Friday Talking Points (485) -- "If You Change Your Mind..."

[ChrisWeigant]

We've always been planning a meeting with Eastasia. What's that? Oh, wait... we've never been planning a meeting with Eastasia. Any suggestion of such a meeting has been tossed down the memory hole -- along with the commemorative coins we prematurely minted to celebrate it.

If ever there was a week to begin with a Nineteen Eighty-Four metaphor, this was the week. President Donald Trump, reportedly fearful that Kim Jong Un was on the brink of pulling out of the proposed Singapore summit meeting, decided to pre-emptively pull out of the meeting himself. It had all the flavor of a teenage girl insisting: "You can't break up with me -- I'm breaking up with you!"

Think that's hyperbole? You decide. Trump's letter to Kim was three paragraphs long. The first was full of bluster, and ended with Trump (once again) bragging about how big America's nuclear weapons stockpile is. This was immediately followed by what can only be characterized as wistful regrets:

I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters. Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.

Oh, and we're no longer going to prom together, and I will be returning your letter jacket and class ring. Unless, you know, you still want to be my boyfriend... or something. Let me know... please.

However, unlike a jilted prom date, this move has already had serious repercussions, none of them particularly good for Trump or America. North Korea has scored a propaganda victory, since they now seems like the reasonable ones on the world stage. Kim Jong Un made concession after concession, and all Team Trump could do was talk about Libya. As a result of this, both China and South Korea now view Trump with much more suspicion, and are likely to move diplomatically away from America as a result. South Korea in particular was blindsided by the announcement, since Trump didn't want to tell their leader (whom he had just personally met with at the White House) in advance, for fear that the news would leak. So much for building trust, eh? A South Korean spokesman had said, earlier in the week, that there was a "99.9 percent chance" that the summit was going to happen, which was completely undercut by Trump's surprise announcement. Looks like the 0.1 percent won out, in the end.

Both South Korea and China are also now reportedly losing their appetite for Trump's "maximum pressure" sanctions on the North Koreans. If China backs away from sanctions then they will mean a whole lot less to North Korea, to put it mildly. Meaning North Korea will have even less inclination to deal than they did before Trump decided to pull the plug.

In a related story, Europe and Iran are now negotiating on how to possibly sideline America completely and avoid U.S. sanctions from destroying the nuclear agreement. Because when Trump said "America First!" what he apparently meant was "America Alone!" -- receding from leadership in the world's eyes on almost a daily basis. That's certainly the way it is playing out, at any rate.

There were two items of note from Congress this week, as the Senate finally passed a much-needed update to the rules governing sexual harassment within the Capitol. No longer will victims have to wait a ridiculous 30 days (a "waiting period" ) before making an accusation, and more importantly no longer will taxpayer money be used to pay off sexual harassment victims. Still, the Senate version didn't go as far as the version the House passed months ago, but there's still a conference committee to hammer out the details yet to happen, so perhaps the Senate version can be improved. This is a change that is long overdue, and there was even a question whether the Senate would take the issue up at all before the midterms, so their action this week was a welcome surprise.

Over in the House, the moderate Republican revolt is growing against Paul Ryan on immigration. Last week, the Tea Partiers flexed their legislative muscles by killing Ryan's pet farm bill because they wanted a Draconian immigration bill voted on. The moderates, however, want a bipartisan solution Democrats can support, complete with a pathway to citizenship for the DREAMer/DACA kids -- and no funding for Trump's wall.

A discharge petition has been filed, and it needs 218 signatures to force Paul Ryan to bring such a bill up on the floor for a vote. Currently, this petition has 213 signatures, and only needs five more. Almost two dozen Republicans have signed on, together with almost all the Democrats -- although three Democrats from the border region in Texas are still holding out their support. Still, this is a rare and extraordinary bipartisan move to force Ryan to break the "Child Molester's Rule" (formerly known as the Hastert Rule) by bringing up legislation that doesn't have the support of a majority of the majority. Five more signatures are needed to pull this off, and there are still moderate Republicans who haven't signed on yet, but ultimately might. So that's something to keep an eye on. If Ryan's hand is forced, it would be a huge embarrassment for him, to put it mildly.

