None of Biden's Cabinet Appointments Will Be More Important Than This One

 

I'm talking Attorney General, natch.

We need a person of the highest caliber to clean out and disinfect the Department of Justice from the Trumpian politicization pursued by William Barr. He who coddled Trump's buddies, dropping charges against Michael Flynn and intervening on behalf of Roger Stone. He who took the hint after Trump tweeted that people should "liberate" themselves from COVID-19 lockdowns in states and cities and who announced that the DOJ would formally begin reviewing and challenging state public health orders. He who approved of LGBTQ discrimination laws under a very capacious interpretation of "religious freedom" and who got himself into the Christian dominionists' neighborhood when he warned that “militant secularists” were behind a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.” He who actually asked Congress to give him the power to hold people in detention without trial indefinitely. That last one couldn't make it past a Democratic majority in the US House.

Gonna take a person of impeccable character, someone strong on civil rights and the protection of the weak, someone totally committed to voter enfranchisement, someone to whom favoritism or presidential interference causes a gag reflex. I've been reading about the leading contenders.

Sally Q. Yates

Former US attorneyShe was deputy attorney general (the official who actually runs the department) from 2015 to the early days of the Trump administration. Wikipedia: Following the inauguration of Trump and the departure of Attorney General Loretta Lynch on January 20, 2017, Yates served as Acting Attorney General for 10 days. Trump dismissed her for insubordination on January 30, after she instructed DOJ not to make legal arguments defending Trump's Muslim ban (Executive Order 13769). Yates thought the order was neither defensible in court nor consistent with the Constitution. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld a revised version of the travel ban in a 5-4 partisan decision.

Before she pushed back on Trump's targeting of Muslims, she had warned the White House that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI and was acting as a foreign agent in very close proximity to the president.

In other words, Trump had plenty of reasons to fire her. All of which makes her a model of virtue.

Following her dismissal, Yates returned to private practice.

She comes from legal royalty. Her grandmother was one of the first women admitted to the Georgia bar. Gran worked side-by-side with Yates's grandfather, also an attorney. Yates's father was an attorney and became a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals for a long tenure (1966-1984). Yates herself, as a US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, prosecuted political corruption (of which Georgia had its fair share) and she became head of the DOJ's Fraud and Public Corruption division. She was lead prosecutor of Eric Robert Rudolph, the notorious Atlantic Olympics bomber who successfully hid out in western North Carolina for months. 

Bonus points: She'll be good on TV.

Doug Jones

There'll be sentiment to give him a job after his loss of his Senate seat in Alabama.

US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 1997-2001, during which time he successfully prosecuted two Klan members for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four Black girls. (It's generally accepted that it was the wave of voting by Black women that got him the seat in the Senate.) He also had a hand in the Eric Robert Rudolph prosecution. It was Jones who secured the indictment against him for domestic terrorism.

In 2018 Jones won a longshot candidacy for Jeff Session's old Senate seat in a special election, beating connoisseur of teenaged girls Roy Moore by two percentage points. He lost that same seat two years later, like everyone predicted he would, to a blockhead coach with very little clue. Roll, Tide!

Considered a "moderate," Jones voted for Trump initiatives about 35% of the time, but he also voted for the conviction of Trump at his impeachment trial. All things considered, he's probably a little less "blue dog" than Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Jones would also bring a Southern accent to TV and could be as effective on that medium.

 

William K. Black

Wikipedia: Lawyer, academic, author, and a former bank regulator. Black's expertise is in white-collar crime, public finance, regulation, and other topics in law and economics. Black was litigation director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) from 1984 to 1986, deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) in 1987, and Senior VP and the General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco from 1987 to 1989, which regulated some of the largest thrift banks in the U.S. He was a central figure in exposing Congressional corruption during the Savings and Loan Crisis.

According to Bill Moyers, "During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. Bi-partisan enough for you? The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the Senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, 'get Black — kill him dead.' Metaphorically, of course. Of course." 

Black became very outspoken on the criminality behind the 2008 crash and 2009 recession. Black asserted that the banking crisis was essentially a big Ponzi scheme; that the "liar loans" and other financial tricks were essentially illegal frauds; and that the triple-A ratings given to these loans were part of a criminal cover-up. President Obama declined to prosecute the banks while Black thought that trying to hide how bad the situation was would simply prolong the problems. He fingered Obama's treasury secretary Timothy Geithner as engaging in the cover-up and claimed that Obama's team did not want people to understand what went wrong or how bad the banking situation was.

Given that past criticism of the Obama administration, Black is probably not a leading contender, though his appointment would make the Bernie forces happy ... which in turn would make McConnell very dyspeptic.

