Month: January 2021

Major votes in the past two weeks show House Republicans coming apart at the seams

Posted on by David Jarman

It took two tries, but we finally saw something out of Congress that would have been unthinkable just over a week ago: Republican House members actually voted “yes” on impeaching Donald Trump—not a lot of them, but enough to squeak into the double digits. That’s not only a change from the first impeachment a year ago when the GOP voted in lockstep against it, but a serious departure from the Beltway media’s conventional wisdom, which relies on depictions of a House Republican caucus that’s well-disciplined and a Democratic bloc that’s in a constant state of disarray.

It wasn’t just the impeachment vote that delivered a serious hit to that stale CW, though. Three other votes taken in the past few weeks also show a Republican coalition that’s fracturing along multiple axes, and in rather unpredictable ways. It’s not entirely unusual to see, for instance, a few dozen Republicans peel off from the rest of the party from one end of the ideological spectrum or the other—either the most pragmatic or most extreme members—on a particular vote. But this quartet of recent votes have seen Republicans splitting off in every possible direction, and those splits haven’t always been on a predictable left/right scale.

That suggests two things: first, that there’s a significant leadership vacuum in the Republican caucus right now, and second, that there’s also a growing divide between authoritarians and non-authoritarians split within the party that doesn’t quite map onto traditional policy preferences. Both have serious implications for the GOP’s future.

The four roll calls where we’re investigating Republican voting patterns are the votes to:

This time, Trump was impeached by a vote of 232-197, with all 222 Democrats voting for it and Republicans voting against it 197-10. The Electoral College objection, meanwhile, failed 282-138, with Democrats again unanimously opposed but Republicans in favor 138-64. (Republicans also tried to repudiate Arizona’s electoral votes, but that garnered slightly less support, and in any case, no one voted to reject Arizona’s votes but accept Pennsylvania’s, making the latter a more meaningful vote to analyze.)

The second pair of votes both required two-thirds majorities. The $2,000 stimulus checks, which had to hit that threshold because the legislation was brought up on an expedited basis, narrowly exceeded the mark, 275-134. Forty-four Republicans voted for it but 130 voted against the plan, despite Trump’s support for the measure, while Democrats were 231-2 in support.

The override of Trump’s NDAA veto passed by a considerably wider 322-87 margin, with 109 Republicans actually opposing Trump and just 66 sticking with him. This was the only vote of the four that saw a sizable numbers of Democrats go against their party, with 20 opposing the override while 212 backed it. However, as we’ll discuss at the end of this piece, these dissenters were mostly from the party’s left-most flank and were voting to oppose the military’s enormous budget rather than to support Trump in any way.

Each of these roll calls alone shows a serious split within GOP ranks: Even on impeachment, the 10 Republicans who voted against Trump set a record for the largest number of representatives impeaching their own party’s president. But the divide goes much deeper.

With a “yes” or “no” vote possible on each of these votes, that gives us 16 potential buckets for members to fall into. However, not all of the House GOP’s 211 current members show up below because we’re only including representatives who participated in all four votes. That winds up excluding 64 Republicans, including all freshmen (since two of the votes took place at the tail end of the last Congress), as well as anyone who skipped one more or of these votes for whatever reason.

Still, we can analyze a meaningful proportion of the GOP caucus, about 70% of it in total. And underscoring the extent of the fracture we’re seeing, Republicans occupy no fewer than 11 of these 16 possible buckets, ranging from as few as one member up to 43. Democrats, by contrast, wound up in just three buckets, and almost all—196 of the 217 who cast votes on all four measures—were in just a single grouping. You can see these buckets, which we’ll examine one by one, visualized just below:

Of course, it’s possible to find any arbitrary set of votes that show various divides for either party, but this set is anything but arbitrary. Rather, these were four of the most consequential votes the House has been called upon to take since Trump’s first impeachment, and they all took place in a span of just 16 days, making them worthy of collective study.

