Last Call For Rebuilding The Bench, Finally

Democrats aren't waiting for the DNC to start moving on 2018 anymore.  We've proven that the leadership of the party (namely Debbie Wasserman Schultz) is too  worried with fundraising and networking to bother to actually run candidates.  It galls me, but Howie Klein over at Down With Tyranny was right all along about her, and the awful House and Senate Dem operations to boot.  Hell, it's been months since Trump won and we still don't have a DNC chair.  They're beyond useless.

So meet the new guys in town, running their own candidate recruitment shop, and they're already at work getting involved in state races around the country.

Kara Lynum was meeting with a client Monday morning when she decided to run for office. The client was an undocumented man from Mexico, and Lynum, who is an immigration lawyer in St. Paul, Minnesota, brought up current events. "I said to him, 'I'm really sad about Trump,' and he said, 'Yeah, you're sad, but I'm really worried about my family,'" she says. Lynum, 35, had joined thousands of protesters at a march through the Twin Cities on Saturday and had spent weeks thinking about what the Trump administration's immigration policies would mean for her clients. 

"He was a nice guy," she says. "He's been here for like 15 years. He's got a 12-year-old daughter. He said that, and I was so upset and I was like, 'You know what? I'm gonna sign up.'" 

So that afternoon, Lynum filled out an online form created by Run for Something, a new political nonprofit founded by two veteran Democratic digital organizers to recruit progressive millennials to run for office. Like many of the people contacting Run for Something, Lynum hasn't thought much about what position she'll end up running for. But she's in good company; according to the group's co-founder, Amanda Litman, more than 650 people contacted it about running in the six days since it launched on Friday. As Democrats wrestle with how to turn mass demonstrations against the new administration into political gains, Run for Something is one of a number of liberal organizations hoping the Trump era ushers in a new wave of first-time office-seekers. 

Run for Something's mission is not to stop Trump in 2020, at least not directly. Its focus is on local races, where Democrats have been creamed over the last eight years, losing some 935 state legislative seats during the Obama era. In 2017, it is focusing its efforts on Virginia and North Carolina, two places where Democratic gains at the state level (the party controls the governor's mansion in both states) are undercut by conservative legislatures. In Virginia, a blue state in the last three presidential elections, Democrats have failed even to show up in some races: 44 of the state's 67 Republican delegates ran unopposed in 2015, including three Republicans in districts carried by Hillary Clinton. Democrats have a long way to go to recoup what they lost, but they've also left a lot of low-hanging fruit on the vine. 

Litman, a Barack Obama campaign veteran who was email director for Clinton's 2016 effort, believes that replenishing the candidate pool has taken a back seat to other party staples, like building a get-out-the-vote program. "Candidate recruitment isn't sexy, it takes a lot of manpower, it takes a lot time, and it needs more concerted effort," she says, "which is why we are stepping up here." 

The idea isn't just to supply candidates where none are currently running; the group believes the bench is too thin everywhere because Democrats are too exclusive in how they pick out candidates. "Parties are usually focused on asking their electeds, their staff, their networks, who they think should run," Litman says. That helps build a pipeline, but it's also an echo chamber that makes it difficult for new faces and voices to penetrate. It can be intimidating, she argues, for a prospective candidate to figure out how to run, without an organization to walk him or her through it. "So we're trying to reach people who, one, might not ever be approached by a party or by a recruitment network, or two, might not be comfortable raising their hand if the party asks who wants to run." In other words, women, people of color, and members the LGBT community—all under the age of 35. 

While Run for Something's founders stress that their efforts are focused on the state level, they view their program (and others like it) as an integral part of a larger rebuilding. As Litman's co-founder, Ross Morales Rocketto, puts it, "When President Obama ran for office originally, he was in his early to mid-30s running for state senate in Illinois."

This is the best goddamn news I've heard in months.  Check them out at runforsomething.net.

Of course, my big question is WHY AREN'T THE DEMOCRATS DOING THIS ANYWAY.

