Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders Wins New Hampshire: Today’s headlines

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To be fair, media personnel may have expected Bernie Sanders to win the New Hampshire primary. (After all, ‘he’s from a neighboring state’.)

Sanders (reuse wiki)

 

Still, that said–here is a quick rundown of today’s headlines about New Hampshire 2020. “BERNIE WINS NEW HAMPSHIRE”? “SANDERS WINS 2ND DEM CONTEST”? Well, no, mainly not. Some respectable news outlets conveyed the straight fact, “SANDERS WINS NEW HAMPSHIRE.” But prominently, on February 12, 2020, the morning after the extensively covered first primary and second voting event of the 2020 presidential election, we get this sampling:

From my (print) issue of The Washington Post: “With win in N.H., Sanders controls Democrats’ left wing”

From The New York Times: “Bernie Sanders Scores Narrow Victory in New Hampshire”

From NYT Wednesday Briefing: “Bernie Sanders edges out Pete Buttigieg”

From USA Today: “Bernie Sanders’ campaign defends narrow win in New Hampshire after big 2016 showing”

From Fox News: “Sanders edges out Buttigieg to win New Hampshire, as Klobuchar surges to third”

From the New York Post: “Bernie Sanders a limp leader after barely squeaking by in New Hampshire”

From Axios: “Bernie Sanders’ uneasy New Hampshire win”

Et cetera. As one tweet put it,

For my money, the WaPo headline stinks most. Again to be fair, Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, willingly markets Sanders book and campaign merchandise. So that’s something saved from the wreck. But the Post headline is a swift two-fer using Sanders to blank out Elizabeth Warren, figuratively speaking.

Meanwhile, most of the national political press is comparing 2020 turnout to 2008 turnout for Obama.

More later on the ‘turnout’ narratives trending in media.

Update, 9:26 AM:

From Politico’s “Playbook”: “Bernie wins New Hampshire by a whisker”

Update, 10:07 AM:

From Politico “Morning Score”: “Sanders edges Buttigieg in New Hampshire”

 

“What went wrong” in 2016? Are they kidding?

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Going where the denial is thickest–in the news media

As a rape survivor myself*, I believe Juanita Broaddrick. I listened to Ms. Broaddrick when she was interviewed on Dateline NBC back in 1999. I listened carefully to everything she said, and–as a lifelong registered Democrat myself–I believe her with all my heart. Her accusation was that Bill Clinton assaulted her, in Arkansas, years earlier, when he was State Attorney General and widely believed to be a rising political star and a local political wunderkind. This was a rape allegation–different in degree from the several sexual harassment allegations also leveled against Clinton, and in 2016 against Donald Trump, and very different from Clinton’s compulsive philandering. Broaddrick accused Clinton of forcible rape, on national television–network, not cable–credibly, with detail, not concealing or denying her own errors or her anger at Clinton. Yet after the Clintons left the White House, Broaddrick’s name was scarcely mentioned in what are often called the ‘elite’ media. As the highly respected late columnist William Blackberry commented, it was mystifying that a credible accusation of such magnitude could be passed over. This while The Washington Post deemed that President Clinton’s affair with an intern warranted a special pull-out section titled “Presidency in Crisis”( temporarily), and Republicans in the House were voting to impeach Clinton.

It is an unanswered question, now, how many people even know who Juanita Broaddrick is. Many younger people who voted in 2016 would not have recognized her name in 2015. The fact that she became part of the public discourse largely through some rightwing outlets and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a source of regret for me personally.

The Democrats who should have acknowledged her story dropped the ball. So did the GOP, of course. Neither major party moved constructively to address the issue of rape, in the 1990s or under the George W. Bush administration. President Obama and Vice President Biden did more than any previous White House, addressing sexual assault on college campuses and problems such as the backlog of unprocessed rape kits in the criminal justice system. But much remains to be done.

Our top media outlets did far too little. Millions of words have been written about the 2016 election, with more to come; hundreds of opinion polls were taken, countless models predicted the outcome–wrongly–but so far as I know, no major media outlet polled the public on awareness of Juanita Broaddrick’s accusation against Clinton, or even on her name recognition.

A couple of points here. First, rape is a difficult topic, grim and painful, and difficult things by definition are harder to deal with than easy things. Fewer people will deal well with something difficult than with something easy, including people in the news media. Second,  as mentioned above, few people in large media outlets tried to deal with the Broaddrick story well. This gap is not consistent with a belief in Clinton’s innocence, which would have emphasized accuracy. It sweeps an issue under the rug instead of addressing it.

Third, a media focus on horse-race politics shed too little light on rape as an issue. Thus if Broaddrick’s name was mentioned at all, it was usually through the prism of possible effect on the campaign of Hillary Clinton for president. Those media personalities are now consumed with the question of ‘what went wrong’ with the 2016 election, and what went wrong with their predictions.

Conceding defeat in 2016

Conceding defeat in 2016

Democrats are also addressing the question of ‘what went wrong’, especially since the Clinton campaign is not telling.

And the Clintons are of course being faulted for not telling. On this narrow point, I can help them. This is a question they will not answer fully, because they cannot.

‘What went wrong’ is that the wife of a rapist ran for the White House.

Unthinkable? One would think so. But it wasn’t. There was no one to advise the Clintons, effectively, that Clinton should not run.  A deadly simple timeline resulted. The Clinton team decided to try the run and accumulated all the money not going to the GOP. Meanwhile, Republicans salivating at the prospect of running against ‘Hillary’ lined up, and money or no money, the GOP field was self-destructively large. Trump was the cue ball. Wham. He broke the rack on the table wide apart. And while Trump was breaking things open on the Republican side, the Clintons and their media allies were shutting out every better candidate on the Democratic side–Vice President Biden first, before the primary season even began; then Senator Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

So on one side Trump benefited from the arithmetic of the field, and on the other Clinton, with no essential constituency or platform except narrow self-interest, shut out the field.

Net result: 1) A small cadre of Democratic insiders decided to paste in a nominee before any votes were cast, and 2) they picked the worst possible candidate. The Clintons with their greed problem, their old-time insider status, their treatment-of-women problem, their ties to Wall Street, etc., etc., etc., were the worst possible choice to run against Donald Trump. Not that they knew enough to take Trump seriously, any more than they knew enough to take Sanders seriously. (So much for ‘electable’.) So much for the high-paid expertise with which they theoretically surrounded themselves.

I believe that even the quiet Lincoln Chafee would have done better than Clinton. Joe Biden would have crushed Trump. Bernie Sanders would have crushed Trump. But every political and/or media insider was convinced that Clinton was a shoo-in. And not content with being convinced themselves, they exerted pressures huge to tiny, broad and narrow, to exclude any contrary voice or dissenting opinion.

On a small scale, I saw a little of the action even near my own neighborhood. (A realistic pre-election poll might have taken into account how many millions of Americans witnessed unbecoming behavior by individuals who thought they were going to have the upper hand come Election Day.)

By the weekend before the election, I for one was wondering about the much-touted ‘landslide’. I was not very surprised at the outcome but was disappointed that Russ Feingold lost the Wisconsin senate race. Knowing the Clintons, Feingold’s appeal is probably one of the reasons they neglected Wisconsin. Much of their joint public career for forty years has consisted of playing keep-away, and much of their appeal has been to media insiders who play keep-away themselves. (A realistic post-election investigation might try to examine how the Clintons went about rewarding or enticing favorable media coverage.) No wonder they were so surprised: they shut out the very people they should have been listening to.