To that end, we’ll start with the members who voted the way that Trump would have wanted each time: “no” on impeachment, “yes” on challenging the Pennsylvania votes, “yes” on bigger stimulus checks, and “no” on overriding Trump’s veto of the military budget. In other words, this was—in theory—the group of most maximally MAGA members:

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: yes; $2,000 checks: yes; Override: no (8 members)

Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25); Greg Pence (IN-06); Clay Higgins (LA-03); Jason Smith (MO-08); Jeff Van Drew (NJ-02); Lee Zeldin (NY-01); Chris Jacobs (NY-27); Michael Burgess (TX-26)

Interestingly, and encouragingly, there were very few members who took this approach. It’s possible that shows that Trump, whose outreach to Congress has been both ham-fisted yet perfunctory, and who has little connection to traditional Republican avenues of power, no longer has quite so much influence on the House. On the other hand, it might also show that while Trump’s odd mishmash of preferred issues and grievances has had a lot of resonance with low-information voters who haven’t felt at home in either party, it was never really a good fit for the Republican Party, which is not exactly known for either handing out money to people who need help or for telling the military to take a hike.

And while this group should superficially represent the most Trumpy brigade possible, it actually doesn’t include many members from the nuttiest ranks of the GOP—perhaps just Louisiana’s Clay Higgins (best known for his apocalyptic tweeting), and Indiana’s Greg Pence, who, in case it wasn’t clear from the last name, also happens to be the vice president’s brother and may share his sibling’s toadying tendencies.

Instead, this bucket contains a couple of GOP members with the most moderate (at least on a left-right axis) voting records but who are uniquely cross-pressured: Mario Diaz-Balart, who represents a mostly Cuban-American district in the Miami area; and Jeff Van Drew, who was elected as a Democrat but infamously switched parties during the previous impeachment.

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: yes; $2,000 checks: yes; Override: yes (13 members)

Robert Aderholt (AL-04); Rick Crawford (AR-01); Mike Garcia (CA-25); Ken Calvert (CA-42); John Rutherford (FL-04); Jackie Walorski (IN-02); Jim Baird (IN-04); Hal Rogers (KY-05); Jack Bergman (MI-01); Elise Stefanik (NY-21); Bill Johnson (OH-06); Frank Lucas (OK-03); Tom Cole (OK-04)

The next bucket features Trumpy Republicans who are anti-democracy and pro-stimulus but just couldn’t say no to the military. One unusual name in this bucket is Mike Garcia, who holds the bluest district in the nation that’s represented by a Republican (California’s 25th, where he narrowly won reelection in November after more comfortably winning a special election last spring) and is someone you’d therefore expect to take a more moderate path, perhaps up to and including impeachment. Apparently, though, he thinks a base-first strategy is his best path to squeaking out another victory in 2022, despite his district’s leftward trend. Another is Elise Stefanik, until recently an establishmentarian but who in the last year has seemingly gone all-in on using Trumpism as a means of climbing the leadership ladder.

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: yes; $2,000 checks: no; Override: yes (32 members)

Mike Rogers (AL-03); Mo Brooks (MO-05); Doug Lamborn (CO-05); Buddy Carter (GA-01); Mike Bost (IL-12); Jim Banks (IN-03); Mike Johnson (LA-04); Garret Graves (LA-06); Tim Walberg (MI-07); Blaine Leutkemeyer (MO-03); Vicki Hartzler (MO-04); Sam Graves (MO-06); Trent Kelly (MS-01); Michael Guest (MS-03); Steven Palazzo (MS-04); Virginia Foxx (NC-05); David Rouzer (NC-07); Richard Hudson (NC-08); Steve Chabot (OH-01); Bob Gibbs (OH-07); Dan Meuser (PA-09); Fred Keller (PA-12); Glenn Thompson (PA-15); Mike Kelly (PA-16); Joe Wilson (SC-02); William Timmons (SC-04); Chuck Fleischmann (TN-03); Mark Green (TN-07); David Kustoff (TN-08); Roger Williams (TX-25); Chris Stewart (UT-02); Rob Wittman (VA-01)

The next batch, which voted against impeachment and stimulus checks but supported challenging the electors and the military budget, is made up of more standard-issue, “normie” members of the Republican Party’s right flank, including a number (like Vicky Hartzler and Tim Walberg) who are known more for old-school social conservatism. Interestingly, though, one name here is Mo Brooks, who has been one of the loudest voices inciting violence and is a main target of censure efforts. Despite his links to Trumpism, he couldn’t get on board with COVID relief and couldn’t oppose the armed forces either. The latter is not a coincidence, since his Huntsville-area district is heavily dependent on military and aerospace technology, centered around the Redstone Arsenal.

