Democrats: Trump Wants To Be Impeached

Why haven’t Democrats begun impeachment hearings against President Trump after the special counsel could not exonerate the president on charges of obstruction of justice? The answer that many Democrats are giving is that they think that Donald Trump wants to be impeached.

“The President is almost self-impeaching because he is, every day, demonstrating more obstruction of justice and disrespect for Congress' legitimate role to subpoena,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday to CNN. Yet despite Trump raising the stakes, Pelosi still resists launching a formal House impeachment effort. The speaker has stated on several occasions that she does not support impeachment and that seems unchanged, but why?

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff answered that question Sunday on ABC News, saying, “Part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further. He [Trump] certainly seems to be trying and maybe this is his perverse way of dividing us more ... He thinks that's to his political advantage, but it's certainly not to the country's advantage.”

Why would impeachment be to Trump’s political advantage? The most obvious answer would be to shore up his base as the trade war heats up and core parts of the Trump coalition feel more and more economic pressure. A Morning Consult poll from early May showing state-by-state approval of the president found that Trump’s approval was underwater all across the vital Rust Belt as well as soft in many traditionally Republican farm states. President Trump has a net approval of fewer than five points in Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas. Impeachment hearings might cause Republicans in these states to circle the wagons and defend Trump from the Democrats just as they rallied in support of Brett Kavanaugh last year.

Impeachment would also lend credence to Trump’s claims that the Mueller investigation was part of a coup attempt aimed at removing him from office. The president may hope that he could spin an impeachment attempt as the preordained conclusion to a corrupt investigation. This might not sway independents, but it would help to stoke support from Republicans.

Both Trump and the Democrats might also be looking back at the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998. CNN polling in December 1998 found that Clinton’s approval jumped 10 points after his impeachment by House Republicans while approval of the GOP fell by 10 points. Gallup reported that Clinton received a record-high approval rating at 73 percent after his impeachment. Donald Trump, a longtime friend of Bill Clinton, likely remembers how impeachment backfired on the GOP and hopes to repeat history.

Both Trump and the Democrats can also read polls and the data shows that most Americans do not favor impeachment. A Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll from early May that, while 56 percent of Democrats supported impeachment, 65 percent of the total were opposed to the idea. More recently, Reuters/Ipsos poll found more support for impeachment but still only a minority of 45 percent. The president may hope to goad Democrats into following an unpopular strategy that would become the major issue of the 2020 campaign.

Finally, Trump is probably willing to take the embarrassment of impeachment in the House because he understands that it would be meaningless. Democrats lack the votes to remove him from office in the Senate where Republicans retain a majority. The president may well be willing to go down in history as one of the few presidents to be impeached if he could turn the tables on Democrats by remaining in office and possibly rallying voters to give him a second term.

It is most likely the last reason that prevents Nancy Pelosi from giving the go-ahead to the impeachment effort. The risk that Trump’s impeachment would have a Clintonian effect on the president’s reelection effort is one that she is unwilling to take unless the president goes so far that even Republicans abandon him in large numbers.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Review: 'The President Is Missing' By James Patterson And Bill Clinton

You may have seen James Patterson and Bill Clinton making the rounds on the talk show circuit to promote their book, “The President Is Missing.” The news centering around the interviews has mainly involved the former president having to defend his sexual misbehavior in the #MeToo era. The message of the book has largely escaped media notice on both the right and the left.

I didn’t intend to read the book. Normally anything that involves the Clintons pegs low on my interest meter and despite being a lifelong bookworm I had never read anything by James Patterson. I picked up the book out of curiosity when my son pointed it out at our local library. After perusing it for a few minutes, it piqued my interest enough to check it out.

To those who would argue that my conservative credentials are suspect because I read a book coauthored by Bill Clinton, I say that it isn’t healthy to wall yourself off from all opposing viewpoints. The insular echo chambers of social media in which we hear only a distorted view of the other side’s beliefs are a major problem of modern American life. Besides, I checked the book out from a library so no Clintons were enriched by my reading of the novel.

To my surprise, “The President Is Missing” is a very good book. It is a fast-paced and very believable thriller that is difficult to put down. Despite fears to the contrary, the book does not preach about the liberal point of view any more than average Hollywood movie and probably less so. There are references to traditional Democratic talking points, but that is to be expected from a book that centers around a president who assumed to be a Democrat.

The central character of the book is the president, who tells the story from his point of view. Although a Democrat, the president seems to be a moderate and the character is likable. Like a few modern Democrats from the real world, he is a veteran of Desert Storm. Unlike many from both sides of the aisle, the fictional president puts partisanship aside to act in the best interests of the country at great personal risk to himself.