Meet The Sisters Of The Resistance

The planned Women's Marches around the country blew away estimates as hundreds of thousands showed up to protest the Tangerine Tyrant in cities across America.  In Washington DC, crowds dwarfed that of Trump's inauguration the day before.

Activists and politicians rallied huge crowds who descended on the nation's capital today for the Women's March on Washington this morning, the biggest of hundreds of similar marches taking place today.

The rally featured speeches from women's rights activist Gloria Steinem, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, Madonna, actresses Ashley Judd and Scarlett Johansson and director Michael Moore among others.

A group of largely women senators and other politicians took the stage together at one point, including Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, Claire McCaskill, D-MO, and newly elected senators Kamala Harris, D-CA, and Tammy Duckworth, D-IL, who addressed the group as did Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, were also on stage.

With the timing and sheer number of people involved, it comes as little surprise that there are various causes attached to the march, which was largely billed as a demonstration in support of women's rights and civil rights but for many has clear political undertones connected to the inauguration of Donald Trump.

In Boston, LA, Chicago and NYC huge crowds marched and chanted.

They were joined by crowds in cities across the country: In Chicago, the size of a rally so quickly outgrew early estimates that the march that was to follow was canceled for safety. In Manhattan, Fifth Avenue became a river of pink hats, while in downtown Los Angeles, even before the gathering crowd stretched itself out to march, it was more than a quarter mile deep on several streets.

Portland, St. Paul, Denver, even Austin, Texas had major demonstrations.

The Austin Police Department told CBS Austin that it estimates more than 40,000 people descended on the state capitol Saturday afternoon to participate in the Women's March on Austin. They said the participants filled more than 20 downtown city blocks.

People are pissed off, guys.  Trump is the most unpopular president since Dubya crashed and burned, and he's starting at this level and will only get worse for him.

The Regime's First Speech

Trump's inaugural speech was "one for the ages" in the same way that hurricanes like Katrina and earthquakes like the one during the 89 World Series were: disasters of historic proportions, viewed by tens of millions as it happened.

In it Trump, the least popular president to take office in modern history, addressed his supporters and simply ignored the people who didn't vote for him, repeatedly saying that America now belonged to Trump voters and not himself.  The passages are truly disturbing:

Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction -- that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families and good jobs for themselves.

These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public. But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists. Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge. And the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

America is a great country that belongs to Trump voters.  Everyone else? Well, they're the reason America is an awful place.  But that stops now, because I will stop them.  You, my supporters, will stop those people.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first — America first.

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.

Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body. And I will never, ever let you down.

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth, and we will bring back our dreams. We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor. We will follow two simple rules -- buy American and hire American.

Note he didn't say "All of us" or "America" but "We assembled here today" as having the power, and being the righteous.  Everyone else will be made fearful of America first, a slogan with a very dark history as the country now plunges into an era of ruthless protectionism that will absolutely lead to devastating trade wars and a ravaged economic landscape.  To have a president repeatedly say it should scare the hell out of you.  But here's where we should really be paying attention:

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones. And unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth. 

 We're going to war, folks.  A massively expanded military and mindset to "eradicate" terrorism absolutely means we're going to be in shooting wars all over the globe with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of troops.

That passage above was followed by this one:

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

Dissent in the Trump regime will not be tolerated. Only total allegiance will do. And those who bring up race or creed or sexual orientation? There's no room for you, only patriotism.  You are a patriot, right citizen?

Folks, Trump has been saying this for months now.  And now he is backed up by the total control of our government, law enforcement, and military.

You should be very, very frightened.  We now live in a authoritarian regime. This speech was written by a white nationalist warmonger tyrant, and it was given by one too.

Be ready to resist any way that you can.

Last Call For Bernie Does Sacramento

Looks like the Bernie Bros are putting their votes where their mouths are: The Our Revolution gang has taken over the California Democratic Party and looks to leverage control of the largest state party in the country to affect national Democratic priorities.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) turned out en masse at ordinarily sleepy party caucuses earlier this month, electing a slate of delegates who could be poised to take over the largest Democratic Party organization outside of Washington, D.C. 

