MONSIEUR MACRON GOES TO WASHINGTON

By Dominique Paul Noth

Macron and Trump

Tuesday (April 24) the media had grand fun with the man-hugs between Trump and Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron, president of France, during the first formal state meeting and dinner the US president has held. Lots of grimace-causing handshakes, a moment of dandruff brushing by Trump that Macron took with a grin, constant chatter about how these two leaders couldn’t quit each other.

But the media attempt to make Macron a laughingstock backfired bigtime when he addressed a joint session of Congress Wednesday morning and in impeccable English carved out a place for himself as the true leader of the West.

Even discounting the required standing, the cheers and rounds of applause that greet every speaker to these congressional gatherings, Macron was making the sort of impact across the aisles that Trump never enjoys. His reputation in Europe may be something of a conservative taskmaster but in the US he suddenly came across as a progressive.

He forcefully proclaimed the heritage of the two countries, defended the Paris climate accord and longed for the US to return to that accord and continue the Iran nuclear pact – elevating saving the planet as the concern that sooner or later would bring the US back to his side.

He discounted the value of “commercial wars” (read trade wars) and made it clear throughout, to spontaneous eruptions of applause, that his viewpoints were far more popular in Congress than Trump’s.  He bluntly said America would be judged by history on its maturity about climate change and intelligent world policy, rather than the fits and hiccups generally emanating from the White House.  It was a pointed rebuke.

And quite a turnaround for Congress.  Even the Republican gentlemen ensconced behind him, Vice President Pence and Speaker Ryan, were forced to their feet more often than they had planned, yet 16 years ago they were part of the group in Congress that changed French fries to “Freedom Fries,” so angry were they at France for not joining the Iraq war.

So let the media have its fun setting the Trump-Macron lovefest to music and providing constant front-page photos of the two leaders holding hands and patting each other on the back. 

Macron may have looked like a little boy standing next to Trump, but he was the one with the smile of a tiger.   It was Trump who looked fawning and it was Macron who was quietly grabbing the mantle of world leader.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

WHY DEMOCRATS ARE CHOKING YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNTS ACROSS NATION

By Dominique Paul Noth

Meet the candidates nationwide in your emails and snail mail begging for money – not just through many political or party groups but more often in personalized notes from themselves or famous supporters. 

Among the liberal senators facing ferocious
GOP money attacks are Sherrod Brown . . .

As a journalist I sign into multiple campaigns of both parties to keep track of what is happening. This year the Democrats have made it much easier for all of us, since so many are sending missives laced with money hunger, deadline pleas, matching fund opportunities, desperation or even “where have you been?” panic. (Like “Why haven’t we heard from you, insert name?)

Sensing a momentous wave, candidates around the country have intensified reaching out.

. . . and Elizabeth Warren  . . . 

  One result is that the money sent Democratic candidates is bulging and so are the number of women candidates.  It’s all still second place to the GOP, but it is making more contests competitive and even making an  earlier impact than the Republicans.

Act Blue, an internet service that candidates use to make sending money easy, is already closing in on its 2016 results – seven months ahead of the election!

. . . and Wisconsin's own Tammy Baldwin . . .

Big progressive donors are being stretched to the max and so are the little donors who remain the bulk of the Democratic party giving and voting. For state parties, this is a mixed blessing, as they reluctantly confess.

Great if there’s a nationwide sweep but it comes at some cost to local election fund-raising. 

. . . but so are moderates like Claire McCaskill.

It may be unfair that the average citizen is being asked to give till it hurts, but how else to combat  the superior dark money offered on the GOP side from  such billionaires as the Kochs and the Mercers, an Addison demanding genuflection, an Uihlein here, a Hendricks there – just add your favorite villain. 

The Democrats cannot hope to match this outlay, so they need to pile up $25 donations across the land to reflect the reality of growing support. So it may be a good dilemma for local candidates who feel money for them is drying up from the national blitz –at least everyone is working in the same direction when it comes to turnout. 

The problem for many folks on fixed income or little discretionary money is – where do you put the dough and how much to how many?  Most progressives I know of are investing more than they sensibly can afford, but feel it is vital for the country.  But there are some races where “give till it hurts” causes moral pain, particularly in D.C. Senate and House races which once limited fund-raising to the state you live in. 

Not counting the two independents who vote with the Democrats – King and Sanders seem in good shape – there are 23 Democratic Senate seats facing renewal or replacement in November – and only eight Republican ones. Nine GOP if you include the Mississippi seat of retiring Thad Cochran, which requires a November election to complete his term until 2020.

Mississippi is usually unthinkable -- Democrats have not won a Senate race there since 1982 -- but the Democrats are making inroads in House elections and the senate picture is still shaping up.  Wyoming’s John Barrasso and Mississippi’s other senator, Roger Wicker, didn’t seem much threatened . . . until a few weeks ago. 