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: yes; $2,000 checks: no; Override: no (43 members)

Gary Palmer (AL-06); Paul Gosar (AZ-04); Andy Biggs (AZ-05); David Schweikert (AZ-06); Debbie Lesko (AZ-08); Doug LaMalfa (CA-01); Devin Nunes (CA-22); Matt Gaetz (FL-01); Bill Posey (FL-08); Greg Steube (FL-17); Brian Mast (FL-18); Barry Loudermilk (GA-11); Rick Allen (GA-12); Russ Fulcher (ID-01); Ron Estes (KS-04); Steve Scalise (LA-01); Billy Long (MO-07); Dan Bishop (NC-09); Ted Budd (NC-13); Adrian Smith (NE-03); Jim Jordan (OH-04); Warren Davidson (OH-08); Kevin Hern (OK-01); Scott Perry (PA-04); Lloyd Smucker (PA-11); John Joyce (PA-13); Guy Reschenthaler (PA-14); Jeff Duncan (SC-03); Ralph Norman (SC-05); Tim Burchett (TN-02); Scott DesJarlais (TN-04); John Rose (TN-06); Louie Gohmert (TX-01); Lance Gooden (TX-05); Randy Weber (TX-14); Jodey Arrington (TX-19); Michael Cloud (TX-27); Brian Babin (TX-36); Ben Cline (VA-06); Morgan Griffith (VA-09); Tom Tiffany (WI-07); Alex Mooney (WV-02); Carol Miller (WV-03) 

The biggest bucket is also probably the most hardcore of the bunch: They’ll follow Trump not just on challenging the election but also on stiff-arming the military, but, true to form, they just can’t get on board with sending people money. Not coincidentally, most of the members of the Freedom Caucus (the most hard-right of the House GOP’s ideological blocs) are found here, and you’ll probably recognize the names of some of the loudest insurrectionists, like Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, and Louie Gohmert. One odd tidbit is that while this is a disproportionately Southern group, all four of Arizona’s remaining Republican representatives are here too.

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: no; $2,000 checks: yes; Override: yes (6 members)

Rodney Davis (IL-13); Pete Stauber (MN-08); Ann Wagner (MO-02); Chris Smith (NJ-04); Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01); Michael McCaul (TX-10)

Here we have Republicans from the somewhat more moderate end of the caucus who voted no on challenging the electors, and yes on stimulus checks and the military budget, but couldn’t take the final step of voting for impeachment.

One rather unexpected name is Texas’s Michael McCaul: He hasn’t had a particularly moderate record in the past but has faced increasingly difficult elections in his suburban district the last few times and may be trying to adapt. In a statement he released during the impeachment vote, he accurately prophesied, “I truly fear there may be more facts that come to light in the future that will put me on the wrong side of this debate,” but for some reason couldn’t take that final step.

One other surprise, from the opposite direction, was Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a swingy suburban district outside of Philadelphia. Based on his overall record, Fitzpatrick probably was the likeliest Republican to vote for impeachment who ultimately didn’t. (He instead led the push for a “censure” alternative, which was a non-starter with Democrats.)

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: no; $2,000 checks: yes; Override: no (3 members)

James Comer (KY-01); Tom Reed (NY-23); David McKinley (WV-01)

What seems like the least coherent series of votes, at least for Republican members—against impeachment, against challenging the election, and for bigger stimulus, but also against the military budget—is also a bucket with only a few members in it. There’s also not much consistency here in terms of its members, ranging from northeastern pragmatist Tom Reed to very conservative southerner James Comer.