The plot involves the reliance of modern America on electricity and the internet, a threat that I have been concerned about for years. For a long time, I was concerned that a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack. In such a scenario, a nuclear weapon would be detonated high over the central US and the resulting EMP would fry the electrical grids and devices for most of the country. Such an attack could lead to mass starvation and the collapse of the economy.

More recently, I’ve realized that it would be much easier for cyber attackers to simply switch off the electrical grids and lock out the “white hat” hackers defending them. Given the ubiquitous nature of the internet in modern life, malware and viruses could infest everything from household appliances to defense computers and cause havoc.

If you think it can’t happen, it already has… at least on a smaller scale. Russia has launched cyber-attacks on Ukrainian power plants that caused extensive blackouts as far back as 2015. In 2014, a botnet hijacked 100,000 internet-connected devices including a smart refrigerator and used it send 750,000 spam emails. In October 2016, a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack crashed the sites of such internet giants as Twitter, CNN and Netflix. At about the same time, Russian hackers were attacking numerous state and local election administration sites.

The possibilities for nefarious internet schemes with catastrophic outcomes are limited only by the imaginations of cyber terrorists, but there are many defensive strategies as well. One of the most obvious is limiting exposure. Just because something can be connected to the internet doesn’t mean it should be. Is it really in our best interests to have our refrigerators and toasters online? When it comes to voting, paper ballots, even with all their problems, seem immeasurably more secure than a computer-based voting system.

“The President Is Missing” was a quick and enjoyable read. If you like political thrillers and want to escape the crazy news of the day to a world where problems can be wrapped up in 500 pages, don’t be put off by the former president’s name on the cover. Check it out at your local library and you won’t even have to feel guilty.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Reach Out To Clintons

Sometimes people sabotage themselves. They try so hard to succeed, but are unable to see that their best efforts are undermining their own efforts. Lately, it is the Democrats who are showing many signs of self-defeating behavior.

The latest example of Democrat self-sabotage is the party’s welcome to Bill and Hillary Clinton to get involved in the 2018 elections. The Clintons, of course, are the Democrat power couple whose incompetence at running the last election led to what can surely be called the most unexpected and humiliating defeat in the history of the Democratic Party.

When asked whether the party would welcome support from Ms. Clinton and former President Obama, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, answered, “We welcome support from everybody who wants to help, including Secretary Clinton and President Obama.”

When pressed as to whether Democrats would welcome former President Bill Clinton, Van Hollen answered, “Yes. As the head of the DSCC, we welcome those individuals and everybody that wants to help.”

Van Hollen added that the final decision on assistance from the Clintons and Obama would be up to the individual candidates. “Those are not decisions the DSCC gets involved in,” he said. “Those are decisions that are left to every campaign and they can talk to anybody who wants to help and decide who should come to the state and when.”

Republicans should hope that Democratic campaigns embrace the Clintons. Even though Donald Trump’s approval rating is underwater with an average of 41 percent approval according to the FiveThirtyEight index, Hillary Clinton’s popularity is worse. A Gallup poll showed Ms. Clinton at 36 percent approval in December 2017. A Wall Street Journal poll from April 2018 found that she had sunk even lower to 27 percent.

Bill Clinton, who was always more popular and better campaigner than his wife, is a liability in the #MeToo era. Even the left has finally started criticizing his treatment of women, albeit 20 years too late. The former president found himself in hot water again this week after trying to claim victim status because he left the White House with $16 million in legal fees after fighting impeachment.

Think about what the Democrats would be getting if they embrace the Clintons again. As with Hillary in 2016, the party would get a couple under investigation. The FBI launched an investigation into corruption at the Clinton Foundation in January 2018. After the 2016 debacle, it should be evident that people being investigated by the FBI should be held at arms length.

Democrats would get a couple that was so arrogant and incompetent that they flouted the law with a private email server instead of using secure government email systems. The only logical explanation for this decision was to shield illicit emails from preservation in the national archives. It was this decision that led to Hillary’s downfall as it contributed directly to James Comey’s October 2016 memo that swung the election in Donald Trump’s favor.

The Democrats would be welcoming back the people who undermined their own primary system. Donna Brazile, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, admitted that the Hillary campaign had stacked the DNC with its own people even before the 2016 primary. Brazile also admitted to leaking debate questions to Hillary’s campaign to give her an unfair advantage.

The Clinton infestation of the DNC eventually led to the election of Donald Trump. Without Hillary’s stacked deck, it is possible that Bernie Sanders would have been the eventual nominee. No one knows for sure what would have happened in a Sanders-Trump matchup, but Sanders consistently polled better than both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It is possible, even likely, that America would have a socialist president, something that would thrill most Democrats, were it not for the Clinton’s underhanded dealings with the DNC.

Finally, what Democrats get if they decide to welcome Hillary back into their camp is the one candidate in the country who was so bad that she could not defeat the most unpopular major party candidate in history. The vaunted Clinton machine fell to a man in his first political campaign ever. Hillary was just an awful, uninspiring candidate who was toxic on the campaign trail.

