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Why We Must Boycott States With New Abortion Bans |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38164"><span class="small">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter</span></a>
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Wednesday, 22 May 2019 12:58 |
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Abdul-Jabbar writes: "The time-traveling DeLorean is speeding toward 1950, and when it hits 88 mph, it's going to suck the whole country back with it. Back to a time when pretty much everyone who wasn't a straight, white Christian male was considered a second-class citizen whose rights and future depended on the patriarchs' whims and largesse."
Protestors in Montgomery, Alabama, rallied May 19 against their state's abortion ban. (photo: Julie Bennett/Getty)
Why We Must Boycott States With New Abortion Bans
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter
22 May 19
The NBA great and Hollywood Reporter columnist calls for Americans to "stomp on the brakes of the DeLorean" that's taking our country back to an era of straight, white male privilege as laws in Georgia and beyond seek to "reduce women to baby incubators."
 he time-traveling DeLorean is speeding toward 1950, and when it hits 88 mph, it’s going to suck the whole country back with it. Back to a time when pretty much everyone who wasn’t a straight, white Christian male was considered a second-class citizen whose rights and future depended on the patriarchs’ whims and largesse.
It’s hardly surprising that this entitled group would like to return to their rapidly eroding privileged status, which they hope to accomplish through sustained attacks on women, people of color, immigrants, Muslims and the LBGTQ community. By emboldening the right wing through vitriolic rhetoric, the Donald Trump administration has become the UV light in sleazy motel rooms that illuminates these hidden stains on our democracy. Right now the stains include Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and other states passing restrictive abortion legislation that reduces women to baby incubators.
The time has come for Americans to defend the principles of the Constitution by stomping on the brakes of that DeLorean. For now, one of the best ways to do that is through boycotting the offending states.
Boycotts cause hardships to the innocent as well as the guilty. That’s the whole point. Hardships motivate the self-righteous leaders to face the consequences of their political greed. A boycott’s success depends on the commitment of those seeking change to endure suffering. Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955 kicked off the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama that lasted a year and led to great hardships for whites and blacks. One of the boycott’s leaders, 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had his home firebombed. The bus company suffered financial setbacks that affected its employees and other businesses. The black boycotters, who were 70 percent of the buses’ ridership, also suffered. For a year, they walked or carpooled until they were triumphant.
Some filmmakers who have chosen to continue to do business in Georgia are donating money to the ACLU to fight the legislation. While that’s a generous sentiment, it isn’t nearly enough. Here’s why: Unless a powerful message goes out right now, more states will pass these restrictive laws, as we have seen happen already. With women’s rights removed amid little meaningful opposition, LGBTQ rights will follow (as they already have in some states), and so on through every marginalized group. "Build the wall!" isn’t just about the physical wall, it’s about the legislative walls to separate undesirable groups from their constitutional rights. We’ve already seen increased efforts to nullify non-Republican voters through gerrymandering, impossibly strict voter registration rules and reducing polling locations in poor and minority areas.
A boycott is a clear statement that we value conscience over commerce. It means stop doing business with or in these states. For Hollywood, stop making films there. For businesses, stop buying their products or holding conventions or building there. For the average person, don’t visit. No tourism dollars. And we continue this practice until legislators reverse the policies or are removed from office. When the Writers Guild of America, of which I am a member, is willing to boycott talent agencies over packaging practices, certainly they would endorse boycotting states that demean many of their members.
Some prefer to wait and see what happens during the legal challenges as Georgia’s bill heads to the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority. "Wait and see" has always been the default response when people are called upon to do the right thing. King addressed this in his 1963 "Letter From Birmingham Jail": "For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.'" If not now, when?
No one wants a boycott. So, to be fair to both sides, before implementing one, states can be given a reasonable deadline to repeal these unjust laws. Failure to do so should launch a coordinated boycott involving all organizations representing the many marginalized groups under attack. Success for all depends on working as one. Together these groups form a majority of the population and have the power to change things. The will of the majority was thwarted in the 2016 election, and we can’t let it happen again.