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: no; $2,000 checks: no; Override: yes (27 members)

French Hill (AR-02); Steve Womack (AR-03); Michael Waltz (FL-06); Vern Buchanan (FL-16); Drew Ferguson (GA-03); Austin Scott (GA-08); Mike Simpson (ID-02); Darin LaHood (IL-18); Larry Bucshon (IN-08); Brett Guthrie (KY-02); Bill Huizenga (MI-02); John Moolenaar (MI-04); Patrick McHenry (NC-10); Kelly Armstrong (ND-AL); Don Bacon (NE-02); Mark Amodei (NV-02); Brad Wenstrup (OH-02); Bob Latta (OH-05); Mike Turner (OH-10); Troy Balderson (OH-12); Steve Stivers (OH-15); Dusty Johnson (SD-AL); Dan Crenshaw (TX-02); Van Taylor (TX-03); John Curtis (UT-02); Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05); Mike Gallagher (WI-08);

This bucket features much of what’s left of the orthodox Republican establishment—not “centrist,” of course, but located around the ideological midpoint of the GOP caucus, which is still very conservative. This group is naturally anti-stimulus and pro-military, but while its members are not willing to play too-obvious games with democracy, they’re content to let Trump do much worse, which is why they opposed impeachment.

Impeachment: no; Pennsylvania: no; $2,000 checks: no; Override: no (7 members)

Bruce Westerman (AR-04); Tom McClintock (CA-04); Thomas Massie (KY-04); Tom Emmer (MN-06); Chip Roy (TX-21); Bryan Steil (WI-01); Glenn Grothman (WI-06)

These are the across-the-board “nays.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most libertarian-flavored members who remain (after Justin Amash’s departure; he voted against checks and the military budget, but was no longer in office for the Electoral College vote) are seen here, most notably Thomas Massie.

Impeachment: yes; Pennsylvania: yes; $2,000 checks: no; Override: no (1 member)

Tom Rice (SC-07)

The smallest bucket of all contains just Tom Rice, who represents a dark-red district in the Myrtle Beach area. While not a member of the Freedom Caucus, he does have a voting record that places him well to the right of the GOP’s midpoint. Were it not for his impeachment vote, he’d have wound up in the largest grouping, but instead, he’s all on his own. Rice’s vote was uncharacteristic enough that he might have simply pushed the wrong button during the roll call, but his subsequent statement acknowledged his surprising move: “I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable.”

Impeachment: yes; Pennsylvania: no; $2,000 checks: yes; Override: yes (4 members)

Adam Kinzinger (IL-16); Fred Upton (MI-06); John Katko (NY-24); Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA-03)

This batch, which voted pro-impeachment, pro-democracy, pro-checks, and pro-military, includes the low-profile but extremely durable Northeasterner John Katko, as well as Adam Kinzinger, who has recently become one of the most vocal anti-Trump Republicans. While Katko is one of the few Republicans who represents a district that Joe Biden won, and Upton and Herrera Beutler are in competitive districts, Kinzinger certainly isn’t; his main risk would be in a Republican primary.

It’s also worth noting that almost all Democrats also fall in this bucket. This excludes the 20 who voted against the military budget, and also Kurt Schrader, the lone remaining Democrat to vote against the $2,000 checks.

Impeachment: yes; Pennsylvania: no; $2,000 checks: no; Override: yes (3 members)

Anthony Gonzalez (OH-16); Dan Newhouse (WA-04); Liz Cheney (WY-AL)

Finally, here are the few Republicans who voted for impeachment and against challenging the electors, but who otherwise stuck to conservative orthodoxy. The biggest name here might be Liz Cheney, who’s No. 3 in the House leadership hierarchy, but who has been recently very critical of Trump. She could also be a potential challenger to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy or Minority Whip Steve Scalise in the future, but given the outraged calls for her resignation from fellow Republicans following her vote, her motives are difficult to assess—unless she truly imagines the GOP will embrace an anti-Trump future.

The other two members of this trio are sophomore Anthony Gonzalez, a former NFL star who represents a suburban district in the Cleveland area and has tended toward the moderate end of the caucus, and Dan Newhouse, who represents a conservative area in eastern Washington but is potentially insulated from a challenge from the right thanks to the odd nature of Washington’s top-two primary system. (Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon also followed this pattern of votes.)

The recent McCarthy/Cheney tension, in fact, points to how the growing fractures in the Republican Party don’t entirely map onto the traditional left-to-right axis. Cheney, for instance, has a somewhat more conservative voting record than McCarthy, at least according to the widely-used DW-Nominate system of scoring votes.