OK, we have to admit that we're not even going to attempt to cover all of the past two weeks (there was no Friday Talking Points column last week, sorry) of political news here, because of the sheer volume (as always, in the age of Trump). But there is one issue that is worth mentioning, which is happening entirely outside of American politics.

Today, the Republic of Ireland is voting whether to "Repeal The Eighth" amendment to their constitution. This, if successful, would legalize abortion in the country for the first time since the amendment was initially passed in the 1980s. Ireland is one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, but in recent years it has been swiftly moving from being nothing short of a theocracy to becoming a much more progressive state. Ireland, astonishingly, became the first country in the entire world to legalize gay marriage through a direct voter referendum, not too long ago. Today, the exit polls seem to point to a big victory for legalizing abortion (although the official results won't be known until tomorrow). #RepealThe8th!





Before we get to the main award, a quick Honorable Mention goes to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for issuing a new policy to his police department to stop arresting people for smoking marijuana on the street. Instead, cops will now just issue a summons (much like a traffic ticket is issued). From the article, an eye-opening fact: "About 17,880 people were arrested in the city last year for low-level marijuana possession, including smoking in public. A startling 86 percent of those arrested were people of color."

OK, with that out of the way, let's move on to the main event.

The Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week hails from Georgia. Stacey Abrams won a decisive primary victory in the state's gubernatorial race this week, easily defeating her opponent in what had been billed as a close race not too long ago. Abrams was the more progressive of the two, and if she wins in November, she will become the first African-American woman to win a governor's office in all of American history, so that's something to look forward to.

Of course, she's still got a pretty steep hill to climb. Georgia is a deep red state, although there are signs that it's beginning to turn at least a little bit purple. Abrams, as we wrote earlier in the week, has been spearheading a monumental effort to register African-Americans who have recently moved into the state, and these efforts seem to be paying off -- turnout on the Democratic side in the primary was up 50 percent from four years ago. That's a pretty stark improvement. And, as Alabama showed us all (in the defeat of Roy Moore), when African-American women voters get energized, they can indeed be the deciding factor in a close race even in the deep South.

This will be one of the marquee races this fall. So far, Abrams has a leg up on the competition, since the top two Republican candidates have to spend the next month attacking each other in advance of a runoff election. Abrams won such a decisive victory that she faces no runoff, freeing her up to begin her general election campaign.

We have no idea what her chances of victory will be in November, but we have to say she has the best chance of any Democrat trying to win a statewide office in Georgia in quite some time. For now, her easy victory on Tuesday night wins her the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.


{We have a blanket policy of not linking to candidates' websites, so you'll have to look up Stacey Abrams's contact information on your own, if you'd like to congratulate her.}





Sooner or later, we just knew that Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez was going to disappoint us. This week, he did.

Up until now, the D.N.C. had tried to stay out of primary battles, unlike the House committee charged with electing House Democrats (the D.C.C.C.). Perez previously swore the D.N.C. would stay neutral in such fights:

After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee published opposition research on Laura Moser, a candidate in Texas's 7th congressional district, Perez said that his committee would stay neutral.

"What we do at the D.N.C. is we don't get involved in heavily contested primaries, and the D.C.C.C. does," Perez said in March on CNN.

The D.N.C. chairman stuck to that line for months, telling reporters at a May meeting of the D.N.C.'s rules committee that the party would stay "studiously neutral" in primaries.

This Wednesday, Keith Ellison, who lost the race to Perez for D.N.C. chair, and has been serving as a Perez deputy since then, reiterated this stance in an interview with Democracy Now: "The Democratic Party should stay out of all primaries {and} let the voters decide."

Less than 24 hours later, Perez surprised everyone (and completely blindsided Ellison) by walking on stage at the New York Democratic state convention to announce he was endorsing Governor Andrew Cuomo over challenger Cynthia Nixon:

Perez's speech, coming two weeks before a key D.N.C. committee meets to finalize its 2020 primary rules, has roiled party activists and reopened old wounds. When the Buffalo-born Perez said that Cuomo represented the "accomplishment wing" of the party, he angered Democrats who backed Nixon and worried Democrats who are trying to use the D.N.C. reform process to open up New York's restrictive voter-registration laws.

