Im-Politic: What Democracy Supporters Should Think About the Virginia Scandals

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Brett Kavanaugh, Im-Politic, impeachment, Justin Fairfax, Mark Herring, racism, Ralph Northam, recall, sexual assault, Virginia

Although the Virginia political scandals are such a fast-moving, and changing, train, it’s still possible to think about conclusions that validly can be drawn. It’s also necessary, since in this age of the internet and social media, along with a non-stop news cycle, evidence of past misdeeds and misstatements by public figures  inevitably will keep surfacing.

For now, of course, the spotlight is on Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, the state’s Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, and its Attorney General Mark Herring. But it’s clear that it shouldn’t shine equally on each one, and that the responses most consistent with democracy and the rule of law shouldn’t be uniform, either.

The main reason: As repugnant as their adventures in blackface were, neither Northam nor Herring has committed a crime. Consequently, despite the many calls for their resignations by Virginians and non-Virginians alike, I don’t believe they should accede – unless they genuinely conclude their consciences or the public good demand it. This is especially true for Northam, who to date clearly wants to keep his job.

Both his fate and that of Herring should be up in the air – that’s sure. But the decision to keep them in office ultimately should be made by Virginia voters through one of two established procedures. Either they can act on their own, and start gathering the signatures needed to make possible a court-approved recall, or they can urge their elected representatives in the state’s House of Delegates or Senate to approve impeachment and removal.

It’s entirely understandable for Virginians to fear that their state’s government will grind to a standstill as long as Northam remains in the governor’s mansion in particular. (This problem of course exists separately from the complications that would arise from his replacement by the legally troubled Fairfax, or by Herring – though they are major complications indeed.) But if the state’s residents are sufficiently worried about this prospect, they can make their concerns clear and move to assuage them in lawful manners.

None of this argument is intended to belittle other, more ethically, grounded points made to support Northam’s resignation. It indeed is reasonable to contend that he has lost the moral authority Virginians (and other voters) are entitled to expect from their elected leaders. It’s also reasonable to insist that Northam was elected fraudulently – since he never owned up to the blackface incident during the gubernatorial campaign. (And incidentally, I personally find much more troubling the presence of a Ku Kux Klan-hooded figure in the photo in question. For this group is nothing less than a violent domestic terrorist organization with a long record of racist and other bigoted violence.) Ditto for the position that Northam’s apology has turned out to be clumsy at best – and raised new questions about his racial attitudes and sincerity.

From the opposite perspective, I find some merit in the view that Northam’s record in public life on race has been admirable, and that either for that reason, or out of a broader general principle, or some combination of the two, neither he nor his career should be defined solely by a single, non-criminal episode, however odious.

But when a democracy confronts issues like this, neither my individual, nor yours (unless you live in Virginia), is especially important. What needs to count first and foremost are the collective reactions of Northam’s constituents in the state, who entrusted him with specific, major responsibilities, and who first and foremost will be impacted by the various outcomes. Denying a Virginia majority the ultimate say would in effect allot this decision to the loudest (not most numerous) voices in the state – and the nation. And therefore, it would represent a triumph not only of many with no real skin in this game, but of mob rule (albeit a non-violent form).

By contrast, Fairfax has been accused (so far) of two major crimes. Initially, let’s leave aside the comparisons naturally drawn between these sexual assault charges and those leveled at new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. Like Northam, Fairfax is an elected official. Unlike them, however, his alleged offenses could be criminal – which means they raise sets of questions both that are similar to those surrounding Northam (and Herring) and  that are different.

The similar questions entail who should determine Fairfax’s political fate. And the answers resemble those for Northam and Herring: Virginia voters, acting on their own, or through their elected representatives. It’s true that major political and policy problems in the state could result from Northam’s replacement as governor by a second-in-line official whose tenure could be among the briefest on record. But Virginians should have the right to wrestle with these matters and figure out the pros and cons of all the likely scenarios themselves.

