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Trump’s Faux Coup Hits New Level Of Crazy 
Solicitation to Commit Election Fraud is a Crime
It was pretty transparently clear that the source of the Trump-Raffensperger recording was Raffensperger and staff lawyer Ryan Germany. But it’s notable that in the follow-on reporting they aren’t being coy about it. They are basically saying, we’d been asked to commit illegal acts in earlier calls. It seemed prudent to record this call. Probably the best way to see this is that the two men decided to wear what amounts to a DIY wire.
As with the President’s “perfect call” with President Zelensky of Ukraine, the Raffensperger call is so transparent and damning it rather defies commentary. What more is t here to say? The call is reminiscent of descriptions of Trump calls and ploys going back decades. I’ve actually been in calls like this with angry CEOs. One of them I remember most palpably was with a New York richie who’s a pal of the President’s. They’ve been puffed up on affirmations and theories by their yes-men and your job is to listen to them vent and yell.
First, yes, I’m taking this all in too. I’m in that mode in which the revelations are coming so fast that there isn’t much to do beyond take it all in. I will only add that it is a federal crime to falsify vote totals, manufacture votes, not count lawful votes, etc. And it is a crime to try to force an election official to do so. There’s a very good argument that this phone call is evidence of federal crimes by the President of the United States and others.
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Health Care Workers Refusing Vaccination
There’s a fascinating and perhaps ominous article this morning in the LA Times about health care workers who are refusing to take or at least reluctant to take the COVID vaccine. There’s a range of reasons from reasons from things that might strike some of us as irrational to the general hesitancy of not wanting to be first to other things that have some logical basis. One nurse the reporters interviewed is six months pregnant and noted (which I believe is true) that the vaccine hasn’t yet been tested on pregnant women. I don’t know if there’s any clinical reason why this vaccine could operate differently in pregnant women. But I certainly know that many pregnant women and expectant fathers are highly cautious about anything that can disrupt a pregnancy.
I think we fool ourselves, are less than honest with ourselves, if we treat COVID vaccine hesitance or resistance as just a new version of the anti-vaccine activism we’ve seen for the last couple decades. It’s clearly connected to that phenomenon and is fueled by the climate of doubt it has created. But this is a new vaccine and (in the case of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines) uses a novel vaccine approach. Being wary of going first in such a case is simply not the same as refusing vaccines which have been administered literally billions of times and have track records of short term and long term safety going back decades.
Since we spoke last the two Georgia Senators have endorsed $2,000 checks. Senate Democrats called for a vote and Mitch McConnell refused to allow a vote.
There it is. McConnell blocks motion to vote on Democrats' $2,000 relief checks bill. pic.twitter.com/iYceWbNxiU
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 29, 2020
I heard a very knowledgable hill reporter say that McConnell doesn’t care how unpopular this is in the country. He only cares about the majority and saving those two Senate Republicans. This doesn’t add up to me. I’ll say first that I don’t think these races will come down to stimulus checks. But the races are close enough that it could come down to anything and everything.
In twenty years of doing this, one thing that strikes me again and again is the critical importance of naming things in politics. If the question is advocacy and persuasion few steps are more important than effectively and consistently naming the key developments, agenda items, threats and prizes and raising them in the public consciousness. There are few things – things that can be controlled by people involved in politics and campaigns, as opposed to the tides of historical change we are awash in – more important for Democrats to do a good job at in the next two yeas.
You know some examples of this. The ‘death tax’, for instance. Conservative operatives took the unglamorous and unsympathetic cause of trust fund kids and gave it a title with punch, ready understandability and even an edge of justice. In politics like everything else you simply must put your best foot forward. Just showing up or just doing a good job is never enough. You have to tell your story. You have to make sure people with a lot else on their plate know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and why it might be important to them that you succeed. That starts with naming things. That makes the thing visible and tells a story about it embedded in the name.
The Pardons are A Disgrace. But Don’t Sweat It.
Yesterday, as the news set in that President Trump had pardoned almost everyone involved in the Russia scandal, I saw an editor at one of the big political publications say that with this step President Trump had taken one more step in erasing the Mueller probe. This is wrong. And explaining why it’s wrong gives me another opportunity to reaffirm my belief that knowledge, a public accounting of what happened is far more important than punishment for individual wrongdoers.