Arizona's Krysten Sinema

But the Republicans willingly leaving are certainly threatened seats -- Jeff Flake most notably in Arizona where Rep. Krysten Sinema is running an ardent campaign using the internet and even Bob Corker as Tennessee voters weigh the horror of Rep. Marsha Blackburn replacing him, rather than Democrat Phil Bredesen, a former governor far better liked and in some polls leading. 

Blackburn’s hard blond FOX persona is so frightening that Corker even toyed with un-retiring rather than see her run.

Nevada's Jackie Rosen

While still uphill, buoyant Rep. Jackie Rosen is mounting a strong challenge to Republican Dean Heller in Nevada and, amazingly, Rep. Beto O’Rourke has subdued his opponent’s insults in Texas by out-raising Ted Cruz, a race the internet seems eager to keep hot.  

But Mitt Romney seems a shoo-in replacement for retiring Orrin Hatch in Utah, keeping that seat Republican. And Deb Fischer seemed a shoo-in until Democratic activist Jane Raybould and others started hitting her on issues important in Nebraska – health care and her support for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

But the real Senate threats – and the real push for money – involve nearly two dozen sitting Democrats, many facing those outrageous amounts of third party money hard to trace.

Several  races the Republicans won’t much bother with – New Mexico’s quiet and popular senator Martin Heinrich, Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, Delaware’s Tom Casper, Washington State’s Maria Cantwell, even Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar and  Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, Virginia’s Tim Kaine, and Maryland’s Ben Cardin despite a bizarre primary challenge from Chelsea Manning.

But everyone else, especially the most liberal Democrats, are burning up the web with pleas to combat the millions pouring in against them. 

Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin is heavily pounded by GOP money which doesn’t seem to care who she faces (two Republicans, each with their own billionaire in their hip pockets, are trying to knock each other off before the August primary).  

Also pounded by the right are Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow and Florida’s slightly more moderate Bill Nelson who now faces Florida’s well-heeled governor, Rick Scott.

Challenged by outside money are New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand and Connecticut’s Chris Murphy in states they should normally have a comfortable lead in.

In two cases, New Jersey’s Bob Menendez and California’s Diane Feinstein – the challenge may come from Democrats on the left, somewhat curious in the Feinstein case, where the arguments against her float dangerously close to ageism.

But there are Democrats desperate for campaign money that progressive Democrats raise questions about.  

These are the blue dogs whether they accept the name or not, likely to vote with the Republicans on some issues such as a tax bill and yet stand unblinking with fellow Democrats on issues like Obama healthcare. They look strong for the Democrats in reddish states when compared with their opponents.  But without weighing those opponents, what is a poor donor to do when email solicitations arrive from West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey and Indiana’s Joe Donnelly? (In my experience, Casey has been less present on the Internet push than the others.)

The donor instincts are not just about differences of kind in a “big tent party”  -- which should and do exist regionally -- but in worrying about how these Democrats will vote  for six years into the future, and how hard they will work to reverse Trump’s mistakes should their party  gain the majority. 

These are the four that trouble me most.  But while also moderate in their votes, I have a great deal more sympathy and belief in Montana’s Jon Tester (who is fighting Illinois billionaire money from Richard Uihlein supporting his opponent) and particularly Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, whose fighting spirit is admirable and whose ideas are thought-provoking. Given their general control of Missouri, the Republicans are coming after her hardcore – she is considered the most threatened Democratic senate incumbent, though Baldwin might give her an argument. Even Democrats who don’t always agree with her are rallying to her support.

Last time, Republican backwardness on sex helped her win against Todd Atkins – can lightning strike twice?  This time her opponent is state attorney general Josh Hawley, who has been stymied in straightening out his own state GOP.  That stems from his governor, Eric Greitens  who admits to an extramarital affair, is battling blackmail and criminal charges and yet refuses to resign, accusing his opposition of  “a political witch hunt.” Talk about a Trump echo chamber.

Hawley had hoped Greitens would quit to put felony and blackmail charges behind him – and also behind Hawley early in his campaign against McCaskill.  His ineffectiveness has become a campaign issue. McCaskill may get another reprieve through self-imposed Republican folly.
[Editor's note May 31: Greitens did quit, which may be bad news for McCaskill.] 

Hiral Tipirneni is fighting from behind to win
an April 24 special election in Arizona.

As if the Senate elections weren’t busy enough, social media users have been badgered by innumerable House campaigns.  An Arizona House candidate facing a special election April 24, Hiral Tipirneni, is soliciting campaign letters from embattled senate Democrats like Gillibrand while Heitkamp has provided endorsing emails for California Rep candidate Brian Forde, a former Obama adviser.

