At Salon, Heather Digby Parton writes—No, the “grown-ups” won’t save us: A favorite Beltway fantasy bites the dust again:
[...] One would have thought Americans had learned their lesson after having lived through the disaster of the George W. Bush years. But 16 years later the Republican Party served up another unqualified, ill-equipped nominee, and he, too, became president without winning the most votes. Once again the establishment tried to reassure the public that he would be held in check by the vice president and the respectable appointees: Gen. Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, Gen. John Kelly at Homeland Security and — after the first choice was fired — Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser. Since the military is the only institution left in America that maintains even the slightest respect among the public, this seemed like a good idea. These men had commanded legions; surely they could control the likes of President Donald Trump.
That’s not happening. The people who were supposed to help Trump become a responsible leader have instead followed their boss into his morass of lies, corruption and incompetence. As Tom Ricks (who encouraged these people to join the administration for the good of the country) pointed out in a piece for Politico, they have degraded their reputations without making the slightest improvement in Trump’s performance as a leader.
Defense Secretary Mattis embarrassed himself on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on this past Sunday by bizarrely asserting that by appointing him, a big supporter of NATO, the president had endorsed the alliance. This came despite the fact that Trump had behaved like an ill-mannered boor at the annual NATO meeting in Brussels and refused to publicly affirm the mutual defense imperative known as Article 5. Mattis claimed that it doesn’t matter what Trump said; we should be content that he deigned to attend the meeting at all. [...]
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Obama Campaign 2.0:
It also seems reasonable to question the effectiveness of the President's political organization. It is possible the "bubble" of the White House has numbed the political instincts of a great campaigner and his staff. The President has a significant role to play in off-year elections. Historically, the President's political party loses seats in Congress. But strong Presidents have occasionally bucked the trend and prevented a crippling of their agenda. This requires a campaign of sorts, albeit not as large and complex as a presidential campaign. Will a political campaign run out of Washington, not Chicago, be as effective as the previous campaign given an anti-incumbent political environment?
David Plouffe, if reporting is correct, has been given charge of overseeing the overall campaign by posting as outside adviser to the DNC. His strategy is simple: get 15 million first-time Obama voters to turn out again. Mid-term elections are usually party base turnout elections. The broader electorate is not fully engaged because no major candidate is on the ballot. Turnout falls down to mostly committed partisans of either party. Plouffe's strategy is to engage them once again betting they will support Democrats. The Vote 2010 initiative is a gamble to change the composition of the electorate by bringing first time voters into the Democratic base. Driven byMyBO it will rely on the 2008 team of community organizers and volunteers. So the "change the electorate" model is still in place.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Trump, so good at the military, your head will spin, destroys NATO in 3 days. Armando joins to discuss this and the insane claim that Jared Kushner accepted the task of secretly negotiating the most sensitive topic in the world with Russia, then forgot he did it.
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