a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

there's a way of writing (academics do it, journalists do it, etc.) where you find the worst take possible -- even just some marginal piece of work that happens to make a terrible historical argument -- and you base your own writing around the putative ignorance or misunderstanding that take suggests. you have to implicitly or explicitly inflate the significance of this one terrible take (or even a few terrible takes) to make your corrective or criticism seem vital. but it's ultimately a sad sort of thing--a kind of bad-faith way of weaseling into the conversation, or making your own contribution seem more daring or important or singular than it is.

Apparently according to Matt Taibi 'Russiagate' has been 'this generations WMD' which is as unhinged and delusional as anything.

i mean this is a basic human thing, not really a political thing, and you see it in every domain -- not just politics.

xpost

yeah that's ridiculous on its face!

to start with, nobody started a war that killed 100,000s of people in the middle east on the basis of supposing that russia interfered with an american election.

and then there's the rub that they /did/ interfere, while IIRC there were no WMD in iraq.

is taibbi just trolling at this point? or has he reconstructed his entire persona around wanting to distance himself from the normie "liberals" in his milieu?

(taibbi is very smart, and a good writer, and i like his stuff a lot of time.)

One last time (I promise!): the Mueller report, **no matter what it says**, cannot and will not change the key fact: Mueller has freely & voluntarily ended his investigation without indicting even one American for conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 24, 2019

Coming from Greenwald, who denied Russia even interfered in the election until Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians, that's some beautiful goalpost-moving.

Taibbi is not a smart and good writer

Read this crucial passage from @benjaminwittes. The whole argument that "no conspiracy charges=vindication for Trump and/or pops liberal bubbles" is based on a *willful* bad-faith misrepresentation of what's really happening right now and what it means: https://t.co/UdJAhXoGcf pic.twitter.com/3eeePxCLZo

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 24, 2019

Ok, but I don't understand what the practical difference is between the described bad-faith misrepresentation and what is is stated in that tweet. The end result is the same surely?

Taibbi has specifically said the WMD comparison related to impact on faith in the press, not real-world outcomes.

The vast majority of people I’ve seen crowing about the report are journalists taking shots at other journalists - sitting somewhere on a continuum between railing at poor professional standards and settling personal grudges. I suspect the only reason this gets transposed into attacks on ‘liberals’ is because the media critiquing the media is immensely boring for most people.

This is fucked

A “reckoning” for the media of the opposition but not for the fascist president.

A comment from Lawyers, Guns and Money about who the deniers are:

One is just conservatives.

The second are true leftists who think some version of (i) this isn't a big deal because this is what conservatism has always been and you're just noticing it now (e.g. Corey Robin) and (ii) the real struggle is class/racial struggle and this sort of geopolitical stuff is who cares, it's a class/race issue and focusing on this particular thing is dumb.

The third group is the one that fascinates me the most. I think of this as the Matt Bruenig group, and perhaps Taibbi falls in here, though I don't know. This is the group of people who saw Democrats lose to Donald Trump, and rather than realize the moral urgency of the situation, sort of turned into Jack Nicholson's Joker - laughing at the absurdity of someone like Trump winning, and despising the people who could possibly lose to him. They know Trump is terrible, but they seem to hate the weakness and feckless of anyone who could lose to him more than they hate him himself. They find his victory funny in that way, confirming their priors and their hatred of the weak people who could possibly lose to a fool like that. And as time goes on and his badness becomes worse, it makes them hate not him, but more and more they hate the people who lost to him for having the temerity to lose.

rather than realize the moral urgency of the situation, sort of turned into Jack Nicholson's Joker

hahahahahahahaha

I think the grotesquerie and abominableness of Trump led the press to be too credulous about the dossier, etc... to WANT to believe

People who were more out there on the radical left didn’t have an emotional investment in the integrity of the presidency—they had been disillusioned long ago. They were kind of inured from the trauma. I thought I was pretty left but I wasn’t, I guess, because I was traumatized by Trump for sure

good mourning!

The Lawfare Blog pretty much sums up my feelings beautifully.

Getting tired of every aspect of politics essentially becoming Stephen A Smith level sports prognostication

The people who say that it's no big deal that a hostile foreign government tried to hijack our elections forget that numerous hacking and phishing attempts of state elections offices were detected in 2016 and many states conduct elections on computerized voting machines without paper trails. Mysteriously, the Republicans do not seem to view this as a good reason to intervene to ensure the integrity of national elections.

Report coming to Capitol Hill in 30-45 minutes.

That crepitating fraggle Nunes already on TV saying it should be burned.

BYE INTERNET SEE YOU IN A WEEK

I think other fine posters such as DLH have already covered a lot of how I feel about this, but I guess my big concern about the Russia thing all along has been that it's a mechanism for both the party and voters to avoid recognizing Trump as a symptom rather than the problem. If we can blame Trump for racism, instead of racism for Trump, then we can just root out Trump. I know this is a reduction/simplification and I know few people have focused *exclusively* on russiagate as a way out. I know I have seen lots of energized political activism among people who also watch a lot of Maddow and buy heavily into russiagate, and on balance that's good. But the false hope of a deus ex machina ending to Trump is still dangerous and still provides cover to avoid doing the harder work of building a real political majority through policy, coaltion building, shoeleather activism, etc.

