September 15, 2018
The last two years have been a pitched battle between those of us pushing for a “more perfect union” and those wishing to normalize patriarchal white supremacy and abandon any pretense of democracy. From day to day, we rebound from this regime’s relentless assaults on those of us who are not straight, white, Christian men to trying to take solace in special election victories or court decisions that slow our country’s headlong rush into autocracy. For those of us on the side of democracy, this has been an encouraging week.
On Thursday, Tish James won the New York State Democratic Primary for Attorney General, positioning her to be the first Black woman to hold statewide elected office in New York. Additionally, six members of the faux Democratic I.D.C. were defeated by a diverse group of more progressive Democrats.
Nationally, the Republicans’ effort to push Kavanaugh’s nomination through, despite an unprecedented lack of transparency and evidence that he had lied numerous times before Congress was rocked by allegations that an unnamed woman had accused him of attempted rape when both were high school students. The details were truly disturbing. The woman alleged that Kavanaugh and a friend covered her mouth and turned the music up, in an effort to drown out her cries. The letter that Grassley produced the next day, signed by 65 women, is meaningless. After all, a statement by 65 women that Kavanaugh was polite to them is not exculpatory. All of the women involved could be telling the truth, but, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out, class may have played a role. The letter signatories were all alumnae of elite all girls’ Catholic schools and the alleged victim was a public high school student. Kavanaugh would hardly be the first affluent young man to sort women into categories of those you marry and those you don’t, based on class or race, and treating them accordingly. Treating the letter as dispositive of Kavanaugh’s innocence nonetheless, Republican senators have indicated that they will move forward with a vote on Kavanaugh next week.
The news yesterday that, not only was Manafort pleading guilty, but that he was entering into a wide ranging cooperation agreement with the Special Counsel’s office was rightly described as a “stunning development,”(Source: “Manafort Pleads Guilty,” by Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Justin Jouvenal, The Washington Post, 9/14/18). The prospect of Manafort, who had a joint defense agreement with Trump and was present at the infamous Trump Tower meeting, baring his soul to Mueller is wonderful to contemplate, but we should temper our glee. We must remember that Manafort’s ability to incriminate Trump is only meaningful if there is a system committed to holding him accountable and the last two years have shown us that there isn’t.
If we had any doubt, the deafening silence of Republicans’ this week in the face of Trump’s tweets denying the deaths of nearly 3000 American citizens caused directly by his administration’s malign incompetence should be a clue. Their willingness not to allow an allegation of attempted rape to be even a speed bump on their rush to install a partisan hack on the nation’s highest court is another one.
We had better be clear. This is no time to stop and gloat. This is a party of predators and they won’t stop until all of us are prey.
#VOTE
#Swingleft
#Redtoblue