Instead, it’s more a clash between Trump-style populist authoritarianism (to which McCarthy is merely an accessory) versus the more old-school Republican elite traditionalism that Cheney embodies. It would be weird to say that Cheney is “anti-authoritarian”; rather, what she’s objecting to is that Trumpism is the wrong kind of authoritarianism. Maybe a better way of describing it is that traditional Republican conservatism is more about a decentralized, slow-moving form of autocracy that’s spread around a variety of institutions (the military, the judiciary, big business) rather than consolidated in a cult of personality around one very erratic person.

It’s certainly possible that these divisions will recede, especially once Biden is inaugurated and Chuck Schumer is elevated to Senate majority leader—Republicans, lacking any sort of affirmative agenda, have always enjoyed a more harmonious life in the minority where they simply oppose everything that Democrats put forth. But if they persist, they could mean more turmoil ahead for the GOP and undermining the party’s chances of reclaiming the House in the coming midterm elections.

P.S. We’ll close out with a look at the 20 Democrats who dissented on the override of Trump’s veto of the military budget:

Jared Huffman (CA-02); Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11); Barbara Lee (CA-13); Ro Khanna (CA-17); Jimmy Gomez (CA-34); Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02); Chuy Garcia (IL-04); Jim McGovern (MA-02); Joe Kennedy (MA-04); Ayanna Pressley (MA-07); Rashida Tlaib (MI-13); Ilhan Omar (MN-05); Grace Meng (NY-06); Yvette Clarke (NY-09); Adriano Espaillat (NY-13); Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14); Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01); Earl Blumenauer (OR-03); Pramila Jayapal (WA-07); Mark Pocan (WI-02)

Unsurprisingly, this list correlates very much with Progressive Caucus membership, as well as many of the left-most Democratic members under the DW-Nominate system. This indicates the vote was not pro-Trump but rather against current levels of military spending, with the possible exception of the inscrutable Tulsi Gabbard, one of only two Democrats on this list whose term ended after this vote and therefore wasn’t present for the Jan. 6 challenges to the Electoral College or the second impeachment vote.

All of these Democrats of course backed $2,000 checks and impeachment, and opposed overturning the election results, a pattern followed by zero Republicans.

Community Spotlight: The Daily Kos Community reacts to history in real time

Posted on by DrLori

We haven't gotten the chance to celebrate the victories of Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Georgia runoff elections that, against the expectations of most pundits, delivered the Senate into Democratic hands and demoted Mitch McConnell to head of the minority. That great good news was immediately swallowed by the attempted violent overthrow of Congress.

In the earliest aftermath of any emergency, it's almost impossible to make sense of exactly what happened. This attack is no exception—what appeared at first to be a disorganized mob has, in the space of one short week, been revealed to be a coordinated attack, with elements reaching inside law enforcement, the military, and possibly the Congress itself. All of those threads will have to be traced and the perpetrators held accountable, starting with the President and Inciter-in-Chief himself.

Like the world's worst Polaroid, the full picture will take time to appear.

Fortunately, we have that time. The coup failed, but the price was high. We are only now learning that our government came within a hair's breadth of murderous collapse. The aftermath has left a revanchist Republican party in near-collapse and its malevolent leader howling as, first Twitter, then party support, then business and grifting opportunities and finally—and most woundingly—his treasured golfing creds were stripped from his grasp.

As Besame noted last week, the Daily Kos Community is acutely responsive to the news cycle, and when a crisis shakes the country, the Community pivots to analysis and reflection. Of the 14 rescued stories published this week, 12 focus in some way on the attack or its fallout.

There will be time to take account of it all. And time for the other paradigm shift to sink in: Senators Warnock and Ossoff will change the Senate, not only because their presence gives the Democrats the majority, but because of who they are—the legislation they will shape, the leadership they will assume, the moral force they will bring to bear. A better day is coming for the nation because of their victories. We'll have the chance to celebrate, even in the midst of crisis, exactly how monumental their victories were. Because they will likely be sworn in about the same time as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Biden administration will have the power to hold the planners and perpetrators of this attempted coup to full account, no matter where they are, or how powerful they think themselves to be.

And there'll be time to savor their victories. Let's not let that get lost.

Community Spotlight’s Rescue Rangers read every story published by Community writers. When we discover outstanding work that isn’t receiving the attention it deserves, we rescue it to our group blog and publish a weekly collection—like this one—each Saturday. Rescue priorities and actions were explained in a previous edition: ”Community Spotlight: Rescuing your excellent stories for over 14 years.” You also can find a link in Meteor Blades’ “Night Owls” series, which publishes daily between 10-11PM EST.

