Paul Waldman  The GOP wants to impeach Biden for ‘corruption’? Don’t make me laugh

If one tried to articulate the principle on which the Republican push to impeach President Biden is based, it would have to go something like this: Public officials shouldn’t be permitted to profit from their positions, and anyone who does should be removed from office. Like any principle, this one should apply to every public official regardless of party or ideology.

But if any Republican said that out loud, the proper response would be to burst out laughing.

This isn’t just because Republicans have found no evidence that Biden is guilty of wrongdoing, despite the tireless efforts of multiple House committees. Nor is it because they have defended the relentless quest of the Trump family to profit from former president Donald Trump’s time in the White House. Hypocrisy might be the tribute vice pays to virtue, but Republicans stopped paying any tribute to virtue long ago. They sped right past hypocrisy to arrive at something entirely different.

Republicans are not characterizing their impeachment push against Biden as an attempt to bring strict ethical standards back to government. There’s no high-minded talk of integrity, moral rectitude or the solemn obligations of public service. That’s because they are in the midst of a years-long crusade to convince the public to not care about corruption.

That crusade is only partly about defending Trump, perhaps the most shamelessly corrupt president in U.S. history. He installed his laughably unqualified family members in White House positions. He spent a good amount of time in office at his various resorts, charging the Secret Service as much as $1,185 a night per room to stay there to protect him. His Washington hotel became a destination for anyone who wanted to put some money directly in his pocket; foreign governments spent millions of dollars there, as did a fleet of Republican candidates and party flunkies. Foreign governments also eagerly gave special favors to Trump’s businesses. His relentless advocacy for the government of Saudi Arabia while in office was followed by the Saudis giving son-in-law Jared Kushner $2 billion for his start-up private equity firm, even though the Saudis’ own investment advisers found Kushner’s operation unsatisfactory in all aspects.

And that doesn’t even get into the litany of Trump associates with flexible ethics, including multiple Cabinet members and a raft of cronies who faced their own scandals and criminal charges.

Were Republicans bothered by this orgy of self-dealing? They were not. In fact, judging by the myriad ways they have decimated the legal and normative standards to which public officials must abide, they were perfectly sincere when they insisted that Trump’s actions were nothing worse than what voters should expect of anyone in high office.

For instance, the GOP effort to remove nearly all restrictions on how much money corporations and the wealthy can give to candidates goes back decades. It had its greatest success with the Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of spending on campaigns. They also celebrated another Supreme Court case, McDonnell v. United States, which redefined what constituted an official act, ruling that the favors former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell did for donors who showered him with money and gifts while in office didn’t qualify as corruption.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, in recent weeks, reporters have exposed the extravagant largesse that billionaire Harlan Crow has lavished on Justice Clarence Thomas, which included not just luxury vacations but also paying the private-school tuition of a Thomas relative. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has also taken advantage of billionaire-funded hospitality. These revelations were greeted by Republicans everywhere with either a shrug or a rush to defend the right-wing justices. How dare anyone impugn their character by claiming there’s something wrong with taking gifts from super-rich friends who have a deep interest in the decisions the court makes?

Given the GOP’s clear position on what ought to be expected of public officials at all levels, one might be tempted to label it the pro-corruption party. But it would be more accurate to say that its position is that we should stop worrying about corruption altogether.

So listen closely as Republicans offer their wild tales of President Biden’s alleged wrongdoing, spun from innuendo and outright lies. They’ll say Biden is corrupt, but they likely won’t say why corruption is bad. Because they don’t think it is. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/18/biden-impeachment-republicans-corruption/

Washington Post Editorial: A good deal already exists to avert a U.S. government shutdown

A deal already exists to avert a U.S. government shutdown. It’s the debt ceiling compromise that was agreed to in May by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden. The deal was a true middle ground: Mr. Biden and other Democrats agreed to spending cuts on domestic programs in 2024 and 2025 and a reduction in IRS funding in exchange for House Republicans raising the debt limit and forgoing deeper cuts. Both sides gave a little, and the result was some real (though modest) savings. As a new budget year approaches in October, all lawmakers have to do is follow the spending levels they agreed to earlier this year.

Yet far-right lawmakers are demanding a renegotiation, insisting on substantial cuts to everything but defense and veterans aid — the things they did not get earlier this year — and threatening a government shutdown if they do not get their way.

Mr. McCarthy does not have to bow to these lawmakers’ demands. He can stick to the previous agreement, passing a budget with some votes from House Democrats, and avoid an Oct. 1 shutdown.