As final vote totals trickled in, Sanders backers claimed to have elected more than 650 delegates out of 1,120 available seats chosen at this month’s caucuses. Those delegates will choose the next state Democratic Party chairman, along with other party officials. 

Sanders supporters say they hope to change the very nature of the Democratic Party. 

“One of the issues we’re looking to do is transform the party,” said Shannon Jackson, executive director of Our Revolution, the organization that grew out of the Sanders’s presidential campaign. “This is the first step in that process.”

Our Revolution ran an on-the-ground get-out-the-vote effort, to make sure supporters attended caucuses in each of the state’s 80 assembly districts. The group sent out more than 100,000 emails and delivered 40,000 text messages, Jackson told The Hill. More than 800 Sanders supporters signed up to run for delegate seats. 

Longtime Democratic activists, used to low-turnout caucuses in which only party regulars show up, were stunned by the long lines they faced this year. One party strategist in Sacramento said he waited 45 minutes in line before being able to vote, when he was used to walking in and out in the space of five minutes. 

The surge in turnout, and Sanders backers’ success, caught the attention of elected leaders in Sacramento. 

“There’s a lot of energy in the party right now. We need to move really quickly to harness this energy,” state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D) said in an interview, marveling at the turnout in his Los Angeles-area district.

I don't always agree with Sanders guys (to put it mildly) but credit is given where credit is due, all the times I've said "Well then get off your asses and do something to change things if you don't like the party rules" to these guys, well they did exactly that in California.

Getting involved in the local and state party level?  That's precisely what we need a hell of a lot more of and in all 50 states too.  Maybe this is the start of getting the Democratic party turned around.

I'm also very glad to see the Sanders folks finally realize that working from within the Democratic party rather than against it is the far more effective path to long-term victory.  If these are the activists ready to get involved and start filling local and state candidate slates rather than abandoning them to the GOP, then you know what?  That's how representative democracy works, guys.

More power to 'em.  They were told put up or shut up, and they put in the work and got involved.  We need more of that.  A lot more.

And not just in California.  This is a good place to start, however.

The Big Orange Basement

It's only now that the prospect of "President Trump" is sinking in with his supporters and that he won't serve as any sort of check on unlimited GOP lunacy, with Americans only growing more and more horrified at him over the last two months.  As such, he'll be entering office Friday with the lowest starting approval rating of any president in recent history.

It has been 10 weeks since Donald Trump was elected president, and more Americans disapprove (48 percent) than approve (37 percent) of the way he has handled his presidential transition. They are split on his cabinet picks. Views divide heavily along party lines.

Just days before his inauguration, Donald Trump’s favorable rating (32 percent) is the lowest of any president-elect in CBS News polling going back to Ronald Reagan in 1981, when CBS News began taking this measure.

However, a majority of Americans are at least somewhat confident in how Mr. Trump will handle the economy, ISIS and U.S. trade policy. Fewer are confident in his decisions on foreign policy and illegal immigration.

President-elect Trump gets more negative than positive marks for the handling of his Presidential transition. Forty-eight percent disapprove of the job he is doing, while 37 percent approve.

Confirmation hearings for some of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments are underway. Americans are divided over Mr. Trump’s choices for his Cabinet, similar to last month.

On both of these matters, views are highly partisan. More than seven in 10 Republicans approve of how Mr. Trump has handled his presidential transition and his cabinet choices. Most Democrats disapprove.

Evaluations of Mr. Trump’s cabinet appointees are more negative than those of his two immediate predecessors: seven in 10 Americans approved of the cabinet appointments of Barack Obama, and six in 10 approved of those appointed by George W. Bush. 

More broadly, Donald Trump will enter the White House with the lowest favorable rating of any president-elect in CBS News polling going back to Ronald Reagan in 1981. Thirty-two percent have a favorable view of Mr. Trump, while 42 percent view him unfavorably. In 2009, 60 percent held a favorable view of Mr. Obama, and just nine percent had an unfavorable view of him. George W. Bush had a 44 percent favorable rating in Jan. 2001, and Bill Clinton had a 45 percent approval rating. Ronald Reagan came into office with a 47 percent approval rating. Still, unfavorable views of Mr. Trump have declined since he was elected in November.