Fairfax’ status as an elected official also distinguishes him in an important respect from Kavanaugh – who held a judgeship during his Supreme Court nomination hearings, but was seeking a higher post. What Virginians must decide is whether he should continue in his current office, not whether he deserves a new one. (Interestingly, despite some talk of removing Kavanaugh from the federal bench because of his own sexual assault problems, and even other issues such as character flaws allegedly revealed because he supposedly lied about his experiences with alcohol, no removal procedures were ever initiated. Nor has anything yet come from efforts to impeach and remove Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court.)

The more interesting Fairfax questions are those concerning his own exposure to criminal prosecution. Reportedly, his first accuser, Vanessa Tyson, has decided not to press charges. His second accuser, Meredith Watson, seems to have chosen a similar course of action. 

But Fairfax is hardly out of the legal woods, because the statute of limitations for such crimes in neither of the states in which they allegedly occurred (Massachusetts for Tyson, North Carolina for Watson) has yet run out. And state officials can decide to move ahead on either case themselves. Conviction would definitely warrant impeachment and removal. Moreover, such steps could be defensible even if Fairfax was acquitted – but only if Virginians decided they were repelled enough by information that came out in court, of if they decided that the verdict was unjust.     

Similarly, during such a Fairfax trial, I know that if I lived in Virginia, I wouldn’t want my state government (if Fairfax succeeded Northam), or my lieutenant governor to face the possibility of defending himself against criminal charges – surely a full-time job in and of itself. And as with the Northam and Herring messes, all non-Virginians should feel perfectly free to voice their opinions – and even urge resignations (or hanging on). In fact, as with all free-wheeling debate, non-Virginians may well come up with some insights and ideas that haven’t occurred to Virginians. But I don’t live in Virginia, and for all of us out-of-staters,  our personal stakes in the course of this drama are nil.

One contingency that might change all of these calculations, especially for Virginians: If non-Virginians become so outraged by the prospect of some combination of Northam, Fairfax, or Herring staying in office that they try to organize tourism and other boycotts of the state. I’m generally against such campaigns, although there do seem to be reasons to believe that they’re constitutionally protected when waged by individuals. But what strikes me as dispositive is that, as with the possible consequences discussed above, these are possible costs that Virginians should decided to risk.

So again, Fairfax’ future, like that of Northam and Herring should be for Virginians to decide as they see fit. If we really have faith in democracy, the rest of us will be confident they’ll make the right decision – and recognize that we have no legitimate choice but to leave it in their hands.

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Im-Politic: What that Alabama Senate Race Really Means

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2004 presidential election, 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, African Americans, Alabama, Barack Obama, Christine O'Donnell, Doug Jones, establishment Republicans, evangelicals, exit polls, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, independents, Jeb Bush, John McCain, Luther Strange, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Mo Brooks, moderates, off-year elections, Populism, presidential elections, Republicans, Roy Moore, Senate, Steve Bannon, suburbanites, Todd Akin, Trump, Virginia

Last week’s Alabama Senate race results remain worth studying carefully for two main reasons. First, the bizarro and self-destructive intra-Republican politics that handed victory to a Democrat in this deeply red state keep playing out. And second, reading the tea leaves correctly will be critical to figuring out whether, as is widely claimed, the triumph of former federal prosecutor Doug Jones does indeed herald the demise of the currently Trump-influenced brand of the Republican Party.

My overall conclusion: The fate of Trump-ism post-Alabama is still very much up in the air for most of the same reasons that its fate was up in the air pre-Alabama. Because as suggested above, the President and his main allies and surrogates have done such a lousy job of turning a reasonably coherent populist 2016 presidential campaign message into even a minimally coherent governing program.

And from this overall conclusion flow two follow-on conclusions: First, the conventional wisdom surrounding the Republican defeat in Alabama seems considerably off-base. The totality of the polling data shows that it can be mainly blamed on the deep personal and policy flaws of candidate Roy S. Moore rather than on any serious weakening of Trump-ism in the state. That’s lucky both for the President and for Republicans smart enough to recognize that the party’s continued viability depends on abandoning the orthodox conservative agenda still championed by its Washington/establishment wing but so roundly rejected by the voters.

Second, and much more troubling for Mr. Trump and his supporters: In the Alabama intra-party politicking, they showed no greater ability to get their messaging act – and competence – act together than they have in the national political and policy arenas as a whole. And the most glaring sign of this continuing confusion was the decision of the President and initially of his putative ideological guru, Steven K. Bannon to endorse Moore.

