---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 10:55 AM Subject: re: Lawsuit Aims to Hold 2 Contractors Accountable for C.I.A. Torture To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
The job description for the POTUS is laid out in our Constitution. The president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" Yet "Nearly 15 years after the United States adopted a program to interrogate terrorism suspects using techniques now widely considered to be torture, no one involved in helping craft it [or executing in] has been held legally accountable. Even as President Obama acknowledged that the United States “tortured some folks,” his administration declined to prosecute any government officials."
It remains for the Civil Courts to pursue justice where our Executive prefers to turn a blind eye. Prosecutorial discretion has run amok here, effectively nullifying our criminal law code.
Mitchell and Jessen are not uniquely responsible for the U.S. torture program. Responsibility for that is shared up and down the chain of command from president George W. Bush to the private who held the leash. But they're the two have aren't shielded from justice by our CIA and military establishments.
that Trump's a loser, even he concedes alleging fraud while winning'd make no sense this latest lie's a fantasy that feeds the ego that allied itself to Pence no narrative's as dear as victimhood that masks aggression as a quest for rights alleging his pursuit is for our good he takes hypocrisy to artful heights to delegitimize the vote per se while claiming nonetheless that he had won leaves nothing settled at the end of day democracy itself has been undone the Donald flip-flops without blush or shame as long as networks blare his gilded name
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine<levinebar@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 8:23 AM Subject: re: Harsher Security Tactics? Obama Left Door Ajar, and Donald Trump Is Knocking To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>
To the Editor: the precedent Obama leaves in place
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine<levinebar@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 8:23 AM Subject: re: Harsher Security Tactics? Obama Left Door Ajar, and Donald Trump Is Knocking To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>
To the Editor: the precedent Obama leaves in place
David Plouffe takes a lot of words to get to "IT REALLY WAS A CHANGE ELECTIONThe voters were serious about that. And there was only one change candidate." Voters looked at a director of WalMart and the senator from Wall Street and they did not see an agent of the change they wanted. They stayed away in droves. Hillary Clinton lost to a man who got fewer votes than Mitt Romney got four years earlier. This election was about losing, not winning. And we all lost. Barry Haskell Levine
Like many people around the world, I expected a comfortable Hillary Clinton victory on Tuesday. But I’m not a random pundit when it comes to understanding presidential races and the electorate — I managed one Obama presidential campaign and oversaw another from the White House. So of all the forecasts that got it wrong, my prediction that Mrs. Clinton was a 100 percent favorite was a glaring miss.
My confidence was not partisan spin. It was based on public data, voting history and some sense of the Clinton campaign’s own models. I played with various state scenarios, and even in the most generous outcomes, could not get Donald J. Trump to 270 electoral votes.
But he ended up winning 306 electoral votes and, most important, did it by breaking into the Upper Midwest, leaving the blue Big Ten firewall in ruins.
What happened? We will know much more when all the data is in and we can see exactly who voted. But based on what we know, it was a combination of several factors that led to this stunning upset.
DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT WAS VERY WEAK Overall turnout was as well, as Donald J. Trump received fewer votes in winning than Mitt Romney did when he lost decisively in 2012.
Still, the nagging worry about a lack of broad-based enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton, which I noted often as someone familiar with the Obama coalition, proved to be justified. She had passionate supporters and volunteers, for sure. But for sporadic and potential first-time voters, the spark was not there.
In Detroit, Mrs. Clinton received roughly 70,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did in 2012; she lost Michigan by just 12,000 votes. In Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, she received roughly 40,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did, and she lost the state by just 27,000. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, turnout in majority African-American precincts was down 11 percent from four years ago.
It’s a reminder that presidential campaigns are driven in large part by personality, not party. Ronald Reagan, President Obama and now Mr. Trump all were able to create electoral coalitions unique to them.