William K. Black

Jeh Johnson

Secretary of Homeland Security for Obama's 2nd term. Previously the General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2009 to 2012 during the first years of the Obama Administration. He is currently a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and a member of the board of directors of Lockheed Martin Corporation and U.S. Steel. Johnson is a 2018 recipient of the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Award, has debated several times at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions and is the recipient of ten honorary degrees. In private life, Johnson has been a frequent commentator on national and homeland security matters on NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, ABC, CBS and PBS.

Too corporate for me but probably not for Biden.

Deval Patrick

Former Governor of Massachusetts for two terms, and before that served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton. He ran briefly as a vanity candidate for president in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Xavier Becerra

Currently Attorney General of California since 2017. He previously was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing downtown Los Angeles in Congress from 1993 to 2017. Becerra was Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus from 2013 to 2017. 

 

Lisa Monaco

Federal prosecutor who was the Homeland Security Adviser to President Barack Obama, the chief counterterrorism advisor to the president. In this capacity, she was a statutory member of the United States Homeland Security Council.

Monaco previously served as the Assistant Attorney General for National Security from 2011 to 2013, and as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department. In 2017, Monaco became a senior national security analyst for CNN.

Jeff Sessions Will Run for His Old Alabama US Senate Seat

Jeff Sessions can take a punch
and pop back up!

Last night, under the cover of a darkness that passeth understanding, former Trump Attorney General and punching bag Jefferson Beauregard Sessions announced that he will be running again for his old US Senate seat, the one he gave up to become Attorney General and Trump's punching bag.

Thank you Jeremy W. Peters and Maggie Haberman for this tidbit:

"News of Mr. Sessions’s decision to run startled and dismayed national Republicans, who had hoped that he would step aside to avoid the possibility of being vilified by Mr. Trump — and to spare them the headache of a nationalized race in a state they hope to win back."

Alabama Republicans are naturally itching to take back that Senate seat from Doug Jones, who beat young flesh entrepreneur Roy Moore in the special election of 2017. Doug Jones is generally regarded as the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, because, after all, Alabama.

Those "dismayed national Republicans" have had their eyes on two normal-looking, unpunched-by-Trump Republicans who had already declared their intentions to run in a primary for that Senate seat: Alabama 1st District Congressman Bradley Byrne and former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville (because, after all, Alabama + football). Those two guys were maybe considered frontrunners prior to the entry of Jeff Sessions, though young flesh entrepreneur Roy Moore will also be in that March 3rd primary, and he still has a following among the apocalyptic-minded. (There are even a couple more guys who've announced an intention to run, so that Republican senatorial primary in Alabama will be crowded.)

The big question: Will Twitterman, the one with low impulse control, stay out of that primary? Or will he let his cankers bloom and bash Sessions? Maggie Haberman reports this:

"Mr. Trump ... continues to blame Mr. Sessions for the two-year Russia probe, and last weekend he repeatedly denounced Mr. Sessions, saying he was a “jerk” and making it clear Mr. Sessions would not have his support, according to a person briefed on the discussions.

Alabama, winter is coming!

The Luckiest Democrat in the Nation

Alabama Senator Doug Jones must have a guardian angel. The improbable winner of Jeff Sessions' old seat in a 2017 special election has been staring down the barrel of his first reelection campaign in 2020, and along comes a repeat Republican offender in Roy Moore who says he intends to drag the Republican Party down again next year.

Oh goodie!

“Yes, I will run for the United States Senate in 2020,” Moore told reporters in Montgomery, Ala. “Can I win? Yes, I can win.”

Four other Republicans have already declared for the race, none of them with the name recognition nor toxic history of Roy Moore. Some observers think hope that maybe Jeff Sessions will get in and run for his old seat, in which case Roy Moore would probably be crushed in the primary.

Twitterman, who supported Moore in 2017, has turned his back on him, calling him a loser who can't possibly win the Senate seat. That's got to hurt. But it has also fed Roy Moore's ego, to prove Trump wrong. What could be more tempting than proving all the Washington establishment wrong?

Who Are the Big Losers?

Yesterday was a big day, with two major developments related to voting:

1. Judge Paul Ridgeway in Wake Superior Court ended the Nathan Miller attempt to derail the Boone Town Council elections and ordered that the newly elected council members be certified and cleared for swearing into office.

2. Doug Jones won the Alabama special Senate election.

The Losers

Nathan Miller and the Watauga GOP. What will they try next to show their hatred of young voters?

Steve Bannon. His plans for a Trumpist empire look slightly crimped this morning. Twitter is reporting that Bannon aides are now saying that Steve really wanted Mo Brooks for that Senate seat, but was sort of forced to accept Roy Moore (because, uh, Moore won the Alabama primary).