The by-now-standard interpretation of Alabama is that a closely related combination of anti-Moore and anti-Trump sentiments pushed black voter turnout in the state way up, turned off many moderate or independent white suburbanites who had gone for the president in 2016, and tipped the election to Jones. Moreover, these Alabama trends supposedly mirrored developments in the November Virginia gubernatorial race in particular, where a Democrat also prevailed – and look like a promising formula for a Democratic comeback in next year’s off-year Congressional races big enough to flip the House or Senate or both, and for regaining the White House in 2020.

But even without the Moore factor, these claims overlook big differences between Alabama and Virginia. Principally, the latter is steadily becoming reliably Democratic, as voters from more liberal areas of the country have flocked to the Old Dominion’s Washington, D.C. suburbs, attracted by government and government-related jobs. In fact, it’s voted blue in the last three presidential contests after staying in the GOP column every year since 1964.

With the Moore factor, the Alabama conventional wisdom looks even weaker, at least if you take the exit polls seriously. (Unless otherwise indicated, the following soundings come from the official exit polls for Alabama from the 2004, 2008, and 2012 presidential general elections, for the 2016 Republican primary in the state, and for last week’s Senate election.)

It’s true that black turnout was impressive – especially for an off-year election. At 29 percent, it even exceeded the African-American vote in 2012 (a presidential year, when all turnout tends to rise, and when black Americans obviously found Barack Obama a more compelling choice than 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton). It’s also true that because President Trump is reviled in the black community (with approval ratings in the mid-single digits), his endorsement of Moore prompted many Alabama African-Americans to “send him a message.” At the same time, in the 2004 presidential race (the last pre-Obama campaign), Republican president George W. Bush attracted only six percent of their vote (with somewhat lower – 25 percent – turnout). So it’s quite possible that whatever image problems Alabama blacks have with Republicans started well before the Trump era.

There’s also considerable polling evidence for the view that overlapping blocs of moderates, independents, and suburbanites, which gave Trump such noteworthy support in 2016, displayed some buyer’s remorse last week. For example, Moore did win the burbs – but only by a 51 percent to 47 percent margin. That’s much smaller than Mitt Romney’s 66 percent to 33 percent performance. And although there were no Alabama exit polls conducted for the 2016 presidential election, the primary polls report Trump winning fully half of Republican suburbanites – more than twice the share garnered by the next most successful GOP candidate (in a large field), Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

What about the self-described political moderates? In 2012, 52 percent supported Romney – much more than Moore’s 25 percent. Moore’s appeal to these voters also looks paltry compared with Trump’s last year. The president was backed by 40 percent of these voters – many more than supported the runner-up in this category, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

And the same picture is created by self-described independent voters. Fully three quarters pulled a Romney lever in 2012 – three times the share won by Moore. (The 2016 exit poll lacked any data on this question.)

Yet I find more compelling the evidence that Alabama is sui generis. For starters, although by 53 percent to 42 percent, the state’s voters said that the sexual misconduct allegations against Moore were not “an important factor” in their vote, by 60 percent to 35 percent, they described them as “a factor.”

Let’s drill down a little further. Jones won 49.9 percent of the total vote, and slightly more Alabama voters (51 percent) expressed a favorable opinion of him. Moore won 48.4 percent of the total, but 56 percent of the state’s voters viewed him unfavorably. In addition, whereas 65 percent of Jones’ supporters favored him “strongly,” that was the case for only 41 percent of Moore supporters.

These Moore favorable ratings indicate that he suffered from a distinct enthusiasm gap among his core evangelical backers, and several exit poll indicators support this supposition. Evangelical turnout was slightly lower in 2017 (44 percent of the electorate) than in 2012 or 2008 (47 percent). Moreover, although Moore captured 81 percent of this vote, that share was down from Romney’s 90 percent in 2012, Senator John McCain’s 92 percent in 2008, and George W. Bush’s 88 percent.

And although the size of the 2016 primary field makes comparisons with last year difficult, evangelicals made up 77 percent of the Republican vote (a little lower than last week), and 43 percent went for Trump – nearly twice as many (22 percent) as those who voted for Cruz, the next best performer.