Miami Beach’s David Richardson, hungry to replace retiring Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has also flooded Facebook, causing Midwest confusion among people who have never heard of him.  Similarly South Carolina’s Joe Cunningham hopes you will directly help him knock Mark Sanford back to Argentina.

Likewise, South Carolina’s Archie Parnell running against GOP gun toting Ralph Norman has launched his own direct Facebook campaign while Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos is directly soliciting Democrats in border states for her threatened 17th District in a former Trump region. 

Emily’s List is in your email pushing 36 (!) House pro-choice women including Iowa’s Cindy Axne, Florida’s Mary Flores, Washington State’s Kim Schrier, California’s Mai Khanh Tran and Illinois’ Lauren Underwood (many of whom would flip red seats to blue) plus female candidates for governorships.  Even attorney generals in other states have gotten into the internet act.

On and on down every ballot, including those you can’t vote in, the money wheel spins across the US.  Will it tap your savings?

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.  

ADD TOUGHNESS ON SYRIA TO TRUMP’S CHAIN OF MISCONCEPTIONS

By Dominique Paul Noth

Trump closed the barn door on dapper dictator Bashar al-Assad after
his chemical attack crushed his opposition.

We don’t need to rely on Russian bots to fill our email and news feeds with false history.  The Republican Party and the Trump administration have that well in hand, demonstrated by a selective and probably ineffective airstrike on Syria April 13 that closed with Trump reviving Bush’s false claim at the end of the Iraq war:  “Mission Accomplished.”

He was not alone. UN ambassador Nikki Haley lowered her reputation for accurate tough talk by declaring about the airstrike that “America was locked and loaded” (quoting Trump) and then added this:

“When our president draws a red line, our president enforces the red line.”

This red line rhetoric is meant to be a slap at Obama rather than at the Republican Congress that refused to back up his stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, first taken six years ago.

It has become a Republican centerpiece of fake news, suggesting that a weak Obama failed where a strong Trump is succeeding, building up the Tin Man to hide his Cowardly Lion bluster.

Now there are legitimate arguments that can be made about Obama’s approach to foreign policy. His was more a case by case solution  rather than a hawk or dove overview, but he contemplated intervention at a time when US action in Syria could have made a difference – when there was a real civil war and Assad’s authoritarian ruthlessness was in jeopardy. 

Things might have been different if the US stepped in then, but the US was clearly sick of such Mideast conflicts and questioned whether our government should insert us in a civil war regardless of the crimes against humanity that Assad was engaging in.

We drew a mental line, not a red one, between the brutality of conventional weapons and the use of poison gas. The second we wanted to act on. The first not so much, though it was killing more innocents. (View online the documentary that should have won the Oscar: “Last Men in Aleppo.”)

Thus in 2013, after Obama had drawn a red line around the further use of chemical weapons, Congress balked at giving him military authority to enforce it.  (Trump’s current authority is a paper-thin resolution previously used to justify the Iraqi War.) So a frustrated Obama maneuvered and accepted Russia’s promise to supervise removal of all of Assad’s chemical weapons, accomplishing by diplomacy what he had been denied militarily. 

Today we know the Russians misled UN inspectors and did a lousy job. But we forget the deal did hold up for Obama’s remaining years.  Once Trump came in 2017, Syria reverted to multiple uses of chemical weapons, not stopped by an air strike a year ago and maybe this time not stopped by a military one-off but by the facts on the ground.

In the intervening time Assad’s forces have dominated the opposition and, with Iran and Russia support, firmed up Assad’s dictatorship. Why risk universal condemnation over chemicals when ruthlessness with conventional weapons can bring the same result – and aren’t being protested by the US government? Besides, Assad's recent use of gas was specifically to drive out the last active remnants of the resistance, crushing their will by devastating their children. That Mission Accomplished may have been his.

Despite Trump’s full court press in the media, despite pretense that his America is tougher than the old America,  TV viewers had better get used to turning away from continuing images of brutality rained on Syrian families and cities – and certainly turn away from any pretense we are doing anything concrete about it. 

We have become good at turning away and at accepting false narratives.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

DALLET’S WIN IS SURFACE OF A CHANGING ELECTORATE

By Dominique Paul Noth

JS expert photographer Rick Wood caught Dallet and her family
at her April 3 victory party.

It was rainy and cold throughout Wisconsin Tuesday but that did not deter the forces behind Rebecca Dallet from leaping in puddles, doing handsprings and yelling eureka! when she was the obvious winner with only half the vote counted over Michael Screnock for a 10 year term on the state’s highest court.

