Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Thad]

About the only thing I can say in Comey's defense is that Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton really shouldn't have had that meeting on that plane.

But everything I've been saying for the last ten months still holds: there are rules in place for how the FBI is supposed to conduct investigations; Comey violated them. His decision to go off-script was, at best, foolish, arrogant, and unethical.

[Mongrel]

I still think Comey was trying to do the right thing, but just fucked up horribly.

I can't and won't defend his mistakes in and of themselves, but given the state of Washington politics and how much straight evil, greed, and tribalism most folks on the hill seem to possess these days, I still have a lot of sympathy for anyone trying to act as a civil servant in the true, classical sense.

Did you read the recent longform piece I linked on Comey and Mueller?

[Mongrel]

[Yoji]

Did Trump just shove another NATO leader to be in the front of the group?

Maybe the better question is "Would you put it past Trump to shove his way to the front of the group?"

[Grath]

Did Trump just shove another NATO leader to be in the front of the group?

Maybe the better question is "Would you put it past Trump to shove his way to the front of the group?"

At this point I'd be surprised if Trump didn't shove his way to the front of the group.

[Thad]

I still think Comey was trying to do the right thing, but just fucked up horribly.

I can't and won't defend his mistakes in and of themselves, but given the state of Washington politics and how much straight evil, greed, and tribalism most folks on the hill seem to possess these days, I still have a lot of sympathy for anyone trying to act as a civil servant in the true, classical sense.

Did you read the recent longform piece I linked on Comey and Mueller?

I skimmed it. I appreciate what they did to take down STELLAR WIND, and I do think it speaks to their integrity, but it's not as if they've been above defending dubious surveillance programs in other instances, and Mueller's ass-covering during the 9/11 commission investigation bears remembering.

That said, I sure can't think of a better choice for an independent counsel under these circumstances.

Comey interfered with a fucking presidential election. You can defend his intentions all you want (even after allegations that he was taken in by fraudulent information from the Russians), but it's not really up for debate that he knew what FBI policy was, he knew the reasons for that policy, and he intentionally violated it. It's also probable (though not provable) that he swung the election (though there were, of course, plenty of other reasons the election was close enough to swing).

Meanwhile, latest is that Kushner is now "a focus" of the FBI's Russia investigation.

[Mongrel]

This is not directed at you Thad, but you mentioning the vote swing factors made me think of it.

One of the things that I really hate is watching fans of a losing (or winning) team argue about the minutiae about a buzzer-beater win (or hail mary, or whatever), about the last ref call just prior, the last foul, the stance, the position and decision of this player or that player, and so on ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

When your team loses on a buzzer beater, it's not the buzzer beater that killed you or the million tiny elements of that one act, it's that your team let the game get close enough that a buzzer beater could be the deciding factor.

In sports movies, or sportswriter narratives, this is because a bunch of scrappy underdogs managed to pull equal with someone better. But in reality that is very rare (underdogs are underdogs for a reason) and far more often it just means someone fucked up, often in a big way and all along.

In terms of the 2016 election, that fuckup turned out to be "Run Hillary Clinton". And arguments about Comey, or the Russians, or Bernie-woulda*, or policy details, or tarmac meetings, or the Electoral College, or turnout, or racism, or anything of that ilk feel like those goddamn buzzer-beater arguments.

*I think the decision to run Hillary was the result of issues with the Democrats which run far deeper and older than the Primary fight. There's a reason they called it a coronation.

[Mongrel]

In more of a direct reply, yeah, I think Mueller is probably the best person they could get for the investigation. I expect it to actually be legitimately and diligently pursued and that by itself spells big trouble for Trump, because I doubt his operation can stand even the faintest real scrutiny.

[Mongrel]

Looks like Kushner has gone from being "A person of interest" to "A person of really really interest"

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

[...]

Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

[...]

In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.

The Post reported in April that Erik Prince, the former founder of the private security firm Blackwater and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team, met on Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

WaPo source link

[Thad]

In terms of the 2016 election, that fuckup turned out to be "Run Hillary Clinton". And arguments about Comey, or the Russians, or Bernie-woulda*, or policy details, or tarmac meetings, or the Electoral College, or turnout, or racism, or anything of that ilk feel like those goddamn buzzer-beater arguments.

