MUELLER'S EXPECTED DRYNESS ALREADY KINDLING SPARKS

By Dominique Paul Noth

The Internet brims with podcasts delving deep into Robert
Mueller's findings.

Trump by his mere presence in the White House has placed the American voter in a moral dilemma. The worst fears of his opponents – that he’s an imposter -- sound like the crazy conspiracy theories of his rally followers.

In conversation with Trump detesters, many are now convinced there are enough racists and ignorant people in the US to explain his presence in the White House. Some don’t want to believe that white privilege and fear of the brown and black is that deep in our psyche, but others believe it fervently.

But then there is the growing evidence of the Mueller Report.  The special counsel is set to testify Sept. 24 while the Internet is aflood with podcasts from people who have actually read the report and weighed its implications.  Among the best is one from Lawfare, a distinguished legal blog since 2010 whose first episode in entitled “Active Measures” for the Russian term for its cold war style methods of attack.

I hope everyone listens to Mueller’s House testimony yet don’t expect him to draw a simple road map for the unthinking. He clearly believes his report has outlined his findings and explains his limitations as a dutiful member of the Justice Department, which has opined (to my personal dismay) that a sitting president can’t easily (some say ever) be criminally indicted.

Mueller, a lifelong Republican, is hardly bringing a flaming hot partisan poker to his testimony and will probably invite America to absorb his report, as Lawfare clearly has done.

But a cogent reading throws in doubt whether Trump would have won without Russian propaganda – as hard as that is for even voters who don’t like him to admit. Clearly, when Putin started his disinformation campaign against US voters – taking advantage among other things of the popularity and immediacy of the Internet on millions – Trump was nowhere in his mind.  But certainly by 2015 the propaganda direction had switched to support Trump over Hillary Clinton, whose stern warnings to Putin when US secretary of state under Obama still rankled Putin. 

Mueller details an astounding degree of Russian involvement but he was also dealing with legal realities that allowed him to charge some Americans and many Russians but not the president.  He also refused to clear Trump of criminal obstruction in other dealings.

Now no one will ever prove beyond reasonable doubt that Trump won 63 million voters in 2016 by crook more than hook. None of these voters will probably ever admit they were duped and most of his opposition (who have some other weird political explanations for the results) would rather blame Democratic Party leaders than the Russians.

But millions of US citizens were clearly bombarded with views on Hillary that don’t pass muster in the light of day. Millions were subjected to rallies and messages that sounded American, supported Trump with lies -- and could have affected their opinions in the voting booth.

And yet, and yet  those who oppose Trump and suggest his election was tainted tend to sound like conspiracy theorists of their own, like the people who still think Saddam Hussein bombed the towers or believe Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Abdullahi Omar supported Isis.

We are a-sea in a loony world of attitudes and extremes that lend credence to our Founding Fathers’ concern that education was the key to a winning democracy – “if you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin warned.

Psychologists are familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect and it suggests some fascinating connections to today’s conundrum. “Dunning-Kruger” is a type of cognitive bias, where people with little expertise or ability assume they have superior expertise and the ability to pass judgment on others. This overestimation occurs because they don’t have enough knowledge to know they don’t have enough knowledge. “Not only do they fail to recognize their incompetence,” the effect’s scientists explained in 1999, “they’re also likely to feel confident that they actually are competent.”

It sounds contradictory as does Catch 22 (based on a 1961 war novel but often described as the belief you have to have money to make money, just true enough to sound convincing).   Dunning-Kruger has been extensively explored in psychological terms in the workplace but a recent story in Psychology Today suggests it should also be “studied in one of the most obvious and important realms: political knowledge.”

If it is studied in connection with reading and thinking about the Mueller Report, Trump’s support base will be confronted by some harsh truths. The rest of us can argue about who should succeed him and whether the Democrats have their own Dunning-Kruger groupies.  But replace him we must.

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

HOW FAR LEFT IS TOO LEFT?

By Dominique Paul Noth

Underneath all the turmoil of the Democratic presidential race our headline seems the real issue for voters. Are the most leftist ideas in the field a bridge too far for the winning electorate? Or is a more measured approach failing to seize the public mood?

The answer may depend on where you live.  Folks in New York City and Los Angeles and perhaps even Chicago seem to relish the ideas that moderate Democrats call extreme.  In states like Wisconsin, where the voters may lean Democratic, the successful gerrymandering of a decade has locked the Republicans in legislative power -- despite a smart Democratic governor. 

Individual voters who may passionately like the lefter the better are being pulled up short remembering they live in a country with Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell leading the baying pack on the other side of the divide. They fear that America has revealed itself as a country in which too many forgive moral cowardice and racism, thinking they are getting what they want despite the racism and cowardice.  The underpinnings are beginning to strip the economy into failing pieces, but that is of no interest to those enamored of the surface prattle from the right.

In Wisconsin, party leaders are openly seeking Democrats for the legislature who fit the dozens of districts long controlled by the GOP.  Flamethrowers not welcome because, the theory goes, they can’t win.

Interestingly, both the so-called moderates and the so-called leftists agree on the final goals – universal health care, expanded social security, higher wages, genuine concern for workers, progressive taxes that make the very rich dig even deeper, immigration reform with a path to citizenship, and on and on.  The important differences are in how to get there and how quickly and how cost effective. 

And there is not even general path agreement among the most progressive.  “Medicare for all” is a term made popular by Bernie Sanders and embraced by other presidential candidates (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Bill De Blasio). 

