monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Russian interference in a US election you say??

In November, several outright Nazis and white supremacists will appear on Republican ballot lines. Arthur Jones, a founder of a neo-Nazi group called the America First Committee, managed to become the Republican nominee for Congress in the heavily Democratic Third District in Illinois. The Republican candidate in California’s 11th District, John Fitzgerald, is running on a platform of Holocaust denial. Russell Walker, a Republican statehouse candidate in North Carolina, has said that Jews descend from Satan and that God is a “white supremacist.”

Corey Stewart, Virginia’s Republican Senate nominee, is a neo-Confederate who pals around with racists, including one of the organizers of the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last year. The longtime Iowa Republican representative Steve King has moved from standard-issue nativist crank to full-on white nationalist; he recently retweeted a neo-Nazi and then refused to delete the tweet, saying, “It’s the message, not the messenger.”

Clearly, the time has come for a serious national conversation. And so political insiders across the land are asking: Has the Democratic Party become too extreme?

Everywhere you look lately, centrists are panicking about the emboldened left. Moderates, reported Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News, “are warning that ignoring them will lead the party to disaster in the midterm elections and the 2020 presidential contest.” Former Senator Joe Lieberman wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, over Representative Joe Crowley “seems likely to hurt Congress, America and the Democratic Party.” James Comey, former director of the F.B.I., tweeted, “Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left,” arguing that “America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.”

Though Comey’s judgment about things that affect political campaigns is not good, I think he’s sincere in wanting Democrats to win in November. But his worry is misplaced. Partly, this is because Democrats are not, in fact, rushing to the socialist left in great numbers. “Overall, it's not really true that the insurgent leftist candidates, like the candidates who are affiliated with the D.S.A. or Bernie Sanders’s group, are doing all that well,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University who specializes in partisan polarization. With many of this year’s primary races completed, Crowley is the only Democratic congressional incumbent so far to lose to a challenger from his left. Ocasio-Cortez is a bright, exciting new figure in the Democratic Party, but she doesn’t define it.

And even people like Comey — center-right figures who are momentarily allied with Democrats because they abhor Donald Trump — should be cheered by the energy that Ocasio-Cortez and others like her are creating. In the midterms, passion is likely to matter more than appeals to an ever-shrinking pool of swing voters, who at any rate tend to be idiosyncratic economic populists rather than the judicious centrists of Beltway imagination.

I’m not wholly unsympathetic to people of good faith who want Democrats to win in November, but who fear that America is more conservative than left-wing activists like to believe. I grew up at a time when Democrats were deeply afraid of liberal overreach. For many of the people who taught me about politics, the debacle of George McGovern’s 1972 rout was formative. Its lessons were reinforced by the overwhelming defeat of Michael Dukakis, who was painted as soft on crime and mocked by George H.W. Bush for being a “card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.,” as if concern for civil liberties were shameful. I wasn’t old enough to vote when Bill Clinton was first elected, but I remember what a relief it was when he broke the Republicans’ 12-year stranglehold on the White House, and how necessary and worthwhile his compromises seemed.

Now, however, Hillary Clinton’s defeat has overshadowed McGovern’s as the Democratic Party’s paradigmatic trauma. There are several lessons you can draw from her loss, some of them conflicting — some voters saw her as too corporate, others as too liberal. But it’s clear that in a polarized electorate, grass-roots fervor and a candidate’s charisma matter a lot, and an agenda that seems too modest can be as risky as one that appears overly ambitious.

After all, the economic demands that animate the left are generally quite popular. Though “Medicare For All” means different things to different people, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll from last year found that 62 percent of Americans view it positively. A recent Rasmussen poll found 46 percent of likely voters support a federal jobs guarantee, a more radical proposal that was barely present in American politics a couple of years ago.

Centrists might not think these are good ideas, but they are not wild fantasies; they represent efforts to grapple with the chronic economic insecurity that is the enemy of political stability.

Democrats will not defeat Trump and his increasingly fanatical, revanchist party by promising the restoration of what came before him; the country is desperate for a vision of something better. Whether or not you share that vision, if you truly believe that Trump is a threat to democracy, you should welcome politics that inspire people to come to democracy’s rescue.

That's an excellent synthesis. Indeed there's nothing to be panicking about; the Democratic party is just veering left somewhat, that's all. It's just course correction from the naive and rather ineffective bipartisan tropism of Obama towards a more combative and assertive position.

Bipartisan approaches would require an honest Republican party to work with, and there's very little honesty in today's GOP; better try and beat them to pulp rather than try and work with them...

Still, I expect some noise from the centrists who haven't yet digested the fact that "Hillary Clinton’s defeat has overshadowed McGovern’s as the Democratic Party’s paradigmatic trauma". That is, people who are still in the denial phase re. Trump's election and how bad the same-old-same-old Democrats crashed in 2016.