These issues connected to the Clintons and to the Democratic Party establishment extend to the news media which confidently predicted a big-time Clinton victory. For now, space and time constraints preclude my going into the media issues. Suffice it to say that we are now hearing self-serving commentators mutually affirming their moral superiority to the unwashed masses. Largely these are the people who went along with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. As with sexual assault, it saddens me to see Iraq swept under the rug. On top of the loss of blood and treasure, in all that (temporary) emphasis on sexual assault during the campaign, no one mentioned that rape follows war.

One last point: owing to the experience I suffered, I felt pummeled throughout the 2016 election cycle–beginning with the smug, complacent assertions of Clinton’s being the inevitable nominee, in 2015 and before. The reaction is difficult to write about, even now. Several media theories about election 2016 have addressed the wrongness of the opinion polls–silent Trump voters, distrust of pollsters, faulty polling methods. I have another theory to add: that I am not the only one in my position. Few Americans would have wanted to share an intensely private perspective on Bill Clinton with pollsters. Even fewer would have wanted to volunteer their private opinion–for example, believing Juanita Broaddrick–with pollsters, without being asked to do so.

And no pollsters asked.

*This was a childhood incident. I was in elementary school at the time, an undersized fifth-grader walking alone through a big park in Houston, to a Brownies meeting. The perpetrator was not someone I knew, and the police never caught him. But at least there was none of that nonsense about not believing me. Everyone knew I could not have made it up, and anyway I was taken to the ER of the local charity hospital–Ben Taub–for an exam.

 

 

What are “pay to play letters”? –

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Those Democratic National Committee emails —

Other DNC emails released by Wikileaks in Friday’s first batch contain splashier exchanges of personalities and worse, including the plot to paint Bernie Sanders as an atheist.

But the email thread I want to know more about is the one about “pay to play letters.” Here is the full text of the first email in the exchange, sent May 18, 2016:

From: Lopez, Jacquelyn K. (Perkins Coie) [mailto:JacquelynLopez@perkinscoie.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2016 3:35 PM To: Alan Reed; Comer, Scott; Brad Marshall Subject: SEC letters and donations Hi all, Can we set up a time for a very brief call to go over our process for handling donations from donors who have given us pay to play letters? Want to make sure we have a robust process in place to make sure that donations that come in from those donors, in any form, get put into the operating account. Let me know when would be a good time for you all. Thanks, Jackie Jacquelyn Lopez | Perkins Coie LLP ASSOCIATE* 700 Thirteenth Street, N.W. Suite 600 Washington, DC 20005-3960 D. +1.202.654.6371 F. +1.202.654.9949 E. JacquelynLopez@perkinscoie.com *Admitted in State of Florida; Admission to DC Bar pending.

First question: what are “pay to play letters”?

Questions about this phrase sent to Perkins Coie, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ms. Lopez, and another attorney at Perkins Coie who also worked for the DNC as referenced in the emails, have not been answered.

[UPDATE 7/26/2016:]
Some SEC answers about the “Pay to Play Rule” are linked here. Presumably the “Pay to play letters” will turn out to be related to this rule.

The SEC’s regrettably named “Pay to Play Rule” is (Rule 206(4)-5). 202 pages linked here. Summary by law firm Covington Burling linked here. To note:

In general, “pay-to-play” refers to various arrangements by which investment advisers may seek to influence the award of advisory business by making or soliciting political contributions to the government officials charged with awarding such business.

It would be nice to know which Clinton donors fall into this category.

So, only a few clues for the moment:

1. The question pertains to the SEC; email subject line is “SEC letters and donations”
2. Donors have sent these letters in the past
3. — and apparently routinely
4. since (a) the email as written seems to expect that everyone will know what is meant, and (b) none of the recipients email back saying, ‘What are [you talking about]?’

The focus of the replies is agreeing on a time when everyone can be on the call. (For extra clarity, the final email in the exchange is pasted in below.)

More later.

From:JacquelynLopez@perkinscoie.com To: MARSHALL@dnc.org, ReedA@dnc.org, ComerS@dnc.org Date: 2016-05-19 16:58 Subject: RE: SEC letters and donations

Great, that time works for me as well. Scott, good on your end? Jacquelyn Lopez | Perkins Coie LLP ASSOCIATE* 700 Thirteenth Street, N.W. Suite 600 Washington, DC 20005-3960 D. +1.202.654.6371 F. +1.202.654.9949 E. JacquelynLopez@perkinscoie.com *Admitted in State of Florida; Admission to DC Bar pending. From: Brad Marshall [mailto:MARSHALL@dnc.org] Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 2:59 PM To: Alan Reed; Lopez, Jacquelyn K. (Perkins Coie); Comer, Scott Subject: RE: SEC letters and donations same From: Alan Reed Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 2:55 PM To: Jacquelyn Lopez; Comer, Scott; Brad Marshall Subject: RE: SEC letters and donations We’ve been doing the Operating Acct process set up by Graham for a while now but happy to do a call. Perhaps Tuesday around 4 pm? From: Lopez, Jacquelyn K. (Perkins Coie) [mailto:JacquelynLopez@perkinscoie.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2016 3:35 PM To: Alan Reed; Comer, Scott; Brad Marshall Subject: SEC letters and donations Hi all, Can we set up a time for a very brief call to go over our process for handling donations from donors who have given us pay to play letters? Want to make sure we have a robust process in place to make sure that donations that come in from those donors, in any form, get put into the operating account. Let me know when would be a good time for you all. Thanks, Jackie Jacquelyn Lopez | Perkins Coie LLP ASSOCIATE* 700 Thirteenth Street, N.W. Suite 600 Washington, DC 20005-3960 D. +1.202.654.6371 F. +1.202.654.9949 E. JacquelynLopez@perkinscoie.com *Admitted in State of Florida; Admission to DC Bar pending. ________________________________ NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you have received it in error, please advise the sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you. ________________________________ NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you have received it in error, please advise the sender by reply email and immediately delete the message and any attachments without copying or disclosing the contents. Thank you.

Hillary Clinton about 2008: “Eventually I just decided I had to withdraw”

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Sunday, May 1 (May Day):

CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Tapper interviewing Secretary Clinton, established two points. First, in spite of polls showing widespread doubt about Clinton’s honesty, Clinton still tends to make recklessly inaccurate statements in public venues. Second, Clinton and strategist Karen Finney suggested no particular place for Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic national convention. They offered no specific suggestions as to how Sanders delegates might contribute.

To the first point, this pick-up line from Clinton:

“There comes a time when you have to look at the [realities],” Clinton said. “In fact, in ’08 I was much closer in both popular vote and pledged delegates to Sen. Obama than is the case right now, but eventually I just decided that I had to withdraw and support Sen. Obama because the goal was to make sure we had a Democrat in the White House.”

The statement is posted at CNN.com. Clinton actually said that in 2008, she “eventually just decided I had to withdraw.” Link here. The interview was taped Friday (April 29).