But each candidate advocates something a little bit different.  Several other candidates noted how private insurers play key roles in national health insurance in other countries.  Sen. Amy Klobachur, flat in the polls, nevertheless has made inroads saying fixing the ACA is an essential first step to universal health care.  (The differences continue in education policy though all are pushing for less costly (or no loan) higher education at public institutions.)

Former VP Joe Biden shaped the curve within the Democratic electorate, insisting that the most socially progressive are smart people but the country is not there yet, and that his first step – restoring the best of Obamacare – is where the voters stand.

Right or wrong, the way forward is not just a national question. It  will determine the winning candidates particularly in crucial state elections that percolate under the presidential scene.

State upon state are forming interesting races for the US House and Senate that rely on voter attitudes and also feature some sellable names.

Former Marine pilot and Democratic moderate Amy McGrath has raised impressive money in a bid to defeat Senate leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.  Former astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby Giffords and a leading voice in sensible gun control, is attacking Arizona’s appointed Republican senator Martha McSally.  In a New Mexico House race, a noted name from the past, Valerie Plame, exposed as a CIA agent by the Bush II administration, is running in a crowded field  for  the Democratic seat held by Ben Ray Luján, who is moving up to try and replace retiring Tom Udall as senator.    On and on around the states there are races local newspapers are eager to write about.

But not so much are they crazy to write about races on the level of state-wide legislatures. It’s hard to get the media and the public interested, yet those races are even more critical for the Democrats. 

Many states are fighting extreme partisan gerrymandering imposed by the Republicans that the conservative US Supreme Court, while expressing its disgust, suggests that only the US legislature can remedy. The high court refuses to.   Obviously, given the moral cowardice of the GOP Senate, a legislative remedy won’t happen. It is actually a great incentive in November 2020 for Democrats high and low, elevating in importance local contests as well as getting rid of Trump.

Speaking to experts in state politics though, with more than half the states controlled by Republicans, they estimate that  Democrats will have to punch 20% to 25% above their natural political weight to turn things around.  (In 32 state legislatures, Republicans control 1,000 more seats than Democrats.)

“Like it or not,” said one Democratic leader in Wisconsin, “the bill we have for partisan-neutral redistricting is not going anywhere with this GOP and we will have to live within the existing gerrymandering.”

Democrats, those interviewed added, are still working out their election strategies since many districts controlled by Republicans do not yet have “a viable Democratic challenger.”  Many leaders are concerned that efforts to turn Wisconsin’s Assembly and state Senate are not high among voter awareness.

The feeling of these political insiders is that the core minority sticking with Trump is abetted by the weakness to resist of elected Republicans. In that situation, the issue of how to rouse the voters into action differs from state to state, from rural to urban politics.

How far left is too left? That seems to depend on what you want – and what you can get.

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

WHY HASN’T PUBLIC OUTRAGE JUMPED ON TRUMP?

Where is our  Joe Welch speaking out over  indecent behavior?

By Dominique Paul Noth

Rudy Giuliani’s announced and then canceled trip to Ukraine to encourage that government to find dirt on Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s only surviving son, proved too obviously low for even Trump’s senior advisers – but only after pronounced criticism from both parties.
  
Trump immediately struck again in his now routine departure from normal behavior by injecting self-praising politics into a famous annual Fourth of July celebration, hoping to insert an “ain’t I great” speech into a nonpartisan patriotic moment.

Such antics brought to mind Joseph Welch, distinguished special counsel for the Army in 1954, who finally halted Sen. Joe McCarthy’s overwrought appeal to fear and innuendo by simply asking, “At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?”

That is the only proper response to the machinations of Donald Trump, who so fears people think  a foreign power helped get him elected that the first thing he wants  to do against Biden  in the 2020 campaign is get a foreign government to embarrass a family member and interfere in our election.

The Ukraine affair and the Fourth of July threat are tips of an iceberg that includes bizarre Tweet attacks on former employees, revocation of press credentials, contradicting his own staff  and other uproars so typical of Trump’s modus operandi – to trot out something outrageous and see how much attention he gets from the media whether he does it or not.

These “no sense of decency” moments ought to catapult the American electorate into seeing how far from basic morality Trump is willing to stray.  That the nation accepts this would confound the mild-mannered Welch – whose putdown of McCarthy drew national magazine covers -- and shows how far we have drifted from the traditional America Trump keeps talking about, though he clearly doesn’t know what it was. Welch was a touchstone, the sort we need again.

You don’t have to want Biden as president to realize Trump is counting on the media to magnify by repetition any weird action or political dirtiness he attempts, with Rudy as handmaiden. 

It has already happened regarding Biden.  The only reason most of the country now knows Trump’s nasty nickname for Biden – sleepy creepy Joe – is because news outlets, even MSNBC, repeated it hourly – sometimes in laughter but they repeated it nevertheless.

Trump is the president, the media argues, so every utterance has to be covered. But ratings concerns have clearly infected the networks.  Obama’s controlled face never got half the airtime of the plastic-putty puss.  There is no journalistic justification for how often his repetitious rally ramblings and predictable nastiness get airtime.  

The media is mystified – stupefied – on how to handle someone so willing to be unconventional and even immoral out in the open, untouched by the normal control brake of shame. Since the Mueller report did not criminally nail him for his footsies with foreign powers, he figures footsie can continue. Anything not directly forbidden will rear up again.

