Jessica Valenti at The Guardian writes—It's no accident that sexual harassers rise up the ranks:
As the sexual harassment reckoning continues to sweep the country, with new men outed and more women coming forward every day, people are rightfully asking how it’s possible that these abusers were able flourish for so long.
Across industries, men accused of rape, harassment and the most disgusting sorts of behavior rose up the ranks seemingly without notice. They were promoted time and again, amassing power at work, even though their abuse of women was often an “open secret”.
Perhaps it’s time to consider that abusive men aren’t rising to the top in spite of their disdain for women, but because of it. In a country where domineering bravado and casual misogyny can land a man in the White House, it’s not unreasonable to believe that this kind of behavior in men not only goes unpunished – but that it’s actively rewarded.
George Zornick at The Nation writes—The NRA Took a Big Swing in Virginia and Missed. Are the politics of gun control finally shifting?
Virginia’s elections on Tuesday night were a stinging loss for the Republican Party. Governor-elect Ralph Northam won by the biggest margin for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate since 1985, and Democrats made massive and unexpected gains in the House of Delegates.
Election night was also very difficult for the National Rifle Association, which is headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, and spent big bucks in an effort to defeat Northam and several other Democrats who ultimately won. The NRA poured over $2 million into races in Virginia, including a massive $750,000 advertising push in the last three weeks before the election.
The losses came up and down the ticket. Northam, Lieutenant Governor–elect Justin Fairfax, and Attorney General Mark Herring all faced NRA-backed candidates and won. In 13 competitive races where the Democratic candidate was endorsed by the pro–gun control group Giffords (until recently known as Americans for Responsible Solutions) and the Republican was backed by the NRA, the Giffords candidate was victorious in 12. The winner of the 13th race still hasn’t been declared, as Democrat Shelly Simonds and Republican David Yancey await a full vote tally. Among the winners was Chris Hurst, whose girlfriend was fatally shot on the air as she reported for a local Virginia television station. His opponent was backed by the NRA. [...]
NRA candidates in very safe Republican districts still won, but that was to be expected. In short, the NRA got its clock cleaned everywhere that mattered.
Sarah Jones at The New Republic writes—The Left Had a Great Election Night. Will Democrats Take Advantage?
On Tuesday night, the Democratic Party proved it’s not quite dust and ashes. It took governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey. It flipped two state legislature seats in Georgia and 14 in Virginia. Maine voted for Medicaid expansion by referendum. A slew of local candidates backed by Our Revolution and Democratic Socialists of America won city council seats in Knoxville, Tennessee; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Somerville, Massachusetts. A lefty outsider, Larry Krasner, won the district attorney’s race in Philadelphia.
In total, 19 candidates backed by Our Revolution won seats; so did 15 members of Democratic Socialists of America. (There is overlap between the two groups.) The results aren’t just good news for the party, which had been demoralized, or for voters, who desperately need an alternative to Donald Trump’s Republican Party. It’s good news for the left, which needed to prove that it is a viable political force. There should no longer be any doubt that this is the case. [...]
What does it mean to be a Democrat? Tuesday provided answers, if the party cares to listen.
It can be the party of Lee Carter, a socialist veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who unseated the majority whip of the Virginia House. It can be the party of Danica Roem, a trans woman who defeated one of the most openly transphobic and homophobic members of the Virginia Republican Party. It can also be the party of Chris Hurst, who flipped a delegate seat in southwest Virginia as an openly pro–gun control candidate, and of Hala Ayala and Elizabeth Guzman, Latinas who won delegate races in an election cycle shaped by conservative race-baiting and xenophobia. These candidates and more exploded the narrow definitions of electability that have long governed Democratic politics. And they showed the key to victory is to show up everywhere and run.
Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed at The Washington Post write—How to win like (Bill) Clinton:
Democrats had a good night Tuesday, but there is a lot of work yet to be done. If we want to be a majority party again, we must avoid our own forms of denial. Too often, our party succumbs to a recurring fallacy that voter turnout matters more than persuasion. Clinton knew that winning and governing required both. In 1992, he forged a personal connection with his base and a philosophical connection with undecided voters. When Ross Perot made 1992 a three-way race, some Clinton advisers urged a “34 percent solution” focused on Democratic turnout. Clinton chose instead to compete with Perot for swing voters and cruised to victory. Now, as then, sophisticated turnout models are no substitute for winning the argument.