Instead, Mr. McCarthy has tried to get his far right on his side, proposing a budget that would slash funding for everything other than defense or veterans by 8 percent. That means cuts to education, transportation, national parks, public health and even law enforcement, among other popular and widely used programs. The bill would fund the government only through October, meaning there would be another hostage-like situation over the 2024 budget again this fall — during which the new, lower spending levels would no doubt be the basis for further demands.

When House Republicans pushed such cuts earlier this year, the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House balked. They will not agree to them now. Whatever Mr. McCarthy is doing, it’s not a serious effort to address this reality. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/18/mccarthy-republicans-shutdown-deal/

Philip Bump: Trumpworld is still figuring out the Hunter Biden indictment conspiracy

In theory, the announcement Thursday that President Biden’s son Hunter was indicted on charges related to his purchase of a gun in 2018 would seem like an obvious political win for the president’s opponents. Hunter Biden has been disparaged repeatedly by Republican politicians and the right-wing media to impugn the president; his reaching a plea agreement earlier this year that included the gun question was presented as an unacceptably light response to his alleged actions. That deal fell apart and here we are.

But the indictment instead meant that the right’s broader conspiracy theory about how Joe Biden is using the levers of power needed to be adjusted. (Announcing an impeachment inquiry Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) alleged that the president’s family has been offered special treatment by Biden’s own administration, for example.) It can’t both be the case that Joe Biden is leaning on the Justice Department to go easy on Hunter Biden and that Hunter Biden is now facing a set of charges that are only rarely brought against defendants.

The beauty of conspiracy theories, though, is that they are ever-flowing streams that easily slip around obstacles in their path to get to their destination. It might take a while for an ideal new channel to be carved, but the process by which it is established is already underway. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/15/biden-trump-hunter-indicted/

Norm Ornstein: The Senate’s Deep and Dirty Secret

The Senate’s deep and dirty secret is that holds work only because every member of the Senate wants them to. Other senators continue to deny unanimous consent not just to protect the prerogatives of their absent colleague, but to protect their own ability to use holds in the future. Every member of the body is culpable, because every one of them wants to have the opportunity to gain leverage over a president or another executive-branch official or agency. Even senators of the same party as the president find many instances where their pleas for attention or action are ignored or downplayed. Using a hold to block confirmation of someone a president dearly wants in office means that attention will be given. Of course, in most cases, the holds are for individuals and do not last very long.

Holds have been a part of Senate procedure for a long time, but their use for punitive or ideological motives is relatively recent. During the Obama administration, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas put a hold on Barack Obama’s nominee for ambassador to the Bahamas, Cassandra Butts, that lasted for 27 months, until she died of cancer. The hold had nothing to do with Butts’s qualifications or character—it was purely punitive. Tuberville is not the only senator now using blanket holds for partisan or ideological purposes; Kentucky’s Rand Paul has a blanket hold on more than 60 ambassadors and other key State Department officials, and Ohio’s J. D. Vance has done the same for Justice Department nominees, including the head of the Office on Violence Against Women and several nominees for U.S. attorney, in retaliation for DOJ actions against Donald Trump.

For a long time, holds were an allowable and sometimes beneficial practice that helped balance power between the Senate and the presidency. Senators rarely took advantage of the process by applying blanket holds or sustaining them for unreasonable periods of time. The main abuses in the past were when individual senators tried to keep their holds secret to avoid criticism. That practice was severely limited a few years ago. But the norms that kept the practice in check have been shredded. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/senate-hold-procedure/675315/

Jonathan Last: Trump Controls the Republican Party Because He Has the Power To Destroy It

Trump owns some non-trivial percentage of Republican voters. Maybe it’s 25 percent; maybe it’s 35 percent; maybe it’s 45 percent. These are people who would follow him if he were to decamp from the GOP.

This isn’t even an open secret: Republicans have been talking about it since Trump popped into first place in polling during the summer of 2015. Back then they refused to attack him because they feared that even if they did beat him, he would sabotage the party in revenge. https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/trump-controls-the-republican-party

Bobby Azarian: The scientific reason why Trump's supporters won't believe any evidence

When delving into the perplexing world of politics and the enigmatic figure of Donald Trump, we often encounter a peculiar phenomenon amongst his supporters: a staunch refusal to accept any criminal allegation or felony charge against him, no matter how compelling the evidence.

