What Is Trump Without His Rallies?

An airless balloon. A cheerless buffoon. Michael Kruse, in Politico:

But as America shuts down, as Broadway goes dark and Disney World goes dormant and March Madness goes poof, Trump at the moment has been stripped of arguably his most potent political strength. Entering a new, utterly altered reality, mere weeks after he traveled to India to revel in the adoration of a crowd of 110,000, Trump sat in the White House at a desk called Resolute and appeared out of his element and underprepared—while Joe Biden, his presumptive opponent in the general election, stood the next afternoon in front of a bank of American flags in a hotel in Delaware and spoke to mostly just clicking cameras and seemed not frail or poorly supported but serious and up to the task. Biden’s (small) crowds and Trump’s (large) crowds hardly matter because now there are no crowds at all.

In Outing a Bribery Scheme, Mike Causey Is a Credit to His Office

Read WRAL reporter Travis Fain's wrap-up of the Greg Lindberg bribery case down in Durham. Read it and weep. Because billionaire Greg Lindberg is one of those "masters of the universe" who are single-handedly capable of shoving enough money at politicians to cast an ethical cloud over whole departments of government. For those public officials who accepted great heaps of his cash, they raise suspicions about personal integrity and suggest once again that the love/lure of money is the root of all evil.

Lindberg gave money to both the Republican and the Democratic parties. He gave money to Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer as well as to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He gave 6 figures to Tim Moore, for his House Republican Caucus fund. He gave $50,000 to state Senator Wesley Meredith who was introducing an insurance law rewrite in the General Assembly that would have advantaged Lindberg (the law went nowhere). Most striking of all, Lindberg gave over $2 million to support Dan Forest for governor, a "strategic" expenditure in case Forest should become governor.

Lindberg isn't the first nor will he be the last, to grow his tendrils everywhere, from Raleigh power-centers to Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac. We've always had these guys who respect no bounds to get what they want. And elected officials with their hands out.

Except for NC Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey. (You can read about what Lindberg wanted out of the Insurance Commissioner on your own. I'm not going to summarize all that here. It's beside the point anyway.) Mike Causey, Republican, cooperated with the FBI to expose a bribery scandal involving both billionaire Lindberg and Robin Hayes, Chair of the NCGOP. Mike Causey resisted the attempted bribery and exposed it all. Mike Causey is a civic hero.

Travis Fain found evidence that the Lindberg gang thought Commissioner Causey was also "dense," a kind of Gomer Pyle lame-brain. That Causey always seemed to agree to their quid pro quos and then dragged his feet and appeared to forget his assigned duties and never delivered what Lindberg thought he'd agreed to. All the time Causey was playing Lindberg, wearing at various times both hidden microphones and videocameras and gathering the evidence that led to Lindberg's conviction last Thursday (March 5). Robin Hayes had already pled guilty for participating and is awaiting sentencing.

Some North Carolina Democrats get tarred with the same Lindberg tar. Nobody's accused them of wrongdoing, but it's not a good look. What's documented is some $750,000 that Lindberg gave to the NC Democratic Party in 2018 while it was chaired by Wayne Goodwin, the previous Insurance Commissioner. In fact, according to Fain, Goodwin was Lindberg's "first." Lindberg had spent "more than $340,000 between Goodwin's campaign [to become Insurance Commissioner] and a separate political action committee that supported his re-election."

That's what Fain documents. What's undocumented is the money Lindberg gave to "dark money" groups, of which there was apparently a generous helping given to both sides. Including an unspecified amount to a 501(c)(4) group supporting Gov. Cooper's 2016 campaign.

What set off the whole bribery scene?

Goodwin had given the Lindberg insurance companies an advantage that appears to have been out of the ordinary. Causey's department after January of 2017 began reversing that policy. Lindberg was putting pressure on Causey to go easy on him.

Under Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, the department allowed Lindberg's insurance companies to keep investing up to 40% of their assets, cash from policyholder premiums, into other companies that Lindberg owns. When Mike Causey took over as Insurance Commissioner, his team, led in part by Jackie Obusek, a senior deputy commissioner, insisted on "unwinding" what Goodwin had given Lindberg -- lowering that 40% and thus Lindberg's control over the companies' cash.

Lindberg wanted Jackie Obusek fired. That's what he was willing to buy from Mike Causey, along with of course a more generally lenient regulatory regime overseeing his activities.

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?

