Only Eight Years Until Election Day?

It sure feels that way, with a news cycle that keeps going faster and faster.

The big picture is this: Democrats have voted early in huge numbers in states where such numbers can be counted. Republicans are starting to vote and are increasing their share in battleground states.

As one-time New York Mets manager Yogi Berra said in 1973. “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over. His team, which was performing dismally at that moment, went on to win the National League East title.

It ain’t over until the last voter votes. It ain’t over until the last phone bank wraps up. And if activists can keep their focus on the big prize, we’re looking at what could be a historically significant election.

The coronavirus crisis continues to mount in the United States, and it’s reached into the highest echelons of the Trump bubble. Five of the Vice President’s aides have tested positive. Five of Fox News’ top people including company president Jay Wallace, anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, along with “The Five” hosts Dana Perino and Juan Williams all tested positive after sharing a corporate jet.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows made the media rounds on Sunday to wave the white flag of surrender for the administration’s efforts to control the pandemic. 

https://twitter.com/JFKucinich/status/1320375293580894208?s=20

President Trump’s interview on 60 Minutes was even worse than advertised, proving that when confronted by somebody who won’t let him lie continually, he will run.

https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1320516604216643584?s=20

Incumbents lose big where there is the perception that they’ve just given up on the main problem facing Americans. The best example of this would be Herbert Hoover’s drubbing in 1932, but it can be said to be true of Carter in 1976 and Bush the first in 1992.

And yet...

Having said all that, Donald Trump has a history of pulling himself out of impossible situations and, as everybody should know now, has no qualms about playing dirty.

For instance:

https://twitter.com/ianbassin/status/1319771182619521024?s=20

So let’s remind ourselves just what it is we’re facing should the landscape shift suddenly come November 3.

If you’re happy with conspiracy theorists, science deniers, and the most dedicated followers of Ayn Rand running the country, you’ll love a potential second term for Donald Trump... ...win or lose, he’s not finished wrecking the government.

Even if the president loses, one of his most nefarious schemes is already underway, namely gutting the government of expertise at the policy making level.

On October 21, the president signed an executive order establishing a new category of federal employees. Top officials could classify positions--with no standards in place-- as having “a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” 

Employees holding those positions would moved into a new “Schedule F,” where civil servants would lose all protections, including those against discrimination, forced reassignments and relocations, and any rights to organize or appeal personnel decisions, for example. 

They also could be dismissed for any reason whatsoever. 

This order represents that ultimate expression of an ongoing effort to root out public employees viewed as disloyal and part of the “deep state.”  While it would be rational to assume this move involves planning for a second term, if the gang in the oval office takes a break from looting the treasury, they could come up with a timetable allowing newly reclassified federal employees to be fired right before the start of a Biden presidency.

While uprooting the very concept of a federal civil service dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883, may seem like an action that could be challenged in court, it’s safe to say it will end up in front of the Supreme Court. Ugh. 

If you want to see a template for how to destroy a government agency, look no further than ProPublica’s coverage of the destruction of the Centers for Disease Control.

• In interviews and internal correspondence, CDC employees recounted the stunning fall of the agency many of them had spent their careers building. Some had served on the front lines of the CDC’s most storied battles and had an earned confidence that they could swoop in and save the world from the latest plague, whether it was E. coli on a fast-food burger or Ebola in a distant land. Theirs was the model other nations copied. Their leaders were the public faces Americans turned to for the unvarnished truth. They’d served happily under Democrats and Republicans.

• Now, 10 months into the crisis, many fear the CDC has lost the most important currency of public health: trust, the confidence in experts that persuades people to wear masks for the public good, to refrain from close-packed gatherings, to take a vaccine.

Should he win, President Trump --according to a scoop by Axios-- one of his first acts will be to purge the heads of the FBI and CIA, who have been deemed insufficiently subservient, likely because they’ve been unable to actually arrest any big name Democrats. 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper is also on the short list of people to be removed, reportedly because he rejected sending active-duty military into the streets to deal with racial justice protests. 

There was one encouraging --but ironic-- sign over the weekend: Russian President Vladimir Putin is hedging his bets on the election.

According to Reuters:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.

• Putin was responding to comments made by Trump during televised debates with Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 3 election…

• ...Putin appeared less friendly towards Trump in remarks broadcast by Russian state TV on Sunday. In what may be seen by some analysts as an attempt to try to curry favour with the Biden camp, he took the time to knock down what he made clear he regarded as false allegations from Trump about the Bidens.

One alternate explanation could be that the Russian president was acknowledging the failure of an attempt by his intelligence services to help the Trump campaign.

Regardless of what this means --if it means anything-- it’s important to remember that the goal of foreign interventions in US politics is to create division and distrust. It’s a lesson they’ve learned over the years from our own CIA.

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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com