Trump is already in the low 30's and I think it's going to get worse for him from here.  Unfortunately, it also means things are going to get a lot worse for Americans too.

Still, expect Republicans to shout MANDATE while ripping the last 80 years of classic federal liberalism apart.  It's really too bad that the GOP will do unprecedented damage to the country and the wealthy will loot the treasury completely before voters will be able to do much of anything to stop them.

If we, you know, still have elections.

Enemies Of The State

The Trump regime (let's get rid of the term "administration" right now, this is an authoritarian regime, plain and simple) is now openly threatening the Office of Government Ethics. Because who's going to stop them?

Reince Priebus, chief of staff to President-elect Donald Trump, issued a stern warning to the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Sunday.

Walter Shaub Jr., who heads the ethics office, has been sounding the alarm about Trump’s decision to turn the management of his business over to his sons instead of setting up a blind trust.

“I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be president of the United States of America,” Shaub said in a speech last week.

On Sunday, Priebus suggested that Shaub should “be careful” about criticizing Trump.

“The head of the government ethics ought to be careful because that person is becoming extremely political,” Priebus said, adding that Shaub “may have publicly supported Hillary Clinton.”

“And [Shaub] is calling out the president (sic) with information on Twitter about our detangling of the business over a month ago,” he continued. “So I’m not so sure what kind of standing he has anymore in giving these opinions.”

How long before the Trump regime tries to get rid of Shaub for being "partisan"?  How long before Republicans in Congress legislate themselves the power to remove Shaub or dissolve the office completely?  Trump will sign something like that, for sure.  How long do you think Senate Democrats will be able to hold out?

Fascism comes in a thousand small steps towards consolidating power.

The Story Of Lewis And Bark

Donald Trump is a walking orange chancre and I dislike him immensely.  

That was my opinion of the man before he made the mistake of going after Rep. John Lewis on Twitter this morning.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday morning returned fire on a top Democrat who said he was not a “legitimate president.”

A day after Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Trump was not legitimate, the president-elect told him to worry about his own district instead.

“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets.

What set off the Tantrum Of The United States this time?  The fact that Rep. Lewis came out of the Comey briefing Friday with a very dim view of the President-elect.

Lewis on Friday told NBC News he wouldn’t attend next week’s inauguration, saying he doesn’t believe Trump is a "legitimate president."

"I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It will be hard. It's going to be very difficult. I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis said.

“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” he added.

“I don't plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I miss since I’ve been in Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.”

Trump's assumption that Georgia's 5th Congressional district is "in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)" because all black Congressmen from urban districts are from the goddamn ghetto to this piece of human excrement is classic racism, and this man is going to be President in a week.

Let that sink in.  By the way, GA-5, which includes Atlanta and some surrounding areas?  According to the US Census Bureau, it's a majority black district with a median income of $48,000 and a mean income of $73,200 or so, with 40% of the district having a bachelor's or higher and 88% having a high school diploma.  That actually makes it one of the highest-educated districts in the nation, and it should, with multiple colleges and universities like Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State, Morehouse and Spelman.

It's not falling apart, unless by that Trump means "The Atlanta Falcons".  They're having a bad year.

You know, like Trump is about to.

Last Call For The Colors Of Money

I'm pretty sure Trump's more...confederate...supporters are going to have a mild stroke when this happens later this spring.

For the first time in American history, Lady Liberty will be portrayed as a woman of color on United States currency.

In celebration of the U.S. Mint and Treasury's 225th anniversary, the new $100 coin was unveiled on Thursday featuring Lady Liberty as an African-American woman.

Since the passage of the Coinage Act in 1792, all coins are required to feature an "impression emblematic of liberty," in either words or images. Until the new coin designed by Justin Kunz was unveiled, Lady Liberty had always been depicted as a white woman.