Donald J. Trump. Hahahaha. Trump tweeted this morning that he was right all along about Alabama because when he was stumping the state for Luther Strange, he said in public that Roy Moore could never win the general election. Trump is 0-2 in picking candidates to campaign for, but because in his head he's always right and always a winner, he's drinking this rationalization in a great gulp.

Roy Moore. We hear his horse has applied to the witness relocation program. And before we forget seasons greetings -- Happy Hanukkah, Mrs. Moore!

Virginia Foxx. If a pro-choice Democrat can be elected to the US Senate from Alabama, then anything can happen in the year ahead. You might want to think about that, Madam Foxx. Perhaps you can get President Trump into the Fifth District to campaign for you.

Photo: Alex Brandon/AP

One of Those Watershed Moments

I have to admit that I'm going to miss the Roy Moore campaign. It's been a primer on where the Republican Party has parked its identity in the Age of Trump. Those reminders are both necessary and, lucky for us, numerous. Who is the Trump/Moore Republican? He's a soldier -- defiantly reactionary, divisive by prime instinct, preacher-perfect at denouncing other people's sins while personally wearing no underwear, and sentimental about slavery.

That's what made this Kayla Moore moment last night in Midland City so ... solid. The film is going to live forever.






Doug Jones can win this thing. I discount all polls on this race, including the Fox News one yesterday that had Jones up by 10 points, because how do you model who's going to actually show up and vote? The Alabama secretary of state predicted "a modest turnout of 20 to 25 percent" — surprising, given all the national media attention and the fact that voter turn-out was about 64 percent in the 2016 presidential election. Not surprising though, given the depressing downer nature of the whole campaign. The religious right is turned on by Roy Moore, and of course Democrats are ecstatic about how well Doug Jones has done, but a wide middle swath of not-particularly-engaged voters, including many educated Republicans, have been turned off by the spectacle of Moore, are embarrassed about him, and they either won't vote at all or they'll write in someone else's name (and maybe a few of them will even vote for the Democrat because they no longer believe in Hell).

Reportedly, African-American voters aren't energized about Jones, though major national political figures and celebrities like Charles Barkley have stumped the state. Last night, Jones got "an implicit boost, of a sort," from Condoleezza Rice, who without ever mentioning Doug Jones by name (or Roy Moore either), called on Alabamians to “reject bigotry, sexism and intolerance” and “insist that our representatives are dignified, decent and respectful of the values we hold dear.” Rice is a native of Alabama and maybe still has family there.

Based on what happened nationally with so many suburban, nominal Republicans and independent voters back on November 7, Jones could win it with the growing urban/suburban centers like Birmingham and Montgomery and Huntsville, especially if African-Americans don't sit at home and enough moderate Republicans either do stay at home or throw their vote in any direction but Moore's. The Democrats have been working hard while Moore's got no ground game and has been totally absent from the campaign for days at a time, including all of the past six days before his rally last night, when Mrs. Moore schooled everyone on who's a bigot. When a candidate acts like he doesn't need to work for it and doesn't show up with the public for days on end, do voters reward him with high office? Sometimes they don't.

Steve Bannon did his part at last night's rally, encouraging the booing of Republican Senator Richard Shelby, attacking both Condi Rice and Bob Corker, and then mocking Ivanka Trump's comments about Moore, that there's a special place in hell for people who sexually molest teenaged girls. Bannon has his entire reputation of king-maker and incipient political empire riding on this election today.

Odds for Doug Jones Just Went Up in Alabama

Marine Col. Lee Busby (Ret.) has launched a full-on write-in campaign for the Senate seat in Alabama, hoping to stop Roy Moore from ever getting to Washington. Don't know what his candidacy looks like on the ground in Alabama -- local Alabama coverage at the moment is mainly reprints and replays of national political media), but he's already nationally famous. He did an appearance on Morning Joe a couple of days ago, an interview on NPR this morning, and he's been written up in the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, RealClearPolitics, and probably elsewhere.

Fox News. 

Busby is a conservative Republican. He says he'd vote for the Senate tax bill even though he knows he'll never have that opportunity (because it'll be done with by the time there's a new Alabama senator sworn in). Busby has no formal campaign structure or even a working website "as of Monday morning" (WashingtonPost). He told the Post he is "counting on social media to spread the word" (and here we are, reporting for duty).

According to James LaPorta, "Busby has been the CEO of his own business and worked as a defense consultant and investment banker. At the same time, Busby has been honoring fallen Marines with sculptures" (like the one in the foreground of the photo to the left).

That's an admirable thing to do.

Most interesting: Busby not only voted for Trump. He was current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's vice chief of staff in Iraq.