MR. TRUMP’S MARGINS IN RURAL AND EXURBAN COUNTIES WERE OFF THE CHARTS For example, in Madison County, an exurban area outside Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Romney’s margin over Mr. Obama was 20.4 percentage points; Mr. Trump’s margin over Mrs. Clinton was 39.8. In Buchanan County, Iowa, outside Cedar Rapids, Mr. Obama beat Mr. Romney by 13.9 points. Mr. Trump reversed that result, winning the county by 14.2 points. That happened in thousands of counties throughout the country, and it added up quickly.
IT REALLY WAS A CHANGE ELECTION The voters were serious about that. And there was only one change candidate.
STRONG AND WEAK CURRENTS BEAT DATA AND ANALYTICSThe models for both support (vote share) and turnout were off significantly. It appears that there really were hidden Trump voters, meaning his ceiling of support was higher than most of us believed possible based on polling and modeling survey responses. And millions of potential Clinton voters who the models suggested would vote stayed home.
THE THIRD PARTIES This will need to be confirmed by more data and analysis, but one major reason Mr. Trump’s ceiling could have ended up higher than projected was that the potential Trump voters parked with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, left to vote for Mr. Trump. But potential Clinton targets, especially the younger Johnson voters, stuck with him. Mr. Johnson’s support declined over time, but not equally — those who were potential Clinton voters were stickier than the Trump targets. Mr. Johnson won 8 percent of voters under 45, but only 2 percent of those over 65.
MESSAGE MUDDLE The only two messages that appeared to punch through were the anti-Trump line, on the left, and the grossly overhyped email issue on the right. Mrs. Clinton talked about what she wanted to do from a policy perspective every day, but this campaign was not the Lincoln-Douglas debates, it was “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The three big TV networks together devoted 32 minutes on their evening newscasts to policy coverage in 2016. Again — 32. The race turned into “The Jerry Springer Show,” and that was the kind of campaign Mr. Trump was most comfortable with — and I’m sure the ugliness had the added effect of suppressing turnout.
THE TRUMP CAMPAIGNERS WERE SMART As they flew around Pennsylvania and Michigan and boasted they could change the map, many people, including me, ridiculed them as aimlessly and amateurishly wasting time and resources. But they saw something and committed to a strategy few even in the Republican Party thought would work. They challenged conventional wisdom, and were proved right. And Mr. Trump’s appeal to voters in these states was as strong as he predicted it would be.
JAMES COMEY From the last debate until Election Day, the dominant news was the F.B.I. and Mrs. Clinton’s emails along with a drumbeat of daily WikiLeaks dumps. Postelection research will help shed light here, but the small number of undecided voters at the end should have broken at least equally based on their demographic and voting history. If exit polls are accurate, they moved to Mr. Trump much more than to Mrs. Clinton in certain battleground states, and it’s quite possible the shadow created by the F.B.I. director was the major culprit. Oct. 19, the day of the final debate, was a long 20 days to Nov. 8, and the atmosphere was far from ideal for the Democratic candidate.
Democrats will spend months analyzing what happened, and making important course corrections. We need new talent and leaders to emerge at all levels, including some who can begin to think about running in 2020 against President Trump. Our bench looks thin and conventional, but no one thought, in 2004 or 2012, that Barack Obama or Donald Trump would be serious candidates, let alone win the presidency.
The name of our savior may not be on any of our tongues now. It will be fascinating to see who emerges from the rubble of losing what looked like a sure thing.
Correction: November 11, 2016
An earlier version of this essay incompletely described an estimate of the amount of time devoted to policy issues on network television during the presidential election. The estimate of 32 minutes is for the main three networks’ evening newscasts, not for their total coverage.
David Plouffe takes a lot of words to get to "IT REALLY WAS A CHANGE ELECTIONThe voters were serious about that. And there was only one change candidate." Voters looked at a director of WalMart and the senator from Wall Street and they did not see an agent of the change they wanted. They stayed away in droves. Hillary Clinton lost to a man who got fewer votes than Mitt Romney got four years earlier. This election was about losing, not winning. And we all lost. Barry Haskell Levine
Like many people around the world, I expected a comfortable Hillary Clinton victory on Tuesday. But I’m not a random pundit when it comes to understanding presidential races and the electorate — I managed one Obama presidential campaign and oversaw another from the White House. So of all the forecasts that got it wrong, my prediction that Mrs. Clinton was a 100 percent favorite was a glaring miss.
