David Brock

Dear Commons Community,

David Brock has a guest essay in today’s New York Times entitled, I was wrong about Donald Trump.  Mr. Brock led one of the largest Democratic super PACs dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Before he became a Democrat, he worked for The Washington Times and the conservative Heritage Foundation.  His essay is a warning for Democrats not to take Trump for granted.  If they do, the country’s will revert back to what it was during the Trump presidency.  Here is an excerpt.

“… the last election settled very little — Mr. Trump not only appears to be preparing for a presidential campaign in 2024, he is whipping up his supporters before the 2022 midterms. And if Democrats ignore the threat he and his allies pose to democracy, their candidates will suffer next fall, imperiling any chance of meaningful reform in Congress.

Going forward, we can expect bogus claims of voter fraud, and equally bogus challenges to legitimate vote counts, to become a permanent feature of Republican political strategy. Every election Republicans lose will be contested with lies, every Democratic win delegitimized. This is poison in a democracy.

As of late September, 19 states had enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for their citizens to vote. The Republican National Committee “election integrity director” says the party will file lawsuits earlier and more aggressively than they did in 2020. Trump wannabe candidates like Glenn Youngkin, running for Virginia governor, are currying favor with the Republican base by promoting conspiracy theories suggesting that Virginia’s election may be rigged.

More alarmingly, Republicans in swing states are purging election officials, allowing pro-Trump partisans to sabotage vote counts. In January, an Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill that would permit Republican legislators to overrule the certification of elections that don’t go their way. In Georgia, the legislature has given partisan election boards the power to “slow down or block” election certifications. Why bother with elections?

Democrats now face an opposition that is not a normal political party, but rather a party that is willing to sacrifice democratic institutions and norms to take power.”

Democrats and voters who rejected Trump and his dreadful presidency should heed Brock’s advice. The entire guest essay is below.

Tony

———————————————————————

The New York Times

I Was Wrong About Donald Trump

Oct. 21, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

By David Brock

Like most Democrats, I initially underestimated Donald Trump. In 2015, I founded a super PAC dedicated to electing Hillary Clinton. Through all the ups and downs of the campaign, I didn’t once imagine that Americans would vote Mr. Trump in.

He was an obvious pig (see the “Access Hollywood” tapes), a fraud (multiple failed businesses and bankruptcies) and a cheat (stiffing mom-and-pop vendors). Not to mention the blatant racism and misogyny. About the outcome, I was spectacularly wrong.

Once he was in office, I misread Mr. Trump again. Having worked inside the conservative movement for many years, I found his policies familiar: same judges, same tax policy, same deregulation of big business, same pandering to the religious right, same denial of science. Of course, there were the loopy tweets, but still I regarded Mr. Trump as only a difference of degree from what I had seen from prior Republican presidents and candidates, not a difference of kind.

When a raft of books and articles appeared warning that the United States was headed toward autocracy, I dismissed them as hyperbolic. I just didn’t see it. Under Mr. Trump, the sky didn’t fall.

My view of Mr. Trump began to shift soon after the November election, when he falsely claimed the election was rigged and refused to concede. In doing so, Mr. Trump showed himself willing to undermine confidence in the democratic process, and in time he managed to convince nearly three-quarters of his supporters that the loser was actually the winner.

Then came the Capitol Hill insurrection, and, later, proof that Mr. Trump incited it, even hiring a lawyer, John Eastman, who wrote a detailed memo that can only be described as a road map for a coup. A recent Senate investigation documented frantic efforts by Mr. Trump to bully government officials to overturn the election. And yet I worry that many Americans are still blind, as I once was, to the authoritarian impulses that now grip Mr. Trump’s party. Democrats need to step up to thwart them.

Are Democrats up for such a tough (and expensive) fight? Many liberal voters have taken a step back from politics, convinced that Mr. Trump is no longer a threat. According to research conducted for our super PAC, almost half of women in battleground states are now paying less attention to the political news.