Tapper had asked Clinton whether she was the presumptive nominee, as Trump styles himself. She demurred but said appropriately that she is on the path to the nomination.

But leaving behind the appropriate and dignified, again to the fore comes Clinton’s compulsion to overreach. It wasn’t enough for her just to tell Tapper that she was ahead, and that she hoped for party unity. Asked about the 2008 campaign, she had to rewrite history. In actual fact, Clinton did not ‘withdraw’ from the 2008 Democratic primary until June. In fact, she did not withdraw; she lost. The comments below from National Public Radio on June 5, 2008, are representative:

“From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Robert Siegel.

This Saturday, Hillary Clinton will concede – maybe. She’s expected to congratulate Barack Obama on winning the Democratic nomination. But there have been mixed messages from Clinton’s campaign and she is not planning to release her delegates.

NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.

MARA LIASSON: Senator Clinton’s behavior since Obama clinched the nomination has some of her strongest supporters worried that she is undermining Obama at a historic moment that should be his to savor. Congressman Charlie Rangel is the dean of Clinton’s own state delegation in the House.

Representative CHARLES RANGEL (Democrat, New York): The New York congressional delegation are with her to the end, but we thought the end was the end.

LIASSON: The end Rangel meant was Tuesday night [June 3, 2008], when Clinton delivered what many Democrats are calling her less-than-gracious non-concession speech. To give you an idea how much anguish this has caused even her most loyal supporters, listen to Bill Galston, a former top aide in Bill Clinton’s White House.

Mr. BILL GALSTON: I was an early supporter and remain supportive of her candidacy as long – as long as there – the candidacy was at stake. Having said that – how to put this? This is really hard for me. She’s not doing either herself or Senator Obama any favors.”

The issue in 2008 went beyond a less-than-gracious concession speech. As previously written, one Clinton campaign tactics in 2008 was to keep referencing the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as proof that anything can happen in an election.

It can hardly be expected that Clinton would bring up that issue in a Sunday morning interview. Still, she could have refrained from egregious distortion.

Other parts of Clinton’s statement above may be more colorable but also are problematic. The timeline of the 2008 election shows that on May 1, 2008, Sen. Clinton did indeed have more delegates than Bernie Sanders has now. However, she also had to lend her campaign $1 million of her own money. (On April 29, she had come on ABC saber-rattling against Iran.) A few days later (May 5) she lent her campaign another $425K.

The first week of May was big in 2008. On May 5, Clinton’s campaign argued that the total needed to win nomination should be 200 additional delegates, an attempt to move the goalposts. On May 7, Clinton reminded audiences about the killing of RFK in 1968 once in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and once in Washington, D.C. (There is no evidence that the times recorded are the only occasions Clinton used this talking point. It was and is a delicate item for reporters.) On May 8, she told USA Today that “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening.” She later walked back the comment. She is now walking back her “off the reservation” comment about Trump or others, used as the tease by CNN this morning.

Less colorful but also problematic

Other statements Clinton and her strategist Karen Finney, in today’s CNN round table, could raise concern. Clinton said early, in response to questions about working with Sanders, that she looks forward to working with Sanders “in the lead-up to the convention” and “in the lead-up to the platform.” If this phrasing was more carefully chosen than some of her other comments, it does not suggest much place for Senator Sanders and his delegates in Philadelphia.

In the CNN round table, Sanders strategist Jeff Weaver reiterated that Sanders will stay in the race until the Democratic convention. Finney’s comments paralleled Clinton’s. While making nice to Sanders in general terms, Finney refrained from specifics. She referred to “conversations” with Sanders about “what he thinks is important for the platform.” Finney suggested that Clinton agrees with Sanders broadly on his positions, or some positions, but has different approaches as to “how we get there.”

None of this raises hope that Sanders supporters will be part of the national conversation, from the perspective of the Clinton campaign in 2016.

Clinton on convention platform

Back to the “I just decided I had to withdraw” line —

Clinton’s insistence on rewriting history is the more baffling for being so unnecessary. Virtually any candidate could have put the same thing better. A witty, self-deprecating Barack Obama or Jack Kennedy might have made a joke out of it. “Eventually, after going down [xxx] delegates after that last primary, I just decided to withdraw. Primaries aren’t everything.”

Something along those lines. But for Hillary Clinton, the way to sum up the 2008 primary–which she lost decisively–is with an insinuation that she withdrew voluntarily. There was no follow-up question about ’08.

Yet the Clinton allies fret about media coverage, and about that persistent perception of untruthfulness.

[Edited slightly from morning post]

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton on using other people’s words (2008)

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There is a great Saturday Night Live parody of Hillary Clinton literally turning into Bernie Sanders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs47ce4QRBY

(Video clips of the hilarious skit are widely available on the Internet, here and here among other places.)

Now let’s get back to that topic of amnesia about 2008.

On Thursday, February 21, in the 2008 campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton leveled a singular accusation against Senator Barack Obama.

From transcripts:

“SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That’s, I think, a very simple proposition. (Applause.) And you know — you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in; it’s change you can Xerox. And I just don’t think —

SEN. OBAMA: Oh, but that — that’s not what happened there —

SEN. CLINTON: No, but — you know, but Barack, it is, because if — you know, if you look — (jeers from the audience) — if you look — if you look — if you look at the YouTube of these videos, it does raise questions.”

The exchange attracted some attention on the campaign trail, although with less than success than the Clinton campaign presumably hoped. As discussed by anchor Lloyd Robertson on CTV Television the same night,

LLOYD ROBERTSON: And the two Democratic contenders for the U.S. Presidential nomination struck a few sparks tonight during a debate in the crucial state of Texas. At one point the moderator asked Senator Barack Obama how he responded to charges from Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign that he was guilty of plagiarizing a speech by the Governor of Massachusetts. Obama pointed out that the governor, Demal Patrick, was a co chair of his campaign.

BARACK OBAMA  (Democratic Presidential Candidate): The notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it I think is silly.

Less pointed than the criticism itself is the remarkable fact that it came from Hillary Clinton, who is now going around trying to sound like Elizabeth Warren.

As I wrote in 2008, as a feminist I would like to vote for a woman for president. But the fundamental problems with Mrs. Clinton remain exactly the same now, as then, including her ability to say nice-sounding things, good things, and then to turn around and either do the opposite or use her language as a smokescreen for economic rapacity.

Quite simply, this is a candidate who has never marched in the vanguard for economic justice. She is still GOP Lite, the Republicans’ stop-loss candidate, as Mr. Koch’s recent comments confirm.

As fallible human beings, we all fall short of perfect truth. But Mrs. Clinton carries a pleasant, complacent deceitfulness into pathology territory, like a spouse in denial. She can sound so nice that, at least when she feels relatively comfortable, she resembles some of the moms you remember from the PTA, down to earth, reasonably sensible–and then she trots out a line about the other candidate that turns out to be either exactly the reverse of true, or far more applicable to herself.

Take for example her habit, or pattern, of accusing others of exactly her own problems, like the accusation that Obama was using someone else’s words, or the (dog-whistle) harping on Obama’s alleged inexperience. There was also her other jaw-dropping line on Barack Obama in 2008:

“Well, you know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.”

As I wrote back then, I never did think this was a particularly good read on Obama, whose positions generally come across as measured and rational–well thought out, in other words.