McCarthy (left) consulting with Roy Cohn
during 1954 hearings.

The reference to Joe McCarthy actually has historical connections to Trump – beyond how their use of fear and degradation is much the same.  Recall in videos of those Army hearings that McCarthy’s lawyer was the same Roy Cohn, now departed, who was Trump’s mentor in business shenanigans.  Trump himself has wished aloud the attorney general would serve as his personal lawyer like Cohn – and clearly William Barr is a sort of clone. 

In we can read facial language into videos from 65 years ago, Cohn was not happy with McCarthy’s ploy because he saw early – like the Ukraine fiasco – it could backfire into elevating McCarthy’s enemies.  McCarthy’s overreach was much like Trump’s – he tried  to embarrass Fred Fisher, a Welch assistant for a short time and a member of a Boston law firm  who at Harvard joined the lawyers guild, which had been cleared by DOJ but labeled a ‘‘Communist front'' by the now notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities.

McCarthy’s violent stretch of the facts – trying to discredit Welch and the Army by reaching for any red paint he could find -- is parallel to the Ukraine trip and similar Trump outrages, sometimes against the advice of his modern day Cohns.

Biden’s older son, Beau, a rising political force, was stricken by brain cancer. The grief over his death is the main reason Joe Biden did not run in 2016, while many are certain he would have done better than Hillary Clinton in the states that turned out to be vital – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump seems to suspect that also and he is turning up the pressure that Biden himself forecast – “he’ll go after my family.”

Hunter, the younger son, has had a slightly troubled life, the kind the tabloids Trump loves might exploit -- a divorce, allegations of drug use, Page Six breathlessness when he dated Beau’s widow and now in Ukraine as board member of an oil company cleared of charges in the new, less Soviet friendly government.

What this has to do with Joe is minimal.  Guiliani’s second advertised reason for talking up Ukraine, to get dope on Mueller and how the probe of Trump started, is equally delusional.  But note how Trump reaches for foreign help when facing opponents like Hillary and Joe who have a valuable foreign reputation, the sort of reputation he doesn’t.

The liberal school of thought doesn’t believe – or want to believe -- Trump made it to the presidency in 2016 on his own hook and crook.  It evokes in them a frightening view of anti-intellectual Americans.  I have to remind myself that in Wisconsin, 1,405,284 people voted for him. (For number nerds, Hillary gathered 1,382,536 and would surely have won drawing a fair share of the third party candidates, as the spilled milk people will tell you.)  My question today is simpler: Are those voters still there? Can the Trump voters stand by him now? It’s not just me asking.  TV news crews are busy interviewing voters about shifts in opinion.

Yet something about his methods apparently appeals to a section of Americans, which suggests a segment of the public so upset by the establishment that they wanted a maverick, even if the maverick has now proven a con artist and destroyed our foreign reputation while clinging to a rich man’s view of an economy that hardly addresses the pocketbook issues. 

I don’t know if Biden will be the voters’ final choice, though I have written about why he seems so appealing to voters and so scary to Trump.

I suspect that Trump gimmicks like the Ukraine – trying to destroy him by destroying his children -- will only increase Biden’s support. The election is about more than revealing Trump as a charlatan, but that’s a good start for angry voters.  They are suffering under Trump’s foreign stumbles, refusal to act on climate change, undoing deals that were good in the first place – and simply pretending that just being in the office gives him a license to misbehave.

No, the election should be about the best ideas for government and what the public regards as the best ideas.  The Biden appeal is predicated on a known quantity who can be moved to the left and is going to benefit from all the cheap shots Trump throws at him.  He is too old-fashioned for some of the voters who wanted him in 2016 when he was 72 – and given two terms would have been a president at 80.  But suddenly 76 feels too old out of the starting gate, though strangely you don’t hear the same sniping  about 77 year old Bernie Sanders.  

The progressives see strong younger presidential candidates out of the 20 or so running. One or two may still catch fire.  The issue is whether the electorate feels the same necessity for speed and youthful vigor.   It is too simplistic – as Kirsten Gillibrand proclaimed to the media -- that only Biden’s name recognition has him so far ahead. The non-hyphenated Democrats who make up the bulk of the vote are responding to more than name value.

Remember, in 2007, a year out from the contest, few voters even knew who Barack Obama was, but they measured him against the rest of the field.

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

THE OLD GUARD, SCARING TRUMP AND CONFUSING DEMOCRATS

By Dominique Paul Noth

Nancy Pelosi has been displaying her limp handshake diplomacy against
 Donald Trump  for years.

Leaving aside the younger Bernie Sanders fans, most progressive Democrats are activating for a new generation to take charge of the party in 2020.  In the last weeks, however, they have been forced to concede that the vim, savvy and experience most confounding Donald Trump stem from two septuagenarians. 

The main one, Nancy Pelosi, has emerged as the party’s strategic leader. The Republicans hoped to paint her as the evil shrew leading the impeachment stampede. They have been outwitted. She has convinced her colleagues that sharp investigation of Trump’s behavior will create the grounds for impeachment that even Republican senators can’t ignore.  It is a strategy that appeals after two years of doom and gloom rhetoric. “Own the center left,” she preaches, and bury Trump with a big victory.

The Speaker of the House at age 79 is not just pounding away on Trump’s behavior -- and the criminal means used to protect him – she is also backing a flood of progressive bills moving from the House to the Senate.  The cliché of   “walking and chewing gum at the same time” now only applies to one party – the Democrats.  Her open embrace of that cliché confounds Republicans.