Among the signs that Moore dismay was evident among other voting blocs? He lost parents with children by 56 percent to 42 percent, and mothers with children by a much wider 66 percent to 32 percent. But although losing women overall by 57 percent to 41 percent, Moore won white women by 63 percent to 34 percent.

As for the impact on the President himself? Clearly negative. Mr. Trump remains significantly more popular in Alabama (48 percent approve of his performance as president) than nationwide (just under 38 percent approval according to the RealClearPolitics.com average of the latest soundings). But he won the state by a 62.9 percent to 34.6 percent margin over Clinton, so that’s a huge drop off.

Yet although the president’s nationwide ratings are quite low compared with those of his most recent predecessors at this point in their terms, it’s nothing unusual for them to take a dive after a year in office. Further, 51 percent of Alabama voters told the exit pollsters that Mr. Trump was “not a factor” in their decisions. In fact, the president’s approval ratings among Alabamians are higher than those of the Republican (43 percent) and Democratic (47 percent) parties overall. They’re also higher than those of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (46 percent), whose support of incumbent fill-in Alabama GOP Senator Luther Strange (appointed to replace now Attorney General Jeff Sessions) was deeply resented by many Republicans in the state.

All the same, as the end of his first year in office approaches, the President obviously is less popular than at the start of his term, and it’s easy to see why from simply considering the ideologically scrambled squabbling among Republicans that marked the process of choosing their Alabama Senate nominee. Given his party’s painful experiences with fringe-y candidates in previous campaigns – like Todd Akin of Missouri and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware – it was understandable that McConnell and the rest of the party’s establishment wanted someone far safer to run against Moore. But Strange lacked any ability to connect with the populism and broader voter anger that remains white hot throughout Alabama and nationwide. Even less explicable, a third candidate in the Republican Senate primary – Congressman Mo Brooks – appeared to have combined populist fire with a record that raised no Moore-like questions whatever. Why was McConnell so uninterested in him?

Much more mysteriously, why did Bannon opt for Moore over Brooks – who shared all of his economic nationalist and small-government impulses? His choice is all the more baffling given his acknowledgment last week that “Judge Moore has never been, really, an economics guy. If Mo Brooks had been running here, immigration and trade would’ve been at the top of the agenda — and bringing jobs back to Alabama.” And how come Bannon with all his contacts in the state couldn’t uncover the information about Moore’s sexual past that was reported by Washington Post journalists in the state on temporary assignment? The White House, of course, flunked this basic test, too. 

The president’s endorsement of Strange makes some sense, however, at least according to narrow political criteria. He supported McConnell’s choice because, as I’ve written, he believes he needs to maintain the backing of the Republican Party’s Washington-Congressional wing to survive any possible impeachment proceedings. In other words, at least some of the blame for the contradictions that have been hampering Mr. Trump on both substance and politicking lies with the Democrats. But of course, the president and his aides have given their opponents plenty of Russia-gate ammunition. And whoever or whatever is mainly at fault, the chief problem created by this bind is a powerful one. For the Republican establishment’s agenda remains as unpopular this year as it was last – which is largely why the Obamacare repeals have failed and why the Republican tax bill remains so unpopular with the public.

In other words, the kind of chaos (and yes, I’ve deliberately used former 2016 GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush’s description of the Trump campaign and personality) on display in this Alabama scrum surely reminded voters there about everything that’s always made them uneasy about the president. Although ready to roll the dice with him as a candidate, it’s easy to see why they find his presidency far more troubling – and why these doubts could easily spread further nation-wide, and take deeper root, unless Mr. Trump finds a way to squelch them.

Glad I Didn’t Say That: No Obama Learning Curve on Immigration

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Barack Obama, crime, Ed Gillespie, Fairfax County, gang violence, gangs, Glad I Didn't Say That!, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, MS-13, Virginia, Virginia governor's race

“[I]n Fairfax County [Virginia] MS-13 related incidents in the first 4 months of this year jumped more than 160 percent compared with 2015.”

—WJLA.com, Washington, D.C., June 30, 2016

“This [MS-13] problem is horrible. This is four murders in this park. Obviously, we’ve had other murders in the region in the past few weeks. This is getting out of control and we need to stop it.”

