Re: Ted Rall Subscription Service (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

I could easily imagine Matt Taibbi making this argument.  Of course, I
have my doubts, but it is folly to ever doubt Ted...

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 07:53:28 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > From: Ted<http://www.send.mailchimpapp.com/~tedrall.aol.com>
 >  > Date: Tue,  8 Oct 2019 14:27:54 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > The Ted Rall Subscription Service
 >  > Thank you for supporting independent political commentary
 >  > Here is this week's column. Thanks for subscribing to the Ted Rall 
 >  > Subscription Service.
 >  > 
 >  > Some Republicans see the Ukraine/Biden impeachment inquiry as a deep-state 
 >  > coup attempt against President Trump (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 31cb9070a3&e=c3adcc1cdb) . Some progressives are beginning to scratch the 
 >  > surface of an alternative, but equally cynical, analysis that I think 
 >  > leftists ought to consider:
 >  > The impeachment of Donald Trump is a DNC/centrist coup attempt against 
 >  > progressives inside the Democratic Party.
 >  > Democrats could have launched impeachment proceedings over any number of 
 >  > more compelling issues: Trump’s child separation policy (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 6d268abec4&e=c3adcc1cdb) at the border, the Muslim travel ban (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 823e13d233&e=c3adcc1cdb) , emoluments (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 73f5e26f79&e=c3adcc1cdb) , the president’s erratic behavior on social 
 >  > media (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 53ed773305&e=c3adcc1cdb) . Why the Ukraine/Biden affair?
 >  > The House inquiry is hardly ideal from a framing perspective. The only 
 >  > conceivable reason that the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma hired Vice 
 >  > President Biden’s screw-up (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > cfa197b92a&e=c3adcc1cdb) drug addict (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 5626eda210&e=c3adcc1cdb) alcoholic (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 85a64caccf&e=c3adcc1cdb) son, with zero experience in the energy sector, to 
 >  > sit on its board of directors for $50,000 a month was that he was the vice 
 >  > president’s son. Vox notes (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > f12287907c&e=c3adcc1cdb) that “the situation constituted the kind of 
 >  > conflict of interest that was normally considered inappropriate in 
 >  > Washington.” Pre-impeachment, no one knew about this sleaze.
 >  > Knowing that his worthless son was working a no-show “job” there for a 
 >  > company brazenly trying to buy his influence, Vice President Biden ought to 
 >  > have been the last Obama Administration official to call the president of 
 >  > Ukraine about anything. Democratic leaders, corporatists to a man and firmly 
 >  > on team Biden, nonetheless are aware that their impeachment inquiry risks 
 >  > exposing their preferred candidate to the kind of scrutiny that can lose an 
 >  > election.
 >  > Biden apologists like the New York Times’ resident conservative columnist 
 >  > Ross Douthat are furiously spinning the argument that Americans should 
 >  > ignore Biden’s corruption to focus on Trump’s worse corruption. “
 >  > Hypocrisy is better than naked vice, soft corruption is better than the more 
 >  > open sort, and what the president appears to have done in leaning on the 
 >  > Ukrainian government is much worse than Hunter Biden’s overseas 
 >  > arrangements,” argues (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 6a90a4bd31&e=c3adcc1cdb) the Dout. But impeachment is a political, not a 
 >  > legal (or legalistic) process. We knew what Trump was when we elected him; 
 >  > this point goes to the president.
 >  > So why go after Trump over Ukraine/Biden and not, say, the fact that he’s 
 >  > nuts?
 >  > Risks aside, the Democrats’ Ukraine investigation transforms—not 
 >  > successfully, I think, but anyway, it tries—to rescue Biden’s flagging 
 >  > campaign (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > ba0b5f1bdf&e=c3adcc1cdb) by transforming him into a victim. Liberals love 
 >  > victim narratives.