She just produces wave after wave of responsible bills on election reform, background checks on firearms, paycheck fairness, net neutrality, health care and the environment, while showing the White House her willingness to work on infrastructure.  The delicious irony for Pelosi was that Republicans, led by McConnell, are opposing the infrastructure initiative.

That makes Mitch McConnell looks like the Grim Reaper (his own term that she has cunningly played offense with) blocking all these sensible advances. It hasn’t taken voters long to notice that the Senate, under Republican control, is where good ideas go to die.

The traditional voter preference for split government – denying one party both the Congress and the White House -- is fast disappearing thanks to this obstinacy of Mitch and Donald. Their new breed of Republicans has no philosophical rationale and looks weaker on ideas than the Democrats. Half the talking heads on TV agreeing with the Democrats are Republicans who have fallen away from Trump! Can the voters be far behind?

The fighting spirit of Joe Biden almost leaps past
primary niceties to tackle Trump.

The other vigorous septuagenarian is Joe Biden, younger by three years.  His mere presence at the top of the Democrat field of over 20 presidential hopefuls drives Trump zany on Twitter. Biden is leaping directly into the general election, bypassing the primary to go after Trump full bore and letting the chips of his 40 year record fall where they may. 

In simply not having to prove who he is, he is ahead of most of the field who have to introduce themselves to the public. The attacks from right and left on who he is are preaching to the choir – the voters know him. His plans for the future will unfold slowly while other Democratic candidates are pressed to explain who they are. He’s openly appealing to fallen away Republicans.

The presidential field is generally quite impressive and thankfully diverse. Many are making a strong impact.  But Joe just being Joe, and the reaction from the White House, demonstrate how much Trump hates dealing with known quantities like Joe and Nancy. They simply laugh off his sneering attacks. 

Biden’s age is assuredly a negative factor for new generation enthusiasts. Many eagerly want a younger generation to take hold of the future (and even Biden supporters regard him as  a place holder in the White House).

But age may not be as big a factor with traditional Democratic voters.  Many say medical advances are making 80 the new 60! Trump who is also in his seventies tries to pass himself off as young and healthy compared to Biden.  But the public sees who has to waddle onto the greens and needs a golf cart to carry him through foreign meetings.

Those over 50 are still more reliable as voters than those under 40, and even black women in recent polls show a preference for Biden, which could be another aspect of the Obama factor that is driving Trump nuts.

For two years, the Donald has tried to destroy Obama’s legacy – the health care plan, the Iran nuclear deal, the environmental regulations, pretending he didn’t inherit a good economy.  Maddening for Trump, longing for Obama grows and Biden represents that wished-for competence.   

So his only success has been elevating Biden, to many Americans a key part of an era where progress was made, in increments of inches perhaps but progress nevertheless. It was also a time when the world looked to America for moral and intelligent leadership, something that has vanished. Trump has done more than any other president to elevate Russia, China, Iran and even North Korea and Venezuela. What a horrible legacy!

America’s decline in reputation over two years lends credence to the progressive left’s call for robust correction, no half measures.  Trump has cost us a great deal of lost time at a crucial moment in history.

The US was once regarded as the essential fair broker in international disputes – no longer.   The window on dealing with climate change is almost closed.   The economy cannot long survive the growth of the top 1% against the middle class. 

Thus there is understandable pressure for “Medicare for All,” as some term it, or automatic voter registration, or the Green New Deal as a direction for the future, and many other pleas for immediate action on the left that Trump falsely decries as socialism. The US democracy has actually embraced socialism to deal with the common good – and the "common good" seems to have fewer tools at its disposal under Trump.

The majority of voters may internally agree with the left that something important must be done in 2020. But they may prove in their voting more cautious and hence more susceptible to GOP claims that the Democrats are throwing money around.  

The voters who have the final say have some historic pressures on being cautious.  In America, our traditional icons of heroic patriotism are white males -- mainly icons from the movies and from politics. While many female organizations are now demanding deeper appreciation of female power, even recognition of how the “weaker sex” is often the stronger sex in intellectual maneuvering, there is a tide of history that has diminished women and continues to do so in presidential polling. Is there a new tide in history strong enough to overcome that?

Many expect the electorate to jump in horror away from Trump, but not as far as some on the left hope. It recalls to mind the Aaron Sorkin inspired observation on the “West Wing” Season 7 when Matt Santos was campaigning to replace Josiah Bartlett as president. 

Santos was proudly a liberal but his campaign in Sorkin’s language was dealing with “a nation of centrists” while liberal Democrats were trying to push him even further to the left and conservatives were hawking on the right. That description of a fictional American electorate rings dangerously true to reality 13 years later.  

Biden may represent that solidarity from the Obama past to many voters. I’ve long been one who thinks he missed his natural time, but I also admit that his tenure as VP for eight years has demonstrated a capability that I did not see in 2007.  Election choices are often about the personal story a candidate brings to the office, and Biden has a good one.

His gains, however, have produced a disquieting level of infighting among the Democrats, some of it understandable, some of it petty. 

If the past is any measure, and that is questionable these days, the emerging Democratic candidate has to be a mixture of personality and ideas.  There’s plenty of time to decide -- and maybe to ponder why two septuagenarians, Pelosi and Biden, have made the deepest inroads against Trump.