Since logical discourse about science, the separation of church and state and the constitutional rights of women has not been persuasive, the focus can’t be on changing these legislators’ minds, but rather changing their sense of entitlement. That their moral code is the only one. And this can only be accomplished through sustained pressure. It is not without some irony that Georgia and Alabama, which once used biblical quotes to justify slavery, lead the way in enslaving women by denying them autonomy over their bodies. Stopping them is especially crucial in the face of rising maternal mortality rates in the U.S. More than 700 women die annually due to childbirth, with black women dying at a rate three times greater than that of white women. Forcing a woman to give birth could be a death sentence. Who should make that decision, the government or the woman who faces death?
In April, a wet Connecticut high school baseball field meant the game would have to be canceled. Players and parents who wanted the game to go on decided to soak the grass with 25 gallons of gasoline and set the field on fire to dry it. Apparently, none had ever taken a science class. Instead of drying the field, they created an environmental hazard that required six to eight inches of gas-soaked soil to be excavated at a cost of at least $50,000. That’s the approach of these irrational, ill-informed and infantile legislators. If they can’t get what they want through the merits of their arguments, they will burn down the field so no one can play.
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Trump Is Considering Deputizing the Military as a Civilian Police Force. That Is Terrifying. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=50831"><span class="small">Elizabeth Goitein, Slate</span></a>
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Wednesday, 22 May 2019 12:58 |
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Goitein writes: "According to a report in the Daily Caller last week, the Trump administration is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to give federal troops the power to detain and remove undocumented immigrants in the United States."
U.S. Army soldiers from Ft. Riley, Kansas, install protective wire along the Rio Grande at the U.S.-Mexico border, one of the Pentagon-approved duties for troops deployed to the border. (photo: Getty)
Trump Is Considering Deputizing the Military as a Civilian Police Force. That Is Terrifying.
By Elizabeth Goitein, Slate
22 May 19
he Donald Trump presidency, marked by cruelty, corruption, and disdain for the rule of law, has been disastrous for our democracy. If there is one silver lining, it is this: Trump’s abuses have exposed weaknesses in our laws and institutions that were previously hidden and which we can now begin to try to fix. We learned about one such weakness in February, when Trump relied on the National Emergencies Act to commandeer funding Congress had specifically denied for the construction of a border wall. The latest such legal loophole is another emergency power that could enable the president to turn the military into his own immigration police force.
According to a report in the Daily Caller last week, the Trump administration is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to give federal troops the power to detain and remove undocumented immigrants in the United States, acting essentially as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The White House, when asked about the option last week, refused to rule it out.
If Trump follows through on this plan, it would be a staggering abuse of authority, on par with the president’s declaration of a “national emergency” to build the border wall. In both cases, the president seeks to harness an authority clearly intended for the most dire and unusual of circumstances to deal with a long-standing issue that does not come close to posing an urgent or overwhelming threat. In both cases, the president’s goal is not to avert a catastrophe, but to score political points with his base and consolidate his own power.
The Insurrection Act is an exception to the general rule, enshrined in the Posse Comitatus Act, that presidents may not use the military as a domestic police force. Posse comitatus, in the words of one former Defense Department official, reflects “one of the clearest political traditions in Anglo-American history: that using military power to enforce the civilian law is harmful to both civilian and military interests.” Deploying soldiers as police officers not only violates democratic sensibilities; it increases the risk that interactions with civilians could go disastrously wrong, as armed forces are not trained in conducting law enforcement activities. On the flip side, every soldier engaged in law enforcement is being pulled away from military priorities.
The Insurrection Act gives the president a dangerous amount of discretion.
Despite this strong tradition, there are times when the law permits domestic use of the military. The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy federal troops to suppress domestic uprisings and enforce the law when civilian law enforcement is impeded or overwhelmed. As its name suggests, Congress intended the law to be used only in the most extraordinary situations, and only where absolutely necessary to preserve civil order. For the most part, presidents have honored this intent. The law has not been invoked since 1992, when George H.W. Bush used it to help suppress riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers for the brutal beating of Rodney King.
