It Was Wrong for Democratic Party Leaders and Donors to Force Joe Biden Out

Joe Biden has ended his campaign. Party leaders, major donors, and apparently about two-thirds of Democratic voters wanted him out.

I did not. The party has made a mistake.

After Biden's disastrous June debate against Trump, there was widespread agreement among the faithful that we needed to have a conversation about whether Joe Biden is mentally and physically well enough to continue as nominee. And we had that conversation. And the answer was, yes, Joe is old and frail, but he is healthy enough to do the job he was chosen to do.

But then as they say, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Persons who saw Joe Biden as a weak nominee decided they wanted him replaced, with, well, anyone at all. And they won the argument.

Folks, this is not how democracy is supposed to work.

A little history. The modern Democratic Presidential nomination process began in 1972. That was the first election where the results of the primaries really counted more than the opinions of the super delegates in choosing the nominee. And in four of the next five elections, the Democrats looked like a party that couldn't do anything right. McGovern was crushed in '72. Carter nearly lost a virtually unlosable race in '76. And the less said about 1980, 1984 and 1988 the better.

But one thing we did not do in any of those elections was to choose a nominee, then press the panic button when that nominee fell behind in the polls and force him out.

Now that we've done this:
1. We've sent a message that we will betray anyone the minute the going gets tough.

2. We've given major donors and party leaders the power to deny the choice of the voters.

3. We look ridiculous. We became a squabbling, circular firing squad as soon as our campaign had problems.

4. We haven't gained anything. It's not as if Kamala Harris or anyone else polls any better against Donald Trump.

5. Right up to today, Professor Alan Lichtman, who has predicted the last 10 elections correctly, has pointed out that Joe Biden was still on track to win, largely because he's an incumbent President in a strong economy. Now we've thrown that away.

Perhaps we will win. Perhaps we will lose so badly that in four years the party will have new leadership. We need new leaders who believe in the democratic process, who believe that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and who believe, maybe just a little, in loyalty to a very successful President. Assuming we ever win another election.

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths: The Impeachment of Trump, Part Three: Republicans' Fantasy Role-Playing

I was listening to the impeachment hearings live broadcast today to get an update about the kind of defense Republicans are running. At various times, they've floated different way to defend Trump, including Nick Mulvaney's, "It's not a crime, we do it all the time" and Laura Ingraham's, "Attempted crimes aren't crimes." But Republicans' go-to game plan remains, "This is all a fantasy on the part of Democrats." On November 13 (a very long time ago, as it predates the public impeachment testimony), Republican Congressman Mark Meadows tweeted:

4 inconvenient facts for the Democrat impeachment fantasy:
- Call transcript shows zero link between aid and political investigations
- Aid was released WITHOUT any new investigations
- Ukraine didn’t know aid was withheld during the call
- Trump/Zelensky both say: zero pressure

There was plenty of publicly available information to contradict the above tweet eight days ago, and  more has come out since then. But this Republican line of defense endures. Broken down point by point, these specious lines of reasoning all function the same way: they only work if one takes a single fact, discusses that fact out of context, and ignores every related, contradictory fact. Let me show you what I mean.

Myth: Call transcript shows zero link between aid and political investigations
Fact: While it's true that Trump and President Zelensky didn't discuss the withheld aid package on the phone call that prompted the whistleblower complaint that lead to the impeachment investigation, there was a direct quid pro quo: Zelensky inquired about purchasing military aid, and Trump's response was, "I would like you to do us a favor though" in the from of politically-motivated investigations. Regarding the congressional aid package however, Ukraine was informed by E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland that there was little chance the aid would be forthcoming until they made a public statement committing to opening the investigations. Sondland has testified that while the tie between the release of the aid and the investigations was a presumption on his part, there was a quid pro quo from the White House communicated to him tying other calls and meetings with President Trump sought by Ukraine to the public announcement of those same investigations.

Myth: Aid was released WITHOUT any new investigations
Fact: The congressional aid package was released, not coincidentally when the whistleblower complaint was about to go public. The Ukrainians had indeed decided to announce the investigations based on the pressure they were facing from Trump. President Zelensky had planned to go public with the investigations live on CNN on September 13, but called off the announcement due to the release of aid.

Not a myth, but a misleading fact: Ukraine didn’t know aid was withheld during the call
Fact: They knew it a few days later.

Not a myth, but a misleading fact: Trump/Zelensky both say: zero pressure
Fact: In the first post in this series, I discussed the documentation that President Zelensky and his team felt enormously pressured by the conflict between their need for promised American support and Trump's demands for poltically-motivated investigations; this despite Zelensky had said, "No one pushed me" while sitting next to President Trump.