I've said it before, but it's not either/or. I definitely think anyone who focuses exclusively on Comey/Russia/the EC/whatever, to the exclusion of Hillary Clinton's serious flaws as a candidate and the party's serious, systemic flaws that led to her nomination, is not only naive but dangerous. The Democrats' continued failure to learn the right lessons from both their successes and their failures is what led to Clinton's nomination and subsequent faceplant. Like I've said before, my reaction to Harry Reid's comment that Hillary Clinton didn't do anything wrong and it was all Comey's fault was "Jesus, I'm so glad he's not in charge anymore."

But neither does that mean we should ignore those factors. The Russian interference with the election is a big fucking deal and needs to be investigated thoroughly; if the Trump campaign was complicit, that's an even bigger deal. The flaws with the electoral college haven't gone away and, while it's very unlikely that they'll be addressed in the near term, if we beat the drum for reform for long enough then support will build.

And everybody in the DoJ and the intelligence community needs to look back at what Lynch and Comey did and remember that you never, ever do that.

*I think the decision to run Hillary was the result of issues with the Democrats which run far deeper and older than the Primary fight. There's a reason they called it a coronation.

Well, yes, but I think "Bernie woulda" is an argument that, directly or indirectly, addresses those issues. The electability argument is an important one because, to my mind, that's where the Democrats have gotten it the most fundamentally and deeply wrong.

And again, I've said this before, but neoliberalism is not centrist; it does not represent the economic views of the middle of the country. Clinton and Obama were not elected because they were neoliberal technocrats, they were elected despite being neoliberal technocrats.

When people say that Sanders was more electable than Clinton, that cuts right to the heart of the issue: the Democratic Party is wrong about what makes a candidate electable. Things that the party establishment believes to be disqualifiers -- economic populism -- are not actually disqualifiers.

There's a bit at the end of March where Lewis talks about the '64 convention. He talks about how Johnson ultimately sided with the party establishment, and that led to the riots -- and how the most disappointing thing is that Johnson still won the election and lost the South; that he could have done the right thing and it wouldn't have cost him any votes.

That's how I feel about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and, to a lesser extent, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton): they could have been the socialist crusaders that Fox News said they were, and it wouldn't have cost them any votes.

Course, it'd be unfair to quote Lewis in support of my thesis without pointing out that he was an enthusiastic supporter of Clinton. Which, I think, brings us back to Bernie's greatest failure as a candidate, which is that we're at a real crisis point in civil rights and he hasn't been able to connect with voters on that extremely important issue (or really anything but economic populism).

[Grath]

[Joxam]

Course, it'd be unfair to quote Lewis in support of my thesis without pointing out that he was an enthusiastic supporter of Clinton. Which, I think, brings us back to Bernie's greatest failure as a candidate, which is that we're at a real crisis point in civil rights and he hasn't been able to connect with voters on that extremely important issue (or really anything but economic populism).

That's actually the biggest problem I ever had with Bernie. Mind you I voted for him in my state's primary, but I don't think it can be stated enough how much his supporters screaming about the sixties while black kids were being shot in the streets at the beginning of the campaign cycle turned off so many black thought leaders. So many people just flat out saw, "but he marched with MLK" as an excuse (and a bad one) for why all he talked about for a long time was the economy.

At the end of the day we (his supporters) have to admit that he lost to HRC in bigger numbers than can be explained away with DNC shit, and in my mind one of the main factors in that has got to be his lack of ability to reach out to the black community when it mattered (at the beginning when he was building coalition).

Also one problem I have with the Bernie-coulda argument is that the Oppo against him would have been insane. There's a reason even Trump had to claim love of the bible. Do we really think a culturally jewish athiest "socialist" was going to go unscathed through a general?

It feels nice to think he could have won because it means that racism and sexism weren't nearly as large factors for why Clinton lost, but in my mind that is a dangerous road to go down because of its potential to alienate the black (and to a larger and more serious extent, black female) community.

[Mongrel]

Also one problem I have with the Bernie-coulda argument is that the Oppo against him would have been insane. There's a reason even Trump had to claim love of the bible. Do we really think a culturally jewish athiest "socialist" was going to go unscathed through a general?

