Political Notes (From All Over)

1. Buncombe County state Senator Terry Van Duyn, who came in second in the crowded Democratic primary field for lieutenant governor, has announced that she won't request a run-off against state House representative Yvonne Holley of Wake County, who came in first but failed to get the 30% to avoid a run-off. Five strong and diverse candidates ran in that primary and fragmented the vote accordingly.

Getting to know Holley, I crib this profile from PamsPicks.net (minus all the active links):

Holley announced her candidacy on February 27, 2019. She’s a Baby Boomer born in 1952. She grew up in Wake County, was a front-line elementary student in the desegregation of the Raleigh school system, excelled and went to Howard University. She spent her entire working career in state government, retiring as a state procurement and contract agent. She ran for and easily won her seat in the NC House (District 38) in 2012 and has never gotten less than 79.9% of the vote in any of her reelections. 

Holley has not been “a mover and a shaker” in the House. She represents an older style of politician — reverent of institutions, a calming presence, standing respectfully but with a spine made of hardened steel. She’s very much in the moderate tradition of her father, J.D. Lewis, the first African-American TV broadcaster in the Raleigh/Durham market and Director of Minority Affairs for WRAL-TV (which had also been the editorial home until 1972 of one Jesse Helms). J.D. Lewis “is remembered today as having contributed significantly to the positive dialogue between polarized sectors during an epic time in the nation’s history” (Holley’s website). 

Her Campaign: Holley states a platform of affordable housing, economic development, food security, reliable public transportation, and strong support for public education. She offers a too barebones website (which unaccountably doesn’t provide links to her Facebook and Twitter accounts), but she makes a good video impression and should do more.

2.  Last Saturday at the Watauga County Republican Party convention, Karen Lerch resigned as chair of the Watauga GOP one year into her two-year term. The resignation appears to have come as a surprise to the party. She announced her resignation "at the end of the event," and the vice chair, Melissa Searcy, did not take over the chairmanship:

Nathan Miller, N.C. GOP Fifth District representative, said that at the March meeting of the Watauga County Republican Party, people can send their nominees to the party’s executive committee, then they will likely be voted on. Miller said that depending on the “executive committee’s prerogative,” the final vote could be held off until April. (Watauga Democrat)

Judging from the report in the local newspaper, the Watauga GOP will be making a major push for the AppState student vote: "John Moncrieff, president of the ASU chapter of Turning Point USA, said that most college students are apolitical and that the Republicans need to reach out to them. Moncfieff also that he and his group will hit ASU hard with 'Trump flags everywhere' in the next year."

Trump flags everywhere. Yeah. That'll do the trick.

Turning Point USA, incidentally, is a far right org aimed at turning the mushy heads of college students toward the charms of fossil fuels and the National Rifle Association. The Anti-Defamation League refers to it as an "alt-lite" organization. Its leaders mainly operate by stirring up outrage at "liberal excesses" like Black Lives Matter and #metoo.


3. Have you heard? Trump continues to twist the knife in poor Jeff Sessions' back. Trump has endorsed Tommy Tuberville for the US Senate in the upcoming Republican senatorial primary run-off in Alabama. Tuberville finished first in the primary with 33.4% of the vote to Sessions' 31.6%. They're both vying for the nomination to face Democratic Senator Doug Jones.

Poor Sessions! He's been reassuring Alabamians that he's a loyal Trumpist even while Trump continues to disdain him. Just how much groveling are Republicans willing to do in the autocracy they've created?

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!

Gorka Sees the Future, and You're Not in It

Sebastian Gorka, Trump's former White House Lucifer-lookalike, told an auditorium full of College Republicans last night in Chapel Hill that he predicted and firmly believed that Trump will complete eight years in the presidency and will be followed by eight years of Mike Pence. The students cheered. According to the News and Observer, there were about 200 in the room.

I love political prognosticators. They make my corpuscles bunch and run. I listen to them avidly and read their opinions wherever I can find them, and then if they're writers, I want to see what they look like and whether I can take what they predict as possible. Or anyways likely. Or merely self-congratulatory fantasy based on living in a box.

Gorka is not clothed in credibility. He's all about macho dominance of perceived enemies. He famously bragged about Trump, “the alpha males are back,” and he itched to give Islam -- the whole religion apparently -- some alpha male comeuppance. He was in on drafting the first Muslim ban. He was and still is a satellite of Steve Bannon and a regular contributor to Breitbart News. He had an ill-defined job in the White House -- like Omarosa -- and new Chief of Staff John Kelly got rid of him on August 25, 2017.

