Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photo (cc) 2019 by nrkbeta.
I’m thinking through what it means to say that Kamala Harris has united the Democratic Party’s disputatious factions. The media tend to refer to those on the left as “liberals” and “progressives” as though the terms are interchangeable. They’re not.
I’m not going to try to tease out the various positions that define the factions. Instead, I’ll take a shot at who’s in what camp. This is unscientific to say the least, but:
• Liberals. Also known as the center-left. This is where the bulk of the party is today, and where it’s been most of the time since FDR. Leading exemplars: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
• Progressives. The left, which I’ll arbitrarily define by citing Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders would be in here if he were actually a Democrat.
• Centrists. Now this is slippery. Bill Clinton for sure. Joe Manchin*? Does anyone know if he’s still a Democrat? It’s tempting to say that he’s a conservative, but he votes with President Biden most of the time. Barack Obama governed as a centrist, but I’m not sure whether that was his preference or if he was just playing the hand he was dealt.
What unites them all, incredibly, is not just support for Harris but genuine enthusiasm and excitement.
*Note: Manchin used to be a Democrat, but he’s now an independent.
The media fact-checkers have not distinguished themselves this week, torturing the language to find fault with statements by Democrats that, in some cases, are actually true.
Now, I’m going to confess that I was not following the fact-checkers during the Republican National Convention. But what I have found going back a number of years — as I wrote for HuffPost way back in 2011 — is that organizations like PolitiFact often twist themselves into knots to find negative observations to make about Democrats so they can achieve some sort of balance with Republicans, who were often untethered from the truth even before the rise of Donald Trump.
Fact-checkers for The New York Times and The Washington Post have both come under fire during this week’s Democratic National Convention. But I want to focus on PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project, which has produced some fact-checks that make you scratch your head. I’ve been following PolitiFact on Threads. Here are a few examples:
• On Tuesday, PolitiFact gave President Biden a “false” on its Truth-O-Meter for claiming that billionaires pay an average tax rate of 8.2%. The post linked back to a PolitFact story from last January that said:
The White House report found that if you include unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families, then their taxes paid would account for just 8.2% of their income.
Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound as if 8% was the standard rate today, not what would happen under a potential future proposal.
In other words, Biden was correct under PolitiFact’s own analysis.
• On Wednesday, PolitiFact slapped J.B. Pritzker on the wrist: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Trump told ‘us to inject bleach’ during the pandemic. That’s Mostly False. Trump’s 2020 comments about treatments were criticized, but he didn’t tell people to inject or ‘take a shot’ of anything.”
Pritzker’s statement was labeled as “mostly false.” Yet here’s a BBC report from 2020 that quotes Trump’s exact words: “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”
Pritzker was right on the facts, the nuance and the context. Full stop.
• Two more from Biden: PolitiFact said the president’s assertions that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security were “mostly false” because — God help us — “When he was president, Trump released annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare but he has repeatedly pledged throughout the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut the program” and “Trump has said in the past that he’s open to cutting Social Security, but this isn’t his current position.”
I’m sorry, but that’s just embarrassing.
The late show
A number of observers, me included, have been puzzled by the DNC’s schedule, which has resulted in the main speaker of the night taking the podium after 11 p.m. The swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and most of Michigan are all in the Eastern time zone, and presumably you don’t want soft supporters and undecided voters to go to bed before hearing from the Obamas, Tim Walz and, tonight, Kamala Harris.
But it may not have made much difference. According to Craig Harrington of the liberal organization Media Matters for America, the audience for President Biden fell off only 2%. “Not ideal, but not disastrous either,” he wrote on Twitter/X.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no one is going to invest a couple of hours tonight and then tune out just before Harris comes on. Still, it strikes me that it would have been a good idea to wrap up each night’s proceedings before viewers decide they’ve had enough.
Walz from the heart
Tim Walz’s short, punchy address and Oprah Winfrey’s speech were pitch-perfect.