It should go without saying that the presence of undocumented immigrants within the United States does not justify invocation of this potent emergency power. There is no uprising taking place, no breakdown of civil order. For better or for worse, immigration officers are fully capable of carrying out deportations—indeed, they are doing so at record-setting rates.
Unfortunately, however, the Insurrection Act, like the National Emergencies Act, gives the president a dangerous amount of discretion. The Insurrection Act allows the deployment of federal troops “whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” The judgment as to whether these vaguely worded conditions exist is left entirely to the president. The National Emergencies Act, for its part, allows the president to declare a national emergency—and therefore to invoke dozens of special statutory powers—without defining the term or specifying any substantive criteria that must be met.
Both laws are also short on checks and balances to deter or correct abuse. In their current form, neither law includes any express provision for judicial review or any time limits on how long the powers they confer may be exercised. And while the National Emergencies Act includes a weak congressional backstop—any member can force a vote on a resolution to terminate a state of emergency, but passing the resolution still effectively requires a veto-proof majority—the Insurrection Act does not even go that far. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could thus prevent the Senate from considering any legislation to call off the troops.
Congress enacted these sweeping delegations of power on the assumption that presidents could be trusted to act honorably and in the nation’s interest. Whether such an assumption is wise when passing run-of-the-mill legislation is debatable. When granting presidents extraordinary authorities to implement emergency rule or to deploy federal troops domestically—powers that, by their very nature, pose profound risks to a democracy—trust should never replace careful, substantive limits and rigorous procedural checks.
A rare opportunity now exists for Congress to reform these authorities. Republicans, worried about how a future Democratic president might use emergency powers, are lining up behind legislation to reform the National Emergencies Act. Many of them are no doubt driven by a dislike of Democratic policy goals, rather than a true concern about excessive presidential discretion. Nonetheless, the reform they are supporting—a requirement that Congress approve states of emergency within 30 days—is exactly the type of check that is needed to prevent abuse and presidential overreach. Depending on how events unfold, Republicans might be willing to support similar reforms to the Insurrection Act.
Ironically, some Democrats are balking at National Emergencies Act reform, hinting that the law could be a useful tool for future Democratic presidents faced with an obstructionist Republican Congress. This approach is understandable but shortsighted, and ultimately dangerous for our democracy. Trump is aberrant in many respects, but he is not the first president to misuse power, nor will he be the last. To the extent his actions have highlighted specific authorities that are particularly susceptible to abuse, it is incumbent on Congress to reform these laws before Trump, or another president, exploits them further—employing emergency powers to shut down communications facilities, or deploying the military to suppress anti-government protests. With Trump already having laid the groundwork to challenge the legitimacy of any 2020 election defeat, the issue is as urgent as any this country faces.
Trump has shown what can happen when Congress delegates too much discretion to the president. To call this a “teachable moment” is an understatement. For the sake of our democracy, Congress must heed the underlying lesson behind Trump’s abuses of power and amend the legal framework for emergency powers to replace trust and discretion with meaningful checks and balances.
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FOCUS: Nancy Pelosi Must Defend the Essential Integrity of the Constitution |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Wednesday, 22 May 2019 10:59 |
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Pierce writes: "Congressman Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, had a group of high school students sitting on the steps of the U.S, Capitol, and he was explaining to them what the impeachment process is, and why Amash has called for it, bringing down upon his head the wrath of flying monkeys everywhere."
Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Getty)
Nancy Pelosi Must Defend the Essential Integrity of the Constitution
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
22 May 19
Initiate impeachment proceedings. It really is time.
 n Tuesday morning, on the electric Twitter machine, I saw a picture that was both remarkable, and remarkably sad. Congressman Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, had a group of high school students sitting on the steps of the U.S, Capitol, and he was explaining to them what the impeachment process is, and why Amash has called for it, bringing down upon his head the wrath of flying monkeys everywhere.