 >  > And now the crux: Elizabeth Warren. When Nancy Pelosi announced the 
 >  > impeachment inquiry, the self-styled progressive from Ma was 
 >  > rising in the polls so fast (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 4f5c2df8dc&e=c3adcc1cdb) that many analysts, me included, believed that she 
 >  > had become the most likely nominee. I still do. That goes double following 
 >  > Bernie Sanders’ heart attack (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 756a372339&e=c3adcc1cdb) , which fuels concerns about his age.
 >  > As impeachment proceedings do, the current effort to sanction Trump—
 >  > remember, odds of getting 67 senators to vote to remove him from office are 
 >  > exceedingly long—will dominate news coverage as long as they go on. It’s 
 >  > going to be impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, 24-7.
 >  > The drone of impeachment will eclipse Warren’s remarkably disciplined (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > ca2c2e9c0c&e=c3adcc1cdb) campaign. She has a plan for everything (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 542171be5b&e=c3adcc1cdb) but the media won’t cover them. Warren trails 
 >  > Biden on name recognition; how will voters get to know her? I’d be 
 >  > spitting bullets if I were her campaign manager.
 >  > As I’ve written for The Wall Street Journal (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > d5309c1819&e=c3adcc1cdb) , progressive ideas are dominating the current 
 >  > presidential campaign cycle on the Democratic side. Most of the top 
 >  > candidates have endorsed Bernie Sanders’ key 2016 promises: free college, 
 >  > Medicare for All, $15 minimum wage. Nearly three out of four Democratic 
 >  > voters self-identify as progressives.
 >  > Bernie lost the Battle of 2016 to Hillary Clinton but he won the war. 
 >  > Corporatists still control the DNC but the vast majority of Democrats lean 
 >  > left. Before Biden entered the 2020 campaign it seemed clear that four 
 >  > decades of Third Way/Democratic Leadership Council/New Democrats/Clintonite 
 >  > rule of the party was coming to an end. A progressive, either Sanders or 
 >  > Warren, would almost certainly be the nominee.
 >  > Biden’s campaign is about one thing: blocking progressives.
 >  > Samuel Moyn, interviewed (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > ac8d9e5c81&e=c3adcc1cdb) in Jacobin, sort of gets it. “[Democratic 
 >  > Congressman] Adam Schiff (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > e64859789b&e=c3adcc1cdb) and many others are not concerned about saving the 
 >  > Democratic Party from its historical errors, including its own disaster in 
 >  > 2016,” Moyn says. “If impeachment becomes a distraction from that much 
 >  > more pressing campaign to save the Democratic Party for the Left, then it 
 >  > will have been a disaster.”
 >  > What better way for moderates to recapture control of the Democratic party 
 >  > than by impeaching Donald Trump? The impeachment brigade has progressive 
 >  > allies like AOC’s “squad.” But the pro-impeachment Democrats who are 
 >  > getting airtime on MSNBC (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > d06d454d4b&e=c3adcc1cdb) , unofficial broadcast organ of the Democratic 
 >  > Party, are the centrist/DNC “national security Democrats (
 >  > https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=
 >  > 9c1e24a711&e=c3adcc1cdb) .” (Note the new/old branding. Scoop Jackson, 
 >  > call your office.)
 >  > Impeaching Trump may not be a fiendishly clever conspiracy to recapture the 
 >  > Democratic Party from the left. It may simply work out that way—dumb luck 
 >  > for dumb corporatists. Regardless, pro-impeachment progressives are dupes.
 >  > Why impeach Trump when it seems so unlikely to result in his removal from 
 >  > office? Why risk energizing and further unifying the Republican Party?
 >  > As their backing of Hillary over the more popular Bernie in 2016 showed, the 
 >  > old DLC cabal is more interested in getting rid of the progressives in their 
 >  > own party than in defeating Donald Trump. Impeachment may not nominate, much 
 >  > less elect, Joe Biden. But it just might neutralize Elizabeth Warren.