There are many neurological and psychological reasons for this irrational behavior. But today, we will focus on the mental phenomena I feel are most urgent to explore ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Now that Trump is running for president again while facing 91 felony charges, I feel a moral responsibility to illuminate all the mental factors that are driving Americans to support a man who is a master manipulator, and incapable of telling the truth. Unfortunately, these are qualities that are too common among presidential candidates, but Trump is a particularly egregious example, and therefore we must be vigilant. This article is meant to inform but also to warn voters of what is to come.

Researchers placed participants into the confines of an fMRI scanner and presented them with a mixture of factual and abstract statements. The results were illuminating. Disbelief, it turns out, is cognitively demanding. It requires more mental effort than simply accepting a statement as true. From an evolutionary perspective, this preference for easy belief makes sense; a perpetually skeptical individual questioning every piece of information would struggle to adapt in a fast-paced world.

What does all this have to do with Trump supporters? Well, it’s far less cognitively demanding for them to believe anything their leader tells them. Any challenge to what Trump tells them is true takes mental work. This means there is a psychological incentive for Trump loyalists to maintain their loyalty.

Now, let's consider the unique predicament faced by individuals who staunchly support Trump and want him to again become president. From the moment Trump began his political career and his social engineering career, his supporters have been exposed to narratives — Trump doesn't lie, Democrats are communists, the media is an enemy of the people — that emphasize loyalty and trust in their political idol. These narratives often steer away from critical examination and instead encourage blind faith. When coupled with the brain's inherent tendency to accept rather than question, it creates an ideal environment for unwavering allegiance. No matter that Trump, time and again, has been revealed to be a serial liar, habitually misrepresenting matters of great consequence, from elections to economics to public health.

If we aspire to build a society less susceptible to misinformation, we must embark on a paradigm shift. Our educational approach should pivot from passive acceptance of supposed facts to the exhilarating pursuit of questioning authority and healthy skepticism (as too much skepticism can also lead to irrational thinking). Recognizing that belief, in many ways, is the brain's default mode rather than a conscious choice, can serve as the first step in this cerebral revolution.

In conclusion, the unwavering belief in Trump, despite the felony charges against him, is not solely a political matter but, for some, a manifestation of our brain's intrinsic tendencies. Understanding this cognitive dynamic is pivotal in addressing the challenges posed by misinformation and fostering a more critical and discerning society. https://www.alternet.org/trump-supporters-brains/

David Von Drehle: Democrats are crazy to insist only Biden can beat Trump

In a nation where 50-50 debate is the defining rule of politics, a huge majority of voters — nearly 8 out of 10 — agree on this: At 80, President Biden is too old to seek a second term.

This is not a whimsical or ageist belief. According to Social Security Administration actuarial data, the majority of American men who are Biden’s age are in their final decade of life, with an average of about 7½ years of life remaining. I wish the president well and hope he has many happy, healthy years ahead. But a second term would take him to age 86 — 12 years past the average life expectancy of an American male born in 2020.

Why on earth would a political party, supposedly in the business of channeling the views of the people, tack determinedly into the face of such widespread and well-founded opposition? It’s certainly not because Biden is extremely popular. The venerable measure of presidential job approval maintained by the Gallup organization has consistently shown Biden bumping along in the vicinity of 40 percent for most of his term. And it’s not because he is a great campaigner. The election of 2020 was Biden’s third attempt to win the presidency and was no more successful than the first two until he was rescued from defeat by party leaders alarmed at the suicidal prospect of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as nominee.

This is happening for two reasons: the refusal of one man, Biden, to step back (a bewilderingly common affliction among the superannuated politicians shuffling around Washington), and the virtuosity of Democratic thought leaders in telling one another things that are not true. The second of these is the more interesting.

You can trace the Democratic self-delusion to the 2016 election, in which the egregious Donald Trump seized control of a moribund Republican Party and eked out a narrow victory over Hillary Clinton. In a preview of 2020, Democratic leaders had been so alarmed by Sanders running hard to the left that they reached into their vaults to anoint a proven loser, then pretended they had a great candidate. Clinton had the dubious distinction of losing the nomination in 2008 to a freshman senator, yet the party was shocked when she managed to lose to a celebrity from reality TV.

Rather than draw the obvious conclusion that the party needed to strengthen its bench, Democrats instead decided that Trump had some strange political dark magic. No amount of subsequent losing by the burly blowhard has shaken that deep-down dread. At cocktail parties, in caucus rooms and on cable TV, one hears over and over that only Biden can defeat Trump, like an elderly Harry Potter who alone can stop Lord Voldemort.

