Kavanaugh – Memphis Flyer

Remember that time a blockbuster investigative report showed that the president of the United States had engaged in multi-million-dollar tax frauds throughout his business career? Probably not. It happened last week, while we were all watching the Senate’s Kavanaugh Kabuki Theater production unfold.

For some reason, The New York Times decided it would be the perfect time to publish an exhaustive, 40-page investigative report detailing the Trump family’s finances. The story revealed that Donald Trump (and his siblings) became millionaires as children, thanks to patriarch Fred Trump’s tax-evasion maneuvers. By age 3, the president was earning $200,000 a year. He was a millionaire by age 8. In all, Fred Trump transferred more than $1 billion to his children — and, according to the Times, the family paid around five percent in taxes on that money, thanks to shell companies and other financial machinations.

Phil Bredesen

The Times story completely debunked Trump’s oft-repeated claim that he is a self-made millionaire who took a measly $1 million loan from his father and turned it into a vast real estate empire. (Trump lied. Shocker, I know.) It also laid out a rock-solid case that committing tax fraud was a routine part of the Trump family’s business plan.

At any other time in American history, this story would have created a tidal wave of outrage. It would have consumed the media and our public discourse and put the president in political jeopardy. In 2018, the story barely caused a ripple.

Instead, the media focused on the GOP’s victory in getting Kavanaugh installed on the Supreme Court. Not content to merely celebrate their triumph, Republicans and their media minions took the occasion to lament that, as a result of all those nasty, aggressive women coming forward to recount horror stories of harrassment and sexual assault, it is actually men who are in danger in our society.

“The women are fine,” the president said, as he shot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

We shall see how fine they are in about 30 days, when the November 6th mid-terms occur. Hopefully, voters will let the president and the GOP know how they feel about the absurd “investigation” into allegations about Kavanaugh’s past behavior.

A fact that often gets overlooked is that Republicans aren’t really the “majority” in this country, even though they have managed to take control of all three branches of government. A majority of the country, for example — by a 45 percent to 32 percent margin — believed Christine Blasey Ford over Kavanaugh. The 48 Democratic senators who opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination represent 56 percent of the population, a clear majority. The 50 GOP senators who supported Kavanaugh represent 44 percent.

That’s why the only real change has to come at the ballot box. The system is skewed, both by the ridiculous gerrymandering of House districts nationwide, and by the fact that states like Wyoming — which has a population that’s about half that of Shelby County — have the same number of senators as California, with 40 million residents. The Senate does not accurately represent the electorate. Which is why every Senate race is so important.

Speaking of … in Tennessee, Democratic Senatorial candidate Phil Bredesen enraged many of his supporters last week by stating that he supported Kavanaugh’s nomination. It was a dumb move. The initial polling after Bredesen’s statement showed his opponent, Marsha Blackburn, surging into the lead, as many Democrats renounced their support for their nominee. A common refrain: “I’m not voting for the lesser of two evils.” But that’s exactly what you should do in this case.

There’s a saying that “Democrats fall in love, while Republicans fall in line.” I don’t know any Democrats who are in love with Bredesen, a centrist who’s probably to the right of John Kasich. But this is the choice we have: Phil Bredesen versus Marsha Blackburn — a Trump boot-licker and a pawn of Big Pharma, the NRA, and other corporate lobbies. She’s anti-choice and would support Alex Jones for SCOTUS if Trump nominated him.

So, if you’re a progressive, tell me again how not voting in this election because you’re miffed at Bredesen is a smart decision. Progressives don’t have the luxury of sitting this one out because the Democratic candidate is less than perfect. There’s no Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or any other feel-good “make a statement” candidate in the race. The decision is binary, and it’s simple: You can hold your nose and vote for Bredesen, or you can cut it off to spite your face — for six years.

Bredesen at Rhodes

At one point during Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen’s solo appearance at Rhodes College on Thursday night, a Q&A affair that was originally intended to be a debate between himself and Republican opponent Marsha Blackburn, a questioner in the audience suggested that, if 80 percent of succeeding at something consisted of just showing up, the former two-term Governor might get 80 percent of the votes from those who turned out.

Bredesen suggested hopefully that, if he did really well, he might get as much as 82 percent of the audience vote. In retrospect, either figure seemed entirely reasonable.Not unexpectedly under the circumstances, it was clearly a Bredesen crowd, warmed up by lengthy preliminary remarks from young Rhodesian Democrats and, as the tenor of audience questions indicated, unmistakably partisan in its expectations.

Indeed, Bredesen — as cautiously centrist in his remarks at Rhodes as he is in his TV ads — may have been the most moderate Democrat present for the affair, held at the McNeil Concert Hall at Rhodes.

Example: Asked his attitude toward President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court, Bredesen delivered the distinctly nonpartisan answer that it was not the business of the Senate to “re-play previous elections” (i.e., to attempt to void the preference of an elected president) but rather to “advise and consent” on a nomination, with primary regard to questions of qualification, ethics, and temperament.

In so saying, however, Bredesen availed himself of a mild reproach of opponent Blackburn for declaring herself for Kavanaugh within “minutes” of Trump’s nomination of the jurist. For the record, she has only this week in a press release demanded that Bredesen also declare himself on Kavanaugh, a request unlikely to be honored.

Blackburn’s disinclination to accept what had been an invitation from Rhodes and other sponsors to debate Bredesen remains something of a mystery. The 7th District congresswoman has also turned down an invitation to a debate in Chattanooga, but has accepted later debate opportunities scheduled for Nashville and Knoxville.

Hence the reconfiguration of Thursday night’s event as a “‘Memphis Matters’ Ideas Forum” — an hour-long well-attended affair moderated by veteran Democrat Deidre Malone and featuring Bredesen alone, The ex-governor was consistently middle-of-the-road in his responses but took such shots at Blackburn as that posture permitted.

As an example, his very first answer — to a question about the most important thing he could do for Memphis — was simple and to the point: “show up and listen to what people in Memphis have to say” (a sally which, appropriately, earned him a hand from the audience).

What Bredesen himself had to say was, as indicated, somewhat circumspect and non-controversial. He repeated one of his TV commercials almost word-for-word as he explained that he was running for the Senate not to offer ritual opposition to Trump but to represent Tennessee, and that, for example, he could give the President “elbow room” and support his efforts to reach an understanding with North Korea but oppose Trump’s tariff-based trade war.

Dutifully, Bredesen offered understanding and support when asked about Black Lives Matter and the “moral obligation” to assist Dreamers. His most distinctive proposal (and one no doubt aimed at his audience) was to reduce student-loan debt by stripping the infinite varieties of available loan packages down to a single variety with a 3 percent long-term interest rate and without any means testing. That latter provision would make possible simplified loan applications of “three or four lines,” Bredesen said.

Asked what the nation’s biggest problem was, Bredesen said it was the inability of Washington to get anything accomplished, and he boasted his own ability to deal with things “where the rubber meets the road,” citing as an example his handling as governor of TennCare, maintaining the state healthcare system but cutting the ever-burgeoning program down to size, budget-wise.

The verdict of state voters, Bredesen said, had been to reelect him to a second term with a majority in every one of Tennessee’s 95 counties. To be sure, that outcome, in 2006, was over a GOP sacrificial lamb — not a high-profile Republican like the self-declared Trumpian Blackburn — but it was still memorable (and recent) enough to encourage not only local and statewide Democrats but those in the nation at large, to dream the dream of a party restoration in border-state Tennessee.

Which is why Jonathan Martin of The New York Times was on hand for Thursday’s event at Rhodes and why pundits and reporters from all over will be following this race to its conclusion.