That's exactly the thing. Had Bernie won the nom somehow, he could very have lost as badly or worse to Trump. On top of the other factors you named, he was visibly older than Trump (even though both are old - what can I say, the spraytan and combover actually work on some people) and had dozens of not hundreds of old statements and policy positions dating back decades which the right could have very easily used to absolutely pillory the guy in a general. The GOP was positively salivating at the prospect of Bernie as the nom.

I recall more than one Bronto posting links to lists of all the buckets of mud the GOP were saving up to immediately sling at Bernie should he clinch the nom. None of that stuff was big news because the GOP deliberately wanted to give Bernie the best chance possible. Who knows... when people were griping that no one had investigated Trump, maybe it's because the best GOP investigators were all digging up dirt on Bernie and then sat on it in readiness.

That's not to say his winning a general would have been IMPOSSIBLE. But he lost the primary fairly and for good reasons and those liabilities would have only been bigger in a general election.

However, in Bernie's defence, he didn't really expect to get half so far. When we go back to Bernie's original announcement, he stated flat out and quite honestly that he really didn't think he had a chance, but that he disagreed with the nomination being a coronation and also that the left wing of the party had no representation. I think he would have been perfectly happy to let a young, charismatic leftist run instead, but he found it profoundly distressing that no such person had emerged. What he really wanted to do is remind everyone of the times when that was a routine thing, that the Democrats could and should be running more leftist candidates and in that regard, I think he succeeded.

It's also to Bernie's credit that he's still continuing to speak and work and in a sensible way, rather than Hillary who ran off to sulk and continues to not really be a voice for anything productive even when she does speak.

[Mongrel]

I appreciate that this would have him blowing smoke out his ass.

[Joxam]

It's also to Bernie's credit that he's still continuing to speak and work and in a sensible way, rather than Hillary who ran off to sulk and continues to not really be a voice for anything productive even when she does speak.

While I love that Bernie is vocal, even if i disagree with some of the people he's been vocal for, complaints about Hillary not being vocal are a little unfair in my opinion. Every single time she says anything a handful of articles come out saying she needs to step aside and if she says nothing she gets "she ran off to sulk." She is damned either way.

[Thad]

That's exactly the thing. Had Bernie won the nom somehow, he could very have lost as badly or worse to Trump.

I don't deny the possibility.

But.

and had dozens of not hundreds of old statements and policy positions dating back decades which the right could have very easily used to absolutely pillory the guy in a general. The GOP was positively salivating at the prospect of Bernie as the nom.

I'm pretty sure that for the purposes of the 2016 election, we can throw out "the opposing party was positively salivating at the prospect that he'd be the nom" as a reliable indicator of the outcome of the race.

I recall more than one Bronto posting links to lists of all the buckets of mud the GOP were saving up to immediately sling at Bernie should he clinch the nom. None of that stuff was big news because the GOP deliberately wanted to give Bernie the best chance possible. Who knows... when people were griping that no one had investigated Trump, maybe it's because the best GOP investigators were all digging up dirt on Bernie and then sat on it in readiness.

That's not to say his winning a general would have been IMPOSSIBLE. But he lost the primary fairly and for good reasons and those liabilities would have only been bigger in a general election.

But THEY NOMINATED HILLARY CLINTON.

I mean, yeah, Sanders has negatives and is a potentially controversial candidate.

You know who else has negatives and was an undeniably controversial candidate? HILLARY CLINTON. (And also, Donald Trump!)

It's true that we never got a chance to see what would happen when the floodgates opened and the full force of the GOP smear machine was turned on Bernie Sanders. But we've been watching for the past twenty-five years what happens when the floodgates are open and the full force of the GOP smear machine is turned on Hillary Clinton. Her unfavorable ratings were historically unprecedented. Sanders had the highest net favorability rating of any candidate of any party in the race (and IIRC the only one that was even positive); it certainly wouldn't have stayed that high if he'd gotten the nomination (and he would not currently be the most popular politician in America), but it's very hard for me to accept the premise that it could ever have sunk as low as Hillary Clinton's. People made up their minds about Hillary Clinton a long time ago.

Which is not to excuse her fuckups in the campaign. "We're going to put a lot of coal plants out of business" and "basket of deplorables" and her total failure to campaign in Wisonsin come to mind. She made mistakes; things happened that were out of her control; there are certainly a number of scenarios where she could have won if only X, Y, or Z had gone differently. But she had an uphill battle, even against someone as unpopular as Trump, and a lot of people made the mistake of thinking it was going to be easy for her to win. She was one of them.

