Attorney General Jeff Sessions Forced to Resign –
ELECTION ANALYSIS –
By Glynn Wilson –
True to form, the first King of America preempted all television programming the day after the midterm elections to make sure everyone’s attention was focused on him, the greatest narcissist whoever lived.
Donald Trump could not wait a day for the analysts to finish polishing off their interpretations and explanations of what happened on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018. He knows all he has to do to survive and win is to jump ahead of the curve and talk incessantly and no one will be able to look away for a second to change the subject. The subject is what he says it is.
Thanks only to a monumental effort on the part of Democrats in U.S. House elections across the country not only funded with more small donations than they had seen since Senator Barack Obama took the stage to run for president in 2008, but big money from New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg and California billionaire Tom Steyer, America has been saved from a total monarchy one more time.
At least for a few minutes, until after a contentious White House news conference in which he rudely called reporters rude, it was announced that he had demanded the resignation of his faithful little lapdog in the Department of Justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
We have been fighting an American king since George Washington turned the job down to create the position of American president.
Now we have one who is madder than any hatter, even King George III, who we defeated in the Revolutionary War.
Right after Trump’s rambling news conference, which was finally, mercifully interrupted by the local CBS news affiliate in Mobile, Alabama, to cover some local crime and repeat the outcome of the governor’s race, presumptive new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi held a rambling news conference of her own.
While the New York Times had already published pieces calling her “Trump’s foil” against impeachment, and she vowed not to back down from the House’s responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable, the effort seemed wholly inadequate to the task of standing up to a king.
Remember, in a recent interview with “Sixty Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl, Trump had said to her face: “I am president and you are not.”
Well, he’s right about that, I guess. He is. The question is, is he above the law?
Apparently so, since he just hired Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general to replace Sessions. Whitaker, who is not even subject to Senate confirmation although the Republicans have the votes to confirm him, has previously questioned the scope of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in a column for CNN. He wrote that it would be going too far if he examined the Trump family’s finances.
“This would raise serious concerns that the special counsel’s investigation was a mere witch hunt,” Whitaker wrote, repeating Trump’s own derisive description of the investigation of him. Mueller subpoenaed the Trump Organization for documents related to Russia, which would seem to be an entirely appropriate thing to do for any investigation.
To date the investigation has been overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Sessions did the only thing he could legally and ethically do due to his conflicts of interest for being involved in Trump’s campaign and having contacts with Russians himself. He appropriately recused himself. Trump has complained about this incessantly, clearly not understanding or caring about the legal and ethical issues in play.
Since Whitaker himself has expressed opinions about the investigation, Justice Department ethics advisers may well demand that he recuse himself. But surely Trump would not have made the move on Wednesday if he had not already known the answer to that was no.
Sources in Mobile are expressing their regret that they will not be able to attend the unveiling of the new federal courthouse in Sessions’ home town, which was expected to carry Jeff Sessions’ name. Somehow we don’t think King Trump will allow that now.
Democrats Take the House
Before I was rudely interrupted by Trump’s press conference and the firing of Sessions, I was writing about the outcome of the election. Now back to that.
The banner headline for Democrats was that they picked up enough seats around the country to take back a majority and the leadership in the House, where they will be able to set much of the spending agenda in Congress.
Remember your early history lessons about American government? The House controls the “purse strings.” They control the federal budget. The president can recommend a budget, and the Senate has to go along and can suggest changes, but the final decision rests in the House.
As of this writing, since all the election returns are not yet counted, the Democrats hold 222 seats out of a total of 435, while the Republicans dropped to 196 seats. The Republicans are still leading in 10 more races, while the Democrats lead in another seven.
No doubt about it. The Democrats will control the House for the next two years. That’s huge, and it’s also true that any impeachment articles against the president would have to be initiated in the House.
Unfortunately for those who are pushing for or expect this to happen, Ms. Pelosi has already said “impeachment is off the table.” Perhaps Democrats might try to find someone else to run the House as Speaker, if they had anyone else who could beat her. Unfortunately they don’t.
If the House pursued articles of impeachment against Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, the trial would of course have to take place in the Senate.
Republicans Take the Senate
Unfortunately for Democrats who would like to find a way to get rid of Trump, many hopes were dashed on election night when some of their best chances to upset the balance of power failed in places like Texas and Tennessee.
As of now, the Republicans will hold 51 out of 100 seats. They are still leading in three other races. The Democrats only clinched 44 seats, but they lead in two other races. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent socialist, won reelection and he caucuses with the Democrats, so that’s another vote — but not enough to convict the president and remove him from office.
Republicans Win More Governors Races
Also unfortunately for the Democrats, of the 36 contested races for governor around the country, the Republicans won 26 and are still leading in one, while the Democrats only picked up 23 seats. Republicans won the most high profile races in the key states of Florida and Georgia.
And of course Republican Kay Ivey easily bested the Democrat in Alabama, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox. With rounding, Ivey got 60 percent of the vote to only 40 percent for Maddox, a major disappointment especially to Democrats in Tuscaloosa, Huntsville and Jefferson County. The only blue on the Alabama map was in Jefferson County, the home of the state’s largest city in Birmingham, and across the Black Belt.
The outcome would seem to confirm what the Republicans said openly when they took over the Legislature in 2010: Their aim was to turn the Democratic Party into nothing but a party of African-Americans, not the word they used. Other than some progressive white Democrats in Birmingham and Huntsville, they’ve apparently accomplished their goal. Maddox was only able to tie Ivey 50-50 in his home county of Tuscaloosa. Even metro Mobile is bright red on the map.
Trump Wins Overall
It is impossible to honestly analyze these results without conceding that Trump the American king won the hearts and minds of more Americans in his first midterm election as president. After all the big talk of a Blue Wave, and all the hard work and money that went into creating one, many analysts were talking on Wednesday about it being stopped in its path by a Red Wall.
As hard and impossible as it may seem at the moment, Democrats are not going to be allowed any time to rest if they expect to take down Trump in 2020. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s either get back up and get back to work to save American democracy over the next two years, or simply give up and concede to bow and kiss the king’s ring. That or do what many activists did back in the early 1970s: “Turn on … drop out.”
There’s always Colorado, Oregon or California — or Michigan, which legalized recreational marijuana in a ballot measure on Tuesday. Canada has legalized recreational marijuana use nationwide by federal law. Maybe it’s time to consider getting out of the path of Hurricane Trump.
Surely it will blow through at some point in time, maybe in 2020 or 2024, if he doesn’t try to change the constitution to give himself unlimited terms. But you know what happens during a hurricane. There’s not much left in it’s aftermath.
Yes, towns, states and countries can be rebuilt. But it takes a whole lot of money and a world of time. Make up your mind. Do the work now. Or then. Good luck.
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