Cuomo has been far from progressive while in office, although (like a lot of Democrats these days), he is attempting to tack much further left now that he is running for re-election. Progressive ideas which he previously scoffed at, he now says he supports. Nixon has driven him into these positions by her authentically progressive stances, but will he actually support them if re-elected, or will he revert to his much-less-progressive history? Cuomo also picked up the endorsement of Hillary Clinton this week, which just reinforced the doubts of progressives, really.

Perez may have broken D.N.C. rules with his surprise endorsement, but then again he may not have. Either way, he definitely broke his own pledge to stay "studiously neutral" during primary season.

The D.N.C. lost a lot of respect from rank-and-file Democrats in the 2016 election, for very obvious reasons. It has been struggling to regain that respect, with a heavy concentration on "unifying the party." During this period, it has also seen a lot of its funding stream dry up, as Democratic donors have been choosing to donate directly to candidates they like rather than launder their money through the party's national apparatus. Perez was supposed to be working to fix this problem, and staying neutral in the primaries was supposed to be a big part of that.

That's all over now, apparently. With his Cuomo endorsement, Perez has lost any pretense of trying to bring the party back together for the midterms. He is precisely the establishment creature progressives always feared he was. That "accomplishment wing" putdown was especially jarring, hearkening back to Hillary's presidential campaign language.

Tom Perez was trying to build trust in the party's central committee, and bring disaffected progressives back into the fold. All that lies in ruins now. These days, it is pathetically easy to direct donations to individual candidates, thus circumventing the party's bigwigs. And progressives are taking note.

For exposing all that talk of neutrality in the primaries as nothing short of sheer hypocrisy, and for thus destroying all the efforts to regain party unity, Tom Perez is easily our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. In one fell swoop, Perez made all the suspicions the progressives have had about him all along come true. These days, that is a pretty bad week for a Democrat to have.

{Contact Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez via his official D.N.C. page, to let him know what you think of his actions.}




Volume 485 (5/25/18)

The only real thread this week's talking points have is humor. We don't quite know why we're in such a funny mood, but then it's been a ridiculous couple of weeks in politics.

We say "couple of weeks" because of course we failed to write a column last week, due to outside life intervening. Once again, our apologies for the interruption in service.

Again, though, we don't know why when collecting talking points this week we found ourselves not with just a single funny item to save for the end, or even two or three. It seems all this week's talking points have some element of humor about them. In fact, there were so many possibilities, the news that West Hollywood proclaimed "Stormy Daniels Day" and gave her a key to the city didn't even make the cut. So hold onto your hats and let's begin.



Don't mention Libya!

Here's the link, for those unaware.

"Watching the Trump administration's bungling of the North Korean summit preparations was much like watching that old Fawlty Towers episode 'The Germans' -- which most fans know as the 'Don't mention the war!' episode. All Team Trump had to do was keep away from the subject of Muammar Ghaddafi's untimely demise, a few years after he had agreed to quickly and completely get rid of his nuclear weapons program. But first Mike Pompeo and then Vice President Pence apparently just couldn't help themselves, speaking in muddled fashion about following the 'Libya model.' You could almost hear Basil Fawlty in the background screaming: 'Don't mention Libya!' The North Koreans have long held what happened in Libya up as their own model for why nations should never give up their nuclear weapons programs, which anyone with the slightest knowledge of the country would have known. All they had to do was 'don't mention Libya,' but the two of them couldn't help but blurt it out anyway. At least Basil had been hit in the head by a frying pan before he started ranting about the Nazis, but Pence and Pompeo didn't even have that excuse."



Pot, meet kettle

Maybe Melania could help with all the bullying? We're just saying....