14 RESCUED STORIES FROM 4PM EST FRIDAY, JAN. 8, TO 4PM EST FRIDAY, JAN. 15, 2020

Why Impeach Again Now by dratler observes that President Trump’s first impeachment didn’t catch the public’s interest because Ukraine is a distant country and obstruction of justice requires some knowledge of the law. The attack on Congress, on the other hand, is a visceral and visible attack that can’t be explained away. “As time goes on, we are attending places of worship less and less often. The seat of our government—especially the Capitol—is our common secular temple. You can see the awe and reverence in the faces of tourists who visit our capital every day.” The attack on the Capitol was an attack on all Americans, and it demands a commensurate response. Dratler joined the Daily Kos community nearly five years ago and has authored 85 stories, five of which have been rescued.

In The Coming Crisis, Treats writes, “I’ve never wanted to be wrong about anything more than now.” Treats examines rise of American authoritarianism and warns that its power won’t wane when Trump is gone from public life. “We face in this country right now a long-term, vicious, and ruthless insurgency that will inflict all the terror they can on this nation in order to destabilize it to the point where in the chaos they can take permanent power.” Although its success is not assured, the author warns that we cannot ignore or minimize the dangers this faction poses. A nine-year Kossack “(s)till searching for that tidbit of truth and knowledge to be found here and there,” Treats has authored 31 stories, eight of which have been rescued.

In If you want the wound to heal, take the knife out of it first, LimeyExpatDave likens the United States to a wounded patient in a trauma ward. The assault on the Capitol, he argues, is not the knife-in-the-back moment for democracy, but is instead a deepening of the wound the country sustained the first time we did not demand accountability for a lawless government. “If these actors, the politicians and their followers, who lied, cheated and violated the law  to stab American democracy in the back, are allowed to escape consequences then the wound cannot heal. America has swept these people under the rug so many times that the rug is now within three feet of the ceiling and you’re crawling around on it on your hands and knees, dodging the light fixture!” A prolific commenter, LimeyExpatDave is the author of 43 stories. This is the first time the nearly 13-year Kossack has been rescued. 

Driving through a deep-red farm country on the way to Walmart and Tractor Supply, where Trump support is deep and stalwart, first-time writer and new Kossack YoniL notes a lack of Trump signs and Trump flags, and a proliferation of clean rectangles on vehicles, visible signs “indicating where bumper stickers had been removed. ‘Blue Lives Matter’ stickers were still there, but next to them you could see the tell-tale signs of newly exposed adhesive.” Republicans Denying Trump Faster than Peter Denied Jesus (not equating the two) is a grassroots peek into a new reality in Trump Country. It appears that his ardent supporters are now ready to say “Trump who?”

In The first lies … the ones we tell ourselves, vjr7121 reviews the lies that the media and punditry have told to soften the threat that the Trump regime posed to the country, and argues for a full investigation, accounting, and justice, on behalf of the public and the rule of law. The founding lie, however, is the one we all accepted: American exceptionalism, and the attendant idea that “we owed our ‘home teams’ support for even bad decisions and poor policies … The sickness is not a foreign pathogen and is not based on party affiliation, it is rooted in beliefs (of our nation’s founding).” Vjr7121, a retired educator, sometime writer, and full-time liberal, has written 164 stories for Daily Kos, 23 of which have been rescued.

Whytewolf explores the limits of free speech in the United States in Now More Than Ever: Why We Need the Exercise of Free Expression. Noting that free speech limits are more clearly defined in other Western democracies than they are in the U.S., and that we are unlikely to impose legal restraints on free speech without amending the Constitution, whytewolf considers the ways that absolutists abridge the right to free speech, and how those abuses can be countered. This is whytewolf’s eighth story, and the fourth to be rescued.