—Fairfax County police chief Ed Roessler, March 3, 2017

“Along with Los Angeles, ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] considers Northern Virginia a hub for MS-13.”

—Fox5DC.com, Washington, D.C., July 27, 2017

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie’s ads spotlighting MS-13 threat are “really trying to deliver…fear. What he really believes is if you scare enough voters, you might score just enough votes to win an election. It’s just as cynical as politics gets.”

—Former President Barack Obama, October 19, 2017

Im-Politic: Ensnared in the History Wars

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Confederacy, Confederate monuments, Holocaust, Im-Politic, racism, Staunton, Stonewall Jackson, Stonewall Jackson Hotel, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, Virginia, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

I finally had my own personal brushes with the History Wars this past week, receiving a first-hand reminder of the complications entailed in presenting the American past with accuracy and therefore with true integrity. Nothing I experienced has shaken me of the conviction that most of the nation’s Confederate monuments shamefully honor traitors (I discussed some of the exceptions here), and should be removed (lawfully) from public places. Ditto for displays of Confederate symbols on private property – although such displays should remain Constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. But what about dealing with these affronts on a personal level? That, it became clear to me, is another matter altogether.

My encounter with the History Wars resulted from a two-day trip my wife and I took to Staunton, Virginia, a picturesque town of about 25,000 located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and recent History Wars battlefield Charlottesville. We went to the area to check out a big regional book sale, and to take in two plays staged by the town’s renowned Shakespearean theater.

And we scored a deal: a package from a local hotel that included not only two nights’ stay, but two performances and a sumptuous breakfast. What could have been better? Here’s what. The hotel was the “Stonewall Jackson” – named of course after the famous Confederate general.

By the time we put one and one together, it was too late to cancel without a charge (yes, how convenient), so we held our noses and took the trip. The hotel was in all other respects exemplary – including a very friendly, helpful staff. It employed some African-American workers as well, and we saw no signs of dissatisfaction on their part. Moreover, the town lying beneath the (big) “Stonewall Jackson Hotel” sign seemed perfectly pleasant as well. True, we saw very few African-American pedestrians or working at local businesses. On the other hand, Staunton features tony restaurants with fashionable farm-to-table menus, as well as a (quintessentially progressive) fair trade products shop.  In other words, a hotbed of racism and reaction it isn’t. 

I thought of sharing (politely) my opinion of the hotel’s name with the staff, but wound up keeping my thoughts to myself. After all, it’s the owners’ views that really count. I probably will communicate my feelings on Facebook in hopes of persuading them to change – and will let them know (regretfully) that unless they do, I can’t in good conscience stay there again.

History Wars encounter Number Two was much easier to deal with – my visit to the town’s Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, located in Staunton because the 28th president was born in the town (and lived there briefly during his infancy before his family moved to Georgia).

Although Wilson held deplorable racial views even for his time, and although he is among my least favorite presidents (overwhelmingly because of his disastrously naive foreign policies), the decision was a no-brainer for me on moral grounds. For as I’ve explained previously – and as with similar figures like the Founding Fathers – Wilson’s role in American history far transcended his record on race. And he didn’t take up arms against his own country.

Moreover, the facility handled these issues very appropriately. In addition to the exhibits describing Wilson’s re-segregation of the Federal government and paternalistic – at best – views of his fellow black citizens, the guide who conducted the tour of the actual Wilson family home forthrightly told our little group that the former president’s parents employed three house slaves – rented from a local farmer for Wilson’s father, a minister, by his congregation. And she made plain as day how low the living standards of these slaves were.

Encounter Number Three came on our drive back, when we decided to take local roads (including one dubbed the “Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway”) part of the way and came upon the kind of big antiques store that my wife can’t resist. I find these places eminently resistible, but as usual, gave it a quick once over. I wasn’t offended by the Nazi memorabilia I saw. (They can be genuine collector’s items – as with the Japanese sword a childhood friend’s father took back from his World War II service in the Pacific. That didn’t make him an Axis supporter.) Ditto for the “George Wallace for President, 1964” sign displayed in a side room. (The arch-segregationist then-Alabama governor made his first run for the White House that year.) For the record, my wife was much more creeped out by these items.   