Treasury & Mint officials unveiled the 2017 American Liberty High Relief Gold Coin! https://t.co/HkfcPN5Enq #USMint225 @USTreasury pic.twitter.com/0ShGHPn5oF

— United States Mint (@usmint) January 12, 2017

I think I'm going to take up the fine art of numismatics later this year.

"As we as a nation continue to evolve, so does liberty's representation," said Elisa Basnight, U.S. Mint chief of staff, at a ceremony unveiling the new coin. "We live in a nation that affords us the opportunity to dream big and try to accomplish the seemingly impossible."

The new 24-karat gold coin, which is set to be released in April and is meant primarily for collectors, is one of a series of new, diverse commemorative coins the Mint will unveil in the coming years. Future depictions of Lady Liberty, according to the Mint, will also feature designs to represent Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Indian Americans, and others "to reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States."

And I think I'm going to make it a yearly thing at that.

The Donald Does Not Like Questions

His Imperial Orangeness would like you to know that media critical of the Trump administration will not be tolerated in any way.

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday would not let a reporter from CNN ask him a question during a press conference, saying that he worked for a “fake news” company.

The contentious exchange happened after Trump trashed a report CNN published Tuesday that said the U.S. intelligence community had presented him with allegations that the Russian government had compromising, but unverified, information about him.

“Could you give us a chance, you're attacking our news organization, can you give us a chance to ask a question, sir?” CNN's Jim Acosta asked him.

“Don’t be rude. I’m not going to give you a question,” Trump responded. “You are fake news.”

After the news conference, Acosta said on air that Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, told him that “if I were to do that again, I was going to be thrown out of this press conference.”

What happens when Trump has the power of the state to not just throw journalists out his press conferences, but to start jailing them at will?

Might be something CNN wants to start asking. Heck, he almost covered up the real story at his presser: that he still refuses to release his tax returns, and refuses to resolve his painfully obvious conflicts of interest.  Greg Sargent:

We appear to be entering into truly uncharted territory. The vast extent of Trump’s global holdings, combined with their opacity, create both a level of potential for conflicts, and an inability for us to track those conflicts, that render all efforts to predict the consequences utterly hopeless.

It is hard to say what will happen now. The role of the press in trying to keep track of those conflicts will be crucial. But on that front, too, what we saw at today’s presser was cause for alarm. Trump tore into CNN as “fake news” for publishing a careful if provocative and envelope-pushing story on unverified claims that Russian intelligence gathered compromising information on him. Trump ferociously attacked Buzzfeed for publishing a dossier of those claims, pointedly noting that Buzzfeed would “suffer the consequences.”

That would be worrisome enough on its own. But combine it with Trump’s unprecedented dishonesty and his refusal to revise his claims when they are widely called out as false, and it all starts to smack of an effort to stamp out the very possibility of shared agreement on the legitimate institutional role of the news media or even on reality itself. It’s easy to imagine that, if and when a news organization uncover potential conflicts, Trump will simply deny the reality of what’s been uncovered (“fake news”) and begin threatening “consequences” towards that organization.

One thing that remains clear: Congressional Republicans are not going to step up and try to mitigate this situation. Republicans are not going to take any of the steps they could be taking to try to prod Trump into showing more transparency about his holdings, which would make conflicts and corruption less likely. It’s hard to see that changing, unless, perhaps, intensified media scrutiny shakes loose enough scandalous stories to make the lack of congressional action untenable. That will also require public pressure — of the sort that forced Republicans to reverse recently on their plan to gut an independent ethics oversight office, but probably a lot more.

Right now, serious pessimism appears to be a reasonable default setting. I could be entirely wrong about this — maybe Trump really will surprise us. If not, our institutions are going to be tested in unforeseen ways, and it will be on us — through vigilance, organizing, and political action — to make sure they are up to the task.

We're a week and change away from the most terrifying administration in recent history, and odds are very good that things will begin to disintegrate in America very quickly.

The Obama Machine Revs Up

President Obama will not be going quietly into that good night, no matter how many folks on the right (and left) wish he would just disappear and quietly take up painting like Dubya did.  The Obama campaign infrastructure is evolving into a network to train the new Democratic party leaders of tomorrow, and their first order of business is to get the ball rolling for 2018 and beyond.