In The Road to Hell, A Pagan in Arizona recounts growing up in an evangelical church that always mixed right-wing politics with faith, and how after leaving the church, the author “didn't think about it much. Until 2016, when I started hearing Pastor What's His Name's rhetoric being repeated very often and very loudly. As if someone had exhumed his ideas and repeatedly dosed them with meth.” In a region where Trump flags are still flying, A Pagan in Arizona wonders whether the evangelical neighbors will agree that it was God’s will that Biden was elected. A new Kossack, A Pagan in Arizona is a “Flaming Liberal hedgewitch and artist” who has authored eight stories. This is the first one rescued.

Woodworker brings a change of pace and a somewhat change of subject in The transformative power of the arts. Realizing that “the Republican party has been the sanctuary for some time now for those we excuse as ‘harmless crazed folks’ when they come to the dinner tables of the sane,” Woodworker offers the example of an uncle who found healing in art, and counsels that, “When we craft useful beauty, we are also crafting something within ourselves. The transformation that can take place in wood (or through work in other materials) is also a transformation of self.” A 12-year member of the Daily Kos Community, Woodworker has authored 26 stories, three of which have been rescued.

New member and first-time writer Europeananalyst argues that Trump supporters are not delusional, but are instead determined to hold power at all cost in MAGA Mob does NOT believe in Election Fraud, they’re dishonest traitors.  Drawing from two Italian political mottos to explain what is happening with Trump supporters, the author speaks from the perspective of someone who "learned at an early age, dealing with the communists in my home country, that is pointless to argue with dishonest people." 

In the first true break of subject this week, Brecht captures that lightning-in-a-jar moment in writing in Write your own Bookchat in 2021. While encouraging other Kossacks to write about the books they love in the long-running series Bookchat series, he revisits his first crafted and polished story and its effect on him: “Writing offered me a physical toolkit to test and shape my ideas into more complex stories. A fine novel can be a grand loom, to lay out subtle and interwoven truths, in a rich tapestry of life,” and asks others to do the same. A member of the Daily Kos Community since 2005, Brecht has written 95 stories, 45 of which have been rescued. He resides in Los Angeles with extensive literature and music libraries.

In The House Members Who Voted in 3 Presidential Impeachments, billyleeblack16 takes a dive into impeachment history and finds that “nine House Republicans who voted to both impeach Bill Clinton over a blowjob ... voted against impeaching Donald Trump over inciting an armed insurrection against Congress,” to the astonishment of few indeed. One GOP congressman back in the day—Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan—voted to impeach Clinton, passed on Trump the first time, but voted to impeach the second time, ensuring Upton will be a piece of presidential trivia someday, as the only congressperson to vote to impeach two different presidents. Billyleeblack16, who is neither Billy, nor Lee, nor Black—nor 16 —has written 17 stories, four of which have been rescued.

Taking the aphorism “We are all the hero in the movie of our life” as a starting point, new CCommunity member theghostofjohndewey connects Frodo, Luke Skywalker, and the archetypal QAnon conspiracist under the umbrella of Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces. The "hero’s journey" is a three-part process that repeats in both modern stories and ancient myths. Theghostofjohndewey explains how the structure of Departure, Initiation and Return act in the monomyth of a QAnon conspiracist. It's not about what is real, but what that person believes is real. Q and The Hero’s Journey (A Shared Delusion) is the author’s fourth story and first rescue.

JenMerrill and her 21-year-old son Lucas rented a hotel and a car, and beat the pavement in Georgia for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, door-knocking and contacting voters face to face. What My Son and I Discovered When We Dipped Our Feet into Georgia Politics recounts their adventures talking to voters in Greene County, where they discovered the power of meeting voters where they live. In the end, they “decided we loved the African Americans of Greene County — the white people we encountered, not so much.” On Election Day, Lucas served as a poll watcher—the only Democratic poll watcher in a sea of Republicans who “almost managed to keep him out” but, in a nail-biter, didn’t. This is proud mom JenMerrill’s second story and first rescue.

Joe Biden will not be inaugurated Jan. 20 announces that, thanks to 100,000,000 write-in votes, the author comeaug will be president instead, and expects to hold office for about three weeks. If you hadn’t heard about the real election because the corporate media is in the bag for Biden and Harris. Extolling the benefits of being an outsider, comeaug promises “to use the Trump method to MAGA. First, I will make America really crappy, and then it will be easy to bring it back (I think).” Comeaug has authored 11 stories with this first-rate parody being the first rescue.