The criticism applies better to the Clintons. Clinton’s vote for George Bush’s war is the perfect example. The public overwhelmingly recognizes that the Iraq resolution gave Bush the cover he needed to invade Iraq. But did Mrs. Clinton acknowledge that? No, her version of the story was that she voted for the war in order to rein in Bush.

As for Bill Clinton, he is rapidly becoming the epicenter of defensiveness. In this election cycle, he has spoken to audiences as though he thinks the Iraq War should not even be brought up. As I wrote in the 2008 election, Bill Clinton is now (again) lumbering around testy and blustering, bullying reporters and blaming the media for his wife’s problematic candidacy. The main difference is that President Clinton was red-faced in 2008 and is pale and thin now.

This is not a matter of appearances. It’s the conduct that is unbecoming. And yet the Clintons themselves seem to feel little doubt that Bill Clinton is adored wherever he goes. (The grain of truth in this representation is that, as in 2008, the Clintons fare better with audiences and voters in communities with less access to the Internet. In 2008, Hillary Clinton did better with seniors, as she does to some extent now, in some regions. In 2016, she often does better with African-Americans–especially in the Deep South states with the widest racial disparity in Internet access.)

Back to Mrs. Clinton’s own career. To recap: she was a good student in college and at Yale Law; flunked the bar exam; moved to Arkansas and re-took the bar exam there; passed. Married Bill Clinton, who became Arkansas’ attorney general and then governor for several terms, after an early loss.

Her law career in Arkansas? Her law career was as the governor’s wife. Look where she worked. For all Mrs. Clinton’s high-sounding rhetoric about ‘fighting for us’, ‘standing up to the NRA’, etc., did she take a low-paying public-service job in the Public Defender’s office? No. Did she go to work as an Assistant District Attorney, fighting crime? No. Welfare or Child Services? No. Did she work as a labor lawyer, helping organizers in Arkansas? Pursue corporate malefactors for workplace abuses or environmental abuses? Sexual harassment? Get real. This is no Norma Rae. Mrs. Clinton went for a ‘good’ job, a job she got as a pol’s wife,  in the most established law firm in Arkansas. (For perspective, check out statistics on the employment situation for most young adults with first-professional degrees in the late 1970s.)

Back to February, 2008 —

By the way, what Obama had said was,

“We are going to rid the tax code of these loopholes and giveaways. We’re going to stop giving a penny of your money to anybody who ships a job out of Texas, Ohio or anywhere else to another country. We’re certainly going to begin to get the tax code to reflect what the needs of middle class families are, so we can rebuild a strong and prosperous middle class.”

Surely every Obama voter, including this one, believes that we would be better off if these goals had been achieved. But they have been obstructed, to the last syllable, by Republicans in Congress and out. And they were never boosted successfully, or effectively, by the Clintons or by Hillary Clinton’s top allies. The globe-trotting Clintons have been considerably more engaged in reaping big bucks abroad than in keeping American jobs at home.

In hindsight, it looks as though Clinton’s accusation of plagiarizing was basically an indirect attack on Obama’s statement itself. She couldn’t outright come out and oppose keeping jobs at home or getting rid of corporate giveaways in the tax code. But she could signal indirectly, to interested donors, that she had her mind on other things.

Sanders’ claim to turnout is valid

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Several commentators have disparaged Sen. Bernard Sanders’ argument that turnout will be vital to Democrats in November and that he can help the turnout. He is right on both counts.

Commentators at MSNBC, CNN and now some of the networks have gotten on a train recently, though–pointing to the undoubted fact that Democratic turnout in primaries this year is lower than in 2008. (Barack Obama ran that year. No one has turned out newly energized voters like President Obama.) They also point out that the Democratic turnout is lower than turnout in Republican primaries, where Donald Trump has gotten the GOP moving. So–they go on to gloat–where is the turnout that Sanders promises to deliver? (Some particularly unappealing and smarmy gloating on this item has come from Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews. No surprise there. Matthews’ wife, Kathleen Matthews, is losing her race for Maryland’s 8th District congressional seat, in spite of locking hips with the Clinton team and its donor base behind the scenes; you can’t expect him to be a good sport–a man who uses the phrase “Washington insiders” with a straight face is hardly going to be an objective observer of the nation’s fortunes. Blitzer and a tiny handful of others at CNN have been drawing envious blood from Obama since moments after the president’s election November 4, 2008. They apparently resent both his and Vice President Biden’s independence of the DC media establishment. Maddow seems long since to have bought in to the notion that careerism=feminism, or something to that effect. In between fawning on Brian Williams, she seems to be pretty much engaged in boosting the most mediocre women she can find in public life.)

But there is a factor at work this year that did not weigh on turnout in previous elections. The factor is “superdelegates.” Regardless of how hard Sanders’ ardent supporters work–and most of his supporters are ardent–Hillary Rodham Clinton and her team quietly sewed up somewhere around 450 party insiders, to paste her into the nomination should she have difficulty with voters.

Senator Sanders

Hint to analysts: if you want to be an analyst, it might help to analyze. Is there any realistic possibility that the mass of offstage superdelegates would not discourage turnout, among any voters who knew about them? Or among voters who just saw the delegate tallies for the candidates, without clarification?

So much for hope and change. The insider campaign against both–again, by ‘Washington insiders’–has been relentless–while it has also been picayune, bigoted, petty, envious and competitive. Money does not mean sense.

Nor, in the media establishment, does it mean rigorous adherence to journalistic standards. (You read it here first.) Any political analyst is intellectually required to clarify those superdelegates, in the public interest. That is not happening.

The accrual of more than 400 superdelegates by the wealth- and foundation-supported Clintons should also have been rigorously and accurately reported as it occurred. That did not happen either.

This process will have to change, and will change. In the narrowest partisan terms, it is disastrous for the Democratic Party. Democrats are living in a dream world if they think that a Hillary Clinton campaign can just skate by a nominee like Donald Trump. Trump has already appealed to independents–and to Democrats. It is unrealistic just to assume that a gravely flawed candidate like Clinton can defeat him. This is a pipe dream, and that’s even before the rest of the information on the private-server emails comes out. The insecurities about Hillary Rodham Clinton as a candidate are already manifest, in the behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent anyone else from even running.

Vice President Biden

This strategy is also being feverishly boosted by the Maddows and Matthews of the media world. Maddow spent a lengthy segment one evening on some whack-job’s push to get a death penalty(?) for gays. The clear implication was that Hillary Clinton is our only firewall against measures such as, as Maddow put it, “executing homosexuals.” Do Maddow and her ilk really think that executing homosexuals would be opposed only by a Clinton? They don’t think a candidate like, for example, Vice President Joseph Biden would step up to the plate? They don’t think Biden would oppose executing homosexuals? Do they really think Jim Webb would not have opposed these ills, if he had been allowed in the field? Lincoln Chafee? Wouldn’t even Gov. Martin O’Malley have opposed executing homosexuals, at least if the polls were going the right way?

Bernie Sanders could crush Trump. But he has to become the nominee to do so.