Gorka wrote a "resignation letter" that was excerpted in The Federalist. It's a "kiss my white ass!" directed at John Kelly:

“given recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

So Gorka tells the students in Chapel Hill last night that he wasn't fired. He resigned. And then predicted an Era of Trump/Pence. He described Trump as “Kryptonite to political correctness” and an “unstoppable steam locomotive.” Macho authoritarianism? Yes indeedy, there's authoritarianism, but it's all coming from the Middle East, or from anyplace Muslims are in the majority. Trump is, in essence, an alpha male saving the race.

What a time we live in! Members of churches all over Alabama have become winkers at child molestation, perhaps in concert with also thinking Trump was divinely appointed to the job. Trump has finally bullied Sessions into pursuing Hillary Clinton with a Special Prosecutor, and the president just appointed his lawyer's husband to a federal judgeship (in Alabama, no less), a man who only became a lawyer three years ago and has never tried a case and has a social media history that strongly suggests he lacks a judicial temperament, and oops! he failed to tell Congress he has a conflict of interest with the Trump White House.

So in such a whirling world, Gorka predicts 16 years of Trump/Pence. I ask you, in a world so warped, who can confidently prognosticate otherwise? (Though my corpuscles are telling me another story altogether.)

Trump Lays a New Turd in the GOP Punchbowl

Republican leaders in the US Congress were perhaps looking forward to a September when they could get a couple of positive things done, like beginning to relieve Houston, and maybe raise the debt ceiling -- votes likely to be bi-partisan and popular -- but no, Trump has to go and drop DACA on them, saying, "Now, you've got six months to pull my bacon out of the fire."

Majority reaction -- wide and deep offense. Business leaders have risen up against Trump's move, risen up like a king cobra about to strike. Political leaders in both parties hate it, warned Trump against it, now scuff at the dirt. Qualified Hispanic voters who used to regularly vote Republican -- there are some -- are reconsidering their values. Congress will groan under the load while multiple "polls show that DACA enjoys overwhelming support among the public."

(Republicans stand to lose a substantial bloc of voters. Up to 38% percent of Hispanic voters have voted Republican, depending on the place and the candidate. Mitt Romney got 31% of the Hispanic vote. Trump, not.)

It's clear Trump didn't know what he was doing yesterday. By evening he was tweeting -- “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit the issue!”

I will revisit the issue. I bet you will.

If certain facts and human realities weren't clear to Trump, Sessions knew exactly what he was saying and what it all meant, and he gleamed like a greased pig in those television lights. Was he exulting in his heart? "Fewer brown people will be coming here, or staying. Praise Jesus!"

Why did Trump have to go and do that now? Of all the things that terrify him -- being touched by strange people, being laughed at, being put on the spot publicly and dared to tell the truth -- looking weak is strong juju for Trump men, and some eleven conservative Republican attorneys general had threatened to sue Trump by today if he didn't start to end DACA. (Plus he was on his way to a big public rally of his DACA-hating peeps in North Dakota today.)

The attorney-general-posse is led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under indictment by a Texas grand jury for securities fraud. Paxton was joined by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as well as Idaho Gov. C. L. Otter, in a June 29 letter to Jeff Sessions urging the White House to start phasing out DACA by Sept. 5, or face a lawsuit.

Jeff Sessions ... the willing stooge Trump sent out yesterday to face the cameras, the man who loves what's happening -- he had reportedly told Trump that he wouldn't defend DACA in court. The Constitution is his shield, he believes says. With Sessions, the law follows the heart, and the white Anglo-Saxon race is very important to Sessions. He's on record praising the 1924 eugenics-based immigration law that enforced racial and ethnic animosity. In a Breitbart radio interview with Steve Bannon in 2015 Sessions made perfectly clear his preference for people who "assimilate" completely, and you can figger all day what that means.

And then comes Irma.

"He Has Moved the Bar of Outrage"

Peter Baker, and the signs of the times:

GLEN JEAN, W.Va. — Remember that time President George W. Bush told his attorney general to investigate Al Gore for his “crimes”? Or President Barack Obama called for a Justice Department prosecution of John McCain?

No. Neither thing ever happened.