Yeah, it's possible that Sanders would have been a bad candidate and that he would have performed poorly. (And, I repeat, if he intends to run again he seriously needs to get his shit together on outreach to civil rights groups.) But the premise that Clinton was ever a good candidate is insane. I mean, the proof is in the pudding: she couldn't even secure an electoral college victory against Donald Trump.

I won't rule out the possibility that Clinton really was a better candidate than Sanders. But I can't help noticing that a lot of the people saying that swore nine years ago that she was a better candidate than Obama, too.

[Mongrel]

Remember, I'm not really saying "Bernie never would have won!" Just that his losing was a real possibility and - arguably - more likely than Hillary on day 0.

But not by a huge margin, I think.

[Thad]

That's fair. Anyone who claims that his victory would have been a certainty is indulging a fantasy.

But so is anyone who claims that his victory was impossible. And the Democratic establishment's insistence that Hillary Clinton was an unstoppable candidate, both in '08 and '16, borders on pathological, and it should be a cause for great concern that there are still party leaders who think she only lost because of Comey. That mindset desperately needs to change or we're going to keep repeating the same mistakes.

The good news is that the party seems to be getting that message a lot better now than it did in '01 (when it was "he only lost because of the Supreme Court"). There are a lot of contributing factors to that; it doesn't hurt that we've been there before, and the base is a lot louder and more effective now than it was then. (Plus, as Paco mentioned last year, the upside of the Tea Party takeover in '10 is that it took out the Evan Bayh wing of the Democratic Party.)

There are a couple of other reasons for the current party unity, and they mostly boil down to public opinion. Trump's historic unpopularity has emboldened the Democrats to unify in opposition to him. And this seems to have happened right around the time Betsy DeVos was nominated. Earlier cabinet nominees had more Democratic support; I think there was probably a sense that obstructionism was bad politics. At this point it's pretty clear that obstructing Trump's agenda is good politics.

Course, I don't support obstructionism for its own sake, and if Trump proposes anything that actually can be beaten into sensible bipartisan shape, then sure, the Democrats should go for it. But I think what they've figured out by now is that the odds of that happening are not very good.

As for what any of that means in '18 and '20, it's hard to say. If the Dems retake the House I think there's a good chance we're in impeachment territory (there is, of course, a chance of it happening before then, if revelations come out that make it politically suicidal for the Republicans to oppose it; I wouldn't bet on it, but the way things are going it's certainly possible). As for '20, it's hard to say; all the names I've seen floated are ones I've mentioned myself: Sanders, Warren, Biden, Booker, Gillibrand. While obviously my preference is for the Sanders/Warren wing of the party, I think the other three names are solid choices (and, after all, anybody's bound to be an improvement over Trump -- even Pence or Ryan). If Sanders and Warren both run, I can see them splitting the base vote and a more establishment-friendly candidate getting the nom -- though I can also see the possibility that this time the nominee could be savvy enough to pick a running-mate who appeals to the base. If the Perez/Ellison race was a relitigation-by-proxy of the '16 primary, at least it had a much more conciliatory ending.

[Thad]

It's also to Bernie's credit that he's still continuing to speak and work and in a sensible way, rather than Hillary who ran off to sulk and continues to not really be a voice for anything productive even when she does speak.

While I love that Bernie is vocal, even if i disagree with some of the people he's been vocal for, complaints about Hillary not being vocal are a little unfair in my opinion. Every single time she says anything a handful of articles come out saying she needs to step aside and if she says nothing she gets "she ran off to sulk." She is damned either way.

If Clinton does what Gore did and becomes an outspoken and sincere (if still a little boring and wonky) advocate for her favorite liberal cause, I'll welcome it.

But it sure seems like every time she opens her mouth it's to say some variation on "I take responsibility for every decision I make -- but that's not why I lost."

I gotta hand it to her, though: if she wants to explain why she lost, I really don't think she could have possibly illustrated it better than by insisting that she does a thing, and then doing the opposite of that thing literally in the same sentence.

[Blossom]

Discovering that "I'm with her" only barely lost out to "because it's her turn" as a campaign rallying cry internally was pretty telling. She doesn't have a cause to speak about now because according to her, she didn't have a cause to run on in the first place.