Already, former aides are revamping Organizing for Action, the group formed out of his old campaign structure. No longer about backing up Obama’s agenda in the White House, it will be a nexus for training activists and candidate recruitment, reshaped both by Trump’s win and some of the factors that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss. 

Though OFA has been mostly quiet over the last two months and made no formal announcements, its Chicago headquarters has been filling up with new hires, including several old campaign aides, who are planning to focus on the mechanics of campaigns, from running Obama-style persuasion programs, integrating data and running paid canvassing operations. Though the first goal is designing the program for what they’ll aim to make hundreds of workshops nationwide, there’s already talk moving toward endorsing candidates. 

And Obama has identified a few issues that would draw him out directly: a Muslim ban, though he still considers the chances of that remote, or moves that would cut back on the protections he put in place for the children, known as “dreamers,” who were brought to the country illegally as minors and who’ve been living here since. 

“If he deports thousands of kids,” Obama has said several times in private meetings of late, according to people present, “I don’t know that I can sit on the sidelines.” 

Also potentially on the list: a move by Trump to unravel the Iran deal or the Paris climate accord, or the shape of an Obamacare repeal and replacement. 

“If things rise to the level where it’s a statement of who we are as a people and as a country, things that are important to him, then depending on the circumstances he will engage and he will talk,” said one of the people familiar with thinking about the post-presidency. “But this is now the moment where the next generation of Democratic or progressive leaders steps up and engages in the political fight, however defined and broadened.”

This is absolutely the right move here by President Obama and the Democrats.  Rather than crawl home and lick their wounds, or worse, approving Trump's agenda through "bipartisan cooperation", he's standing up to organize and to fight back.

I'd love to see workshops here in Northern Kentucky.  Democrats have gotten pummeled here, and it would be excellent to have some organizing resources to turn to.  Matt Bevin is expected to today wipe out the Bluegrass State's long union tradition with a few strokes of his pen.  Sign me up to start fighting back.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump continues to be petty and vindictive, using the presidency to settle scores...or at least the transition period to do so.

Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation. 

Twitter is one of the few major U.S. tech companies not represented at Wednesday afternoon's Trump Tower meeting attended by, among others, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Tesla's Elon Musk — an omission all the more striking because of Trump's heavy dependence on the Twitter platform. With some 17.3 million followers of his account, the president-elect has made Twitter into the de facto press channel of his transition operation.

Trump has had public beefs with other tech execs at the sit-down. He's criticized Cook over Apple's refusal to decrypt a cellphone whose owner was implicated in a terrorist incident, for example, and Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post. But, it seems, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's role in what the Trump operation saw as the breaching of a deal was a step too far for those close to Trump. 

The incident at issue was detailed in a Medium post last month by Gary Coby, director of digital advertising and fundraising for the Trump campaign. According to Coby, Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying — as part of a $5 million deal between the social media company and the campaign — an emoji showing, in various renderings, small bags of money being given away or stolen. That emoji would have been offered to users as a replacement for the hashtag #CrookedHillary, a preferred Trump insult for his Democratic opponent.

The message to tech companies is clear: do what Trump wants, or else the power of the government will be used against you. Twitter wouldn't take money as a social media platform to officially insult Trump's opponent, so now it will be locked out of White House access.

Actually, that message is to everyone on the planet.  Better play Trump's game, because it's the only game in town, losers.  You have no choice...

...or you could resist.

You Get My Trump TV Whether You Want It Or Not

Looks like the GOP is going to Trump his broadcast propaganda arm after all, and we'll get to pay taxpayer dollars for it. Because why should Vladimir Putin have all the fun with state-run news agencies?

FOR YEARS, members of Congress have fumed about what they regard as ineffective U.S. public diplomacy, including the failure of broadcasting operations such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to match the reach and apparent influence of networks such as Russia’s RT and Qatar’s al Jazeera. A frequent and arguably fair focus of criticism has been the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the body created to supervise government-funded media outlets while serving as a firewall between them and the political administration of the day. 