What did offend me was the conversation I heard between the young man at the cash register (who was unfailingly polite toward both of us), and two other customers. On top of dredging up the usual canard about Confederate memorial opponents wanting to “erase history” (What? You never heard of history books or museums?), they made the kind of remarks about the Holocaust so ignorant that they were surely in part willful (though they obviously were not Deniers).

As I was in earshot, I was sorely tempted to interject. But I decided that no useful purpose educational purpose would be served. Indeed, far likelier that I would have reinforced any prejudices they had about rude, self-righteous Yankees. Or Jews. Or both.

Since I have no reason to believe that the employee owned the store, or that the owners condoned his views (or even knew about them), I don’t at this point have any issue with patronizing that store again. And getting the cashier in trouble seems way over the top – especially since he didn’t initiate that exchange and could well have been agreeing with his customers largely to be polite, and make sure he completed the sale.

My wife wound up getting some truly beautiful items there. In fact, she considers it one of the best antique stores she’s ever seen – both in selection and price terms. We also still love central Virginia – its countryside is mostly stunning. But as we continued back north on the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, heading toward I-81 and home, we both realized more than ever, how long America’s History Wars, and the collective and individual challenges they pose, are bound to last.

Im-Politic: First Thoughts on Charlottesville

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ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, anti-semitism, Charlottesville, civil liberties, Civil War, Confederacy, Constitution, David Duke, Founding Fathers, free speech, Im-Politic, neo-Nazis, racism, Robert E. Lee, secession, slavery, treason, Trump, Virginia

It’s as tempting to offer timely thoughts about today’s Charlottesville, Virginia violence and the reactions it’s generated as it is difficult – for new developments keep taking place, and incontrovertible facts are hard to come by. That said, here are what strike me as as points worth making at present.

First, as I’ve previously written, the triggering complaint of the white nationalist/neo-Nazi/confederate revivalist/call-them-what-you-wish protest and the narrowest-gauge cause it represents should be unacceptable to all Americans who truly love their country. Confederate statues and other monuments to the rebellion (e.g., street and high school names) have no place in our national life. And removing them has nothing to do with erasing history. The history of the Civil War must of course be taught in the most intellectually honest way possible. But statues and street names etc are unmistakable efforts to honor and memorialize.

And whether you view the secession as motivated by intertwined racism and slavery issues (where in my view the bulk of the evidence points) or more legitimate federalist and states rights claims, the decision to revolt violently against the federal government was a simple act of treason, which should always be condemned in the harshest possible terms.

Moreover, please don’t respond with observations that the Founding Fathers’ ranks included slave-owners (like Washington and Jefferson) or that many subsequent American leaders were racists (like Woodrow Wilson). For slavery was, tragically, legal under the Constitution until emancipation. And as I’ve written (in the post linked above), most of the historical national figures with inadequate records on race were, first, to great extents products of their time and, second, known for playing many other roles and making many other contributions to the nation and its success.

As for the protesters’ broader supposed grievances about repressed and endangered white rights and even safety, I have no doubt that economic stresses and anxieties are at work in many cases. But feeling the need, or advisability, to fly the Confederate flag or wear the swastika simply signals a form of derangement that our society has rightly decided is beyond the pale politically and morally speaking. So public figures should decry this message and reject any association with those sending them.

Which brings us to the question of the Trump response. It was, as critics have charged, far too weak. What I can’t figure out is the “why”. Is the president a racist? He’s had too many African-American friends and supporters for that charge to stick. He and his advisers and aides also have too often argued for restricting immigration by pointing to the benefits U.S. blacks would reap.

Related anti-semitism make even less sense, given that Mr. Trump’s daughter married an orthodox Jew (who he has anointed as a top White House aide) and then converted herself to Judaism. I know that the “some of my best friends are….” argument can be and has been abused by anti-semites (as well as racists). But insisting that “some of my children and grandkids….” is much harder to dismiss.