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

HOW THE SENATE DOOMED THE MUELLER PROBE MONTHS AGO

By Dominique Paul Noth

Rejected as Trump's personal lawyer, William Barr then wrote
a memo and became Attorney General.  A good background
to know in absorbing his letter on the Mueller probe.

Approaching age 69, William Barr may be technically younger than the president but he was clearly in full retirement and not even in consideration for the job of attorney general – until he came out of nowhere in an unsolicited memo  to praise the absolutism of presidential authority and criticize the mere existence of the Robert Mueller probe.

Hardly a surprise, Trump nominated him for the AG job and his defenders made much of his association with Mueller decades ago and his old rep as good lawyer.  Even legal pundits on outlets as varied as FOX and MSNBC made noises that the Barr they knew from 30 years ago would dominate over the Trump fawning of his most recent statement.

Those assurances and three Democratic votes (Doug Jones, Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin) led the senate to easily confirm him in December, with his open promise that he would not let the president’s manner and politics sway him – at least anymore than they already had. 

That action clearly doomed the Mueller report to the trash bin.  We actually don’t have the report just a four page summary by Barr, which in fairness to the president and his critics needs some deeper examination.  I suspect we will never have the full report.

Mueller confirmed the Russians interfered with our election, demonstrated in 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, multiple indictments and 40 FBI agents echoing the firm conclusions of the US intelligence agencies.  The larger question was whether the Trump campaign participated (colluded) with the Russians or if the Russians did it so well and thoroughly on their own.  

Mueller concluded that  he could not tie such efforts to Trump or his campaign despite “multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign,” according to Barr’s four-page summary of the report, reducing any of Mueller’s sentences to footnotes and phrases. 

So what was behind Manafort’s sharing of campaign data with the Russian? What were the frequent offers of help from the Russians about? Why was the Ukraine plank added to the Republican platform at the Trump campaign’s insistence?  Why, most strangely, did so many in the Trump campaign or hangers-on try to hide their Russian connections?  For those questions, we have no answer. 

Conversely, Mueller could not prove to his own satisfaction under a limited law the president’s criminal role in obstruction of justice, which is doubly hard to prove without the underlying criminality of collusion.  Was the president worried that James Comey and then Mueller could find something there anyway? (He could not know how deep they were looking or who else was talking.)   Was he just being his typical run at the mouth self?  Mueller left that decision to others – maybe thinking of Congress? 

Unless the full report is released or Mueller is free to testify, there are many more key questions we can’t answer.  For instance, Mueller never questioned Trump in person.  Was that because of DOJ policy?  Or did Trump threaten to take the Fifth Amendment if questioned?

Did Mueller intend his refusal to exonerate the president as a way of opening the door for Congress to decide though the impeachment process? My children may be in their sixties decades from now in order to learn what Mueller intended.  That’s when historians scrape the barnacles off the record and if people still care enough to resurrect the truth.  This is my negative judgment about how much Congress will uncover in the next few months.

The House wants Barr and even Mueller to testify. The Democrats want to see the underlying documentation. But some of that may never happen or not be very satisfying. There are Department of Justice rules that need to be worked around.  Such things as grand jury testimony and conversations among prosecutors.  “I decline to answer” may be the most common response. The House will try but the process will be slow and exhausting. The difficulty – the maddening frustration -- may spur Trump’s opponents to turn out to vote heavier against him in 2020. Or they may slink away at how little we know.

Given the rules that encourage obfuscation, given the 5-minute question limitations of House hearings, given  the Republicans still in charge of the Senate, and  given Nancy Pelosi’s wise instructions to not  give Trump  the satisfaction of a vindictive enemy, impeachment seems off the table. Whatever Mueller intended.

That was written on the wall last December when Barr supporters said he would act as an old-fashioned traditionalist rather than a Trump partisan.  He didn’t.  Mueller may have well wanted Congress to decide on such issues as obstruction of justice, but Barr stepped in and decided on his own that no such inquiry was warranted. This, frankly, is the most obvious misstep – Barr concluding over a weekend something that Mueller was gathering reams of evidence on for two years!

The House may complain.  It may try to have more of the report released now rather than decades from now for historians.  The main comfort for Trump’s opponents is how  many other legal avenues there are that Mueller was only indirectly involved in – the behavior of the Trump foundation, revelations in his tax returns, the emoluments lawsuits.  The real punishment of Trump remains in the hands of the voters.

What does all this prove? I can only echo an unlikely Democratic candidate for president, South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg: "The country should never have let someone like Trump even get within cheating distance of the White House."

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH EVERYONE?

ONLY FIVE BUT STORY DETAILS 13 in Democratic presidential field. Clockwise from top left, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke and Elizabeth Warren.

By Dominique Paul Noth

On social media at least, the squabbling among Democratic candidates for president has started way too early and it is hard to tell how seriously the snipes should be taken.

Though socialism and capitalism have actually mixed match for a century, new disputes have broken out over semantic purity, as if a Socialist Democrat can’t be a capitalist and a capitalist can’t like aspects of socialism.  Though for decades the stuff called socialism has been hijacked by what we now think of as a capitalist democracy and even a Socialist Democratic democracy.

Bernie Sanders’ occasional reluctant toe in the water to define who he is may have contributed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have added to the confusion, though I found her university-level explanation of how capitalism and socialism blend to be admirable. But isn’t this too pedantic a debate to sidetrack the country in its search for a new leader?  