Those who thought that Harris should have picked Josh Shapiro as her running mate may have changed their minds Wednesday night, as Shapiro delivered a perfectly serviceable but rather generic address. Walz, by contrast, was folksy and empathetic, speaking to the heartland in a way that the Democrats haven’t done in many years. You had to love his former football players taking the stage, too.
What can I say about Bill Clinton? It was interesting to see that some women I follow on Threads were tuning out. Given his history, I couldn’t believe that he glommed onto the dick joke President Obama indulged in — funny coming from Obama, creepy from Clinton.
Clinton also spoke way too long and just sort of rambled. I know that some viewers loved it, and I’ve heard from a few. I also understand that a former president can’t be denied his place at the podium. But I was glad when it was over.
Barack and Michelle Obama in 2008. Photo (cc) by Luke Vargas.
Twenty years ago, when the Democratic National Convention gathered in Boston, a young senator named Barack Obama delivered the speech that launched him to the presidency.
I was covering the convention for The Boston Phoenix, but I wasn’t in the hall. No regrets — I reported from four national conventions, and I thought the best way I could serve our audience was to spend as little time in the building as possible, focusing instead on alternative events, protests, what the media were up to and the like. Still, that was a big one to miss.
I didn’t miss Barack Obama’s speech last night, nor Michelle Obama’s, even if it was from the comfort of our TV room. Wow. Observers are trying to decide who delivered the better of what were two magnificent addresses. I thought hers was a superior piece of pure oratory but that his did more to advance the cause of getting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz elected. The two addresses complemented each other perfectly.
And soaring though their rhetoric was, it was pretty amusing to see the former president go there for what I believe was the first time since Marco Rubio made some awkward remarks about the size of Donald Trump’s, uh, hands.
Doug Emhoff’s speech was folksy and effective. All in all, it was another strong night for the Democrats.
Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.
The Boston Globe’s editorial board has just called for President Biden to end his re-election campaign. The paper took its time, which I think is appropriate. But given the president’s anemic response to his disastrous performance in last Thursday’s debate, it’s now clear that someone else would be better suited to the crucial task of saving our democracy from Donald Trump and the forces of the authoritarian right. The Globe writes:
Serious questions are now in play about his ability to complete the arduous work of being leader of the free world. Can he negotiate with a hostile Republican Congress, dangerous foreign powers, or even fractious rivals within his own Cabinet? The nation’s confidence has been shaken.
The Globe is also calling for an open convention. I understand the appeal. But the cleanest solution would be to hand off the presidency to Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden would have to resign in order to do that, and I realize that’s unfair. There’s no logical reason for him not to serve out the remainder of his term, but defeating Trump is of paramount importance. Harris is as popular, or unpopular, as any of the other Democrats being mentioned, and with her ascendance there would be no issues regarding campaign finances or ballot access.
The New York Times is reporting that Biden told an unnamed key ally that he is thinking about ending his campaign. The Times is getting furious pushback from the White House, but how could Biden not be having such conversations? Former President Barack Obama is also letting it be known that his full-throated support for Biden is mainly for public consumption.
Maybe Biden will put the doubts to rest in his interview with George Stephanopoulos. Maybe he’ll hold a two-hour news conference, as Jake Tapper has suggested, and turn back the clock. Right now, though, he appears to be on a trajectory that will end, inevitably, with his making a very different calculation.
President Biden delivered what I thought was the best State of the Union address I can remember. He was energized, passionate, funny and focused. He mixed it up with Republicans on issues ranging from Ukraine to reproductive rights and, aside from unfortunately adopting Marjorie Taylor Greene’s slur while answering back at her (he referred to undocumented immigrants as “illegals”), he escaped unscathed.
For those of us who look back to Barack Obama as the gold standard, well, the SOTU doesn’t often produce a memorable speech. Obama’s two for the ages are his address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and his eulogy at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015. No one remembers his SOTU speeches.