"Trump's letter to Kim Jong Un was pretty hilarious, resembling nothing so much as a teenage girl breaking up with the captain of the football team. But one line in particular was so downright laughable, it's hard to believe Trump wrote it. As to why he was backing out of the summit meeting, Trump wrote: 'Sadly based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate....' This is as amusing as his wife trying to champion an online anti-bullying effort, when you get right down to it. I mean, Donald Trump is complaining about 'tremendous anger and open hostility' in a communication? Has he read his own Twitter feed? Trump simply has no leg to stand on, in this regard. Pot, meet kettle."



Remember that time?

Kim Jong Un has won the propaganda war already.

"How did it come to the point that the leader of North Korea looks to the rest of the world like the reasonable actor, and the president of the United States looks like a petulant child? This propaganda victory was complete, when North Korea refused to take Trump's bait and instead issued a very polite statement in response to Trump walking away from the summit in a snit. North Korea can now reasonably claim that it was offering up concession after concession while Trump offered none, and was ready and willing to enter negotiations while Trump took his bat and ball and went home. One comment I read on a Washington Post article stuck with me: Remember that time we had a president who didn't make Kim Jong Un look sane?"



Another Nunes nothingburger

The White House once again assumed the role of the Keystone Kops this week.

"The Trump White House stepped in it once again when it tried to aid and abet Devin Nunes in his quest to reveal the name of a confidential F.B.I. source, against the entire national security apparatus's advice. A meeting was going to be held at the White House where the Justice Department offered up a classified briefing to two fervent GOP Trump supporters in the House. Democrats complained, so at the last minute two meetings were held to brief two groups on exactly the same information. Then, bizarrely, Trump's lawyer showed up to the supposedly-classified meetings. Trump has laughingly labeled this 'spygate' -- only the latest in the long string of conspiracy theories he's been promoting to feed his own paranoia. But, once again, the Nunes meeting turned out to be a big wet firecracker. The meeting fizzled. This was pretty obvious by Nunes's silence immediately afterwards. If the information was anywhere near what Nunes and Trump were insisting it was, they would have now been shouting it from the mountaintops. This shouting has been conspicuous in its absence."



Lie-gate

Democrat Adam Schiff, who attended the second classified briefing, did the best job of summarizing, by coining an all-purpose term in response:

The president said there was wiretapping at Trump Tower. That was false. He said there was an unmasking conspiracy. That was false. He said there were political spies embedded in his campaign. That's false. This isn't "spygate," but it's a form of "lie-gate."

Ryan tries his hand at comedy

That's the only explanation we can think of, personally.

"Paul Ryan spoke this week at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. In his speech, he tried out a few jokes. Or at least that's what it seemed like. Ryan said, and I quote: 'There is a deeply serious problem we see right now within our society. We see moral relativism becoming more and more pervasive in our culture. Identity politics and tribalism have grown on top of this.' Unquote. Seriously -- how did Ryan not burst into flames or get hit by a lightning bolt when he uttered this false concern at a prayer breakfast? I mean, I know that moral relativism used to be a big bugaboo among Republicans a few decades ago, but haven't they completely lost all right to take such a moral-high-road stance with their daily refusal to hold Donald Trump to any sort of moral code whatsoever? To say nothing of Trump's identity politics and tribalism, in a week where Trump suggested kicking NFL players out of the country if they use their constitutional right of protest. As with Melania Trump's anti-cyberbullying campaign, the question that immediately springs to mind for Paul Ryan is: Have you actually met Donald Trump?"



Groundbreaking!

Speaking of lightning bolts and divine intervention in general....

"This week, a sinkhole opened up on the White House lawn, right in front of the press briefing room. Exactly one year ago to the day, a bigger sinkhole opened up in front of Mar-A-Lago, Trump's resort down in Florida. The Earth, it seems, is contemplating just swallowing Trump's administration whole. However, there was no word on whether brimstone odors were detected or not. Whether you're a fan of reading portents and omens or not, this seems somehow significant. By week's end, the sinkhole had been covered up, which provided an easy punchline. But the funniest thing written about the sinkhole this week came from HuffPost's Ariel Edwards-Levy: 'A sinkhole near the White House? That's groundbreaking news!'"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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