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths: The Impeachment of Trump, Part Two: The Conspiracy Theories (Look, No One Wants Nude Pictures of Trump)

So if Democrats are trying to impeach the President based on a narrative of certain events, his defenders obviously need an alternate narrative. A problem for those defenders: the case against Trump's creation of a shadow foreign policy that included withholding aid to Ukraine until that country announced investigations damaging to Trump's political opponents is rock solid. So much so that Republicans are having to resort to far out conspiracy theories to try and clear the President of wrongdoing (or at least create a lot of distractions from that wrongdoing).

And who better than to repeat all the craziness Republicans have been circulating than California Congressman David Nunes, who, at the impeachment hearings this week used his time to air, (from Will Sommer of The Daily Beast,  "conspiracy theories that are little-known outside of Fox News and the right-wing media ecosystem, and were widely divergent from what witnesses Ambassador William Taylor and State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent were at the hearing to discuss."

From the Republican point of view, Nunes is the perfect guy to spread their cuckoo-bananas nonsense, as he has a lot of experience in the craft. Earlier this year, during the Mueller Special Counsel investigation, Nunes offered up far out (and debunked) theories regarding a "deep state" conspiracy between Democrats, rogue US government officials and Russia to discredit Trump.

As sometimes happens with current events, the article I intended to write today has already been written by someone else. In this case, the debunking of the conspiracy theories Republicans are using to prop up Trump has been covered very well by Grace Panetta of Business Insider in an article titled, Congressional Republicans are repeating many baseless conspiracy theories in Trump's impeachment inquiry. Here's why they're all bogus.

From the article:

Here's a breakdown of the conspiracy theories many Republicans are pushing and why they don't hold up: 

Hunter Biden committed corrupt activity in Ukraine, and his father tried to cover for him

The entire impeachment inquiry centers around Trump and the GOP's discredited claim that in his capacity as vice president, Biden tried to help his son by calling for the firing of Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor they say was investigating Burisma.

Despite Trump and Giuliani's allegations, both US and Ukrainian government officials have confirmed there's no evidence that the Bidens did anything improper.

(Note from Joe: Read the article if you'd like to read a lot more about the complete lack of any reason for further investigation of Hunter Biden.)

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Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit the Democratic party

On the July 25 call, Trump also referenced a discredited conspiracy — also heavily pushed by Giuliani — that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that Ukraine was somehow in possession of a DNC server.

"I would like you to do us a favor though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... The server, they say Ukraine has it," Trump said on the call. 

The US intelligence community has conclusively established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to undermine Hillary Clinton by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

In the call, Trump was referencing the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which the DNC retained to help them respond to Russia's breach of its servers during the 2016 election. 

"The server" refers to an unfounded conspiracy theory that the DNC hid an incriminating server from the FBI while the bureau was investigating Russia's hack, and that the server contains information about who was really responsible for the breach.

In reality, there is no single, physical DNC server, and there is no evidence that Ukraine's government "hid" it from investigators or was in any way involved in the 2016 US presidential election. 
CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz told CNBC that Trump's reference to CrowdStrike in the Zelensky call was "unintelligible, to be honest."

(Note from Joe: The idea that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election is supposed to bolster the idea that Trump had legitimate reason to call for "investigations" in the Ukraine, as if he was interested in more than stirring up doubt against Joe and Hunter Biden.)

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A DNC operative named Alexandra Chalupa conspired with Ukraine to spread dirt on Trump

As part of the conspiracy that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, some have also claimed that a DNC operative named Alexandra Chalupa coordinated with the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Trump.

In reality, Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American Democratic political consultant and operative, ran a minority engagement program for the DNC in 2016 and communicated with Ukrainian officials about Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who served as an advisor and lobbyist on behalf of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

There is no evidence Chalupa conspired with Ukraine to conduct any kind of opposition research with regard to Trump. Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign in August of 2016, and is currently serving a seven-and-a-half year federal prison sentence for financial fraud, failing to register as a foreign agent, and witness tampering.
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Democrats tried to collaborate with Ukraine to obtain nude pictures of Trump

The Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, twice claimed that Democrats collaborated with "people they thought were Ukrainians" to get nude photos of Trump. Nunes made these statements in the September 26 public testimony of the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and in the November 15 testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine.

In 2018, The Atlantic reported that two Russian pranksters posing as members of Ukraine's parliament prank-called House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff claiming to have "pictures of naked Trump" from a purported encounter Trump had with a famous Russian woman. 


While Schiff said on the call that the information was "helpful," his staff told The Atlantic in a statement that they had alerted law enforcement before and after the call that it was "probably bogus."  

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Future articles in this series will cover subjects including Trump's mischaracterizations of his infamous call with President Zelensky, and the lingering possibility that impeachment of Trump will include obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation. Of course with public hearings just getting rolling, who know what kind of crazy nonsense Republicans will be throwing out there? I'll be covering that too.

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