A Federal Judge Skewers the Roberts Supreme Court

The Smiling F U

Milwaukee Federal District Court Judge Lynn S. Adelman has published what the WashPost calls a "blistering critique" of the Supreme Court’s record under Chief Justice John Roberts, focusing on a string of decisions that he argues have fostered “economic inequality,” “undermined democracy,” and “increased the political power of corporations and wealthy individuals” at the expense of ordinary Americans.

'Bout time.

Adelman referenced Roberts' 2005 confirmation hearing in which he promised to be a non-political "umpire," "calling balls and strikes." Adelman labels that promise a “masterpiece of disingenuousness.” Gee. What's a synonym for disingenuousness? Oh yes ... dishonesty.

Adelman cited a series of cases, most of them 5-4 decisions, which he says have consolidated the power of the rich, limited redress for the powerless, and weakened democracy. Among them were Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 Roberts opinion that loosened Voting Rights Act safeguards for minorities, and the North Carolina voting rights case, Rucho v. Common Cause, in which the court, in a 2018 Roberts opinion, said partisan gerrymandering presents “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”

He also cited Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in federal elections, and the 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which held that it was unconstitutional to allow public employee unions to require collective-bargaining fees from workers who choose not to join the union.

Adelman also had words for Twitterman, who he wrote ran as a populist but failed to deliver “policies beneficial to the general public …. While Trump’s temperament is that of an autocrat,” Adelman wrote, “he is disinclined to buck the wealthy individuals and corporations who control his party.”

There's a lot of squawking on the right about "how dare this liberal judge express his opinion," when conservative judges do it all the time, do it with gusto, and get away with steering the Republic toward a full-on oligarchy. It's refreshing to have a federal judge call "bullshit!"

NEWS FLASH: The Coronavirus Doesn't Watch Fox

Last night — following a day in which several Republican lawmakers self-quarantined due to coronavirus exposure, the stock market took an historic hit, and the 26th American died from COVID-19 — Fox Business Network’s Trish Regan began her show with a monologue damning the opposition party for politicizing the public-health crisis. As Regan spoke of a “chorus of hate being leveled at the president,” the chyron next to her read: “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam,” an effective summary of the host’s defense of Trump.

Ain't You Thankful for a Stable Genius in Charge of a Flu Pandemic?

A flu panic is bad enough. Having a giant baby in charge of the response is worse.

Trump at the CDC last Friday,
dressed for serious science

Has Trump done anything right since the coronavirus got traction in China and immediately jumped just about everywhere else? Has he made anything better? He appointed the Vice President in Charge of Aping (bless his heart!) to lead the medical response, which sent guffaws through the political bleachers. He's continued to make things worse through ignorance, denial, and deflection.

Finally, last week (Feb. 26), Trump's HHS Secretary Alex Azar told a congressional committee: “As of today, I can announce that the CDC has begun working with health departments in five cities to use its flu surveillance network to begin testing individuals with flu-like symptoms for the Chinese coronavirus.” Wait. We have a "flue surveillance network" that's only just been activated and only in five cities?

Trump's White House knew there was a developing Chinese epidemic as far back as the middle of December. They did virtually nothing. When the Chinese government essentially shut down Wuhan and several other Chinese cities January 23, Trump issued a travel restriction on non-citizens coming directly from China -- never mind US citizens who came on home showing no symptoms but who were carrying a virus that liked to jump hosts before there were symptoms, and travelers who were coming from Europe or elsewhere but who had recently been in Wuhan or had close contact with someone who was there. I heard someone on TeeVee say that Trump's "public health emergency" clampdown on travelers from China was his only right move so far. You agree?

In the early days of February, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) got its diagnostic test up and running. Strict guidelines about who could get tested -- only those with recent travel to China or those who had come into contact with a confirmed infection. No other test existed yet (in sufficient numbers), and guess what? The CDC's test didn't actually work. No kidding. Because the test contained "an unspecified problem with a compound that prompted inconclusive results" (Ashley Parker et al.). 

"Then came the testing errors, as some labs began reporting inconclusive results from the CDC kits. The problem with tests quickly snowballed, becoming a self-perpetuating cycle. Because the tests were faulty and the testing criteria so limited, the government was missing a lot of the cases because it couldn’t scale up. Some in the administration didn’t initially take the crisis more seriously, in part, because it appeared that the case count was low." (Parker)

At the White House, Trump was all like "it's over in China and we've got China bottled up." So by not acknowledging a problem, or even understanding what a pandemic is and how it operates, time frittered away when testing kits (accurate testing kits) should have been stockpiled and the medical infrastructure prepared for mass hospitalizations and a mounting death toll among the elderly. “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Twitterman bragged in late February — and then became an active font of "misinformation and confusion, further muddling his administration’s response" (Parker).