This is crazy. Any moderately popular person could beat Trump in a general election. The former president has not made the slightest effort since leaving office to win back a single swing vote; indeed, polls suggest that more than half of the electorate is a hard no on Trump and nearly two-thirds are either firmly or leaning against him.

Another mistaken mind-meld among Democrats is the idea that Bidenomics is a winning platform. Here’s the truth: For an incumbent president, the economy is only as good as the public believes it to be. The large U.S. share of the vast global economy is always a mixture of good news and bad. And that will not change in the next six months, during which — political scientists tell us — voter attitudes on the economy will be set.

Yes, unemployment is low; wages at the bottom are rising; inflation is down from its peak. But the deficit is on track to double, interest rates are at 20-year highs and household income has dropped three years in a row. Polls indicate that Americans are less gung-ho about Biden’s economy than Democratic cheerleaders want them to be.

And Democrats are deluding themselves when they tell themselves they have no alternative to Biden. The governors of 24 states are Democrats. Fifty U.S. senators are Democrats or caucus with the Democrats. The entire Cabinet comprises Democrats, and Democrats lead some of the world’s most complex corporations. The mayors of many of the nation’s largest cities are Democrats, as are the presidents of many colleges and universities. Many retired military leaders are Democrats. America has done fine for more than two centuries with presidents drawn from these wells.

If Biden were to choose retirement, the field of contenders would fill overnight and a new generation of leaders would finally emerge in a nation that is hungry for them. The election is more than a year off. There is plenty of time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/14/biden-trump-election-democrats-delusion/

Amy Walter: Old Metrics No Longer Silver Bullet in Predicting Presidency

When I first started covering politics some 25 years ago, the following data points were considered the gold standard to understanding the trajectory of an election cycle: a president’s job approval rating, the overall mood of the electorate (namely, is the country headed in the right direction or wrong direction) and opinions about the economy. Taken together, they told the story of a president or party in peril, or a president and party that were headed to reelection.

Over these past few years, however, these questions have become less determinative. https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/old-metrics-no-longer-silver-bullet-predicting-presidency

Michael Hiltzik: Does Ron DeSantis even believe his dangerous B.S. about COVID vaccines?

The latest government advisories on the new monovalent COVID-19 vaccines were not much of a surprise. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccines as safe and effective, and a day later the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the shots for all Americans over the age of six months.

Even less of a surprise was the reaction of the resolutely anti-vax, anti-science Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican, who is angling for the GOP nomination for president, staged a roundtable of scientific mountebanks on Wednesday to attack the vaccines.

DeSantis’ roundtable took place, naturally, on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which is today most notable as the place where truth goes to die.

The roundtable, as one might have predicted, was an agglomeration of misinformation, misunderstanding and misrepresentation that amounted to a public health threat in real time.

It raised the question of how many lives would be saved across the country if DeSantis’ presidential campaign completes its glide path to irrelevancy, sapping his quest for the most politically expedient right-wing policy prescriptions.

The answer, conservatively, is hundreds of thousands. Florida boasts one of the worst COVID death rates in the nation, more than 391 deaths per 100,000 population. If Florida’s rate were applied to the entire U.S. population instead of the national rate of 338.6 deaths per 100,000, then nearly 1.3 million Americans would have perished from the disease, instead of the documented toll of 1.1 million.

In other words, the end to DeSantis’ boorish, charisma-free performance on the campaign trail would be a public health boon. Can there be any greater proof of the adage that elections have consequences? https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-09-15/desantis-attacks-covid-vaccine-risking-untold-lives

Maureen Dowd: Go With the Flow, Joe!

I’ve covered Biden for 35 years. He has always been a babble merchant, prone to exaggeration and telling stories too good to be true, saying inexplicably wacky things. It was often cleanup on Aisle Biden. So when he acts like this now, it shouldn’t be attributed just to aging. Certainly, he has slowed down. But his staff has exacerbated the problem by trying too hard to keep him in check. Americans know who Uncle Joe is, quirks and all, slower and all. Let them decide.

The president’s feelings were no doubt hurt the other day by The Washington Post column by David Ignatius, a charter member of the capital’s liberal elite, saying that Biden should be proud of “the string of wins” from his first term but not run for re-election because he “risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”

I don’t disagree, but I doubt it will make a difference.

If Biden has a chip on his shoulder, it’s justified. Barack Obama blew off his vice president in 2016 in favor of Hillary Clinton, and a lot of Democrats wrote off Biden during the 2020 primaries after he lost Iowa and New Hampshire.