On the other hand, President Obama would be a better surrogate. The 44^th president has so far not been inclined to re-enter the political arena, but Gallup found in February 2018 that 63 percent approve of the way that Obama handled his job as president. Considering that President Trump has spent much of his time erasing Obama’s legacy of executive actions, the former president could be a powerful voice for Democratic candidates.

In the wake of the 2016 election, Democrats seemed poised to put the Clinton era behind them for good. Two years later, the Clintons are trying to creep back in, but they really have nothing to offer Democratic candidates. If Democrats are smart, they will quash the Clinton resurgence now in order to avoid a repeat of 2016.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Polling Is Even With Obama And Clinton Before Their Midterm Disasters

After years of blistering attacks by the left, a new comparison of President Trump’s polling numbers with past presidents shows that reelection is a distinct possibility. Even though President Trump’s approval rating is still underwater, Presidents Clinton and Obama were reelected with similar poll ratings.

According to an analysis by Gallup, only 37 percent of registered voters believe that Trump should be reelected. This number is almost identical to the ratings of Barack Obama in October 2010 and Bill Clinton in October 1994. Both prior presidents went on to win reelection, but their low approval ratings just prior to midterm elections did presage electoral disasters for their congressional allies.

In 1994, Democrats lost 54 House seats and nine Senate seats to hand Republicans control of both houses of Congress. In the 2010 Tea Party wave, Republicans won 63 seats to gain control of the House, and expanded their Senate minority by six seats.

All three presidents came far short of George W. Bush’s polling just prior to the 2002 midterms. In September 2002, 60 percent of voters said that Bush deserved reelection. The 2002 midterms stand out as a rare election in which the president’s party gained seats in both houses of Congress in an off-year election. Republicans picked up two Senate and eight House seats that year.

Gallup points out that Trump’s approval rating is worse than his predecessors at the same point in their presidencies. Clinton was at 40 percent in April 1994 and Obama was at 46 percent in March 2010. Both presidents saw declines in their popularity as the midterms approached. Clinton was in the midst of the Whitewater scandal and signed a controversial crime bill just prior to the election. Obama was bedeviled by the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the stimulus.

It is important to note that there were other factors at play in the reelections of Clinton and Obama. Clinton won only 49 percent of the popular vote, but still won the Electoral vote thanks to the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot. In 2012, Obama benefited from several external factors including IRS suppression of opposition groups and a late approval bump from his handling of Hurricane Sandy.  

Republican midterm successes in 1994 and 2010 were also based on more than just presidential unpopularity. In 1994, Republicans campaigned on the Contract With America, a promise to vote within 100 days on 10 separate bills that detailed conservative priorities. In 2010, the Republicans promised to repeal the unpopular Affordable Care Act and put the brakes on Obama Administration spending.

So far, in the runup to the 2018 elections, the Democrats have not been able to articulate a positive and popular platform. Democrats have proposed repealing parts of the new tax reform bill in order to pay for a trillion dollars in infrastructure spending and instituting a new gun controls, but neither idea seems to have caught the public’s imagination.

Among Trump’s Republican base, his support is similar to the levels experienced by Obama and Clinton. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans still support President Trump compared to 79 percent for Obama and 71 percent for Clinton. George W. Bush had 93 percent support among Republicans in 2002.

There are still far too many unknowns to accurately predict an election more than two years in the future. Factors that could cause Trump’s approval to skyrocket or plummet include the effect on the economy of tariffs and tax reform, the outcome of peace negotiations with North Korea and potential scandals. Mr. Trump may also face a strong third-party challenger in 2020 that could split the conservative vote.

The Gallup data should not make Trump supporters feel that President Trump’s reelection is assured, but neither is it out of the question. Almost two years into his presidency, Trump is still not a popular figure, but Democrats have not learned how to exploit his unpopularity. Trump partisans can be reassured that most recent sitting presidents have been reelected, but the price may be the loss of Congress.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Hillary: People Are 'Misremembering' How I Attacked Bill's Accusers

According to Hillary Clinton, people are “misremembering” her role in attacking the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. The comments came in an interview last week with radio personality Rita Cosby that was part of Mrs. Clinton’s promotional tour for her book, “What Happened.”

Cosby asked the former First Lady if she had any regrets about not being supportive of the women who accused President Clinton and her role in “sort of attacking the victims.”

Clinton responded with a long, meandering answer that never directly addressed the question posed by Cosby, but implied that Bill Clinton’s accusers were all liars. Clinton began by saying that “every situation has to be judged on its own merits,” but that “people are either misremembering or misinterpreting history.”

“Of course, you should give people who make such allegations the benefit of the doubt, that's what our system does,” Clinton said, “but then you have to investigate them.”