So in red states or purple states this author believes a candidate who has a 'vision' of extreme leftist views will win in those states because the leftist has a new view? It wasn't as though Hillary was rejected by the people because she was more moderate, in fact she won the popular vote which means more people voted for her than people who didn't vote for her, just not in the battleground states which mattered. Which I think was due more to the fact Comey announced the re-opening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email case at the last of the election than anything else. Hillary never did defend herself against those allegations effectively. She never came up with a winning argument against those allegations and instead relied on how bizarre Trump is and how deplorable his supporters are. She never really came to her own defense with Comey's characterization of her when he announced she was effectively guilty but she won't be indicted. Also, she didn't fight hard enough in those battleground states throughout the campaign. There are lots of reasons why she lost, but it wasn't because she was a moderate.

People might now embrace those ideals and they might have embraced them back then, but they approved of Hillary and thought she would be a good president or else she would not have so overwhemlingly won the popular vote.

Russian billionaire with U.S. investments backed alleged agent Maria Butina, according to a person familiar with her Senate testimony

Maria Butina, the Russian woman charged in federal court last week with acting as an unregistered agent of her government, received financial support from Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian billionaire with investments in U.S. energy and technology companies, according to a person familiar with testimony she gave Senate investigators.

Butina told the Senate Intelligence Committee in April that Nikolaev provided funding for a gun rights group she represented, according to the person. A spokesman for Nikolaev confirmed that he was in contact with her as she was launching the gun rights group in Russia between 2012 and 2014. He declined to confirm whether Nikolaev gave her financial support.

Nikolaev’s fortune has been built largely through port and railroad investments in Russia. He also sits on the board of American Ethane, a Houston ethane company that was showcased by President Trump at an event in China last year, and is an investor in a Silicon Valley start-up.

Nikolaev has never met Trump, according to his spokesman.

However, Nikolaev’s son Andrey, who is studying in the United States, volunteered in the 2016 campaign in support of Trump’s candidacy, according a person familiar with his activities. Nikolaev was spotted at the Trump International Hotel in Washington during Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, according to two people aware of his presence.

In a court filing last week, prosecutors said Butina’s emails and chat logs are full of references to a billionaire as the “funder” of her activities. They wrote that the billionaire is a “known Russian businessman with deep ties to the Russian Presidential Administration.”

Prosecutors did not identify Butina’s funder by name but said he travels often to the United States and was listed by Forbes this year as having a net worth of $1.2 billion — which is the same as Nikolaev’s current listing.

Butina was ordered held without bond last week after she was charged with conspiring to work as a Russian agent. Prosecutors allege that she sought to meet GOP politicians and infiltrate conservative organizations, including the National Rifle Association, at the direction of a Russian government official, in an attempt to advance the Kremlin’s interests.

According to prosecutors, for two years she traveled back and forth to the United States, often accompanying Russian central banker Alexander Torshin to NRA events and other political meetings. Prosecutors have said her activities were directed by a high-level Russian government official who matches the description of Torshin.

So in red states or purple states this author believes a candidate who has a 'vision' of extreme leftist views will win in those states because the leftist has a new view?

Though Comey’s judgment about things that affect political campaigns is not good, I think he’s sincere in wanting Democrats to win in November. But his worry is misplaced. Partly, this is because Democrats are not, in fact, rushing to the socialist left in great numbers. “Overall, it's not really true that the insurgent leftist candidates, like the candidates who are affiliated with the D.S.A. or Bernie Sanders’s group, are doing all that well,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University who specializes in partisan polarization. With many of this year’s primary races completed, Crowley is the only Democratic congressional incumbent so far to lose to a challenger from his left. Ocasio-Cortez is a bright, exciting new figure in the Democratic Party, but she doesn’t define it.

Centrists might not think these are good ideas, but they are not wild fantasies; they represent efforts to grapple with the chronic economic insecurity that is the enemy of political stability.

Democrats will not defeat Trump and his increasingly fanatical, revanchist party by promising the restoration of what came before him; the country is desperate for a vision of something better. Whether or not you share that vision, if you truly believe that Trump is a threat to democracy, you should welcome politics that inspire people to come to democracy’s rescue.

The Trump administration on Tuesday will announce an aid package for U.S. farmers to protect them from the fallout of trade battles between the United States and other countries, a source familiar with the plan said.

Politico had reported earlier on Tuesday that the administration was expected to announce billions of dollars in aid, and the Washington Post reported that the plan was to provide $12 billion in support.

None Dared Call It Treason . . . When It Was a Democrat

Not only did Obama stop missile defense systems from deploying in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2009, Obama sent planeloads of socks and blankets to Ukraine in the face of Putin’s aggression. Which really shouldn’t have been a surprise: Senator Barack Obama was very much for disarming Ukraine. Channeling Neville Chamberlain, Obama said in 2005: “We need to eliminate these stockpiles [of conventional weapons] for the safety of the Ukrainian people and people around the world, by keeping them out of conflicts around the world.”