Show Americans what you’re for. Clinton understood that ideas are the most underrated weapon in politics and the best chance a party has to change minds. He ran the wonkiest campaign in memory and made real solutions to real problems — sending young people to college in return for national service, rewarding work with the earned-income tax credit, steering capital to poor neighborhoods through community development banks — the test for his opponents. Attacking “the brain-dead politics of both parties,” he declared: “Americans know what we’re against. Let’s show them what we’re for.”
Joan Walsh at The Nation writes—Here’s Why Democrats Won Big in Virginia. Twice as many Democrats contested GOP state House seats as in 2013—and they helped push other candidates to victory:
Though all of Virginia’s statewide elected officials are Democrats, the party has lagged in the state House: Republicans control 66 seats in the House of Delegates, Democrats only 34. But this year Democrats ran 54 challengers against GOP incumbents, up from only 21 in 2015. Of the 54, 31 were women—and 26 of those women were first-time candidates. An astonishing number of those first-time candidates defeated incumbent Republicans Tuesday night.
I’ve covered these Virginia House elections since mid-summer. When I called around in the last couple of weeks to get predictions from Virginia Democratic veterans, the most optimistic said the party would gain eight House of Delegate seats. Several folks said 4-to-5. Nobody but nobody said 16. And nobody, even back in the early days of hype, suggested they might flip the state House.
“Turnout was way up where we ran candidates,” said former Virginia congressman Tom Periello, the progressive who lost the Democratic primary to Ralph Northam and immediately endorsed his former rival, and joined Win Virginia, a progressive PAC pushing state House candidates. “And particularly where we ran a diverse slate.”
Andrew J. Bacevich at The New Republic writes—Leave It to the Generals: A nonstrategy for Afghanistan:
Within the armed forces, and among members of the media with a hawkish bent, the beef against Barack Obama as war president was that he micromanaged our military campaigns, denying warriors the latitude and flexibility they needed to get things done. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates compared Obama to LBJ, an unrivaled military meddler. He believed that, like Johnson, Obama had intruded into military matters that were beyond his purview, with results that were far from helpful. No one will make a similar charge against President Trump. Not since 1861, when Abraham Lincoln entrusted the conduct of the Civil War to George McClellan, the ineffectual leader known as “Little Napoleon,” has the balance of civil-military authority tilted so greatly in favor of the generals.
When the notoriously risk-averse McClellan proved hesitant about actually committing his army to battle, a caustic Lincoln asked if he might “borrow it for a while,” hinting at the greater presidential assertiveness to come. Barely conversant with history, military or otherwise, Trump himself shows none of Lincoln’s ability to learn and to grow in office. His implicit charge to our own would-be Napoleons reduces to this: Don’t bother me; just get on with it. Trump may preside over America’s ongoing wars. He leaves to others the actual direction of those wars.
We are now beginning to get an inkling of what that implies. Contrary to what he promised on the stump, the seemingly endless wars that Trump inherited appear likely to continue endlessly. This is due in large measure to the fact that the generals to whom he defers show no evidence of being able to transcend the limits of their own experience.
A.C. Thompson and T. Christian Miller at ProPublica write—Will Texas Massacre Finally Get Military to Improve its Criminal Reporting System?
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had an urgent question Monday about Devin Patrick Kelley, the former U.S. Air Force airman who is accused of killing 26 people worshipping at a church service yesterday: How was it that Kelley, convicted of domestic violence and discharged for bad conduct, was still able to get a gun?”
By late afternoon, Abbott appeared to have his answer: the Air Force said an initial review indicated it had failed to share Kelley’s criminal record with the civilian authorities, and so his conviction was never entered into the federal database used to screen potentially dangerous gun buyers. Federal laws bar felons and those convicted of domestic violence from obtaining guns.
The Air Force said it will conduct a full review of how it handled Kelley’s records, as well as all “relevant policies and procedures.”