But in reality, the last election settled very little — Mr. Trump not only appears to be preparing for a presidential campaign in 2024, he is whipping up his supporters before the 2022 midterms. And if Democrats ignore the threat he and his allies pose to democracy, their candidates will suffer next fall, imperiling any chance of meaningful reform in Congress.

Going forward, we can expect bogus claims of voter fraud, and equally bogus challenges to legitimate vote counts, to become a permanent feature of Republican political strategy. Every election Republicans lose will be contested with lies, every Democratic win delegitimized. This is poison in a democracy.

As of late September, 19 states had enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for their citizens to vote. The Republican National Committee “election integrity director” says the party will file lawsuits earlier and more aggressively than they did in 2020. Trump wannabe candidates like Glenn Youngkin, running for Virginia governor, are currying favor with the Republican base by promoting conspiracy theories suggesting that Virginia’s election may be rigged.

More alarmingly, Republicans in swing states are purging election officials, allowing pro-Trump partisans to sabotage vote counts. In January, an Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill that would permit Republican legislators to overrule the certification of elections that don’t go their way. In Georgia, the legislature has given partisan election boards the power to “slow down or block” election certifications. Why bother with elections?

Democrats now face an opposition that is not a normal political party, but rather a party that is willing to sacrifice democratic institutions and norms to take power.

The legislation Democrats introduced in Congress to protect our democracy against such assaults would have taken an important step toward meeting these challenges. But on Wednesday, Republicans blocked the latest version of the legislation, and given the lack of unanimity among Democrats on the filibuster, they may well have succeeded in killing the last hope for any federal voting rights legislation during this session of Congress.

Having underestimated Mr. Trump in the first place, Democrats shouldn’t underestimate what it will take to counter his malign influence now. They need a bigger, bolder campaign blueprint to save democracy that doesn’t hinge on the whims of Congress.

We should hear more directly from the White House bully pulpit about these dire threats. The Jan. 6 investigators should mount a full-court press to get the truth out. Funding voting rights litigation should be a top priority.

Where possible, Democrats should sponsor plebiscites to overturn anti-democratic laws passed by Republicans in states. They should underwrite super PACs to protect incumbent election officials being challenged by Trump loyalists, even if it means supporting reasonable Republicans. Donations should flow into key governors and secretary of state races, positions critical to election certification.

In localities, Democrats should organize poll watching. Lawyers who make phony voting claims in court should face disciplinary action in state bar associations. The financiers of the voting rights assault must be exposed and publicly shamed.

The good news is that liberals do not have to copy what the right is doing with its media apparatus — the font of falsehoods about voter fraud and a stolen election — to win over voters. Democrats can leapfrog the right with significant investments in streaming video, podcasting, newsletters and innovative content producers on growing platforms like TikTok, whose audiences dwarf those of cable news networks like Fox News.

Issues like racial justice, the environment and immigration are already resonating online with audiences Democrats need to win over, such as young people, women and people of color. Democratic donors have long overlooked efforts to fund the media, but with so much of our politics playing out on that battlefield, they can no longer afford to.

Dear Commons Community,

During their first debate (see video above for highlights), the two men running to become New York City’s next mayor offered starkly different visions last night about how to lead the Big Apple out of the pandemic, improve public safety and gird the city of 8.8 million people for more powerful storms driven by climate change.

Democrat Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa also sparred over personal and character issues, with Adams lambasting Sliwa for having admitted in the past to making up crimes and for “buffoonery.”

Sliwa, the founder of the 1970s-era Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol, insisted he’s the candidate more in-touch with regular New Yorkers. He said he feels they accept his apology for having falsely claimed he was kidnapped decades ago and boasting of faked exploits from his unarmed patrols.

Adams, the Brooklyn Borough president and a former New York City police captain, is widely expected to win the Nov. 2 election.

He’s the Democratic candidate in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1, having campaigned as a moderate choice in a crowded primary field. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor and as a candidate, he has spoken personally about policing through the lens of having been a cop, a critic of his own department and a young Black man who experienced police brutality.