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT is dedicated to finding great writing by Community members that isn’t getting the visibility it deserves.

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Jan. 6 was far from the first insurrection Trump supported, and it’s unclear if it was the last

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Right now—and this is a real thing—Donald Trump has lost the Secretaries of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and whatever the heck role Mick Mulvaney held And really, that’s just the tip of the milky white iceberg of milky white people who made the tough moral decision that 3.95 years of inciting violence, instilling racism, and driving divisiveness was simply all they could take. I mean, 3.94 years? Sure. But they always expected that Trump would become presidential before he stopped being that thing. Everyone has their limits, and for a lot of Trump’s associates, those limits seem to be symbolically stepping back at the very last possible second out of a powerful delusion that this will somehow purify them in time for their next six-, seven-, or eight-figure position.

Then, as happens in serious democracies, this run of camels who finally discovered their last straw, led to Trump spending a good part of his week talking over strategy with the MyPillow Guy. Mr. Pillow came to the White House clutching a sheaf of papers that cleverly pointed out Trump could use the insurrection he incited to declare that people were being insurrectiony. Then he could invoke the Insurrection Act. Then, once Trump had installed himself as president for life and turned the CIA and FBI into the KGB and Stasi, respectively, Trump could just declare martial law and shoot them. Really. That was the plan. Plus you get 80% off a full body pillow using the code #CrossTheRubicon.

Admittedly, there’s no truth behind the discount code. I think. But since the pillows are nothing but cloth bags of shredded foam that probably cost Mike Lindell a nickel apiece to manufacture, feel free to give it a try.

In any case, the major point here isn’t that the pillows are demonstrably smarter and more patriotic than the guy who peddles them. It’s that Trump is so devoid of anything that looks like a serious adviser, he really did spend hours in the White House going over a plan to take America along the same path blazed by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and, of course, Adolf. At the direction of the MyPillow Guy.

All of this is extraordinarily sad. But not for Donald Trump. It’s sad for everyone who isn’t Trump.

As The New York Times reports, everything that has happened with Trump, was exactly what had to happen with Trump.

The siege of the Capitol wasn’t a departure for Trump, it was an apotheosis. For years, he’s been telling us he wouldn’t accept an election loss. For years, he’s been urging his followers to violence, refusing to condemn their violence, and insinuating that even greater violence was on the way. As he told Breitbart in 2019, in one of his characteristic threats, “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

And what do you know, Trump was right. It was very bad.

The Times also points out that Trump didn’t start cheering on mobs overrunning capitols on Jan. 6. That was really more of an endpoint. Trump started off by cheering on crowds who tore through multiple state capitols over social distancing guidelines, or rumors that someone might restrict 100-shot magazines for their AR-15s, or threats to statues dedicated to racist mass-murderers and traitors. In every case, Trump praised the militias, the white supremacists, and the hoarse-throated mob. 

What happened in D. C. on Jan. 6 was just a national version of what happened in Wisconsin, in Colorado, and in Kentucky, and in a dozen other states. Trump not only encouraged these events, he even refused to say there was anything wrong with a plot to kidnap and publicly execute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Speaking of which, here’s Trump from the rally that came right before his people swarmed up the Capitol steps, smashed through doors and windows, and went prowling the halls of Congress with handcuffs. “We’ve got to get rid of the weak congresspeople,” said Trump, “the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them … Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

Gee. Where did people get the idea that he wanted them to kidnap, try, and execute members of Congress? Right from Trump. (Bonus: Note why Liz Cheney was so willing to sign on to impeachment).

What happened on Jan. 6 was shocking, but it should not have been surprising to anyone. Trump has been calling for this moment since he came down that gold elevator. He’s not just overlooked violence, but encouraged it. He’s made it clear, at every speech and every rally, that beating people up is okay. That violence is good. That executions are fine. In fact, he has complained that there was not enough violence and brutality to suit him in this wimpy modern world. He didn’t just license his followers to smash the police in the face with “thin blue line” flags, he made it inevitable.

Trump is who he has always been. His followers are doing as he has always wanted. None of this was a secret. For the last four years, all of the Republican Party and half of the media has pretended they could not see that Trump was simply a fascist, doing what fascists always do—offering violence and calling it order. 

Don’t expect them to start admitting it now.