Just last Friday, visiting the CDC in Atlanta, Trump claimed, incorrectly, that “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.” When something's "beautiful," that's Trump-speak for an outright lie or shorthand for "I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about." His administration had sent government workers with no protective gear whatsoever to welcome American refugees from an infected petri dish of a cruise ship, and then those workers returned to their scattered home-bases, some of them no doubt taking the incubating virus with them.

(You see how the alien creatures in the Alien movies are perfect metaphors for this virus.)

Trump, at a Feb. 26 news conference: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

On March 4th, Trump told Hannity, "I think the 3.4 percent [World Health Org's projected death rate from coronavirus infection] is really a false number — and this is just my hunch — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild, they'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people."

Trump's hunches are ineffably tied to Trump self-interest.

March 6th, at the CDC in Atlanta, Trump said, "I didn't know people died from the flu." Not making that up.

Mark Meadows, Finally Rising To the Level of His Incompetence

Congressman Mark Meadows (NC-11) will resign his seat early and go to the White House to be Twitterman's Chief of Staff. Good luck with that, Bro!

Meadows leaves plenty of wreckage in his wake. He waited until the day before the end of candidate filing last December to announce he wouldn't be running for reelection, but he had his wife's BFF Lynda Bennett all prepped to step up and run for the seat. Turned out, about a dozen others also wanted a shot at it, and their dyspepsia grew as they discovered how Meadows had tried to manipulate the results.

Lynda Bennett did come in first in the primary but with only 22.72% of the vote. She'll face a run-off on May 12th against second-place finisher Madison Cawthorn who evidently spoke for many 11th District Republicans in his anger at Mark Meadows:

“I am calling for a runoff,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind the people of Western North Carolina are sick and tired of watching the politicians trying to force their will upon us and every single vote that was cast against Lynda Bennett was a vote against what Mark Meadows has done.”

Third-place finisher and long-time member of the NC Senate Jim Davis said, “I don’t get Mark Meadows claiming she [Lynda Bennett] was the best-qualified candidate in the race, which is total hogwash, but he has the right to do that,” he said. “This just reeks of the coronation of a candidate, and one of the less qualified candidates in the race,” he added.

During his time in the US House, Meadows was pretty much single-handedly responsible for two government shutdowns and for the ousting of House Speaker John Boehner. "In 2013, he engineered a shutdown in an attempt to strip funding from the Affordable Care Act. In 2018, Meadows encouraged President Donald Trump not to accept a bill to fund much of the government without $5 billion in wall money and rallied others on the right to do the same" (Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times).

Freedom Caucus vandal inside the Oval Office with the stable genius. A match made in pandemonium with plenty of gall.

You and Your Goddamn Money

The following news came via Michael Scherer in the WashPost yesterday:

Former New York mayor and full-time billionaire Mike Bloomberg has decided to form an independent expenditure campaign that will absorb hundreds of his presidential campaign staffers already on the ground in six swing states -- Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina -- to work to elect Joe Biden this fall. 

Maybe this is what those North Carolina Democratic office-holders were promised when they endorsed Bloomberg for president last month. Maybe they're jumping up and down right now with glee -- for lordy lordy, Democrats will have their own oligarch to fight the oligarch. Maybe Democratic Party officials and Democratic political operatives are similarly juiced for their prospects this year, visions of Bloomberg dollars and field staff dancing in their heads.

But it's the apocalypse, isn't it? Isn't it the Dark Night of our political soul?

Put the stake in the whole idea of reforming a political system that allows rich people all the power. Place that oaken stake over its heart and drive it down hard. Forget reform. Money runs politics, money rules the Republic. And sad to say, Democrats have become ever bit as obsequious to the filthy rich as their Republican counterparts.

If only money didn't also mostly corrupt. (Okay okay I'm willing to admit that there are also statesmen in our history who stood for righteous justice and would not kowtow. They're in the minority.) If only money didn't bend the moral will. The hand is out, and the hand that places money in that hand also wants something tangible, at the very least a stability in the system that guarantees their continuing profit. People with money don't like threats to their state of play. They'll use the politicians they've bought to guard their interests. The more the money, the more the corrosion of principles, both civic and moral.