Underneath there is a more serious discussion unfolding: How progressive can the final Democratic choice be? If he or she labels themselves a Socialist Democrat, will traditional Democrats run screaming as if the Frankenstein monster had been set loose from the castle?  If the candidate’s label is proud Democrat, will Socialist Democrats sniff like superior nobility and stay home?

Is the country after Trump ready to be pushed into a daring Green New Deal and economic restructuring or more inclined to a step by step approach?  On the other hand, where else are the voters who want to be rid of Trump going to go?

Then there is gender bias.  Are white men inherently so privileged and dominant that they pale in comparison even to white women? And certainly to women of color.  Does #MeToo mean #NotThem?

Did Beto O’Rourke, despite the money he raised in the first days, doom himself by telling a little white lie? That he was born to run despite teen years indulging in many escapes from society that all teenagers engage in.  Clearly he meant he felt the need to be of public service very young, but it was amazing how many pundits – and mainly female pundits – seemed waiting to jump on him and move him to the level of domineering chauvinist. 

Underneath this petty uproar is a deeper question about whether Beto is too conservative as well as being too white, and you sense a real argument (what is a real progressive?) forming around the unannounced (at this writing)  Joe Biden who will also be a mighty fund raiser.

Progressive is not my main concern about Joe. It is his age, though his health regimen is amazing. But does his age make him more a one-term uniter, forcing the US to wait another cycle before tapping the younger crowd?

It may take Biden awhile to find the responsible answer to progressives who will slam him for past statements dating back to the crime bill and Anita Hill, where he seemed way too cavalier about concerns of minorities.

There I think Biden probably has a good answer that most Americans and even minority Americans will sympathize with – he, like America itself, grew up and became more understanding of social issues and trigger points. It’s unfair, he could argue, to take someone viewed as progressive in the 1980s and tar him with the 2019 brush, blaming him for being far ahead of most of the country then but attacked for where he was 30 years ago.  Isn’t it most important that he changed?

Unlike that mischaracterization of Beto’s statement, people are not born fully formed in their opinions and many can and do get rid of the bigoted opinions they grew up around.  And all those older voters count, too, even the ones that can’t quite get rid of that old mud.

It could be that beliefs of young voters that look so solid today will be refined over time as well. There’s hardly anyone with a long career in politics who hasn’t disappointed at one time or another. Now even newer presidential candidates are learning the power of the old YouTube clips, Twitter wars and reams of articles about you. Plus the weird pressures of celebrity expectations. These pressures seem to make us neglect what a talented field of candidates has emerged in our haste to fling garbage.  

Aside from being too pragmatic to carry the label progressive (where did that canard come from? Read up on Milwaukee’s “sewer Socialist” mayors) Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is under attack. Her sense of humor may delight her fans but she is apparently too mean a boss, a criticism that somehow has never been landed on any of her male opponents. A converse thought – maybe their behavior as a boss should have been talked about and society is just catching up on a gender discrepancy. 

Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper was too cozy then and too cozy now with Republican ideas -- how dare he in an era when any good Democratic candidate must hate Republicans!

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is making waves out of nowhere –a former Afghan veteran and piano player who knows many languages and handles town halls with ease. He has openly faced up to the issue of his youth as well as his gayness and encouraged an intergenerational approach to the issues of the day.   His very presence in the race brings back to mind the famous gay soldier episode of Aaron Sorkin’s “Newsroom.”

Cory Booker confirms he is dating Rosario Dawson, so stop those whispers that he would be a potential ABC’s “The Bachelor” in the White House.  (His larger problem may continue to be his support of voucher schools when mayor of Newark.)

Though black and as charismatic on the stump as any of the others, Kamala Harris is being forced to prove that her outstanding record as a California prosecutor in no way diminishes her commitment to the issues of diversity – immigration, police brutality, wages, you name it.

Julian Castro, former cabinet leader and, like Beto, another Texan vying for national attention (not to be confused with his equally handsome twin brother, Joaquin, who is making noise in the House) sought to separate himself from the pack by embracing the concept of reparations for the descendants of slaves.

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee saw the nation’s high school students, unsolicited, leave schools to draw attention to his and their central issue – climate change.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has jumped from unknown to much talked about (on the Internet at least) with his warnings on automation costing millions of jobs in the next decades. He is, to oversimplify, seeking to create a universal income base by taxing Amazon.

New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand actually waited until March 18 to formally announce, though no one had a doubt she was in the race.  The first thing she had to do is explain her insensitivity on the gun issue in the past.  The other complaint she has to fend off is that she acted too quickly about Al Franken.

But since Vermont didn’t have much of a gun issue either, Bernie has joined her in mea culpas to the gun control crowd.  We will have to see how this excuse plays out – that argument that guns or racial problems, etc.  didn’t impact some candidates growing up as much as it did others.  But it becomes a campaign negative when you have to prove your heart is pure. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has produced the most detailed platform of legislation and methods of any candidate for president.  But you will scour news stories in vain for the details, since that is apparently more boring than all that celebrity stuff and who is raising the most money.

Let’s all take a deep breath.

The money figures for all candidates, particularly where they reflect small donor enthusiasm, are impressive.  The unspoken central purpose – to expose Trump as a silly choice who should never again darken the White House – certainly looms large for all of them, along with the fear he still has enough weaklings around him in the Senate to deny impeachment. 

