#^d 2019-10-17 #^h Midweek Roundup
Sometime Wednesday afternoon it occurred to me that I might as well go ahead and round up the first rush of Democratic debate links for the Weekend Roundup. Then I wondered whether I could just dispatch them early, in a Midweek Roundup (something I've done a couple times, but not often). So here's what I rounded up by bedtime. Not many comments, other than to note that the "conventional wisdom" on Syria is not only worse than what Tulsi Gabbard has to say, it's worse than Donald Trump (see, e.g., his dismissal of Lindsey Graham, below).
Some scattered links this week:
FiveThirtyEight:
Cristina Cabrera: Graham threatens to become Trump's "worst nightmare" in escalating feud: This promises to be more fun than Graham's two-plus years of utter sycophancy, but amidst all the insanity Trump has spouted over the last week, he sure has Graham's number:
Trump, however, doesn't seem to particularly care what his closest Senate ally thinks.
"Lindsey Graham would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years, with thousands of soldiers fighting other people's wars," Trump told reporters on Wednesday afternoon. "I want to get out of the Middle East."
Trump said Graham ought to focus on "the judiciary" and investigating Trump's "deep state" conspiracy theory instead.
"That's what the people of South Carolina want him to focus on," the President said. "The people of South Carolina don't want us to get into a war with Turkey, a NATO member, or with Syria. Let them fight their own wars."
Alexia Fernández Campbell: No one has a damn clue how many jobs will be lost to automation.
Matthew Chance: Putin is on a victory lap of the Middle East. I suspect this is overstated, and of little practical import, but it does reflect the fact that the US has seen its reputation as a benefactor and power erode after decades of incoherent, reckless, and obsessive actions (not least its subservience to Israel). Moreover, America's position is likely to deteriorate further, especially as American public opinion turns against Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, and Egypt -- a conjuncture of Islamophobia on the right and anti-authoritarianism on the left. Trump's unique contribution to this is that he's convinced many despots in the Middle East that they no longer have to choose between the US and Russia.
Patrick Cockburn: Turkey's Syria invasion rapidly backfiring for Ankara.
Jonathan Cook: Israel prepares to turn Bedouin citizens into refugees in their own country.
Tom Engelhardt: American Brexit: "It's not just Britain headed for the subbasement of imperial history."
Kareem Fahim: Turkey's Erdogan presses offensive in Syria boosted by a nationalist surge at home. Doesn't that often happen in the early days of a war, before blowback occurs and the consequences sink in?
Tara Golshan: Bernie Sanders's plan to reshape corporate America, explained.
Rebecca Gordon: Extorting Ukraine is bad enough, but Trump has done much worse.
Ben Hubbard, et al: In Syria, Russia is pleased to fill an American void.
Sean Illing: The racial pessimism of Clarence Thomas: Interview with Corey Robin, whose new book is The Enigma of Clarence Thomas.
Sarah Jones: Trump 'surprised' the grieving parents of a British teen at the White House.
Ed Kilgore: Moderators and rivals pound Warren on middle-class tax-hike evasions. It's a rather dumb question, implying that middle class people aren't paying for health insurance now, where in fact they're paying through the nose into a scheme that squeezes them harder every year.
Jen Kirby:
Ezra Klein: Sorry, but Democrats need to talk about Hunter Biden. "Trump won't be."
In 2016, Bernie Sanders famously refused to attack Clinton's emails in the debates. "The American people are sick and tired about hearing about your damn emails," he said to applause. The result was that rather than Democrats realizing how damaging that story was -- and how ineffective Clinton was at putting it to rest -- during the primary, they found that out in the general election. And yes, the media deserves the blame for the coverage decisions, but Democrats can't simply assume the media won't make the same mistakes in 2020. The lesson of Clinton's emails is that unfair smears can help Donald Trump get elected.
One thing that might help here would be to never let an answer to this question go more than one sentence without bringing up Trump and his family of leeches. Then feel free to point out more examples of families profiting from their genes, like the Bushs, the Cheneys, the Romneys, and (sure) the Kennedys. Nepotism is an endemic problem in America, but it's worse in times of greater inequality and corruption, like now. Maybe go on and offer a back-handed compliment to the Bidens, who at least have the decency to recognize that even the appearance of impropriety is something that needs to be avoided. Of course, this approach would work better if the candidate isn't Joe Biden, but even he could handle the question much better than he did in the debate.
Eric Levitz:
PR Lockhart: Forth Worth officer charged with murder in killing of black woman in her own home.