“There were allegations that were disproved,” Clinton claimed. “There were allegations that were absolutely contradicted under sworn testimony.”

In reality, the accusations against Bill Clinton are very similar to the accusations against Donald Trump and Roy Moore.  In many cases, sexual harassment and assault accusations are based largely on the testimony of the parties involved with little or no physical evidence.

In the cases of “he said/she said” in which women accused Bill Clinton, Hillary clearly took her husband’s side. Hillary called the women “bimbos” and “trailer trash” and allegedly threatened to destroy their reputations, notes the Daily Wire.

Despite Hillary’s claim that the allegations against Bill Clinton were disproved, the former president did admit to affairs with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, two of the women that Hillary Clinton had attacked. In other cases, the truth is still elusive. Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones still stand by their stories of sexual assault at that hands of Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s defense of her husband is one more case of sexual hypocrisy. Partisans of both sides are more interested in using abused women as a weapon against their opponents than in helping them find justice. Hillary Clinton is no different. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Bill Clinton bashes Obamacare - then asks for more

In a rare Democratic moment of truth, Bill Clinton almost sounded like a conservative for a few minutes in Flint, Mich. on Monday. In his remarks, which were covered by CNN, Clinton called Obamacare the “craziest thing in the world.” On Tuesday, Mr. Clinton tried to walk back his comments and may have inadvertently provided insight into Hillary Clinton’s new healthcare strategy if the she wins the election.

"So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world," Clinton said on Monday according to CNN.

He tried to rebut criticism from the left on Tuesday, telling an Ohio crowd, “Look, the Affordable Health Care Act [sic] did a world of good, and the 50-something efforts to repeal it that the Republicans have staged were a terrible mistake. We, for the first time in our history, at least are providing insurance to more than 90% of our people.”

“But there is a group of people -- mostly small business owners and employees -- who make just a little too much money to qualify for Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get affordable health insurance premiums in a lot of places,” Clinton continued. “And the reason is they're not in big pools. So they have no bargaining power.”

Clinton’s criticisms of the Affordable Care Act mirror concerns of conservatives before the law was passed. Adverse selection, in which people who are already sick sign up for health insurance while the healthy pay the fine instead, played a large role in driving up prices. Obamacare depended on enlisting young, healthy people to pay the costs for people were older and unhealthy. That has not happened. The problem is so bad that many health insurance companies are choosing to leave the market completely, rather than continue to absorb losses.

As prices increase, companies are passing more costs along to their employees or dropping health insurance coverage altogether. If you still have an employer health insurance plan, you’re probably paying a higher monthly premium as well as higher deductibles and copayments. Many companies, particularly small businesses, are opting out of providing health insurance altogether.

Those who still have insurance may not be able to go to the doctor. As Clinton pointed out, 25 million more people now have insurance, but there are just as many doctors as there were before Obamacare. This increased demand has caused a doctor shortage in many areas. The Fiscal Times estimates that “demand for physicians will grow by 11 percent to 17 percent through 2025, while the number of doctors will increase only by 4 percent to 12 percent.”  It’s going to get hard to get an appointment.

The original goal of the Affordable Care Act was to insure everyone in the United States. Has it been successful? The Kaiser Foundation estimates that the uninsured rate declined from a high of 18.2 percent in 2010 to 10.5 percent in 2015. Even after the devastation wrought by the ACA, more than 28 million Americans remain uninsured. The most common reason for not having insurance according to Kaiser is that it costs too much.

What is the Clinton solution to the continuing healthcare crisis? Last January, Hillary Clinton told a crowd in Iowa, “It was called Hillarycare before it was called Obamacare. I don't want to start over.”

Bill hints that she won’t start over. Slate has a quote that many articles covering the story didn’t include that hints at where the Clintons want to go. “So here’s the simplest thing,” Bill Clinton said, “Figure out an affordable rate and let people use that, something that won’t undermine your quality of life, won’t interfere with your ability to make expenses, wont’ interfere with your ability to save for your kids’ college education, and let people buy into Medicare or Medicaid.”

So the Clintonian answer to the health insurance crisis is more government. Bill would let people buy into a Medicare and Medicaid at “an affordable rate” that probably has no relationship to the market rate for insurance. This can be understood as price controls and a public option.

Voters should know that a third of doctors are already not accepting new Medicare patients according to Investor’s Business Daily. Both programs are also in financial trouble already. Medicare’s trust fund is projected to be insolvent in 15 years. Medicaid, whose cost is split by the states and the federal government, already represents 20 percent of state budgets even before the costs of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion kick in.

Bill’s idea does not address the economic problems of Obamacare at all. It just changes the insurance provider from private companies to the government. In other words, Hillarycare would impoverish the government the way Obamacare has broken the insurance companies.

Originally published on The Resurgent