A Democratic Pe-emptive Autopsy

By Richard Boettger

Where did Trump come from?  Liberal theology comfortably believes it is THEIR fault, the “deplorables” and immoral dupes who vote for him.

No.  It is the Dems’ fault, starting at the top.  To win in 2022, much less 2024, the Democratic party has a lot more soul-searching to do in order to not repeat the sins of 2016.  Especially since Dems have got so much right in 2020 and the first month of 2021.

Trump was created by the Democratic leadership at the top: Obama, Ginsberg, Reid, Pelosi, Hilary, Shultz and Brazile, and the entire political nightmare team that blew the election, the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary for a generation.  Legions of faithful centrist and progressive Democratic devotees got themselves and others out to vote, gave Democrats full reign for 8 years, and were catastrophically betrayed by a leadership that made very critical error they could.

The main mistake was not abolishing the filibuster for the eight years when they could have done so easily.  Now we blame Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema.  For eight years, blame Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the entire Democratic leadership.  Rachel Maddow spent two weeks at the beginning of the Obama presidency begging the Dems to do so.  The top Dems refused to even consider it, to open the topic for discussion, for the most dishonorable reason: they wanted to screw up the Republicans just as badly whenever the Republicans took over.  How did that work out?  The minute the Repubs could approve their first of three Supreme court justices, they immediately abolished the Supreme Court filibuster rule, doing in five minutes what the Dems did not do in 8 years.

Nominating Hilary Clinton was also done for the most dishonorable of reasons and by the most dishonorable of methods.  Obama chose her over Biden because Biden had the balls to stand up for correct decisions, namely for gay marriage and against following the generals into 8 final useless years in Afghanistan.  Hilary never publicly opposed Obama on a single issue, except her voting for the war in Iraq, which arguably cost her the nomination in 2008.  Her relatively minor other disagreements, as she describes in her book “Hard Choices,” she kept private, and didn’t prevail in a single one.  Obama liked ass-kissers, as evidenced by his circle of advisers.  Instead of appreciating that his VP pushed him to one good decision on marriage, and was overwhelmingly right on Afghanistan, Obama used Biden’s guts and political integrity to bar him from the 2016 nomination.

Instead, the Dems nominated the only person who could possibly have lost to Trump.  I for years loved Hilary and only switched to Obama after reading “The Audacity of Hope.”  But the Hilary of 2008 was a Jekyl to 2016’s Hyde.  In those eight years, she used a private server, deleted thousands of emails, allowed the death of our ambassador to Libya, gave supplicant speeches for big bucks to the banking kings who had crashed the economy, funneled millions of dubious dollars to her Clinton Foundation, and had a perfectly mediocre record in the Senate and as Secretary of State.  

Dems can rightly blame Comey and the Russians all they want, but Biden and Bernie had no such skeletons to haunt their campaigns.  None of these faults were October surprises, they were well-known throughout the nominating period.  All Comey did was  make a bad Hilary move stand out more, crucially at the end.  And with all of this, and the perverse electoral college, she still almost won.

Nominating Hilary was mostly Obama’s fault—his roasting Trump at the Correspondents’ Dinner was the straw that made Trump finally run after threatening it for years—but the Dems’ campaign leadership shares much of the blame.  Read Shattered for the full dissection, but rigging the debates and deciding against yard signs were two of the most obvious boners.  These were the same hard-working campaign staffers who had successfully elected not only Obama but given him congress for eight years.  But under his spell and a devotion to the formerly-great Hilary, they overlooked her obviously crushing flaws and went full speed ahead off the cliff.  The final straw was Obama’s roasting Trump at the Correspondents’ Dinner, motivating Trump to finally run after threatening it for years.

Saint Ginsberg has been so utterly above public reproach, we risk having Breyer make her same deadly mistake.  Ruth Bader cutely maintained that no one could do her job better than she did, which included prancing as the Notorious RBG, doing operas with her buddy Scalia, and basking in adoration, as she most selfishly crushed her life’s work by not passing her causes on, to a rightful successor on the Supreme Court.  Along with the Dems letting Mitch McConnell deny Merritt Garland his rightful seat, which they could have given him any time over the course of a year, the current 6-3 conservative majority would be 5-4 for liberals without the Republicans being able to do a thing about it.  Again, two own-goals, and the Court is lost for 40 years. (An “own-goal” means kicking the ball in your own goal by mistake, scoring for the other team.)

The most current own-goal is the failure to consolidate the House’s impeachment in the Senate, not once, but twice.  A little-discussed fact I heard first on Maddow and only once thereafter was that the Senate had complete authority to make their impeachment votes be secret ballot instead of for the public record.  Rachel got this from her interview of the impeachment managers Neguse and Plaskett in February this year.  She asked them if they’d thought of it, and the stunning answer was, they had, and decided to go with the open vote simply because that’s what they did in 1999 for Bill Clinton.  

Really, that was it.  See the link below to Rachel’s interview, only about 2 minutes long.  With all of the talk of the chicken Republicans’ fear of voting against Trump, it was our democratic Senate leadership that decided NOT to fully impeach Trump, which would indeed have gotten him out of further presidential possibilities. Forever.

Feb 15, 2021, The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC:

 RACHEL MADDOW:   …..  I did have one other question that I don’t know if anybody’s asked any of you impeachment managers, and it may be a question out of ignorance, so forgive me if it is.

But as far as I understand procedure in this part of the impeachment process, the Senate is setting the rules for the trial, the Senate could really set almost any rules that it wants in terms of how the impeachment was going to be conducted.

So to the point that you both discussed there about the courage or lack thereof among Republican senators to cast their vote and actually consider the evidence, their own political futures — did you guys ever consider asking for the Senate trial to be judged by a secret ballot, for the senators to cast their vote to acquit or convict without putting their name on it? Was that a content — was that — is that within the realm of possibility?

JOE NEGUSE: You know, yeah — so the answer, Rachel, happy to defer to Delegate Plaskett as well. But the short of it is you are right, the Senate has plenary jurisdiction to decide the rules of the road so to speak with respect to impeachments.

Typically, it’s done through an organizing resolution. The organizing resolution in this case largely was modeled after the Clinton impeachment of 1999. Of course, the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson was unique and over 150 years ago. There’s never been a secret ballot. Certainly, the Senate could have proceeded down that course if they chose to. There were certainly some discussions in that regard, but ultimately, the Senate made the decision to model the organizing resolution after the rules that were adopted in 1999.

STACEY PLASKETT: Right, and I would just say to add to that, of course, that’s a negotiation that goes on between the — in the Senate, among the senators. And while we can give ideas, that’s for them ultimately to decide. And because of following precedent usually the Senate does, I don’t think that a secret ballot would have been something they would have put forward, although it would have made it a much more interesting conviction I’m sure.

MADDOW: Yeah, it definitely would have changed the final numbers. I can guarantee you that.

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