There were reasons for the Democrats to revel in glee in what is on paper a nonpartisan race.  Screnock had open backing from what has become in many minds the evil triumvirate – the NRA, the Republican Party and the conservative juggernaut disguised as Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, literally flooding his campaign with dark money. 

Dallet had her own liberal backers and some big out of state names that usually ignore our high court race. But it was not just Joe Biden and Eric Holder making the race a national media story.  Ever since Trump, there has been a David vs. Goliath feeling to Wisconsin elections, so dominant has been the GOP grip on the state government and the state’s sad emergence as a national test tube for Trumpian ideas.

For many her win is the start of retrieving respect and balance for the high court. Even Gov. Scott Walker regarded Dallet’s win as the first surge of a Blue Wave.

It did not escape notice that part of Dallet’s victory was in Paul Ryan’s House District 1 where (except for Waukesha County) she won or basically tied in the other four counties, part of a district gerrymandered to remain Republican. Dallet’s reputation is not just as a liberal values judge but a judge with law and order credentials, which could explain the size of her win.

But much of it spells hope for less well heeled candidates running against Ryan in November -  if he decides to run (the polls have moved him from sure thing to threatened and as of this writing he had not announced his decision on his future).

The 12 point margin of her victory also suggested, as many elections around the country have recently done, that the one-time sure hold the Republicans believed they had on rural territories has evaporated.

Not that superior money doesn’t make a difference, but it is no longer the guarantee it once was in elections.  Nor are the usual outbreaks of slimy television ads, such as the one WMC increased showings of after the prosecutor and the named family in the case protested this perversion of the facts and invasion of privacy.  The ad reminiscent of the infamous Willie Horton commercial tried to paint the two-year sentence that Dallet had given as some kind of weakness. 

Louis Butler

The public wasn’t buying it, but it scared folks with long memories. Ten years ago Michael Gableman, who wisely decided not to run again, won his seat on the high court largely because of a Willie Hortonesque ad that was even more misleading but probably cost Louis Butler his incumbency on the court. Even today, Butler’s decisions and reputation on the court survive, but the ad robbed him of his career.

The public seems to have grown up – in most parts of the state.  In Milwaukee, County Executive Chris Abele, a rich man in his own and his father’s right, spent a fortune trying to reshape the county board to his preferences.

In the cases where he spent the most money, he lost handily, even suggesting that Oak Creek is fertile territory for a more progressive candidate for the legislature. Abele lavished more than $160,000 in flyers and campaign activities on his District 8 candidate, James Davies, who lost handily (56%-44% out of 7,682 votes) to public educator Steven Shea, endorsed by progressive groups.

In the race where Abele shoveled the most money – District 1 against board chairman Theodore Lipscomb Sr. – opponent Casey Shorts took advantage of the Abele LeadershipMKE’s $178,328 in anti-Lipscomb mailers and canvassers.  Shorts had entered the race on his own hook, but certainly didn’t deny the money help that gave him 48% of the vote, far closer than he would have gotten on his own steam.

Another Abele supported candidate, Patti Logsdon, benefited from $129,000 in his money to edge a conservative supervisor (Steven Taylor) in District 9, but with only 23 votes separating the candidates, expect a recount.
(Ed Note: Later results put the race 500 votes out of reach.)

Most successful was Abele’s support of incumbent Deanna Alexander over Sparkle Ashley in District 18, which retains on the county board his lone, very conservative and Trump-style supporter.  Abele also supported Alexander with campaign money, but Ashley did not provide a strong enough counter in a district ripe for change.

Abele’s money combined with pitiful turnout to defeat Supervisor Peggy West in the Latino dominated District 12, where his $63,945 effort paid enormous dividends, a sad comment on the Latino community where the voter turnout was a pitiful seventh of what District 1 drew.

The winner, Sylvia Ortiz Velez, may have run behind in the district before but never refused Abele’s help this time, though she told interviewers that she does not support all his  policies. But she clearly owes him her seat, so it will be interesting to see how she votes on the board.

The District 12 story, where only 1,417 turned out to vote, spells difficulty for many grassroots groups that supported West.   Whether it is the specter of Trump, Sessions and ICE or whether other factors, the US citizens of Hispanic heritage in this district are painfully reluctant to engage in local elections. 

In the District 7 race for an open seat, as all sides predicted, Felesia Martin won with a whopping 79% of the vote.

The sparse impact on the county board, most of whom did not face opposition, suggests that Abele is good at wasting money, not exactly the image he is working toward.   

Some will reduce the victories to progressive over moderate as they turn to thinning the field against Walker in the governor’s race.

But across the state there may be a different lesson.  Dallet’s main appeal was competence, experience and social values but in a form moderates also found appealing.  Putting absolutism in ideology first is not as smart as listening to the electorate.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.