The only explanation that makes even some sense to me (meaning of course that I’m not totally convinced) is that the president worries that a substantial part of his (largely white) base either covertly or (much likelier) subconsciously sees itself as racially repressed or marginalized, too, and would suddenly desert him if he went after the David Dukes and Richard Spencers of this country. In other words, Mr. Trump’s troubling words reflect a political calculation, not a shared bigotry.

If so, his position is not only timorous, but pathetically mistaken. Because for every hater he retains by his silence or anodyne words at times like this weekend, he risks losing many more moderates and independents who have no use for the identity-politics obsessed, and therefore intrinsically divisive, Democrats but who are disgusted by overt racists – much less neo-Nazis. In fact, Duke’s tweets today show that this arch-racist and anti-semite is infuriated by the president’s Charlottesville remarks.

More important, the president will earn much more durable support from independents and moderates – especially those who have actually lost economic ground or fear such losses – by keeping the campaign promises he made to restore living wage jobs than by even minimal pandering to prejudice.

Finally, the role of the Charlottesville police and any other law enforcement authorities tasked with handling the protests needs to be scrutinized thoroughly – along with our notions of protesters’ rights. I’m pretty certain that most Americans would agree with the right of Nazis and the like to stage a protest over the treatment of Confederate memorials (or any other reprehensible) cause, and to display symbols that should disgust all people of good will. And of course, these are Constitutionally protected rights.

But I’ve long thought that the right to protest also entails the right of protesters to be protected from those seeking to disrupt their events. In other words, once counter-protesters started physically interfering with the Nazis, the police force present should have stepped in and started making arrests. Even better, they should have taken much more effective measures to keep the counter-protesters physically apart from the protesters, to reduce the odds of violence breaking out to begin with. To my knowledge, law enforcement authorities have never been sued for such failures (not even by the American Civil Liberties Union, which admirably supported the Nazis’ etc right to demonstrate in Charlottesville). I hope the organization will consider bringing such a case in the wake of Charlottesville, if the circumstances merit this action.

For failing to establish protesters’ right to security could easily turn into an open invitation for harassment that could crimp free speech rights yet further. And what would induce the Nazis – and violence-prone lefties – to start licking their chops more eagerly?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: An Obama Trade Winner…That Isn’t

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D.C., Fairfax County, fast track, federal spending, Obama, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Virginia, Washington, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you still doubt that President Obama doesn’t know nearly enough about trade’s impact on the U.S. economy to merit a fast track blank check from Congress, ask yourself why he decided to promote the virtues of new agreements at a roundtable yesterday in Fairfax County, Virginia.

It’s clear why some combination of the host Fairfax Chamber of Commerce and White House aides pitched the appearance. They viewed it as a chance to spotlight all the high-tech, knowledge-industry companies throughout the affluent county that they’re sure will benefit from the trade expansion spurred by deals like the president’s prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But the administration is ignoring a screamingly obvious reality: Fairfax and Washington, D.C.-area municipalities like it are good bets to prosper long-term whether new trade deals are signed or not – less because they’re so intrinsically dynamic, but because they’re so heavily dependent on federal government spending and jobs for their well-being. Indeed, Fairfax openly admits the link.

According to Fairfax’ own statistics, just under 21 percent of its workers are employed by government at all levels – federal, state, and county. The comparable share for the nation as a whole is 16.16 percent. But these Fairfax numbers tell only part of the story. For they omit all the county residents employed at its innumerable so-called private sector companies that survive (and thrive) almost solely on federal contracts – and all the business and tax revenues they in turn generate for Fairfax’ other companies and budget.

Federal spending was especially helpful to Fairfax during the recession. According to the National Association of Counties, it never experienced one. But Fairfax’ reliance on Washington’s tax dollars was also evident from its concern about the federal spending slowdown agreed to by the White House and Congress.  George Mason University economists estimated that in 2013 the sequestration cost Fairfax more than eight percent of its economic output and more than 13 percent of its jobs – losses far greater than those suffered nation-wide.

Many conservatives will surely interpret the White House’s agreement at the least to spotlight Fairfax as a sign of the president’s alleged determination to addict the entire U.S. economy to federal spending. As I see it, yesterday’s Fairfax session points to an even more disturbing conclusion: that after more than five years living in the capitol’s political and media bubble, Mr. Obama now assumes that the Beltway norm is now the national norm.