Meanwhile, when these over-promoted, overpaid, and under-qualified folks joined up behind scenes to paste Clinton into a nomination she has not earned and does not deserve, they took away part of my vote. They will not get the rest of it. I will not be blackmailed into voting for the ‘electable’ candidate. For one thing, she’s not. For another, the blackmail is being pushed by the very people who put us in this situation in the first place. This is not a process, a candidate, or a strategy that can withstand accurate scrutiny.

 

 

The Elephant and the Denatured Donkey in the Room

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As the New Hampshire presidential primary approaches (February 9), the national political press is consumed with speculation over Donald Trump’s lead in the GOP. Secondarily, it is speculating over how well Sen. Bernie Sanders’ lead on the Democratic side will hold up. The corollary re the GOP is that establishment candidates must be ‘winnowed’, so that Republicans can ‘coalesce’ around an alternative to Trump or Ted Cruz. The corollary re the Democrats is that loaded-with-minuses Hillary Clinton is in for the long haul, on her way to her still-inevitable nomination. Commentators do not always put it that way, but that’s the gist.

Not too ironically, one of the more interesting aspects of the 2016 race is what the national political press is not discussing. This has happened before. An avalanche of commentary in 2014 failed to disclose that the GOP ‘wave’ had a key cause: in state after state, the GOP saw to it that, while tea party candidates proliferated, party-establishment candidates had a clear path to nomination. Thus the arithmetic of the field virtually always prevailed, and in favor of the party’s preferred candidate. The relatively plausible candidate then went on, in most races, to win–especially against Blue-Dog, Clinton-like, triangulating-type Dems. More on that later.

The insurgent types seem to have learned a lesson from 2014, by the way. Trump may be a human cue ball, but most of the ‘winnowing’ this time has occurred in the non-establishment lane, as it’s now being called. Dropouts so far Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum would all be competing for the insurgent vote, if they were still in; Rick Perry and Scott Walker somewhat; only George Pataki and Lindsey Graham perhaps not. Thus with nine presidential candidates remaining, the GOP now has six candidates competing for establishment support–Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio. Only two are competing for the tea party-evangelical vote–Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Trump is running sui generis, salesman that he is.

I do not pretend to have a forecast for the New Hampshire primary. In the interest of full disclosure–to make my own position clear–if I lived in NH I would be voting for Senator Sanders. My own guess is that if Trump were to drop out of the GOP race or to do so poorly as to become irrelevant, his supporters would scatter or drop out, too. Pretty dreary prospect.

Sanders 2016

Back to what’s not being reported. First, the Republicans.

Whatever the outcome in New Hampshire, for anyone who can do arithmetic, the GOP candidate with the best chance long-term is still Jeb Bush–IF he chooses to stay in the race. Christie is ghastly. Fiorina is being sidelined pretty emphatically, in spite of her efforts to out-ugly the uglies. She would probably be sidelined more explicitly, except that the party is trying (sort of) to keep some women voters. Gilmore is being thoroughly ignored. Kasich is under none-too-subtle pressure to make like Scott Walker and bow out; that happens to GOP candidates who occasionally pay lip service to working people. The focus of commentary at the moment is on the GOP candidate most like Bush–Rubio. A few weeks of voting should answer some questions. Bush has the backing to survive not being voted for; Rubio may not. The big question is whether Bush and his backers stay in.

Jeb Bush

Meanwhile, in the tea party-ish lane, Ben Carson is facing an onslaught from Cruz, whom nobody can out-ugly. If insurgent voters were to turn on Cruz in revulsion, that whole wing of the GOP would change in a heartbeat. With Cruz hypothetically not a factor, his supporters would probably split among Carson, Trump, the multiple-candidate lane, and dropping out or voting Democratic. It will be interesting to see how they vote in New Hampshire.

So, back to the non-reported: what no esteemed commentator says about Jeb Bush is that the invasion of Iraq cost the United States dearly. No pundits bring up the statistical facts–the Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion and afterward; the assassinations of Iraqi college professors under the Coalition Provisional Authority; the deaths and injuries in American troops. No commentators point that Team Bush has never apologized for the harm done to fellow human beings, or even for the harm done to America around the globe. No mention of Iraqi children, or babies, killed; no reminder of the horrors of the Bush years–Fallujah, collateral damage, sexual assaults in the military and out of it.

Few commentators on the GOP candidates remind the public that George W. Bush used the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for invading Iraq. Not one major media figure has pointed out what I pointed out in 2002-2003, the luminously simple statement of fact that every American can understand: “The Iraqis didn’t do it.” There were no Iraqis among the hijackers. Nor do commentators tend to bring up ‘weapons of mass destruction’. (Neither do the Clintons; see below.)

Instead, we get commentary-lite, on the Jeb Bush ‘baggage’ in narrowly political terms. Two recent examples come from the pro-GOP Roll Call. One piece refers to “the family legacy” as a blessing and a curse, and to concerns about the effect on the candidate’s electability. The fact that the family has not expressed responsibility, let alone contrition, for our situation in the Middle East is omitted. Indeed, Jeb Bush says that people concerned about the actions of his father and brother need to “get therapy”–to the applause of his audience.

A succinct summary of the ethics-lite perspective is provided in the other piece:

“Bush has plenty of credentials, but they are less valuable this year. The Bush brand, once strong, was severely damaged by his brother, and Jeb himself doesn’t fit the times, when long political bloodlines and deep establishment connections are liabilities, not assets. He is, to put it bluntly, old news at a time when Republicans are looking for something new and different. For many Republicans, his name told them everything they needed to know about him and his candidacy.”

This is the way to acknowledge the biggest foreign-policy mistake in fifty years? Even Donald Trump does a better analysis of the Iraq War. Incidentally, Trump also provided a pretty good thumbnail of the effect (on the GOP) in political terms: “Lincoln couldn’t have gotten elected.” (Of course, Trump like all the GOPers blames President Obama. In my view, this is a cynical ploy to take advantage of voters too illiterate to understand that the invasion of Iraq happened before Obama’s watch, and over his opposition to the war.)

Needless to say, the same utter lack of contrition and the same failure to take responsibility extend to the Wall Street debacle in subprime lending. And the national political media tend to fall in line here, too. Too seldom is Jeb Bush, or any Republican candidate, held to account for his/her sympathy or collusion with the giant perpetrators. Meanwhile, the GOP gets to rail unchecked against the president even while unemployment falls, wages rise, prices stay level, the real estate market recovers, housing ownership revives, and coverage for health care expands. You’d think some of these gains were the capture of Osama bin Laden or the release of captured Americans all over again, they are so thoroughly ignored by big-time Republicans. Give credit to President Obama, the man who risks his life daily? Not on your bippy.

Now to the Democratic side.

As with GOP candidates, what is missing from commentary on the Democrats is exactly the information voters need. Hillary Clinton would be a disastrous nominee for Dems, but she has lined up segments of the media establishment along with her ‘Super Delegates’ and other connections.