We were also treated an an exceedingly weird performance by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sat there looking miserable, trying to be impassive, but reflexively nodding from time to time as though he agreed with Biden. I don’t know how to describe Vice President Kamala Harris except to say that she was resplendent and may have improved her political standing through body language alone.
I caught a little bit of the commentary by the “PBS NewsHour” folks afterwards, and the theme they seemed to be settling into was that Biden’s speech was overly political. Good grief. These are the times we live in. Jonathan Capehart put it well, though, calling it “an epic speech” and that Democrats “will be energized by the cranky grandpa.”
Yes, they will. The polling for Biden has been awful lately as the media, and especially The New York Times, have obsessed over the president’s age. Maybe the SOTU will be a turning point.
Former President Barack Obama has posted an important message at Medium. Echoing President Biden’s approach, Obama calls on us to support Israel’s right to self-defense while at the same time calling on Israel to protect the lives of civilians and work toward a decent resolution of the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He writes:
[W]hile the prospects of future peace may seem more distant than ever, we should call on all of the key actors in the region to engage with those Palestinian leaders and organizations that recognize Israel’s right to exist to begin articulating a viable pathway for Palestinians to achieve their legitimate aspirations for self-determination — because that is the best and perhaps only way to achieve the lasting peace and security most Israeli and Palestinian families yearn for.
After striking out the day before, we finally got to see the National Portrait Gallery paintings of Barack and Michelle Obama at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was a wonderful experience, and we enjoyed learning more about the artists, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. I regard Obama and Dwight Eisenhower as the two best presidents of my lifetime, and I was too young to remember Ike.
Harry Reid. Photo (cc) 2010 by the Center for American Progress.
Harry Reid, who died Tuesday, was among the few characters I liked in Mark Leibovich’s book “This Town.” Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, was a bare-knuckles brawler with no interest in the money-and-lobbyist culture that rendered Washington a teetering wreck before Donald Trump came along and toppled it over — while he and those close to him pursued their own corrupt schemes.
There is, though, one weird blemish on Reid’s record — his claims during the 2012 presidential campaign that Republican candidate Mitt Romney hadn’t paid any taxes. “So the word is out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t,” Reid said on the Senate floor that August. It wasn’t true, and Reid’s only justification was to tell CNN in 2015, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
So I found myself wondering if there was anything more to Reid’s false claim. The answer: yes, a bit. Maybe not enough to justify Reid’s lies, but more than you might recall.
Unlike virtually all of his modern predecessors, Romney released just two years of tax returns. He cited John McCain as a precedent, but FactCheck.org found that excuse to be lacking. FactCheck’s Robert Farley wrote in July 2012:
In more than three decades, no other nominees for either party have released fewer than five years’ worth of returns. Romney’s own father released a dozen years’ worth when he ran for the GOP nomination in 1968.
Romney has been under mounting public pressure to release tax returns — largely due to the Obama campaign raising questions about Swiss bank accounts and investments in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. Romney has released his tax returns for 2010 and an estimate for 2011 (the full return of which he says he will release later). He says that’s enough.
So here you have Romney, a noted liar in his own right, refusing to release tax returns that might have blown his campaign out of the water. Someone needed to put the pressure on him. The Obama campaign could only say so much. Reid took the hit, making up a false accusation that Romney wasn’t paying any taxes and essentially saying: Prove I’m lying.
Four years later, Romney enthusiastically embraced the Reid line of attack in his efforts to derail Trump’s candidacy. Trump, as we all know, wouldn’t release any of his tax returns. Here’s what Romney said: “There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns: There is a bombshell in them. Given Mr. Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.”
Expressed in Mitt-speak rather than with Reid’s pugnacity, but essentially the same thing.
Romney finally released a fuller set of tax returns in September 2012. At that point, though, the damage had already been done. And no, Reid did not cover himself with glory in that episode. But Romney could have done the right thing at the start of his campaign rather than opening himself up to charges that there must be hiding a “bombshell” — as Romney himself would put it four years later.