Policy positions (other than support for the Trump tax law)? Against abortion (check!). Repeal Obamacare (check!). Voted for John Kasich in the 2016 Republican presidential primary (hmmm). But that's it. That's all the policy issues Busby has so far shared with the public, though there's this:

With the Washington Post, he used military strategy to explain his politics: "The left flank and the right flank are heavily guarded. I think that gives you an opportunity to run straight up the middle.” On the basis of that, the Post suggested he was therefore "centrist."

That may be correct. Despite his doctrinaire right wing positions on abortion and monetary policy, he attended a Doug Jones fundraiser early on, to check out the Democrat in the race (so he's open-minded or at least curious), but decided Jones was not "appealing." Meanwhile -- and perhaps the explanation for why he attended that Democratic fundraiser -- Busby has been unimpressed with Roy Moore, a zero in Busby's view, even without all the sexual accusations.

So what's a cigar-chomping Marine to do if both the Republican and the Democrat fail to measure up?

Well Dayum! Democrat Doug Jones Is Running as a (Gulp!) Democrat in Alabama

Doug Jones, who's up against Republican mad bomber Roy Moore in the Alabama special election to replace Jeff Sessions in the US Senate, is not concealing his core philosophy, is not trimming his sails on abortion rights or climate change, is not trying to seem "Republican lite" or "focus-grouped" or mamby-pamby. He's standing up for his convictions, come what may.

Recent polling seems to suggest that people -- even people in Alabama -- like a Democrat who isn't ashamed to be a Democrat. The last poll we've seen -- by Fox News, no less -- has Jones and Moore tied.

Running as a Democrat in deep-red Alabama ought to be the kiss of death under normal circumstances. Circumstances ain't normal. Roy Moore ain't normal. He offends plenty of moderate, country-club Republicans (who, just incidentally, often want their teenage girls to have access to abortion and sometimes need it), and Jones has a reputation as a stand-up prosecutor who's also not a loon and probably won't embarrass the state.

Go down swinging, Mr. Jones! Or if you don't go down, or if you even come close, you've shown the way potentially to others who've been afraid.

Alabama Republicans Go Retro

Alabama Republican voters picked Roy Moore last night. The man who holds a gun funny, wears a cowboy hat as a helmet, and wants to make his religion the law of the land. Note: his religion is not exactly the loving kind. They call him "Judge," and he does.

Can things get any worse for Mitch McConnell? It was pile-on-Mitch all day yesterday. Another repeal&replace bill sunk like an anvil in his own caucus. Another of his most influential lieutenants and committee chair, Bob Corker of Tennessee, announced he'd had enough and would not run for reelection in 2018, setting the stage for another potential circus of a Republican primary in 2018 in which the name "McConnell" will mean approximately shit. Mitch became the Nancy Pelosi of the Republican Party yesterday.

(Meanwhile -- and by the way -- who's the Tennessee Democrat for that race? More about that below.)

And the cherry on the top of yesterday for Ole Mitch ... Roy Moore, ascendant, coming at him with the lash of retarded righteousness. Everyone expects Moore to win the general. It'll be Moore v. Doug Jones, the Democrat who won his own primary on August 15 (see below). But the actual election isn't until December 12, and that's more than adequate time for a well-funded alternative to Moore to build a case. A Democratic candidate who "fits the state" and is firm to the touch has every opportunity for upsetting Judge Moore (especially in an age when anything can happen politically, and does).

Doug Jones

Nobody thinks Jones can win. Except maybe Jones himself. He's the underdog, no doubt. But he's also no coward (the cases he prosecuted as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama produces evidence of moral conviction and courage). Asked how in the world he thought he could overcome the Republican advantage in Alabama, Jones said, "At the end of the day, they [the voters of Alabama] are worried about their children, they are worried about their elderly parents, like I am. They're concerned about where their jobs are going to come and what's going to come into this state."

Nothing wrong with that, but needs some cooking on some fire. Can he translate that (populist) message into a movement in his direction? Dunno. Experts say, Proly not.

Probably.

The worst set of numbers for Democrat Jones, IMO, come from the Aug. 15 primary: "Moore received 162,570 total votes, which was more than the entire Democratic field. Jones won his primary with 104,549 votes, or 65.6 percent of the 154,481 votes cast by Democrats" (al.com). Jones has to build Democratic energy in a state where Democrats have been defeatists for more than a decade. A Democrat hasn't won a statewide election since 2008 and hasn't won a U.S. Senate race since 1992.

So ... back to the sudden opening in Tennessee: Who's the Democrat to run for Corker's seat against whatever candidate survives the Republican primary? Will the Tennessee GOP be weaker after the Trumpists tear the establishment apart? Might the Democrats nominate Nashville Mayor Megan Barry? Or US Congressman Jim Cooper? Who then? The only Democrat who's actually declared his candidacy is a virtual unknown, James Mackler, a Nashville attorney and Iraq war veteran.