Trump has:

refused to release his tax returns 

refused to divest from his private businesses

put his son-in-law and daughter on the White House staff

without proof, accused his predecessor of illegally tapping his phones

fired the F.B.I. director who was leading an investigation into certain of his associates

 undercut his “beleaguered” attorney general in public, presumably so he'll resign so Trump can appoint a more compliant A.G., who'll behave like an employee 

On the same day Trump called for a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton by his Justice Department, he also asserted that he had the “complete power to pardon” his friends, relatives, and very possibly himself if necessary, to short-circuit a special counsel’s investigation into any possible collusion between his team and Russia.

This can't go on. This must not continue.

We Are Already in a Constitutional Crisis

Everybody's buzzing this morning about the taped interview Trump gave to NYTimes reporters.

The main takeaway: Trump thought he'd be king once he got into the White House, thought that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was his personal lawyer and would protect him from any FBI investigation, thinks now that he is still above the rule of law. That's a constitutional crisis in the making.

Trump said: “Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”

"Unfair to the president" because obviously Jeff Sessions was supposed to shield Trump from the FBI, and he could have shielded Trump from the FBI, but he went and recused himself and exposed Trump to the FBI. What a louse! (Makes us wonder all over again what Trump must have said to the new guy he nominated to head the FBI, or what he wanted to say to him.)

Is there any other possible interpretation for what Trump meant when he said "it's unfair"?

Headhunters in Search of Smaller Heads

On Trump's problems recruiting qualified candidates to fill top administration jobs:

“He just threw Jeff Sessions under the bus,” said Bill Valdez, a former senior Energy Department official who is now president of the Senior Executives Association, which represents 6,000 top federal leaders, referring to recent reports that the president is furious at the attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia investigation. “If you’re working with a boss who doesn’t have your back, you have no confidence in working with that individual.”

And this:

Republicans say they are turning down job offers to work for a chief executive whose volatile temperament makes them nervous. They are asking head-hunters if their reputations could suffer permanent damage, according to 27 people The Washington Post interviewed to assess what is becoming a debilitating factor in recruiting political appointees.

Putin Caged Trump at Every Level

Under oath in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing in January, Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he had not met with any Russian officials during the campaign. He had. Twice. With the Russian ambassador, that same Putin dude whose contacts with Michael Flynn led to Flynn's lying and to Flynn's subsequent firing.

Apparently, talking to the Russian ambassador leads to lying.

What has followed the revelation is just as interesting and in some ways more revealing. First, there was a qualified denial: Sessions said he hadn't met with “any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

Meaning, I may have met with "Russian officials" but not "to discuss issues of the campaign." Hmmm.

Then this also emanated from the Justice Department, also last night: "a department official who came to the defense of the attorney general" said, “There’s just not strong recollection of what was said.”

Apparently, talking to the Russian ambassador leads to lapses of memory. Michael Flynn said he couldn't remember either what he had discussed with the Russian ambassador.

So this question arises: If Sessions had conversations with the Russian and now can't remember what they talked about, how does he know they didn't discuss the campaign?

The Trump boys are getting wrapped around their own axle.

What Possible Benefit?

Why would Julian Assange buddy-up with Donald Trump?

Could it have anything to do with being stalked by the U.S. government since 2010 in a criminal investigation of Wikileaks and its broadcasting of secrets?

Wouldn't it be nice if that all just went away under the Trump administration and the Justice Department management style Jeff Sessions?

No Hiding Trump's Hostility Toward Government

Okay, we get it, Mr. Trump. You're expressing your perfect contempt for the various departments of government to which you're appointing people with either (a) no qualifications for managing those departments or (b) open hostility toward the departments they are being appointed to manage.

Like this fool.

That's really a funny joke. Hahahahaha. Can't wait to see how it all turns out, if the good people who voted for you will be laughing too.

The scorecard, so far:

Steven Mnuchin at Treasury wants to do away with Dodd-Frank

Andrew Puzder at Labor is a vocal critic of increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay

Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency is a primary architect of legal challenges on President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations

Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services wants to phase out Medicare

Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who believes that the pyramids were grain storage bins

Jeff Sessions at Justice is no friend of either civil rights or voting rights

Betsy DeVos at the Education Department who intends to cut "the public" out of public education

This bunch has tilted radically to the 1% and decidedly away from "those forgotten people" Trump said he wanted to help. Yeah, these guys are really gonna help!