Clinton is running basically on four planks, one semi-hidden–her electability; her inevitability (behind the scenes); her being a Democrat; and her “experience,” with the claim that she gets things done. Each claim is spurious. Setting aside longer examination for now, do they stand up to quick scrutiny? In order —

If Clinton is electable, why is she struggling so much for the nomination that she and her donors did their best to sew up beforehand? If Bill Clinton is ‘one of the best politicians of his generation’, then why did the Clintons leave the Democratic Party in shambles in Arkansas? Why was Arkansas a blue state when the Clintons began there, and a red state after their thirty-plus years? Why didn’t Hillary Clinton run for the senate from Arkansas? Speaking of New York, has there been a wave of Blue wins since the Clintons relocated there? Why did Marjorie Margolies (Mezvinsky), mother of the Clintons’ son-in-law, lose resoundingly in her New York district? The simple fact is that the Clintons are not beloved, and their coattails are nonexistent. Much of MSNBC in the tank for the Clintons. How are MSNBC’s ratings nowadays? Virginia results in 2015 were disappointing for Dems. Governor McAuliffe, widely billed as a chief Clinton ally, is not deeply beloved. Neither are the Clintons. After Clinton campaigned in Virginia in 2013, McAuliffe barely squeaked out a victory–and that was over Ken ‘Kook’ Cucinelli.

If Clinton was inevitable, why did her supporters do so much behind the scenes to keep other candidates from running? Do these machinations express confidence in their candidate?

Democrats? The Clintons are triangulators. They may be liberal on social issues, but as their track record shows, they have a pattern of shafting labor–even after receiving generous donations and support from labor, and from working people. Before she started sounding like Elizabeth Warren a few months ago, when was Clinton ever forceful on economic justice? In the senate, she voted for the resolution enabling GWBush to invade Iraq. Before that, as first lady she partnered in Bill Clinton’s anti-populist path. Before that, as wife of the candidate she stood by while Bill Clinton flew back to Arkansas to endorse personally the state’s execution of a mentally disabled African-American man.

What has Clinton ‘gotten done’? Did she work to reduce the backlog of rape kits? She now talks the game on student debt, etc., but did she ever work with her donors who are lenders to help with it before? Did she do anything beforehand to impede the coming subprime-derivatives meltdown? Did she support policies to rein in Wall Street (or the good ol’ boys in the C of C), either in Arkansas or later? Did she support gun control, before this past fall? Does her track record include support for clemency, for anyone besides Marc Rich?

These are character questions as well as economic-policy questions. Hillary Clinton is not Elizabeth Warren, and should not pretend to be. She is not someone who ‘fights for’ people outside her immediate circle. That’s not who she is. Clinton herself touts misogynistic and sexist attacks against her–but she has never stepped outside her comfort zone to defend other women, in her life. She is no Ann Richards–who endured savage and misogynistic attacks but without selling out. Clinton’s State Department emails show no consideration for President Obama, let alone for Vice President Biden. Clinton and her people, inside and outside her office, kept a wary eye out for any signs that anyone else (good) might be popular. She did the same in Arkansas, for decades. So did her husband.

One of the main problems analyzing the Clinton candidacy is that too much is deemed off-limits as ‘personal’. There is an unstated definition of ‘personal’ as ‘private’, even when the person is running for the White House. For obvious reasons, the Clintons themselves try to bat away every question of character, and many questions of policy, as mere gossip. But this strategy misconstrues the concept of the personal. Clinton has been married for decades to a man whose degrading treatment of her and of many other women is amply documented. This is not ‘right-wing conspiracy’. It is fact. It is also spousal bullying. (No, it’s not romance. It’s not intrigue. It’s not titillation. It was probably barely even sex. It’s spousal bullying–aimed at one’s own partner, while also demeaning the numerous other women involved.)

She shows the symptoms, by the way–that weird lack of judgment, that weirdly dehumanized Stay- Puft complacency, the perpetual calculatedness, the inability to empathize with any woman not ‘successful’ or established, etc.

And how did Clinton herself ‘stand up’ to the spousal bullying? –By working for the spouse’s political career, by helping the spouse advance up the ladder, by helping him into the White House. For my money, there is no way Bill Clinton could have won in 1992 if his wife had not stoutly denied every (true) accusation against him. As a result, Hillary Clinton became rich and famous; her husband became rich and famous; Arkansas was left behind. Reminding the public of this track record is not the same as gossiping about a neighbor. To remember the over-all track record of dishonesty, humiliation, and other forms of bullying is not the same as criticizing some poor woman for failing to take exactly the right course of action against an abuser. Clinton is now running for the White House, and now has all the resources in the world–entirely because of her long-term partnership with Bill Clinton. And she’s talking about the man with a credible accusation of sexual assault against him as “First Dude.”

There is not enough space here to discuss the problems with the ‘having it all’ version of feminism. Careerism is not feminism.

But the problems with the GOP and the Democratic races have one hideous parallel–that signature lack of shame. No matter what mistakes they make, no matter what harm they have caused–no shame, no remorse, no contrition. No amends. And the political media establishment is playing along on both sides.

More GOP debates, too few glimpses of decency

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Public discourse in the 21st-century USA sometimes forgets clear fundamentals, and the problem is most acute in the Republican Party sector.

Yesterday I wrote that I would post a follow-up after watching last night’s GOP lineup on Fox Business News, to see whether any of the candidates would refer to mass deportation. Discussion of the debate is below, at bottom (scroll down).

Meanwhile, forgetfulness has clearly set in among people who oppose any kind of “regulation.” These people are inwardly divided. Some of them want to deport children whose parents were not born in this country, for example, forgetting that there would have to be careful fact-checking before anyone’s parents could be proven not born in this country.

Deportation: more regulation, more government, more cost, more taxes

Note to other writers and journalists: not to join in media-bashing, but why doesn’t some moderator or television reporter or interviewer ask the obvious question, when one of these guys comes out whaling on deporting children of “illegals”? Question:

How would you know that their parents are ‘illegal’?

Follow-up questions:

Who would determine that the parents of a five-year-old are undocumented?

Who, if anyone, would check?

Who would verify?

As we live now, under the Fourteenth Amendment, a person born in the United States is an American citizen. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, who my parents are, or were, is my business. Who your parents are, or were, is your business. (This is America.) Expunging the Fourteenth Amendment would make it anyone’s business, or someone’s business. Exactly whose has not been designated. Donald Trump never mentions who would handle a mass shipping-out, but the facts would have to be checked by duly constituted authorities. The authorities in turn would have to be monitored–Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? There would have to be oversight. There would have to be a route for appeal, in cases tainted by (inevitable) error or corruption. There would have to be meticulous records, documentation (this being the concept, after all), preferably supported by video recording. All of this (nightmarish) process would involve regulations.

Not that deportation is the only work site requiring regulation. (I cannot believe I’m having to write these words.) Fuel manufacturing, handling, and storage require oversight, monitoring, and concern for public health and public safety; and not every human being can or will provide these prompted by conscience alone. In other words, they have to be regulated. So do the manufacturing and handling of all other explosives. The same goes for airplane maintenance; airplane parts should not fall off in the air. Fruit juice fed to babies should not contain pesticides and herbicides. Meat and bread should not catch mold and worse from grocery shelves. Children’s toys, cribs, and car seats should not be accidents waiting to happen, causing the deaths of an actuarially predictable number of toddlers each year. The contents of prescription medications should be what the label says they are, in the proportions specified and prescribed. All of the foregoing are sites where regulation is necessary. So are manufacturing and storage for fertilizer and the many other household and construction products, whether or not created for demolitions, that turn out to be flammable and/or explosive.

