Impeachment Day 6: Months of Grass Roots Activism Moved Democrats at a Critical Time
More often than not it’s the little things that make a difference in politics.
The decision to move forward on impeachment investigation(s) didn’t happen just because an easy to understand tale of presidential misconduct came to light.
While the Ukraine scheme does directly involve Individual #1 more than much of what Meuller revealed, there was another factor that should not be overlooked: constant pressure at the congressional district level by activists.
Indivisible (which I happen to be part of) is one of the groups involved in delivering a pro-impeachment message.
On Tuesday, when it became clear the mood was shifting on Capitol Hill, a text from the national leadership generated 12,000 calls to Congressional representatives.
The total number of texts flowing to and from this group has topped one million during the month of September. And those messages came on the heels of a month long campaign to contact representatives while they were on summer break.
Here’s Ryan Grim at The Intercept on the mood as elected officials returned to DC:
On Wednesday, September 18, as Democrats prepped for a series of private meetings, it was clear that nerves had been frayed. August had been a challenge for the party’s rank-and-file, as activists and angry citizens back home browbeat them at town halls, grocery stores, and local events for the party’s unwillingness to impeach President Donald Trump. “We spent all summer getting the shit kicked out of us back home,” said one Democrat who received such treatment...
That grassroots anger was translating into primary challenges, he noted, and needlessly furious constituents. Rep. Cheri Bustos, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and a champion of doing nothing when it came to Trump, had recently counted as many as 111 primaries, far more than a typical cycle. The members without official primary challenges were by no means safe, either, as they might soon draw a challenge unless the trajectory of the politics changed. Freshman representative Lori Trahan, from Massachusetts, for instance, came out for impeachment after Dan Koh, whom she beat in a primary by 147 votes in 2018, called on her to do so, with the clear threat that he may run again.
The seats of upward of 200 Democrats were being put at risk to protect a handful of loud front-liners, Raskin argued, and it wasn’t obvious that the strategy was actually protecting them from anything. Grassroots activists were demobilizing, Democrats across the board were facing primary challenges, and somehow, someway, Democrats seemed to be losing, again, to Trump. Something had to give.
Trump’s defenders have noted this activism and are pushing back by doing the things they know best: asking for money and playing the fear card.
FreedomWorks, big money front group created to give legitimacy to the Tea Party Movement, is behind a direct mail plea accusing Indivisible of hating the constitution.
Over at Fox News, the Hannity show featured guests saying the alarm over President Donald Trump's scandalous phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was being funded by liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
From Newsweek:
Guests Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing joined host Sean Hannity in maligning the anonymous intelligence official who filed a complaint over the call for fear that Trump was abusing the power of his office.
Both diGenova and Toensing vehemently attacked the official, who has now agreed to testify to congressional leaders about his concerns. The whistleblower's complaint was released Thursday, and details efforts by White House officials to hide evidence of the phone call with Zelensky.
DiGenova told Hannity Thursday that the whistleblower "doesn't need to be feted, he needs to go to prison," as reported by Media Matters.
Mark Sumner at Daily Kos reports on how extremist Trumpanistas at 4chan are on a crusade to reveal the identity of the whistleblower:
Despite some big assistance from The New York Times, it doesn’t seem that the mob has yet come to agreement on a target for their rage. But, as The Washington Post reports, that hasn’t stopped them from jumping to openly racist conclusions based on bone-headed idiocy. In the complaint, the whistleblower identifies them self as “a non-White House official.” Out of this, several 4Chan”hunters” seem to have skimmed only the words “non-White” and immediately began declaring that “the whistleblower is not white.” This set off a frenzied review of people of color who have been stationed at the White House over the last two years.
The pro-Trump forces have guessed that the whistleblower is “Hispanic or Jewish or Arab or African American and, many were sure, a woman.” Some pointed at former deputy DNI Sue Gordon. Others at current CIA Director Gina Haspel or former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. That none of these names make sense, based on the timing and nature of the complaint, doesn’t matter.
The hunt has been spurred on by conservative commentators and by Trump’s own words. His claims that the whistleblower were “something like a spy” and suggestion that spies should be killed, have been taken very seriously by people who are at this moment posting picture of federal employees, outing their home addresses, and suggesting that this one could be “the one.”
Jon Schwartz at The Intercept has written an article about all the systemic work the right has done since Richard Nixon resigned. Many on the right felt like the ex-president had been railroaded, and were determined to prevent such a thing from happening again.
What we do have is another kind of system, one that the right wing in the U.S. has been constructing since Watergate: a system to make sure no Republican president is ever forced from office again, no matter what they do — even if they shoot someone on 5th Avenue. The right has devoted decades of careful, patient investment to creating this system, which has three main arms.
First, there’s a gigantic media ecosystem, with Fox News at the apex and innumerable smaller creatures. Second, there’s an intelligentsia based in think tanks and Ivy League professorships funded by conservative foundations. Third, there’s a legion of right-wing judges carefully selected for monomaniacal partisan loyalty.
Together they’ve created what Bruce Bartlett, a Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush staffer turned apostate, called “self-brainwashing.” “Conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth,” Bartlett wrote in 2015. Nothing is true for Republicans unless the system says it is. If this system had been in place in 1974, Bartlett believes, “Nixon would have finished his term.”
And just to let you know these folks are serious:
https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1178087507164110850?s=20
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Lead graphic via Reddit.