A radical change to that system is now coming — and it looks like one that Vladi­mir Putin and Qatar’s emir might well admire. An amendment quietly inserted into the annual National Defense Authorization Act by Republican House leaders would abolish the broadcasting board and place VOA, RFE/RL and other international news and information operations under the direct control of a chief executive appointed by the president. The new executive would hire and fire senior media personnel and manage their budgets.

With a confirming vote by the GOP-controlled Senate, President-elect Donald Trump will be able to install the editor of Breitbart News or another propagandist of his choice to direct how the United States is presented to the world by VOA, or how Russia is covered by RL. If Congress’s intention was for U.S. broadcasting to rival the Kremlin’s, it may well get its wish. 

You'd better believe that days of oversight of Voice of America and Radio Liberty are done with. They are now straight propaganda arms of the White House: Trump's White House.

How long before these outlets have "exclusive access to the President"?

Obstruction Construction

As Politico's Michael Grunwald points out in this article, in 2008 Democrats had control of the federal government and a majority of states, and the GOP tactic of obstructing President Obama's agenda at every turn not only succeeded, but voters across the country rewarded Republicans for it with total control of the federal government and a majority of the states eight years later.

This strategy of kicking the hell out of Obama all the time, treating him not just as a president from the opposing party but an extreme threat to the American way of life, has been a remarkable political success. It helped Republicans take back the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016. This no-cooperation, no-apologies approach is also on the verge of delivering a conservative majority on the Supreme Court; Republicans violated all kinds of Washington norms when they refused to even pretend to consider any Obama nominee, but they paid no electoral price for it—and probably helped persuade some reluctant Republican voters to back Donald Trump in November by keeping the Court in the balance.

So the party’s anti-Obama strategy has ended up working almost exactly as planned, except that none of the Republican elites who devised it, not even Vice President-elect Pence, envisioned that their new leader would rise to power by attacking Republican elites as well as the Democratic president. President-elect Trump was really the ultimate anti-Obama, not only channeling but embodying their anti-Obama playbook so convincingly that he managed to seize the Republican Party from loyal Republicans. And in the process, he has empowered an angry slice of the GOP base that has even some GOP incumbents worried about the forces they helped unleash.

Still, for the most part, obstructionism worked. Americans always tell pollsters they want politicians to work together, but as Washington Democrats decide how to approach the Trump era from the minority, they will be keenly aware that the Republican Party’s decision to throw sand in the gears of government throughout the Obama era helped the Republican Party wrest unified control of that government—even though the party establishment lost control of the party in the process. Unprecedented intransigence has yielded unprecedented results.

Opposition parties always oppose, especially in a country as polarized as America. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton, and Democratic fury at George W. Bush helped pave the way for Obama. What has distinguished the opposition to Obama is not just the intensity—a GOP congressman shouting “You lie!” during a presidential address, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s admission that his top priority was limiting Obama to one term—but the consistency. Before Obama even took office, when official Washington was counseling cooperation and moderation for a party that seemed to be on a path to oblivion, Cantor and McConnell laid out their strategies of all-out opposition at private GOP meetings. And on just about every issue, from Obamacare to climate to education reforms that conservatives supported until Obama embraced them, Republicans have embraced that strategy.

Washington Republicans took plenty of abuse over their “Party of No” approach, especially when they flouted Washington traditions by threatening to force the government into default, or actually shutting the government down. Their approval ratings drooped to levels associated with crime lords, journalists and Nickelback. They endured plenty of setbacks, as Obama managed to enact much of his agenda over their dissent, won a comfortable reelection, and now enjoys the highest approval ratings of his tenure. But they can now claim victory, even though their maximalist no-compromise approach helped launch the anti-establishment GOP insurgency that cost Cantor his seat in a primary—he was accused of failing to fight Obama hard enough—and ultimately propelled Trump to the nomination over their preferred candidates.