Look at the Crowley/AOC race -- he was absent and thought he could keep being absent. She and her campaign won by doing real, old-fashioned politics, knocking doors, building relationships with constituencies. How does the democratic party respond? Pelosi threatens to cut off any consultancy or firm that works for a challenger to an incumbent. The democratic party is still looking for an easy way out so they can maintain their third way centrism. Russiagate looked like it was going to provide that for a time, but it won't.

And I don't think the number of seats picked up in Congress should be used as evidence of much of anything except a typical midterm with a divisive president. We did ok, but I wouldn't exactly say we beat the spread. Long term the same concerns remain. I hope that the sheer amount of energy and youth and talent the whole phenomenon has injected into left-to-liberal politics will pay dividends in the future, but the party already seems determined to quell that.

Good source: pic.twitter.com/RvpUL6gE2N

— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) March 24, 2019

We did much better than okay in 2018. Long term the same worries remain.

Wtf it was the biggest House pickup in 40 years for Dems. People keep foolishly comparing it to the 2010 midterms, but how the fuck is 40 seats not "beating the spread". It literally beat the spread on actual betting markets!

Here we go

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706351394/read-the-justice-departments-summary-of-the-mueller-report

"Good source:"

lol nope.

HUGE news. Mueller did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia, per AG's summary. Report also found "no actions, in our judgment" that constitute "obstructive conduct." https://t.co/bIQ609HN0Q

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) March 24, 2019

"while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" is as bad as it get for trump.

otherwise it couldn't be much better for trump, assuming the letter is a fair summary

And that's Barr's conclusion, and he's got an, uh, expansive view of the threshold of executive power.

Barr: "the investigation did not find" that Trump campaign coordinated or colluded.

Mueller: "the investigation did not establish" that Trump campaign coordinated or colluded.

italics mine

this is complicated.

but on the whole couldn't have been better for trump

it gets weird in the middle of the letter, where barr explains that mueller has handed off the consideration of obstruction of justice to DOJ. and then barr simply says that he and rosenstein "have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is no sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.", and that their determination had nothing to do with the whole "can't indict a sitting president" thing.

oh, ok. not sufficient evidence of obstruction, with trump constantly, privately and publicly, asking/demanding that people squash the mueller investigation? what?

Pete Williams just raised that point.

Cool that Mueller couldn’t even hit him with the shit he said in public

i know that democrats will continue to pursue their own investigations (in the house), and the NY and VA investigations will proceed, but this really takes some wind out of the sails in terms of public support. the actual conclusions of the report (the mueller portion and the details of the part they decided to leave in the air on obstruction of justice, not the barr/rosenstein portion) could quite well be complicated and not at all exonerating. but there will always be that lingering first reaction of "he got away with it" upon reading the headline

upon first reading i thought that when mueller left the obstruction of justice question unanswered, he was intending to leave open the possibility for congress to address it through impeachment. i didn't realize he was teeing it up for barr and rosenstein to smash

hopefully renato is right:

17/ There is no question that lawmakers have a right to find out exactly what evidence Mueller gathered regarding obstruction of justice, and question him regarding his judgment and interpretation of that evidence. After all, obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense.

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 24, 2019

18/ I expect no one will rely on Barr and Rosenstein's separate judgment that Trump did not obstruct justice. Barr's memo on the subject, written prior to joining the Trump Administration, reveals his bias on the subject. So expect a fight about obstruction of justice ahead.

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 24, 2019

actually, Mueller does leave open the possibility for Congress to decide obstruction of justice.

take that, Renato!

In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before @HouseJudiciary in the near future.

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) March 24, 2019

• President Trump remained quiet at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, but told allies privately that he was a victim of an attempted “coup.”"

https://i.imgur.com/7HJiUFK.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/5gl3OjM.jpg

sorry for large

100% chance he pronounced it like the car

actually, Mueller does leave open the possibility for Congress to decide obstruction of justice.

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, March 24, 2019 3:21 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Which leaves the strategic question open of whether there's any benefit to impeachment proceedings that cannot possibly lead to conviction.

I suppose it could further slow some of his agenda. You might argue that impeachment of Clinton helped elect W as well (the whole "restore decency to the office" or whatever), but it's arguable that that would have just as likely happened without the formal proceedings.

Either way I think this has put the Democrats in a shaky position -- they can't just walk away, but they have to think carefully about how and how hard to keep pressing. Trump is going to crow about this in every speech from here until November 2020. He has a cudgel to beat the Democrats with over this, and I don't think hemming and hawing about what the report means or doesn't mean is going to do any good at all without something more concrete.

it'll be interesting to see if it splits the party. i have a feeling most of the primary candidates will continue pressing on the investigations (which they should). the third wayers and more center-right democrats might want to move on.

He has a cudgel to beat the Democrats with over this, and I don't think hemming and hawing about what the report means or doesn't mean is going to do any good at all without something more concrete.

yeah, and plus they have the extra weapon of just lying, saying they're totally exonerated. the real answer is more complicated and doesn't fit in a headline. therefore, that's the new truth for all of them.

it'll be interesting to see if it splits the party. i have a feeling most of the primary candidates will continue pressing on the investigations (which they should). the third wayers and more center-right democrats might want to move on.

M4A is more popular with voters and has tangible benefits than endless investigations that go no nowhere. "We've got him this time" fantasies have run out of road