Now, let's be honest. If a sea cucumber ran against Justin Amash, I'd vote for it. But there's no question that Amash is sincere. He's stood in against the Chimpanzee Escadrille, and against his own caucus, and he has come back for more. And there he is, in front of the most prominent symbol of American legislative power, explaining to people more open-minded than his fellow Republicans are how it's time for that power to be engaged fully against a renegade and criminal presidency. Of course, none of those kids outside the building can vote inside, and that's what makes the photo so very sad. Amash's seminar al fresco would have benefitted legislators of both parties.
It really is time. Don McGahn blew off the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning, relying on a fanciful legal opinion that had no basis in the law. And, if this account in Politico is to be believed, the passions are rising within the majority caucus of the House.
[Jamie] Raskin — a former law professor — said he wasn't advocating impeaching Trump but suggested that opening an impeachment inquiry would strengthen their legal position while allowing Democrats to move forward with their legislative agenda. Pelosi dismissed this argument, asking Raskin whether he wanted to shut down the other five committees working on Trump investigations in favor of the Judiciary Committee.
“You want to tell Elijah Cummings to go home?” Pelosi quipped, referring to the chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee. And in a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee meeting, Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee stood up and demanded Trump's impeachment. Pelosi then countered, "This is not about politics, it's about what's best for the American people," said a member who attended the meeting...
...During the Steering and Policy Committee meeting, Cohen said President Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings “over sex” while Trump is “raping the country,” according to two sources in the room. Cohen later confirmed his remarks. Pelosi pushed back on Cohen during the meeting and his assertion that she was simply afraid impeachment would cost her the House majority. “This isn’t about politics at all. It’s about patriotism. It’s about the strength we need to have to see things through,” Pelosi said, according to an aide in the room.
It is reported that the meetings got a little fiery. Good. They should be. This is not a question for the timid nor an issue for soft words. There should be a brawl over this matter, and, if you think these intra-party squabbles are loud, wait until an impeachment inquiry opens up. My guess is that civility will not be a priority, and good for that, too. Excising the corruption that entered the Republican party in the 1980s, and entered the White House in 2017, never was going to be gentle.
It really is time. Nobody supported Nancy Pelosi more than I did when lightweights like Tim Ryan and Seth Moulton came after her last year. I still don't see a legislative tactician of her caliber anywhere else in the caucus. But this is now beyond tactics, no matter how skillfully they might be deployed. This is a fight for the essential integrity of the Constitution, and pre-emptively ruling out any weapon in that battle is dereliction of the first order. It has been argued that an impeachment inquiry would divert legislative energy from other important issues and, what the hell, impeachment has no chance in the Senate anyway. So much of the leadership's strategy flows from that conviction. When Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, says, as he did Tuesday morning, that the Democratic triumphs in 2018 came because of candidates who "did not run on impeachment, did not run on collusion, did not run on obstruction," his point is that, in one way or another, impeachment is a political loser and that the new House majority has other important business before it.
But the simple fact is that no bill produced by a Democratic House has a chance in Mitch McConnell's Senate. In this, impeachment is no different from Medicare For All or a Green New Deal or a big infrastructure package or humane immigration reform. If passage in the Senate is the sine qua non for doing something in the House, then Pelosi, Jeffries and the rest of their caucus simply should give up and go home for the summer. In addition, an impeachment inquiry, which is all Raskin and the others were asking for, can serve as a powerful educational tool for the general public. The cause of removing a reality-show president needs a reality show of its own—a real one, with witnesses and testimony.
It really is time. We are not far from the day when some court—maybe even the Supreme Court—tells the president* to do something, and he tells the court to get stuffed. It will be too late to fire up the machine then. Better to have it warmed up and running already.
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FOCUS: We've Hit a New Low in Campaign Hit Pieces |
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Wednesday, 22 May 2019 10:41 |
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Taibbi writes: "Recent efforts to sandbag Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard are crude repeats of behaviors that helped elect Trump in 2016."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty)
We've Hit a New Low in Campaign Hit Pieces
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
22 May 19
Recent efforts to sandbag Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard are crude repeats of behaviors that helped elect Trump in 2016
 ast week, the Daily Beast ran this headline: “Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign Is Being Boosted by Putin Apologists”
That was followed by the sub headline: “The Hawaii congresswoman is quickly becoming the top candidate for Democrats who think the Russian leader is misunderstood.”