Sliwa has been a longtime media fixture in New York, first from his days as the founder of the red-beret wearing Guardian Angels and later as a radio commenter with a penchant for attracting news cameras and staging stunts. As a mayoral candidate, he latched on to reports questioning whether Adams really lives at his Brooklyn brownstone and walked around New York with a milk carton featuring a picture of “missing” Adams.

Adams has repeatedly dismissed Sliwa during the campaign and continued to do so during the debate, refusing the opportunity to respond to an extended, rapid-fire critique from his opponent.

“I’m speaking to New Yorkers. I’m not speaking to buffoonery,” he said.

Sliwa sought to portray Adams as an out-of-touch elitist for having reportedly vacationed in Monaco and meeting with donors in elite enclaves like the Hamptons.

“Just follow me in the streets and subways. I’m there. I’m the people’s choice. Eric Adams is with the elites in the suites,” Sliwa said. “Come on, Eric. Come back. Come back to the streets and the subways. Be with the real peeps.”

Adams said he agreed with outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision announced Wednesday to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for all city workers, including police officers. Sliwa said he opposed the mandate, saying the city doesn’t have enough police officers as is and can’t afford to lose more to a vaccine mandate.

To revive the city’s empty commercial office space after the pandemic drove workers to stay home, Adams said he’d seek to make the city more business-friendly and mold it into a destination for industries like cybersecurity, biotechnology and drone development.

Sliwa said many people will never come back to in-person work and the city should instead convert empty offices and commercial real estate into affordable housing.

Adams said he’d allow restaurants to keep their pop-up structures on the city’s streets and sidewalks that have served as outdoor dining rooms during the pandemic. Sliwa said the structures are taking up space needed for bicyclists, pedestrians and cars and need to be scaled back.

Sliwa and Adams have both spoken on the campaign trail about combatting violent crime and clashed Wednesday over how to address it. Sliwa called for hiring 3,000 police officers and claimed Adams had shown no interest in using federal resources to put more cops on the streets. He also called for ending the city’s status as a “sanctuary city,” where local law enforcement does not cooperate with stepped-up immigration enforcement from federal officials.

Adams said he would continue the city’s so-called sanctuary status and knocked Sliwa for fabricating crimes and “playing cop” while Adams was in uniform on the police force.

Both candidates were asked how they’d prepare for bigger and more devastating storms fueled by climate change after Hurricane Ida dropped a deadly deluge of rain on the city in September, killing 13 New York City residents.

Adams called for a three-step forecast system warning residents and city agencies of the threat and a plan to more quickly warn those living in flood-prone basement apartments, particularly illegal cellar apartments without ample exits.

Sliwa called for building seawalls to prevent against coastal flooding as seen after Superstorm Sandy nearly a decade ago, along with better cleaning of drains and basins.

Tuesday’s hourlong debate was the first of two face-to-face meetings before the Nov. 2 election. The second debate will be Oct. 26.

This election will be no contest with Eric Adams easily winning the mayor’s job.

Tony

Dr. Rachel Levine sworn in by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Reuters

Dear Commons Community,

Dr. Rachel Levine was sworn in earlier this week as the nation’s first openly transgender four-star officer.

Levine was appointed to full admiral on Tuesday and sworn in as the first-ever female four-star admiral to oversee the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She is also now the first openly transgender four-star officer across any of the eight uniformed services.

Levine, who will lead 6,000 Public Health Service officers, became the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate back in March when she was appointed as assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to this, she served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health and as a pediatrician.

Levine, speaking at her swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday, called her appointment “an extraordinary honor and profound responsibility” and vowed to help the nation “continue to move the bar forward for diversity.”

“May this appointment today be the first of many more to come as we create a diverse and more inclusive future,” she said.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra called Levine’s appointment “a giant step forward towards equality as a nation.”

“This is a proud moment for us at HHS. Admiral Levine — a highly accomplished pediatrician who helps drive our agency’s agenda to boost health access and equity and to strengthen behavioral health — is a cherished and critical partner in our work to build a healthier America,” he said in a statement.

Congratulations Admiral Levine!

Tony