Wildly liberal, leftist moderate or pragmatic, the Democratic candidates are moving in the same direction, even if disagreeing on terminology.  Since words are my stock in trade, I sure can’t blame them.   Medicare for All is the  term of choice for some but not others. They use single payer, universal coverage, Medicare for 50 and up, but it’s hard to find any who don’t regard affordable health coverage as a right. 

Many are now talking as Sherrod Brown wanted before he dropped out – making the dignity of all work important to their campaigns.  You’ll still find platforms elusive about reparations,  automation and eliminating the electoral college but pretty uniform about immigration, wages, climate change and voting rights.  The public is being asked to decide which ones are doable, which are desirable and which rely on electing the right people to work alongside the new president. He or she can’t do it alone.

More people than usual are paying attention, but the interest and opinion-making has not  yet reached the 70 million the winner must attract to win. 

Right now the biggest maneuvering is around breaking through the media puffery – either on issues or personality.  (Few seem to remember that back in 2008, Barack Obama took some fairly unpopular positions on issues at the time but the nation trusted his interior compass. Personality and issues can go together.)

All concede that Inslee is technically right on the closing window of time for climate change – we must make it important -- but suspect it will still be health care, wages and such bread and butter that many feel won the field in 2018 and think will win the field again. 

Some of the arguments leading to the finale are worth having to clear the air and probably healthy.  But some of the disputes are so hot so early that they are likely to burn themselves out. 

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

WHY VOTERS MUST SELF-MOTIVATE APRIL 2

By Dominique Paul Noth

Lisa Neubauer

November 2018 brought the nectar of what progressive energy could look like in Wisconsin. But will that energy dissipate on April 2? There is so little attention in the media that citizens have to motivate themselves for these so-called nonpartisan spring elections.

Such contests look so infinitesimal in comparison to the fall biggies – and they are tiny in terms of number of races and turnout.  Yet these are precisely the contests in which democracies shape themselves on the neighborhood level. These itsy bitsy elections have impact that can linger for generations. 

Reality may say there is only one statewide race to look at April 2 – but what a race!  It will have reverberating impact on state politics for generations.

And it ought to be a slam dunk for a real progressive justice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court,   Lisa Neubauer – despite the fact that her opponent is, like her, a sitting appeals court judge. But Brian Hagedorn keeps exposing himself as the least qualified candidate imaginable for the high court – especially in terms of having already made up his mind on social and political issues. 

His campaign is trying to explain why routine hard-core GOP supporters like the Realtors and the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce are deserting him. It’s all tied into his political past and continuing behavior, include writings equating homosexuality with bestiality.  That was in his twenties and he is now in his early forties and proudly owns the writing. His defense? He accuses critics of being anti-Christian!

He has never faced the voters, since he ran unopposed after Scott Walker appointed him. Neubauer was appointed by Jim Doyle but then faced the voters along her way to becoming chief judge on the same appeals court he sits on. 

He was named to that appeals court four years ago by Walker after having helped concoct Act 10 and other Republican nasties in the legislature.  A judgeship was openly his reward and it is unlikely that the state voters want to continue that farce.  Especially when he indicates he won’t recuse himself if Act 10 comes before the high court, which is looking more likely every day. Yet he helped draft Act 10!

Neubauer is clearly the only progressive choice to replace Shirley Abrahamson who is retiring.  Her election won’t change the 4-3 conservative edge people talk about on the high court, but it sets the plate for 2020 when the balance can be changed. That’s when another Walker unknown who has never faced the voters, Daniel Kelly, is forced to defend his appointment on the same date in 2020 as the Democratic presidential primary.  (The legislature tried to change that date in its lame-duck session but was stopped cold.)

The motto of people supporting Neubauer  is to look around the corner and elect her, then defeat Kelly  -- “one important step at a time.”  Her campaign supporters are taking her election seriously, aware that Wisconsin is still considered a battleground state for Republican right wing forces  -- despite the flight of big money backers. 

In Milwaukee, there is only  one competitive contest for a Milwaukee County circuit court seat, stemming from Rebecca Dallet’s elevation to the high court, which opened her Branch 40 seat.  And it is a progressive voice  against a  Walker fill-in. 

Walker moved quickly after last April’s election to fill Dallet’s post with a lawyer of his liking the public had never heard of, Andrew Jones.  Now a progressive black woman, Danielle Shelton, is challenging him April 2 for the seat.

The city of Milwaukee also has a chance to elect a unified progressive slate to the Milwaukee Public Schools board.  (More on those non-judicial contests later.)

What is unusual about both the Neubauer and Shelton races is the mode of attack the Republicans have chosen in these supposedly nonpartisan contests.  

Nowhere is this clearer than in Hagedorn against Neubauer.  His plea to voters is  basically “I’m not the ogre being painted”  since he and his wife adopted a child with opioid problems (why that makes him a choice for justice is beyond me). But mainly his campaign is attacking Neubauer for what he is doing in debates and in every piece of campaign literature, accusing her of partisanship.

Neubauer is being attacked for being a Democrat who dared in 2007 to openly participate in a climate change march! This attack probably added to her vote totals since it indicates a lifelong commitment to taking the role of science seriously. 

His campaign has  tried to  use family stuff against her,  such as being the mother of a Democrat in the Assembly, Greta, and being married to a former legislator. They keep coming up empty. Her role on the bench is largely blameless and full of tough decisions often agreed with by other noted conservatives, including several supporting him now who supported her in the past as one of those “sensible Democrats” they could work with.