However, the Air Force and the military’s other armed services have known for years there were widespread problems with their reporting procedures.
A 2015 Pentagon report found the military was failing to provide crucial information to the FBI in about 30 percent of a sample of serious cases handled in military courts.
Eric Levitz at New York magazine writes—Inequality Is a Bigger Threat to Our Democracy Than Putin Is:
In a liberal democracy, the legitimacy of a state is founded on the integrity of its elections. Spread doubt about the latter, and the former starts to fall away. If Americans believe that their leaders do not derive their power from the popular will, but merely from the favor of shadowy puppet-masters, then civic engagement and social trust will decay. Voter participation will decline, along with confidence in public institutions. And these developments will, in turn, make it easier for bad actors to manipulate the democratic process. Eventually, cynicism about democracy could make some voters welcome the prospect of authoritarian rule. This is why it’s so vital that Russian interference in our elections is investigated and deterred.
That’s also why Congress must not pass President’s Trump’s regressive tax cuts.
That may sound like a non sequitur. The debate over tax policy in the United States is generally framed as a conflict between rival economic theories. Democrats may claim that cutting taxes on the rich will slow the economy, or drive up the debt, or force cuts to popular domestic programs. But few would put supply-side cuts on a list of threats to liberal democracy in the United States.
And yet, the idea that increasing economic inequality and sustaining popular sovereignty are incompatible endeavors wasn’t always alien to our politics. In fact, as the Roosevelt Institute’s Marshall Steinbaum recently noted, the New Deal reformers who brought robustly progressive taxation to the United States understood the policy as a means of altering the distribution of power in society. That the rich can easily convert their wealth into political dominance was a common-sense proposition for Americans born into a Gilded Age. Thus, the point of confiscatory top marginal rates wasn’t to maximize efficiency or growth — but to limit the monied elite’s capacity to shape the American political economy to their whims.
John H. Cushman Jr. at InsideClimate News writes—As Climate Talks Open, Federal Report Exposes U.S. Credibility Gap:
As global climate talks resume this week, the U.S. is straddling a climate credibility gap, with the Trump administration's policies on one side of an abyss and what the government's own scientists know about climate change with increasing certainty on the other.
The disconnect became more evident last week as the administration published, but then basically shrugged off, a comprehensive report on the state of climate science.
Written by authoritative government and academic experts, then honed by the extreme vetting of a formal National Academy of Sciences peer review, the latest volume of the National Climate Assessment paints a stern and explicit picture of the risks of climate change. [...]
Meanwhile, the Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress remain wedded to an expansion of fossil-fuel energy that the science says is at the root of the problem. [...]
The credibility gap can be captured in a simple concept, affirmed by every scientific authority: to limit the planet's warming, emissions of carbon dioxide have to be brought rapidly to zero.
Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Is All out of Hope:
A lot of people are talking today about Michael Kruse’s piece in Politico Magazine in which he traveled back to Johnstown, Pennsylvania to check in with Trump supporters he’d talked to last year. The basic takeaway is a bit different from the headline suggesting the president’s supporters never believed his promises. In fact, it’d be more accurate to say that they were actually quite hopeful when he was elected, but prudently skeptical. What’s changed is that they don’t really have much hope at all anymore, but their devotion to Trump is surprisingly undiminished nonetheless. [...]
Johnstown needs a lot of help. That comes through clearly in all the interviews. No Democrat is going to help Trump build his wall or destroy Obamacare or bring back the steel plants, and that’s not what Democrats should be promising these folks because those aren’t the things that are going to help them.
But these folks need left-wing answers to their problems. They need plausible government action to address the opioid epidemic. They need government investment that produces jobs, even if it’s partly a boondoggle for their somewhat shady congressional representative. They need an activist antitrust division that will help them rebuild an indigenous business community, and they need favorable terms for start-up money to seed those businesses.
Those are the kind of promises they should be grasping onto, instead of the racist and xenophobic crap that Trump spews. We can call these folks deplorable and single out the most racist among them as examples for why they’re beyond hope. But that’s abandonment, and that’s certainly not what the local Democratic Party in Johnstown is going to say about themselves and their own community.