It was amazing, given his trajectory, that Biden fought his way to the presidency. And he thinks he has done a great job. Besides, being an underdog is his sweet spot. And he’s got a point that he is the only one who has beaten Trump.

But Biden needs to start looking like he’s in command. His staff is going to have to roll with him and take some risks and stop jerking the reins. Let Joe out of the virtual basement. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/16/opinion/joe-biden-old.html

Dan Pfeiffer: The Real Reason No Dem is Challenging Biden

Political narratives can be misleading. On the Republican side, the conversation is about Donald Trump’s stranglehold over his base. Republican voters’ devotion to Trump is portrayed as being so strong that the former President is compared to a cult leader. Reading press coverage of Joe Biden these days, one would think that Joe Biden was holding off an insurrection among his own voters. But that’s not what the polls show at ball.

Biden and Trump have nearly identical favorable ratings from members of their own party. In the recent New York Times/Sienna poll, Trump’s is 77/21. Biden’s is 77/19. In the most recent YouGov/Economist poll, Trump’s favorable rating among Republicans is 75/24 and Biden’s is 81/17 among Democrats. Republicans are about 10 points more enthusiastic, and both Trump and Biden will need to raise those numbers before the election, but the idea that Democratic voters are walking away from Biden does not show up in the polls.

As Trump is demonstrating in the GOP primary, it’s very hard to defeat a well-known and well-liked political figure. https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/the-real-reason-no-dem-is-challenging

 Anne Applebaum: What Russia Got by Scaring Elon Musk

One evening in September 2022, a group of Ukrainian sea drones sped out into the Black Sea, heading for Russian-occupied Crimea. Their designers—engineers who had been doing other things until the current war began—had carefully targeted the fast, remote-controlled, explosive-packed vessels to hit ships anchored in Sebastopol, the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. But the drones ran into a problem: Starlink, the satellite-communications system that Ukraine had been using since Russia invaded early last year, unexpectedly wasn’t working. This was a surprise to the engineers. Several people, in Ukraine and elsewhere, frantically called and texted Elon Musk, the owner of Starlink, to persuade him to enable the system.

Musk, in turn, called Walter Isaacson, his biographer, and told him there was a “non-trivial possibility” that the sea-drone attack could lead to a nuclear war. According to Isaacson, Musk had recently spoken with Russia’s ambassador in Washington, who had warned him explicitly that any attack on Crimea would lead to nuclear conflict. Musk implied to several other people (though he later denied it) that he had been speaking with President Vladimir Putin around that time as well.

Here is the part you might not have heard, or not registered: The same team launched a similar attack again a few weeks later. On October 29, a fleet of guided sea drones packed with explosives did reach Sebastopol harbor, using a different communications system. They did hit their targets. They put one Russian frigate, the Admiral Makarov, out of commission. The team believes that they damaged at least one submarine and at least two other boats as well.

And then? Nuclear war did not follow. Despite Musk’s fears, in other words—fears put into his head by the Russian ambassador, or perhaps by Putin himself—World War III did not erupt as a result of this successful attack on a Crimean port. Instead, the Russian naval commanders were spooked by the attack, so much so that they stuck close to Sebastopol harbor over the following weeks. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/elon-musk-let-russia-scare-him/675282/
 

Noam Scheiber: Strike Is a High-Stakes Gamble for Autoworkers and the Labor Movement

Since the start of the pandemic, labor unions have enjoyed something of a renaissance. They have made inroads into previously nonunion companies like Starbucks and Amazon, and won unusually strong contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers. Last year, public approval for unions reached its highest level since the Lyndon Johnson presidency.

What unions haven’t had during that stretch is a true gut-check moment on a national scale. Strikes by railroad workers and UPS employees, which had the potential to rattle the U.S. economy, were averted at the last minute. The fallout from the continuing writers’ and actors’ strikes has been heavily concentrated in Southern California.

The strike by the United Automobile Workers, whose members walked off the job at three plants on Friday, is shaping up to be such a test. A contract with substantial wage increases and other concessions from the three automakers could announce organized labor as an economic force to be reckoned with and accelerate a recent wave of organizing.

But there are also real pitfalls. A prolonged strike could undermine the three established U.S. automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — and send the politically crucial Midwest into recession. If the union is seen as overreaching, or if it settles for a weak deal after a costly stoppage, public support could sour. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/business/economy/strike-autoworkers-labor.html