My confidence was not partisan spin. It was based on public data, voting history and some sense of the Clinton campaign’s own models. I played with various state scenarios, and even in the most generous outcomes, could not get Donald J. Trump to 270 electoral votes.
But he ended up winning 306 electoral votes and, most important, did it by breaking into the Upper Midwest, leaving the blue Big Ten firewall in ruins.
What happened? We will know much more when all the data is in and we can see exactly who voted. But based on what we know, it was a combination of several factors that led to this stunning upset.
DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT WAS VERY WEAK Overall turnout was as well, as Donald J. Trump received fewer votes in winning than Mitt Romney did when he lost decisively in 2012.
Still, the nagging worry about a lack of broad-based enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton, which I noted often as someone familiar with the Obama coalition, proved to be justified. She had passionate supporters and volunteers, for sure. But for sporadic and potential first-time voters, the spark was not there.
In Detroit, Mrs. Clinton received roughly 70,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did in 2012; she lost Michigan by just 12,000 votes. In Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, she received roughly 40,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did, and she lost the state by just 27,000. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, turnout in majority African-American precincts was down 11 percent from four years ago.
It’s a reminder that presidential campaigns are driven in large part by personality, not party. Ronald Reagan, President Obama and now Mr. Trump all were able to create electoral coalitions unique to them.
MR. TRUMP’S MARGINS IN RURAL AND EXURBAN COUNTIES WERE OFF THE CHARTS For example, in Madison County, an exurban area outside Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Romney’s margin over Mr. Obama was 20.4 percentage points; Mr. Trump’s margin over Mrs. Clinton was 39.8. In Buchanan County, Iowa, outside Cedar Rapids, Mr. Obama beat Mr. Romney by 13.9 points. Mr. Trump reversed that result, winning the county by 14.2 points. That happened in thousands of counties throughout the country, and it added up quickly.
IT REALLY WAS A CHANGE ELECTION The voters were serious about that. And there was only one change candidate.
STRONG AND WEAK CURRENTS BEAT DATA AND ANALYTICSThe models for both support (vote share) and turnout were off significantly. It appears that there really were hidden Trump voters, meaning his ceiling of support was higher than most of us believed possible based on polling and modeling survey responses. And millions of potential Clinton voters who the models suggested would vote stayed home.
THE THIRD PARTIES This will need to be confirmed by more data and analysis, but one major reason Mr. Trump’s ceiling could have ended up higher than projected was that the potential Trump voters parked with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, left to vote for Mr. Trump. But potential Clinton targets, especially the younger Johnson voters, stuck with him. Mr. Johnson’s support declined over time, but not equally — those who were potential Clinton voters were stickier than the Trump targets. Mr. Johnson won 8 percent of voters under 45, but only 2 percent of those over 65.
MESSAGE MUDDLE The only two messages that appeared to punch through were the anti-Trump line, on the left, and the grossly overhyped email issue on the right. Mrs. Clinton talked about what she wanted to do from a policy perspective every day, but this campaign was not the Lincoln-Douglas debates, it was “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The three big TV networks together devoted 32 minutes on their evening newscasts to policy coverage in 2016. Again — 32. The race turned into “The Jerry Springer Show,” and that was the kind of campaign Mr. Trump was most comfortable with — and I’m sure the ugliness had the added effect of suppressing turnout.
THE TRUMP CAMPAIGNERS WERE SMART As they flew around Pennsylvania and Michigan and boasted they could change the map, many people, including me, ridiculed them as aimlessly and amateurishly wasting time and resources. But they saw something and committed to a strategy few even in the Republican Party thought would work. They challenged conventional wisdom, and were proved right. And Mr. Trump’s appeal to voters in these states was as strong as he predicted it would be.