An independent expenditure group, like Bloomberg is planning for North Carolina, is not allowed to coordinate with candidate campaigns. But they wouldn't exist without a tacit mind-bond with the candidate they're supporting. That's just logic. Since they must report their donors -- unlike the far more sinister dark groups with the hidden connections, like Mitch McConnell's Faith and Power PAC --independent expenditure orgs are less objectionable, maybe, and I have applauded the work of some of them on the liberal side of things. For those of you keeping a hypocrisy log on me.

And there it is. The hook. For here I am lusting for some of that money too. What we could do with it in Watauga County.

The Most Interesting Congressional Race in North Carolina

Following Tuesday's primary in North Carolina, two Democratic women in CD 2 and 6 look poised to take seats in the US House that have been held by Republicans. Deborah Ross in CD2 absolutely buried her Democratic primary contenders, taking right at 70% of the total vote against three rivals. In CD6, Democrat Kathy Manning took over 48% of the vote against four rivals, beating her nearest competitor,  Rhonda Foxx, by 33,361 votes. The Cook Partisan Index rates both districts as "Likely Democratic" for 2020.

But I'm looking also to CD11 for my 2020 excitement, even though Cook still considers it "Solid Republican" even with all of Asheville restored to the district after being previously gerrymandered out. I'm looking that way because of the Democrat who won Tuesday's primary against four rival candidates, Moe Davis, who doubled the votes of his nearest second-place contender.

I've been following Davis since he burst out into the public soon after his (admittedly late) filing for the office. Morris "Moe" Davis retired from the US Air Force at the rank of colonel and already had a high pre-candidacy national profile. He served two years as Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay and resigned in protest because his superiors in the Air Force Judiciary and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense overruled his decision to disallow evidence obtained via CIA torture. In resigning his position, Davis declared that he wasn't going to take orders from people who think "waterboarding is A-Okay."

In other words, he's a commendable hard-nose. He's got a clear pattern of courting controversy, or at least not skirting around it when it blocks his path of moral certitude (he said the Supreme Court was "meddling" when it chose to review the Military Commissions Act). He's not afraid to defy authority when he thinks he's right, and you've got to admire his fortitude. He's been on all the broadcast and cable news programs as a recognized expert in national security, especially security from terrorists who he thinks should be prosecuted the fair way and not via the CIA torture wheel, but he's also defended Guantanamo as a "humane" detention center (which makes him suspicious to some liberals).

He's a "risk" candidate at a time when too many Democrats want "safe." He endorses universal health care ("whether it is called Medicare For All or any other name"), access to abortion, legalizing marijuana, and confronting income equality. His website is no-nonsense and straight to the kisser, sort of like his military career. He says this:

He stood up to the Bush Administration on torture. He stood up to the Obama Administration to defend the right to free speech. Moe Davis risked his career to do the right thing for our country. That’s the kind of character he will bring to Washington as Congressman in North Carolina’s 11th District.

He was born and grew up in Shelby, NC, studied criminal justice at AppState, graduated in 1980 and earned his Juris Doctor from NC Central in 1983. He immediately joined the Air Force as a JAG officer where he served with distinction.

(Full disclosure. I contributed a little to Davis during the primary and will likely do so again.)


The Republican Moe Davis Will Be Running Against

Madison Cawthorn

There will be a hot run-off on May 12th between front-running (and Mark Meadows endorsed) Lynda Bennett and the very young Madison Cawthorn (born in 1995). There were a dozen Republicans running in the primary (listed and described here), and most of them are mightily pissed off at how Meadows kept his decision not to run for reelection a secret until the day before the filing period ended and then advantaged his wife's best friend Lynda Bennett for the seat.

On Tuesday, Bennett took 22.72% of the vote to Cawthorn's 20.40%, and Cawthorn has already called for the run-off, drawing endorsements from several other trailing candidates. Cawthorn was quoted in the press:

There’s no doubt in my mind the people of Western North Carolina are sick and tired of watching the politicians [Mark Meadows] trying to force their will upon us and every single vote that was cast against Lynda Bennett was a vote against what Mark Meadows has done. Republicans in the race were furious that Meadows endorsed Bennett, a close friend of him and his wife, after telling other candidates he would not endorse anyone in the primary.

The odds are rarely on the side of second-place finishers in run-offs, but in this case the odds are hard to figure because of anger in the district at Meadows' trying to manipulate the outcome.