No wonder then that Democrats in the Senate are starting to realize that the new game in town that needs to be played, starting with as much blanket opposition to Trump's cabinet picks as they can, and as often as possible.

Multiple Democratic senators told POLITICO in interviews last week that after watching Republicans sit on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, they’re in no mood to fast-track Trump’s selections.

But it’s not just about exacting revenge.

Democrats argue that some of the president-elect’s more controversial Cabinet picks — such as Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary — demand a thorough public airing.

“They’ve been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice. We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified?” fumed Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs.”

Senate Democrats can’t block Trump’s appointments, which in all but one case need only 51 votes for confirmation. But they can turn the confirmation process into a slog.

Any individual senator can force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold procedural votes on nominees. Senior Democrats said a series of such votes are likely for many of Trump’s picks.

Good.  Make it take months to get these cabinet picks filled, if not longer.  Of course, it remains to be seen if Democrats can play the game as well as the GOP did when they were in the minority (and so far it's been a dismal failure in the House and Senate over the last two years of GOP rule.)

Still, it's the only real shot they have, and at least somebody's willing to go on record to say they are going to start fighting.

New tag: The Resistance.

Last Call For McCrory's Nemesis

Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling takes a look at why NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory lost his bid for re-election, finally conceding yesterday to Democratic state AG Roy Cooper.  PPP is based in NC, and Jensen notes a lot of credit for McCrory's defeat needs to be given to the Moral Monday movement in the state.

McCrory really could claim somewhat of a mandate when he was elected. He won by 12 points in 2012 even as Mitt Romney carried the state by only 2 points, and our polling found him winning independent voters 2:1 and winning about 25% of Democrats. He was seen as being a different kind of Republican, and he got significant crossover support because of that.

But despite going into office with all that popularity and goodwill, he had a negative approval rating by July of 2013, just 8 months after his triumphant election. And he stayed with a negative approval rating every single month until this October in our polling- 39 months in a row of an under water approval rating. Only positive reactions to his handling of Hurricane Matthew got him back in positive territory at the very end, but in the end hostility towards his tenure as Governor was deeply ingrained enough in voters that it only allowed him to lose by a smaller margin than he would have if not for the Hurricane.

What happened in the summer of 2013 to make McCrory so permanently unpopular? He allowed himself to be associated with a bunch of unpopular legislation, and progressives hit back HARD, in a way that really caught voters' attention and resonated with them.

And that's where Moral Mondays came in, constantly protesting against the NC GOP's agenda in a visible and effective manner.

McCrory spearheaded or went along with all of this. And he might have gotten away with it without much impact on his image. Most voters don't pay close attention to state government.

But the Moral Monday movement pushed back hard. Its constant visibility forced all of these issues to stay in the headlines. Its efforts ensured that voters in the state were educated about what was going on in Raleigh, and as voters became aware of what was going on, they got mad. All those people who had seen McCrory as a moderate, as a different kind of Republican, had those views quickly changed. By July McCrory had a negative approval rating- 40% of voters approving of him to 49% who disapproved. By September it was all the way down to 35/53, and he never did fully recover from the damage the rest of his term.

Moral Mondays became a very rare thing- a popular protest movement. In August 2013 we found 49% of voters had a favorable opinion of the protesters to only 35% with an unfavorable opinion of them. And their message was resonating- 50% of voters in the state felt state government was causing North Carolina national embarrassment to only 34% who disagreed with that notion.

The lesson for the Trump era, according to Jensen (and it's a good one):

Pushing back hard on McCrory worked. The seeds of his final defeat today were very much planted in the summer of 2013. And it's a lesson for progressives in dealing with Trump. Push back hard from day one. Be visible. Capture the public's attention, no matter what you have to do to do it. Don't count on the media to do it itself because the media will let you down. The protesters in North Carolina, by making news in their own right week after week after week, forced sustained coverage of what was going on in Raleigh. And even though it was certainly a long game, with plenty more frustration in between, those efforts led to change at the polls 42 months after they really started.

A national version of the Moral Monday movement is what we need to help push back against Trump. North Carolina's progressives showed us the way.