She is also now getting support from former US Attorney General Eric Holder based on her record and solid approach to the bench. Curiously it is not the help she sought or even wants, telling reporters: “I called on the outside money to stay out. I believed in that then, I believe in that now, so I've been consistent all along."

She may know her opponent’s kneejerk reaction better than those outside forces do. In the minutes after Holder’s visit to Wisconsin,  Hagedorn went up with a commercial accusing Neubauer of being a tool of liberal interests. 

Yet many who have worked with her over the years confess they didn’t even know she was a Democrat because she avoids political discussions, like a good judge should.

Danielle Shelton

The Shelton race is equally suspect in the nature of its attacks.  I can find no blame to attach directly to lawyer now judge Jones, who was largely unknown to the electorate when tapped by Walker to replace Dallet.  He had been a board member of  law firm Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek and served as a city attorney in New York when Walker reached down to grab him.

But someone in his camp reached out (by FAX machine?) to local media to remind them that Shelton 20 years ago been arrested for disorderly conduct in Oconomowoc (which seems in retrospect a case of arguing on the street while black). The newspaper articles glanced past her work as a single mother of two grown young women, a military veteran,  a public defender, an  activist for restorative justice and her work with immigrant mothers.

 (I talked briefly with Shelton at a fund-raiser in Shorewood, where she lives, and she confessed to mystification at the tone of that news coverage.)

As far as I can tell, the only criticism against her is being feisty while black. Last week, out of embarrassment, Shelton took down a celebrity endorsement from a parent caught up in that national college admissions scandal.

Turning to the MPS races, I pretty much agree with the recommendations of the Working Families Party (agreeing is not always the case with me).  They were recommendations echoed by Citizens Action of Wisconsin.

This is the first time in years that strong supportive voices for Milwaukee public schools are running as a bloc, as opposed to the shenanigans and curious hidden campaign processes of voucher and charter schools dabblers. Those dabblers have long hidden behind state funding methods that allow them to pretend to be a part of MPS and run candidates who are in their hip pocket.

Bob Peterson

Leading the charge for all of the city of Milwaukee is the “board at large” seat being sought by veteran educator Bob Peterson, a major voice in Rethinking Schools, a former MPS teacher and president of the teachers’ union (MTEA) and a deep detailed  thinker as well as activist for public schools I have known for decades.

His wife, Barbara Miner, a noted photographer and author, wrote one of the definitive texts for anyone who wants to learn about the history of Milwaukee public schools, the 2013 “Lessons From the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City.”

He is being opposed by a personable mother of three public school children, but Stefanie Dugan’s campaign seems largely built on the current interest in female candidates and of mothers stepping outside  of that domestic role to run for office. Which is great when they’re qualified.

In her case that is an amateur experience by someone who can’t explain what a board member does, at least in video I have seen.  Her knowledge  pales in comparison to Peterson’s writings and lifelong interest in public education

Dugan has won endorsement from AFSCME Council 32’s People committee but the larger collection of labor groups including AFSCME, the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, has enthusiastically endorsed Peterson.  While Peterson has not been campaigning on the endorsements but on his ideas, it is notable how quickly US Rep. Gwen Moore came out to support his campaign. 

Marva Herndon

In MPS District 1, a longtime activist for public schools and inner city children, Marva Herndon, is stepping up to the board.  She is noted for peppering that board and the various charter approving agencies in Milwaukee (especially the city) with deep and often embarrassing facts and research from her citizens group known as Women Informed.

This time she is running against Shyla Deacon, an MPS product and former policy maven at Next Door Foundation.  It’s becoming an important race between a veteran agitator for public schools, Herndon, and a newer voice trying to establish a foothold.  Herndon is getting my nod because I frankly think the MPS board needs someone who has been attacking them from the outside to finally get inside. Her views have proven correct over the long haul anyway.

Over in District 2, the progressives have taken hard aim at someone they supported in the past, Wendell Harris. He has tried to simplify their disagreement as his support of Carmen School, a charter taking root at Pulaski High School, but if you talk to teachers and other interested champions for public education, the dispute is far deeper.  Harris seems to have been talked out of the principles that first got him elected.

A dynamic substitute has stepped forward, Erika Siemsen, for 31 years an educator at Neeskara Elementary School (an MPS school in the Washington Heights area).  She comes from an active teaching family.  She wants “learning environments where students have the opportunity to participate in art, music and physical education and where teachers have time to teach and are supported with appropriate resources.” That falls directly into the wheelhouse of what all the districts desire.

MPS Districts

District 3 offers a rare opportunity to make a whole public servant out of Sequanna Taylor. By statute imposed by the Republican legislature (Act 40) she can only be paid part time ($24,000 I believe) as District 3 supervisor on the Milwaukee County board.  As past president of MTEA educational assistants  as well as an MPS graduate and parent, she is ideally suited to fill the board seat that is presently vacant.  The MPS pays a yearly stipend ($18,000) to board members,  which together with county wages comes close to respectable income, pulling together  jobs we may call part time but are emotionally, intellectually and physically demanding. 

In District 8, it is a mother of two MPS students, Megan Halloran, who is getting my endorsement since she has been heavily involved as a community activist including a sanctuary school district, fund raisers and rallies. She has proven far more understanding about the realities of MPS finance and decision-making than her opponent, who carelessly picked up figures from a right-wing source and was called out by an unopposed MPS board member in his blog.

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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.