The Gabbard campaign has received 75,000 individual donations. This crazy Beast article is based on (maybe) three of them.
The three names are professor Stephen Cohen, activist Sharon Tennison and someone using the name “Goofy Grapes,” who may or may not have once worked for comedian Lee Camp, currently employed by Russia Today.
This vicious little article might have died a quiet death, except ABC’s George Stephanopoulos regurgitated it in an interview with Gabbard days later. The This Week host put up the Beast headline in a question about whether or not Gabbard was “softer” on Putin than other candidates.
Gabbard responded: “It’s unfortunate that you’re citing that article, George, because it’s a whole lot of fake news.”
This in turn spurred another round of denunciations, this time in the form of articles finding fault not with the McCarthyite questioning, but with Gabbard’s answer. As Politico wrote: “’Fake news’ is a favorite phrase of President Donald Trump…”
Soon CNN was writing a similar piece, saying Gabbard was using a term Trump used to “attack the credibility of negative coverage.” CNN even said Gabbard “did not specify what in the article was ‘fake,’” as if the deceptive and insidious nature of this kind of guilt-by-association report needs explaining.
“Stephanopoulos shamelessly implied that because I oppose going to war with Russia, I’m not a loyal American, but a Putin puppet,” Gabbard told Rolling Stone. “It just shows what absurd lengths warmongers in the media will go, to try to destroy the reputation of anyone who dares oppose their warmongering.”
Gabbard has had some “controversial” views, having been raised in a conservative religious home, the daughter of a right-wing radio personality in Hawaii who once described homosexuality as “not normal” and “morally wrong.” She later wrote of a political conversion on issues like LGBT rights, but still angered Democrats in the Obama years by invoking an infamous Republican criticism, i.e. that the president refused to use the term “radical Islam.”
Frankly, all the Democratic presidential candidates have controversial statements in their pasts, in some cases boatloads of them (see here, for example). The difference with Gabbard is her most outspoken positions cross party orthodoxy on foreign policy, particularly on war – she is staunchly anti-intervention, informed by experience seeing a failed occupation in Iraq up close — and are therefore seen as disqualifying.
She’s Exhibit A of a disturbing new media phenomenon that paints people with the wrong opinions as not merely “controversial,” but vehicles of foreign influence.
“This is how they control self-serving politicians whose only concern is their career,” Gabbard says. “Unfortunately for them, I am a soldier — not a career politician.”
A transparent hit piece came out as Gabbard was announcing her run. NBC reported “the Russian propaganda machine” is “now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat.” The article among things was sourced to New Knowledge, a cyber-analysis firm claiming it had caught Russian “chatter” about Gabbard’s “usefulness.”
This was after the New York Times did a piece outing New Knowledge as having faked exactly this kind of activity in an Alabama Senate race between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore. In that incident, the paper got hold of a memo in which the firm admitted it had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.”
For NBC to use New Knowledge as a source after this was bad enough. The Daily Beast piece is something beyond, rhetorically. Even during the depths of War on Terror hysteria, we didn’t see Fox headlines stating: “JOHN KERRY: TOP CANDIDATE OF PEOPLE WHO THINK BIN LADEN IS MISUNDERSTOOD.”
The tactic of making lists of thought criminals first reappeared a few years ago, when the shadowy PropOrNot group was profiled in the Washington Post. In this case, the definition of what the Daily Beast calls people pushing “the Russian government line” overlaps with views that are merely anti-interventionist or antiwar in general.
“They smear anyone who is against regime change wars,” says Gabbard.
This applies really to all of the people mentioned in the Beast piece, even Camp, whose inclusion is also ridiculous because it’s not 100% clear “Goofy Grapes” even has a connection to him (and if he does, are we in guilt-by-association-by-association land now?).
