On tonight’s Jenn Psaki’s show, I just heard Nancy Pelosi speak about Trump’s recent Putin-related comments:
Seemingly inviting Russia to invade NATO countries, i.e., those who “don’t pay their dues,” and saying he’d let Russia do “anything they wanted to them,” and
His lack of quick response to Russian activist Alexei Navalny’s death due to “unspecified reasons” which Pelosi reckons was an assassination. Then his belated comments, three days after his collapse in a Russian prison, was his usual self-serving attempt to equate Navalny’s death with his own legal problems:
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network. The former US president and presumptive Republican White House nominee added: “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
Pelosi, as is true of most everyone, stipulates that “Putin has something on Trump.” After reciting that mantra since 2016, I think there’s another explanation: Trump is simply being Trump. It’s no secret about his “bromances” with nearly all world authoritarian leaders. For example, why don’t we wonder “what does Hungary’s Viktor Orbán have on Trump?” Or, “what does Kim Jong Un have on Trump?” All this is not completely irrelevant, but, I believe, only partially true, if at all.
Trump doesn’t need any authoritarian to have something on him. He’s simply an unapologetic authoritarian personality, dyed in the wool at his monstrous father’s directions and via Roy Cohn, a verifiable monster. It’s baked in; Trump is dictator simpatico. He has, as well, survived and thrived despite serious legal, media, and political attacks for decades, emboldening him beyond all concern about his omnipotence. He’s likely always admired those who exercised unquestioned dominance over individuals, industries, and countries. So, of course, he admires Putin. He has no control over himself, in everything that makes a person human, he’s so close to his authoritarian dream and life force, presently leading the GOP, not like a dictator but as a dictator. Next in his sights is our country in full, so mammoth is his evil.
Being humans, we try en masse, I think, to bring some gestalt to the chaos Trump has caused and will continue to accelerate as the election cycle grinds on. We still, after nearly eight years of Trump’s historically rapacious performance as the first truly psychopathic American president, are shocked. At times I startle at the thought that, yes, Donald Trump, was president, and, shockingly, appears at least in light of his apparent omnipotence, to have a path to another four years of destruction. But this is no standard nightmare from which I, or we, can hope to awaken, relieved that it was just a dream. Wondering and wasting time wailing at the wailing wall will not cause Trump and his crowd to magically disappear. We must snap out of it, and very soon begin to fight without apology, if not without fear.
At last night’s debate, Gingo got into a pis*ing match with Mitt Romney over Israel/Palestine policy. Who is more macho. Who has courage? Who is timid. Gingrich’s utterly unearned sense of his own bravery, his own singular judgment, in the face of complex international issues is literally frightening. We’ve known this for a long time, but he’s rarely given us a better example of unrestrained, and ultimately galactically irresponsible hubris.
Here’s what he said: “I think sometimes it is helpful to have a president of the United States with the courage to tell the truth, just as was Ronald Reagan who went around his entire national security apparatus to call the Soviet Union an evil empire and who overruled his entire State Department in order to say, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Reagan believed the power of truth restated the world and reframed the world. I am a Reaganite, I’m proud to be a Reaganite. I will tell the truth, even if it’s at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid.” The perfectly opposite example of this is Newt Gingrich.
In 1985, he told Jane Mayer of The Wall Street Journal that he still believed that “Vietnam was the right battlefield at the right time.” Why didn’t he go? “Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over,” he allowed. But, recovering, he added, “Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made.”
That wasn’t an appropriate question. He like all those who went to Vietnam had a role to play, an unfortunate role. Gingo would have been the same, he’d have served a role, and “made a difference.” To use the question about whether he’d have made a difference is not a question one asks when called upon to serve one’s country. It’s dissembling. It’s like a card game with a player who has exceptional sleight of hand. A principled way to avoid service is well known: conscientious objection. Gingo’s way was self-serving; dishonesty masquerading as honesty.
“In light of the generally lightweight resistance to the Tea Party mayhem caused during this long debt ceiling fight, I’m wondering about things I’ve never wondered before. Is the President who has often compromised with the GOP/TP, not the “down-in-the-dirt” fighter we need to run the Tea Party out-of-town? They are down and dirty, and, in this 21st century civil war skirmish, do we need a Grant rather than a McClellan, a Sherman rather than a Burnside? It’s a war we’re in, without doubt. Clausewitz wrote, ‘War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.’ Since the close of the Civil War, whether we’ve formally noticed it or not, we’re largely a country where, to paraphrase freely, ‘Politics is a mere continuation of war by other means.’ Following his recent and worst compromise on the debt ceiling, is Obama up to this task? And who is, or who might be?”
That was August, nonetheless, with this post, I’m disowning my conclusion then that we need a Democratic primary challenger to President Obama for the 2012 election. Three recent events caused my turnaround: (1) During his September 8th jobs program speech to Congress, President Obama debuted a new public persona, one with strength, resolve, and purpose. No pandering to Republicans, quite the opposite. No soft-spoken phrases to reassure the GOP of his bipartisanship; “Pass this bill” is short, sweet, and its intent obvious, a textbook declarative sentence, a leader’s statement. Incredibly for this President, he did not utter the word “bipartisan” a single time . . . A strong and hopeful start. Bipartisanship with this GOP Congress has been a losing proposition.