In analyzing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 vote not to overturn Texas’ drastic new abortion restrictions, a number of commentators have focused on the role played by the three justices nominated by Donald Trump — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
All three, needless to say, are wildly controversial. Gorsuch was chosen after then-Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused even to take up Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, who’s now attorney general. Kavanaugh was confirmed despite serious and credible allegations of sexual assault. Barrett was rushed through before the 2020 election following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But there is a more systemic problem, and that’s the failure of democracy that made last’s week’s decision possible. Trump, as we all know, lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by about 3 million votes. He won only because the Electoral College, a relic of slavery, provides small rural states with disproportionate power. Yet he got to appoint one-third of the current court.
Moreover, all three of Trump’s justices were confirmed by a Senate controlled by the Republicans even though they represented fewer people than the Democrats. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were confirmed during the first two years of Trump’s term, when the Democratic senators represented 56% of the population nationwide compared to the Republican share of 44%. That margin had narrowed slightly by the time Barrett was confirmed, but 53% of the population was still represented by Democratic senators compared to 47% by Republicans. (See my analysis.)
The other two justices who voted to uphold the Texas law were Clarence Thomas, appointed by George H.W. Bush, who was a majority president, and Samuel Alito, appointed by George W. Bush during his second term, which he won by a majority after losing the popular vote the first time around. But that’s just two votes. If Obama and Clinton had named three justices instead of Trump, it’s easy to imagine that the Texas law would have been suspended by a 7-2 vote. It’s just as easy to imagine that the Texas legislature wouldn’t have passed such a perverse and draconian law in the first place.
This is not democracy. Nor is it republicanism, since a properly designed republic is supposed to represent a majority of the electorate by proxy. It’s fair to ask how long this can go on before the majority stands up and demands an end to government by the minority.
Attorney General Merrick Garland. Photo (cc) 2016 by Senate Democrats.
Give President Joe Biden credit for having a keen understanding of what it takes to hold together his Democratic-liberal-progressive coalition.
When he said in May that it was “simply, simply wrong” for the government to spy on journalists, I was skeptical that he would follow up his sentiment with concrete action. After all, he was vice president under Barack Obama, whose harassment of reporters in his campaign against leaks was legendary. Other presidents also thought nothing about going after reporters, including Donald Trump, George W. Bush and, of course, Richard Nixon.
But press secretary Jen Psaki followed up by assuring reporters that Biden meant what he said. And, on Monday, it came to fruition with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement that the administration would stop attempting to seize journalists’ records in nearly all circumstances. In a memo quoted by The New York Times, Garland wrote:
The Department of Justice will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of news-gathering activities.
Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, issued a statement of approval, saying:
The attorney general has taken a necessary and momentous step to protect press freedom at a critical time. This historic new policy will ensure that journalists can do their job of informing the public without fear of federal government intrusion into their relationships with confidential sources.
Technically, Garland was acting on his own. The attorney general is supposed to be independent of the president. But Garland could hardly continue with the anti-press policies of Biden’s predecessors after Biden himself had spoken out so strongly in favor of reform.
Garland’s actions come in response to some truly shocking actions undertaken by the Trump administration, some of which spilled over into the first few months of the Biden presidency. Acting on what appeared to be political motivations, the Trump Justice Department sought phone and email records from journalists at The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. Judging from the timeline, the Trumpsters seemed to be looking into those news organizations’ reporting on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russian interests.
There are some exceptions to Garland’s order in the case of life-or-death situations, or if a reporter is believed to be actively helping a source obtain classified information. But these exceptions strike me as reasonable rather than being easily exploited loopholes.
Garland’s memo also says that the Justice Department will support efforts to pass legislation making the guidelines permanent so that they don’t expire as soon as Biden leaves office. That’s really the key, since future presidents and attorneys general would otherwise not be bound by Biden and Garland’s good intentions.