Tennison belongs to a type I saw a lot of in Russia, i.e. people who grew up under the shadow of nuclear conflict and perceived bad relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to be the world’s biggest threat to security. This was a big progressive craze in the Reagan/Bush years, when people like CNN founder Ted Turner were creating the “made for détente” Goodwill Games. Tennison has a long history of such “friendship” activities and is said to have brought AA to Russia.
Re Cohen: if accepting a check from him is now a treasonous offense, a lot of Democrats are going to have to send money back. I’ve known Steve a long time and though we’ve had disagreements, outlets like The Beast have frequently villainized him for saying things any Russia expert would know are true, like that the U.S. did meddle in Russian affairs after the Soviet collapse (particularly in 1996).
The other anti-interventionist candidate, Bernie Sanders, had his own gross press misadventure of late.
Sanders joins Gabbard in having been tabbed a Kremlin project countless times since 2016. The latest New York Times piece, about the “left-wing activism” of Sanders, hovers around this dreary foreign-subversion theme. The headline revelation was about a trip Sanders made to Managua in the eighties, where he may have attended a rally. The Times explains: “At the anniversary celebration, a wire report described a chant rising up: ‘Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die.'”
In a subsequent interview with Times writer Sydney Ember, Sanders responded, when asked about this, “They were fighting against American — huh, huh — yes, what is your point?” He then noted he didn’t remember that particular chant.
This is really silly gotcha journalism (especially since it’s not clear what language the chant was in). Ember asked Sanders if he would have “stayed at the rally” if he’d “heard that directly.” Elsewhere, she asked why Sanders once said the Soviets had a good public transportation system and free health care, and if he believed he had an “accurate” view of Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega.
Sanders at first didn’t respond, then spoke and was short with the reporter, seeming exasperated as he explained the context of decades of American interventions in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and other South and Central American countries. He tried to explain that his “view” of Ortega was irrelevant because he was really protesting the policy of intervention, not supporting the foreign leader.
The whole episode was a Back to the Future version of the same criticisms leveled at anyone who opposes regime change in Venezuela today — if you protest the policy, you’re not antiwar, you must support the targeted foreign leader.
“This was not about Ortega,” Sanders said. “Do you understand?”
His curt response inspired author and Times columnist Jill Filipovic to write that Sanders was “shockingly rude,” adding: “We already have a president who attacks the press, condescends and refuses to answer questions he deems stupid.”
Bernie Sanders is not Trump. Neither is Tulsi Gabbard, nor anyone else but Trump, for that matter. It’s a preposterous take. It’s worse than fake-news: It’s self-fulfilling news.
In 2004, Howard Dean was asked repeatedly if he was “too left” or “too liberal” in campaign stops. You would see lines like, “addressing concerns that he is too liberal to be president…” in coverage. It was nearly a mandatory preamble to Dean stories.
On the trail, I watched Dean take in these questions. Over time, you could almost hear his teeth grind at words like “left” or “liberal.” Eventually he did start to flip out.
When he did, suddenly his “testy” demeanor and “combative,” “finger-thrusting” style earned write-ups of their own, culminating in the campaign-ending “Dean Scream” story. Reporters once reveled in the power to make or break candidates with these circular, quasi-invented narratives.
These smear jobs don’t work the same way they once did. Trump in 2016 clearly used impatience with media tactics as part of his strategy. The more he brought trail reporters into stump speeches by calling us things like “bloodsuckers” (“enemy of the people” didn’t come until later), the better he did with crowds.
Reporters refuse to see it, but the national media now lives on the unpopularity spectrum somewhere between botulism and congress. While some of that is undeserved, some of it isn’t. Voters especially resent being told who is and isn’t an acceptable choice, by a press corps increasingly seen as part of a corrupt and condescending political establishment.
Stories like “Tulsi Gabbard Is the Top Candidate of Traitors” represent exactly the kind of thing people hate about the commercial press as an institution. This scarlet lettering backfired badly in 2016, but we’re doing more of it this time around, not less. Don’t be surprised if it ends badly again.
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y 12-year-old daughter recently asked me what I think about abortion. She walked into the kitchen, poked around the refrigerator, then spun around and blurted it out: “I can’t decide what I think about abortion. I want to know what you think.”