(2) President Obama’s remarks on Monday about deficit reduction during which he added more heat to the fire that previously he lit on September 8th. Finally, he got rhetorically personal and physical, landing a series of roundhouse hooks to various GOP chins. Moreover, after calling out Speaker of the House Boehner by name, Obama – in the blue boxing trunks – hammered the Speaker’s orange nose. Yesterday, Boehner seemed a bit shaken, not stirred. His counter-punch was a weak non sequitur, a comment conflating “class warfare” with “leadership.”
(3) Ralph Nader’s Monday announcement that he is actively seeking six progressive/liberal contenders willing to challenge the President in primary contests was another reason I changed my mind.
Channeling Rocky Balboa? The President’s deficit reduction remarks, added to his jobs plan speech two weeks ago, provided evidence of an unexpected moxie, a bit of a temper, and a tad of FDR’s sarcastic humor (“This is not class warfare. It’s math.”). Rather than shadow boxing, he threw some swift, well-aimed uppercuts. He now evinces a full understanding that allowing the GOP to throttle him against the ropes will not wear them out, they can do that all day, all night. You won’t exhaust them to the mat in the 15th round. You must flatten them, and publicly.
My earlier posting, set out above, pushed an entirely different agenda. Now, though, I believe that if Obama continues to battle without cravenly compromising with the GOP Congressloons on essentials, he’s got a reasonable chance to win some victories. It’s quite good too that he called out Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pledge that many Congressloons signed. These moves are like spirited and stinging jabs to the nose, and if he does it long enough, publicly enough, the highly sought after Democratic base will rally. Perhaps too will the independent voters, the Holy Grail of U.S. presidential elections, move into the Obama camp. . .
So, if Obama and his entire administration forcefully attack, attack, and attack the GOP (and some weak Democrats too) on all points, and demand they enact, at a minimum, the more substantial portions of his suggested tax provisions and his jobs plan, an impending primary battle would do more damage than good. My reason for promoting a primary challenge in early August was precisely, and only, to underscore the importance of President Obama to move to the left from a position many of us viewed as pandering to the far right-wing. I’d hoped he would decide to stand on Democratic principles and start punching. Yesterday, and in his jobs plan speech two weeks ago, he did it, and he’s got some fancy footwork, and John Boehner, a tough fighter, was bloodied. If yesterday’s speech is followed up, this is the President we’ve been looking for, waiting for, and a primary challenge would be ill-advised. Let’s allow the President to “float like a butterfly, and sting like a bee,” undisturbed by a 5th column of primary contenders that, in the end, will only aid the GOP/TP.
Ladies and Gentlemen, In This Other Corner, at 180 I.Q, Ralph Naaaaaaderrrrr. On Monday, five-time presidential contender Ralph Nader called for a primary challenge to the President. Mr. Nader – whose nearly 100,000 Florida votes as a 3rd party candidate in the 2000 election caused George W. Bush to (eventually) be quasi-elected president – is seeking, six “recognizable, articulate “candidates. Nader does not want them to mount serious challenges to Obama, but to instead “rigorously debate his policy stands” on issues. Six candidates, mind you. According to an LA Times article:“Nader insists the purpose of his latest electoral effort is not to deny Obama the Democratic nomination, or undermine his chances in the general election against whomever the Republicans put up against the president. ‘Just the opposite,’ Nader said, speaking via telephone from Washington shortly after the recruitment effort was made public. ‘If [Obama’s] smart, he’ll welcome it, because nothing’s worse than an incumbent president slipping in the polls, being constantly on the defensive, being accused by supporters of having no backbone and running an unenthusiastically received campaign. That’s a prescription for defeat. He’s got a lack of enthusiasm with his base,’ Nader continued, ‘If he goes through a one-year presidential campaign with mind-numbing repetition, responding to crazed Republican positions, he is not going to activate his base. He will be put on the defensive, just the way he is now.’” When Mr. Nader begins a project, as all of us over 50s know, he’s like a feral dog with a tasty bone. Nothing will stop him, although I’m sure at least some Democratic party HQ types are quietly trying to do so.
A primary challenge to the “new” Obama would be both constructive . . . and destructive. Constructive by forcing Obama to move more passionately toward his Democratic base and its members’ interests, to refine his sense of what the Democratic party stands for; destructive in causing a sense of Presidential weakness and vulnerability just at the time he’s building and demonstrating strength while taking the offensive against the GOP with force. In addition – and something I didn’t recognize in my early August posting – a primary battle, despite some positives, would be a major distraction from the work the President has at hand – defeating the GOP and the Tea Party, or at least neutralizing them. Either result would likely secure Obama’s re-election, and just might deflate the most dangerous political group of fanatics since the civil war.
