It took methodical, televised proceedings for Nixon to be impeached and eventually step down. Trump’s crimes have been much larger, public, and more frequent. But the rule of law has eroded so much since Nixon, that it can be difficult to imagine Trump being held accountable. Still, history is a guide. If we’re to keep what rule of law we have left, we should expect this to be a drawn-out fight for truth and justice.
Calling impeachment a coup has historical precedent
Unfit for Office →
This is the best essay I’ve read on the case for impeaching Trump. George Conway discusses Founding intent of the impeachment clause, as well as Trump’s clear and routine “breach of trust” (which also raises the possibility of a Constitutional takeover by his cabinet):
Trump’s erratic behavior has long been the subject of political criticism, late-night-television jokes, and even speculation about whether it’s part of some incomprehensible, multidimensional strategic game. But it’s relevant to whether he’s fit for the office he holds. Simply put, Trump’s ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires. To see why first requires a look at what the Constitution demands of a president, and then an examination of how Trump’s behavioral characteristics preclude his ability to fulfill those demands.
"Great News: Wall Street Democrats Might Leave the Party" →
David Dayen, writing in The American Prospect:
This is fantastic news. Anything that accelerates the split in the decades-long marriage between the alleged party of the people and Big Money should be celebrated. The transformation in policy that would ensue if Wall Street Democrats walk away from the party, freeing it from self-censorship and bad ideas, far outstrips whatever money they might raise for Democratic candidates.
…
The most telling quote came from a hedge fund executive, who fretted that if Warren helped people discover that the Trump tax cuts only helped fatten corporate wallets, “Wall Street would not like the public thinking about that.” So their beef with “far left” Democrats is that they would tell too much truth about our broken tax code and the soaring inequality it fosters.
…
That’s exactly the right attitude, which Sanders has backed up with his constant invocations of the old FDR line about the economic royalists, “I welcome their hatred.” And proudly rejecting the support of Wall Street isn’t just a populist pose; it’s a viable economic policy. Just about everything that has ailed the Democratic Party since the 1970s from a policy standpoint can be traced back to an ugly partnership with Wall Street money.
Post-Watergate reformers did not place themselves in opposition to financial power; their first inclination was to throw out the populist head of the House Banking Committee, Wright Patman, who had been fighting consolidation for decades. Patman’s pro-bank foes on the committee ensured his fate by allying with the Watergate babies. Later, as Brooks Jackson details in the seminal book Honest Graft, Democrats, led by chief fundraiser for the House campaign arm Tony Coelho, cozied up to Big Money to hang onto power during the Reagan revolution.
This wound up betraying just about every New Deal principle there was, and muddying the distinctions between the party and the Republicans. Seduced by an ardor for markets, New Democrats and the DLC pursued financial deregulation and spurred financialization in a host of policy arenas, from education to housing to retail. Large companies like Apple and Koch Industries are as much derivatives traders and hedgers as they are product makers and sellers.
GM just showed why we have to overhaul our health insurance system →
Paul Waldman in the Washington Post:
As the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors threatens to drag on, the company decided to play hardball: It announced that it is cutting off health benefits for striking workers. Though they will be able to pick up coverage through COBRA with the help of the union — coverage that won’t be as comprehensive — the move sends a clear message that this will be a merciless fight.
Which reminds us of something very important about health-care reform, no matter what form it takes under the next Democratic president: We have to move away from the ridiculous system where the insurance you have, and whether you have insurance at all, is dependent on the benevolence of your boss.
….
Most people have probably never questioned it: You get a job, and if you’re lucky, it comes with health insurance. You boss decides what kind of plan you’re on, and every year he decides if he wants to switch you to a different one (which is why “If you like your plan, you can keep it” is a fiction, no matter who’s saying it). That’s just how things work.
But more than 150 million Americans get health coverage through their jobs not because anyone thought it would be the best way to construct an insurance system. It was an accident of history…
"Striking GM Workers Deserve Our Support" →
Bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of $11 billion, General Motors has been making record profits—and closing plants. According to striking GM employee Sean Crawford, who works at Flint Truck Assembly building the Silverado and the GMC Sierra, “GM doesn’t care about America, they don’t care what happens to our communities. Whole cities are being decimated by disinvestment. They can wave the flag all they want in their TV advertisements, but they’ve destroyed whole communities of people just trying to raise their families.” For Crawford, the most important two issues in this strike are putting an end to the creation of “temporary” workers—many of whom have been working side by side with him for up to six years—and bringing all workers up to the same tier.
That second point is key: According to Sam Gindin, who by the time he retired had spent decades as chief labor economist for the Canadian Autoworkers, “Part of what made the United Auto Workers so important for so long was the solidaristic union principle of equal pay for equal work. The level of equality in the auto industry was remarkable for decades because previous union leadership fought to keep the difference between skilled trades, assembly line, and even janitors minimal. Having extended this to women decades back, it has more recently been given up for new workers doing the same job as workers hired earlier.”
…
More strikes are urgently needed to reverse the dangerous increase in American inequality. But the exciting strikes that have been electrifying the nation for the past two years have been led by a surge in bottom-up movements of the rank and file, mainly of women in the education sector. Workers at GM are reading tea leaves and official press releases, just like the media, and that’s no way to win a massive strike.
Yet, despite the many obstacles and tarnished national UAW leadership, everyone needs the workers in this strike to win. At General Motors, the autoworkers deserve real job security, a great contract that honors their tireless hard work, and new union leadership. To get it, they need to drive this strike themselves.
Everyone agrees: rich countries have to help poor countries with climate change →
There’s an interesting point that’s implied here: our middle-man elite (i.e., most “politicians”), whom we deride as obsessed with polls, only seem to pay attention to the polls that are politically safe (i.e., the ones that won’t scare their donors).
These numbers indicate the difference between "agree" and "disagree" answers. Predictably, Democrats - and groups that have strong representation in the Democratic coalition, including Black and Hispanic respondents, women, and Millennials - provided the strongest agreement. But surprisingly, even groups at the other end of the spectrum - including Republicans - registered more approval than disapproval.
This consensus should come as welcome news to anyone concerned about climate change, since you can't fight climate change without massive transfers to poor countries. The problem has been neglected in many (though thankfully not all) of the Green New Deal proposals that we've seen so far - and one reason, I suspect, is that politicians think that voters just don't want the United States to pay for it.
"POWERED BY THE PEOPLE: A Genuine Populist Is Running for West Virginia Governor. His Donor Rolls Broke the State’s Campaign Finance Software." →
This is amazing (but shouldn’t be). This is how I naïvely assumed parties worked: organizing from the ground up, recruiting and training people to run for office, supporting candidates up and down the ballot.
The roadmap is simple: Organize locally, recruit local candidates who know their neighbors’ needs, and run those candidates in local races. So far, Smith’s campaign has recruited an estimated 56 candidates and potential candidates who are mulling a run in 2020. They have their sights set on positions like city council memberships, magistrate judge seats, county commissioners, and delegates. Their candidate pipeline includes people who are ready to go —and have their campaign website set already — to others who are considering running for office for the first time and want go to a training to get a sense of what it takes.
Smith’s campaign will train candidates and their campaign staff. Perhaps most crucially, West Virginia Can’t Wait will grant these smaller campaigns access to their team and join them on the trail, opening up town halls and events to the local candidates.