conclude that Trump had, somewhere in his mind, some public interest, perhaps ferreting out corruption generally or forcing other countries to share in the costs of NATO, to justify a vote for acquittal.
[...]
Indeed, at one point, Philbin argued that it would be enough if the president might have had such a motive to clear the way for acquittal.
It requires only brief reflection to see that the position is akin to insulating from any constitutional remedy the most vile and abusive presidential conduct. For it will routinely be the case that a president, even in the middle of some desperate or foolish act of law breaking, might also have some more benign motive somewhere in mind.
This kind of squishy thinking would not fly in a real court.
[...]
If Republican senators are persuaded by the mixed-motive argument and use it as a basis for voting against witnesses, they will have been hoodwinked, and perhaps willingly.
WaPo
I wonder how many doctors even know what's going on. They have billing departments.Davidson told Vox that block-granting Medicaid has been part of mainstream Republican thinking about health care for decades, so he doesn’t buy that Pence was as ignorant about his administration’s new plan as he seemed to be. (The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)
“I think he was not expecting to be pressed on that, and didn’t have his talking points prepared, so he retreated back to his safe space,” Davidson said. “I believe he understands exactly what his administration is doing.”
“‘Innovation,’ ‘flexibility’ — that’s all code for cutting spending and putting more in the laps of people who can’t afford it,” Davidson said. “This would further reduce that funding.”
Asked what he hopes people take away from the video — which has been shared more than 20,000 times on Twitter and has nearly 1.5 million views as this is published — Davidson said he hopes it raises awareness about his work with the Committee to Protect Medicare and encourages doctors to feel comfortable in the policy space.
Vox
“We all have the ability to stand up to any level of folks who are coming along and proposing policies that hurt our patients,” Davidson said. “I think it’s time now for doctors to step out of the exam room and get out into the public space and advocate in a bigger way, and I hope that health care providers who see this want to join with us or in some way on their own become advocates for health care.”
“Patients have a hard enough time scrounging to get coverage,” Davidson added. “If we won’t stand up for them, I’m not sure who will.”
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men...
—Edward R. Murrow, March 9, 1954
We may not be descended from fearful people, but we certainly have evolved into them.
[...]
[Senator Lamar] Alexander [gave] a statement that is going to go down in the annals of unmitigated weaselspeak. Gaze in awe.
I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution's high bar for an impeachable offense. There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a "mountain of overwhelming evidence."Alexander believes that the president* shook down the president of Ukraine in order to help the president* ratfck the 2020 presidential election. Alexander believes this is what happened. Alexander believes that the House managers have made that case. Alexander believes that the House managers have made that case so convincingly that calling further witnesses and demanding further documents would be superfluous. And because Alexander believes all that, he believes that the president*...should be acquitted on the charges of which Alexander believes the president* is guilty as hell.
[...]
In addition to arguing that a guilty president* is guilty but should go unpunished, Alexander is claiming that the solution to a ratfcked election is to hope the next one isn’t ratfcked.
[...]
Now, it’s possible that this latest spasm of political cowardice will cost Mitch McConnell his Senate Majority. (I, for one, don’t think this is going to rescue Collins in Maine. Cory Gardner likely is a dead fish in Colorado, and Martha McSally of Arizona can’t get out of her own way. In their fondest dreams, the Democrats will come out of Georgia with at least a split.) [...] At the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, the moles and trolls are going to throw themselves a party.
Charles P Pierce
And so he will retire in ignominy."I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense," he said.
NBC