Dylan Matthews, et al: 5 winners and 3 losers from the October Democratic presidential debate. Winners: Bernie Sanders; Elizabeth Warren; Pete Buttigieg; opioid epidemic activists; universal basic income. Losers: Tulsi Gabbard; Joe Biden; free trade. My biggest problem with these judgments concerns Gabbard. Zack Beauchamp charges her with "a series of blatantly false statements," but the first one he points out is "the regime change war we've been waging in Syria." He flatly asserts that "The US is not waging a war of regime chance in Syria (as Biden pointed out later in the debate)," but the US was an early supporter of anti-Assad forces, way before ISIS emerged as a factor in the war. ISIS gave the US an excuse to use air power and ground troops in Syria, but the US never wavered in its opposition to the Assad government (even while fighting ISIS undercut the opposition and helped Assad stay in power). Beauchamp repeats the "regime change war" canard several times, and applauds Buttigieg for his "succinct and devastating" putdown of Gabbard: "You can put an end to endless war without embracing Donald Trump's policy, as you're doing." But Gabbard has been much more consistently opposed to Trump on Syria than her critics, who seem to have forgotten how we got into this horrible, nasty war in the first place. You can read the debate transcript in Here's what the 2020 Democrats are saying about Trump's Syria policy. Warren's statement there isn't bad: "We need to get out but we need to do this through a negotiated solution." A President Warren might even be able to do that. Indeed, the best solution to all of America's many foreign policy problems would be negotiation, aimed at replacing the myopic projection of American power with mutually beneficial international frameworks. But Gabbard is less deluded by American myth than any other candidate, and that clarity helps her here. (Where she falls down is not having the commitment to justice that you see with Sanders, or for that matter with Warren.) But Trump is incapable of negotiating anything, not least because he has no sense of decency himself, so his own sloppy exit is probably the best one can hope for now. You could even say that what he's done is accidentally brilliant: by double-crossing first the Kurds then the Turks in rapid succession, he has pivoted US policy in favor of consolidating Assad's power, which is at present the only viable path to peace in Syria. No reason to think he was smart enough to figure that out himself, but maybe Vladimir Putin was. Trump's unique contribution was in being too insensitive to object.
Ian Millhiser:
Ella Nilsen/Li Zhou: House Republicans joined Democrats in condemning Trump's actions in Syria. Vote was 354-60.
Anna North: Ronan Farrow's new book is a reminder of how silencing women helped Trump get elected: Book is called Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. Also on the book: Daniel Lippman: Ronan Farrow: National Enquirer shredded secret Trump documents.
Delia Paunescu: The fourth 2020 Democratic presidential debate, explained in under 25 minutes.
Andrew Perez: Documents reveal hospital industry is leading fight against Medicare for All.
Kelsey Piper: Tom Steyer shouldn't be running for president.
Frank Rich: There are only 5 candidates still standing after the latest Democratic debate: He's counting Joe Biden out, which seems a bit premature, so you can probably guess the rest: Warren, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar. Assumption seems to be that the latter two-three will pick up "moderate" support as Biden falters/flails. I think that may misread much of Biden's support: what they like about him is that he comes off as a solid, old-fashioned Democrat, safe and respectable, at a time when Republicans have every structural advantage and have never been more dangerous. Others may have similar platforms, but no one else has that particular vibe, or comes close.
David Roberts: California's deliberate blackouts were outrageous and harmful. They're going to happen again.
Aaron Rupar:
Giuliani's $500,000 payout from Fraud Guarantee reveals the hypocrisy of his attacks on Hunter Biden: "Giuliani is staunchly opposed to cashing in on political connections -- unless he's doing it."
Greg Sargent: Mick Mulvaney's role in the latest Trump scandal just deepened.
Sabrina Shankman: Trump wants to erase protections in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, a storehouse of carbon.
Emily Stewart: Kamala Harris's call to suspend Trump's Twitter account, explained. "It's complicated." I rather doubt that. Steve M. This is why it's not worth shutting down Trump's Twitter.
Matt Stieb:
Trump has 'very serious meltdown' in meeting with Democrats: Following the House vote condemning his Syria moves. Trump's tweet version:
Nancy Pelosi needs help fast! There is either something wrong with her "upstairs," or she just plain doesn't like our great Country. She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person!
A fourth associate of Rudy Giuliani has been arrested: After Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Andrey Kukushkin, and now David Correia. As Molly Ivins liked to say, "lay down with dogs; wake up with fleas."
Rudy Giuliani pushed Trump to remove Turkish opposition leader from US: Report. Refers to: Carol D Leonnig, et al: Giuliani pressed Trump to eject Muslim cleric from US, a top priority of Turkish president, former officials say: Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan blamed for the 2016 coup attempt.
Matt Taibbi: In Democratic debate, more evidence that Ukrainegate helps Biden: "The more Democrats rally around Joe Biden, the clearer Donald Trump's path becomes."
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Is this Elizabeth Warren's Democratic Party?
Alex Ward:
Matthew Yglesias:
Democrats' debate about automation missed the mark: "Both productivity and economic growth have slowed down, not sped up."