Here and there

Fortunately, there are good-faith ways to reduce the need for regulation. Organic farming and local buying alleviate problems connected to toxins, transportation and freight. If any of the current presidential candidates are actually interested in reducing ‘excessive regulation’, they could consider helping the environment. The need for regulations could be made less urgent, and big areas to build improvement include food and water, travel and shipping, and health and medical care. There will be less difficulty regulating toxins and other hazards, when they are not disseminated into the environment in the first place.

(Side note: Look for Hillary Clinton using these or similar words in the next couple of days. Her campaign people are constantly on the lookout for lines she can appropriate. As a voter, and a viewer, I do wish she would stop trying to sound like Elizabeth Warren. My own sense is that if she were going to ‘fight for you’, she would have done it years ago.)

Back to illegal immigration–the undocumented immigration so vilified is a perfect example of lack of forethought, lack of clear thinking, and lack of rational prevention beforehand creating back-end problems. The hysterical eagerness to deport millions of people forgets that such a process would require the ‘regulation’ vilified as much as immigration itself. More importantly, the anti-immigrant hysteria also forgets why this immigration happens in the first place.

The immigration stems from the wish for survival. People risk their lives, and many of them lose their lives, to slip across our border hoping to be able to make a living, hoping for freedom from poverty and worse, hoping to move farther away from imminent danger and the threat of starvation as well as from local dictators. Some of the world’s poor people put themselves into the hands of human traffickers, sometimes getting scammed and virtually always in danger en route. They do so to survive. Heartbreakingly, survival in Latin America is jeopardized by the flood of weapons shipped south of the border, weapons sourced overwhelmingly from the United States. But American citizens have been prevented from taking rational measures to stem the flow of weapons south–largely by the NRA and its bought-and-paid-for operative, the GOP; partly by self-advancing Dems like Rahm Emanuel and the Clintons. Yet the most vehement opponents of gun control also tend to be the most vehement critics–to put it nicely–of illegal immigration.

This failure of logic in the public discourse is not entirely accident. It is intensified by deliberate assaults on logic, information and common sense mounted daily by lobbyists. The loosely defined but well funded gun lobby pressures elected officials; pressures media outlets; pressures schools, colleges and law schools. Scientists and researchers are under pressure. So are scholarly journals. The assault has been blatant, intense and profitable for the last thirty years.

So, back to last night’s debates–in which shootings and weapons were mostly not mentioned, while “regulation” and “free market” were much in the air. Anti-“regulation.” Pro-“free market.”

One quick comment on that “free market” meme. As I wrote years ago–in a small community newspaper that has since been sold out, speaking of markets–“free market” is an oxymoron. If it were free, there wouldn’t be money in it. In economics language, constraints are part of the market. One person or entity has something; another person or entity wants it. Party A conveys same to Party B, for a consideration. Something of value changes hands in each direction.

But the big question going into last night’s debate, for me, was whether any of the candidates would refer to mass deportation, and if so, who, and in what way.

The good news: a couple of prominent Republican candidates did indeed mention mass deportation, and mentioned it to oppose it–forcefully.

The bad news: I am so reduced by the level of discourse in general that I for one am pathetically grateful when any GOPer says something decent in public.

Let’s start with the good news. In the primetime debate, when Donald Trump reiterated his ‘plan’ to ship out illegal immigrants, even Trump softened the position somewhat with a throw-away “They can come back.” Neither other candidates nor moderators pursued that softly spoken “come back” line of thought, but he said it.

Better yet, Ohio Governor John Kasich blasted the idea of mass deportation. In a forceful and eloquent statement, Kasich characterized shipping out 11 million people as “silly.” High time someone said it. Following up, Jeb Bush said that “to send them back” is simply impossible. He also pointed out that the plan is not who we are, not in line with American values. Again, high time someone said it. Bush also pointed to the inartful politics–saying that the Clinton campaign was watching this and doing “high-fives.”

(From my living room: I watched the debates with my son and his girlfriend. We all noticed that the GOP mentioned Clinton exclusively. They’re salivating at the chance to run against her, and with good reason.)

Ironically, given the destructive rhetoric Trump has unleashed on the public, at this point I think it’s possible that Trump is better than most of his supporters. Trump is a salesman. He knows his market components. He’s playing to them. That’s why he said “I like this guy,” in a room with the man who accused President Obama of being Muslim rather than Christian, etc. Trump is a salesman. I have no experience in his field myself, but as I understand it, if you as a salesman are in a room full of people, making your pitch, that’s what you focus on. If you catch sight of some guy wearing a white costume with a white pointed hood, you don’t seize that moment to condemn the Klan; you sing out, “Hey, Jim, nice toga.”

But that’s the moment when you’ve gone too far. Trump has unleashed something in the Republican Party that its leaders have long known about–none better–but have long sought to deny and to conceal. I am by no means sure that a President Trump actually would deport millions of people, as declared by my correspondent yesterday. But in the interim, his campaign has exposed a nasty wish to do so, among the electorate courted by the GOP.

 

More later.

Donald Trump, Staying Puft

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Fun’s fun. Admittedly, it has been fun to watch Donald Trump ruining the field for sixteen or more other Republican candidates for the White House. He’s like a human-shaped cue ball. Knocked into the rack, he has sent minor and major candidates careening in all directions, colliding with each other and banging up against sides of the green baize table. All their careful game plans gone awry. Their carefully tailored appeals overwhelmed. Their thoughtfully crafted pathways to attention in a crowded field, demolished by the Trump campaign, if you call it that. More oafish and media-baiting than Chris Christie, more openly immigrant-baiting than Scott Walker, more plugged in than Jeb Bush, more ‘centrist’ or unpredictable on some individual issues than any governor, more woman-baiting than any other candidate–Trump has exploded the usual paths to celebrity for other Republicans. He’s stomping on their dog whistles. Red meat? Next to Trump, they look more like pink SweeTARTS®.

Here they are

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people. As said, the spectacle is fun to watch. Serves them right.

Still, given that some GOP voters out there clearly hope that Trump will swing down in a golden chariot from his Tower, and scoop them up from whatever financial doldrums they’re in, it is only fair to point out that deep questions about Trump’s own finances remain open.

Is Trump distracting attention from something?

A few facts are clear from Donald Trump’s 92-page financial disclosure filing to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). One is that Trump is carrying a heavy debt load. He owes four creditors “Over $50,000,000” apiece; his loans total $215 million-plus to $400 million-plus; and at least $25 million to $125 million in loans come due in the next four years. Trump, who has declared bankruptcy four times, has taken on more than $130 million of the current debt since 2012. Trump has claimed a huge income on air, and also claims to be willing to spend $1 billion on the 2016 election, if that’s what it takes to win, but the debt load is still sizeable from any perspective.

The FEC filing also shows that few people who are not Trump himself employ Trump, or pay him for work. His occupational income seems to be largely speaker fees or fees for managing properties now partly owned by others; his pay for managing his own companies is not shown. The financial disclosure form also shows that Trump has sold or liquidated substantial assets in value stocks and in bank funds from the beginning of 2014 to now, the period covered by the filing.

It is not clear whether the assets were sold to finance Trump’s White House bid or for other reasons. The asset sales generated handsome capital gains; his own more volatile companies and properties–the corporations and LLCs with Trump as officer or member, and the famous hotels and resorts, etc., bearing the Trump name–were not sold. The FEC filing also does not clarify Trump’s net worth. Not a balance sheet or a budget, it does not clarify the proportion of income to outlay. Trump’s campaign and press office, contacted by phone and email on August 13, have not responded to questions.

Trump floated one of his preliminary statements about running for president back in 2011, with sources quoted by Politico putting out word that he was worth $7 billion. The net worth figure was disputed even at the time: “The eye-popping figure is far higher than the $2.7 billion that Forbes Magazine valued his net worth to be last month.” Estimates of Mr. Trump’s net worth have fluctuated, with Bloomberg News and the New York Times among others expressing skepticism when Trump upped his claim to $10 billion. Trump’s own estimates have also fluctuated, although Trump’s much-quoted emphasis on his wealth–“I’m really rich“–remains a constant. Since launching his campaign on June 16, Trump has reiterated the brash statements about his wealth, seemingly at every opportunity.

One statement not being recycled, however, is the unnamed 2011 sources’ claim that Trump’s financial disclosures would indicate “more than $250 million of cash, and very little debt. He is very, very liquid.”

The man at the moment

As of 2015, in actuality, Trump’s financial disclosure filing shows massive debt and undefined liquidity. “Part 8: Liabilities” (page 47) lists fifteen debts. Two are Merrill Lynch mortgages totaling less than $1 million. The remaining thirteen are gargantuan. Trump’s filing shows “Over $50,000,000” owed to Ladder Capital Finance LLC; Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas; Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC; and Capital One, although the Capital One deal has an asterisk showing it refinanced with Ladder Capital. Trump also owes another $25 million to $50 million to Deutsche Bank, due in 2024, and $5 million to $25 million to Deutsche Bank due in 2015. He also owes $5 million to $25 million apiece to seven other creditors including Bank of New York Mellon, Ladder Capital, Royal Bank America, and Amboy Bank. Two of the loans come due in 2015, one in 2016, two in 2017, and three in 2019. Setting up a blind trust for a Trump term in the White House would be a challenge.

One question put to the Trump campaign is whether the debts are in any way problematic. Does Trump expect to pay them all? If so, will he resolve them before entering the White House, should he win? If not, how would they be handled?

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s “Over $50,000,000” notes comes from an entity owned 100% by Trump himself (page A3), called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. Chicago Unit Acquisition generates income (page 13)  listed as “None (or less than $201).” This Trump-to-Trump loan is Trump’s highest-interest big loan, at Prime + 5%. No deadline year is given; the “Term” column is filled in with the phrase “Springing loan.”

Other questions put to Trump concern this springing loan. Not an MBA myself, and not being Barry Ritholtz, I had to look up the phrase. A “springing guaranty” is a guarantee that takes effect when something bad happens, like bankruptcy. (This arrangement is also called a “bad-boy guarantee.”) According to the asset wizards at Andrews Kurth, in a springing guarantee, “the borrower is required to fund an escrow account serving as additional security for the loan.” This way, if something bad happens–“say a key tenant decides not to renew its lease”–“when funded, the borrower has more skin in the game to offset drops in value.”

One way to keep the feds off your back? Run for the White House. What better position could there be, from which to argue that an investigation is ‘politically motivated’? Ask Hillary Clinton.

On page 13, Trump lists the value of “Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC” at $1,001 to $15,000 (thousands, not millions). So he owes the LLC at least 3,333 times its value, or he owes it to himself, or to a tiny LLC owned wholly by himself, to fund an escrow account, in case things go wrong? If he owes it to himself, is this enforceable? Will the loan be paid off? Does it have to be? If listed as a “springing loan,” is the escrow requirement enforceable, when the creditor is owned by the debtor? Whatever this dizzying arrangement means, the FEC filing makes clear that Trump owes somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. Depending on how much over $50 million the phrase “Over $50,000,000” means, he could owe much more. Trump himself has spoken on the campaign trail in favor of transparency. It would be nice to have the debts elucidated. Trump has repeatedly said that candidate Jeb Bush is a “puppet” for donors who give him millions. Point taken, but what about a candidate who has been lent millions, or hundreds of millions?

As listed in “Part 6: Other Assets and Income,” substantial assets have been liquidated or sold since the beginning of 2014, in stocks and funds. These sales did not include the 501 corporations or LLCs for which Trump lists himself as director, president or member. The sales were of Baron funds, Paulson funds, and DJIA major companies. Recently, Trump has sold assets held in twelve of eighteen bank funds (page 35). Amounts are given in ranges, and some capital gains are combined with interest and dividends, but the sales total falls somewhere between $2 million and $15 million. The filing does not make clear how much of the fund assets remain.

Trump has also sold company stocks from several brokerage accounts, although he still owns stock in at least 190 companies. Oppenheimer and one Deutsche Asset brokerage account seem to be the fullest; a different Deutsche Asset account and a JP Morgan account seem to be the emptiest. Many remaining company stocks are listed as producing no income, “or less than $201.” Meanwhile, the JP Morgan brokerage account (pages 44-45) shows stock in forty companies from Amazon to Yahoo effectively cleaned out, their remaining value listed as “None (or less than $1,001).” Stocks sold include several on the current Dow Jones Industrial Average–Apple, Boeing, Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble. The “Over $5,000,000” realized from Bank of America stock appears to be Trump’s best sale or liquidation. Nobody’s wrong all the time. B of A is also one of the largest donors to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

If these sales were connected to the White House campaign, there may be more sales, depending on how much the campaign costs in coming months. (“$1 billion”?) Again, the ranges given on the standardized form do not show much remains viable for further sales and assets liquidation.

Pageant winners

In the past, Trump’s flamboyant business career involved buying the Miss USA and Miss Universe beauty pageants, which deflected media attention from his real estate troubles. He is now putting himself on a pageant stage. How serious the run is remains to be seen, but the effectiveness of the deflection is undeniable. Trump has brashly and repeatedly emphasized how much he has given to politicians–“almost everybody on this stage,” he said famously (and falsely) in the August 6 GOP debate. The emphasis on his giving deflects attention from how little he has received, usually a benchmark of candidate success. (“I don’t care”; “I don’t want their money.”) The campaign website has a button for donating, of course. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics show donors to Donald Trump to be few and far between. Similarly, Trump’s brash emphasis on his own companies deflects attention from the fact that he is not hired as CEO and chair of other people’s large companies. His brash emphasis on his wealth–in general terms–deflects attention from his bankruptcies, his volatility, and the lack of specific disclosures on income and net worth.

Ironically, this is the one GOP campaign getting high marks for truthfulness. Donald Trump, who with one of his lawyers concocted the line that a woman attorney wanted to breast-pump in front of him, is the only Republican getting credit for telling it like it is. Media commentators are paralleling Trump to Bernie Sanders–both ‘outsiders’. Actually, Trump is an insider, as his financial disclosures make clear.

The man himself

A better parallel would be to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (with thanks, or apologies, to the late Harold Ramis et al. at Ghostbusters). So long as he can stay on his feet and bully, he can roll through the avenues of New York. Impervious to loss, shame, or bankruptcy, buoyed up (in GOP opinion polls) by pestilential behavior, he stays afloat.

 

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