JAMES COMEY From the last debate until Election Day, the dominant news was the F.B.I. and Mrs. Clinton’s emails along with a drumbeat of daily WikiLeaks dumps. Postelection research will help shed light here, but the small number of undecided voters at the end should have broken at least equally based on their demographic and voting history. If exit polls are accurate, they moved to Mr. Trump much more than to Mrs. Clinton in certain battleground states, and it’s quite possible the shadow created by the F.B.I. director was the major culprit. Oct. 19, the day of the final debate, was a long 20 days to Nov. 8, and the atmosphere was far from ideal for the Democratic candidate.
Democrats will spend months analyzing what happened, and making important course corrections. We need new talent and leaders to emerge at all levels, including some who can begin to think about running in 2020 against President Trump. Our bench looks thin and conventional, but no one thought, in 2004 or 2012, that Barack Obama or Donald Trump would be serious candidates, let alone win the presidency.
The name of our savior may not be on any of our tongues now. It will be fascinating to see who emerges from the rubble of losing what looked like a sure thing.
Correction: November 11, 2016
An earlier version of this essay incompletely described an estimate of the amount of time devoted to policy issues on network television during the presidential election. The estimate of 32 minutes is for the main three networks’ evening newscasts, not for their total coverage.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 7:54 AM
Subject: re: Thoughts for the Horrified
To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Professor Krugman now opines that there will be "no immediate comeuppance" as the world reacts to Trumponomics. Perhaps as a public intellectual, he feels he has to project calm, lest he fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. Those of us without his exalted pulpit are freer to speak truth. The U.S. stock and bond markets float on billions of dollars from foreigners who have perceived the U.S. as a safe haven in a turbulent world. With Trump's inauguration, that is over. The unpredictability in which Trump exults will chase those $billions off-shore. Donald Trump may find ways to profit personally from his high office. But Americans will lose bigly, and America's century of world influence is over.
The Manhattan hotel where Donald Trump held his election-night party.CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
So what do we do now? By “we” I mean all those left, center and even right who saw Donald Trump as the worst man ever to run for president and assumed that a strong majority of our fellow citizens would agree.
I’m not talking about rethinking political strategy. There will be a time for that — God knows it’s clear that almost everyone on the center-left, myself included, was clueless about what actually works in persuading voters. For now, however, I’m talking about personal attitude and behavior in the face of this terrible shock.
First of all, remember that elections determine who gets the power, not who offers the truth. The Trump campaign was unprecedented in its dishonesty; the fact that the lies didn’t exact a political price, that they even resonated with a large bloc of voters, doesn’t make them any less false. No, our inner cities aren’t war zones with record crime. No, we aren’t the highest-taxed nation in the world. No, climate change isn’t a hoax promoted by the Chinese.
So if you’re tempted to concede that the alt-right’s vision of the world might have some truth to it, don’t. Lies are lies, no matter how much power backs them up.
And once we’re talking about intellectual honesty, everyone needs to face up to the unpleasant reality that a Trump administration will do immense damage to America and the world. Of course I could be wrong; maybe the man in office will be completely different from the man we’ve seen so far. But it’s unlikely.
Unfortunately, we’re not just talking about four bad years. Tuesday’s fallout will last for decades, maybe generations.
I particularly worry about climate change. We were at a crucial point, having just reached a global agreement on emissions and having a clear policy path toward moving America to a much greater reliance on renewable energy. Now it will probably fall apart, and the damage may well be irreversible.
The political damage will extend far into the future, too. The odds are that some terrible people will become Supreme Court justices. States will feel empowered to engage in even more voter suppression than they did this year. At worst, we could see a slightly covert form of Jim Crow become the norm all across America.
And you have to wonder about civil liberties, too. The White House will soon be occupied by a man with obvious authoritarian instincts, and Congress controlled by a party that has shown no inclination to stand up against him. How bad will it get? Nobody knows.
What about the short term? My own first instinct was to say that Trumponomics would quickly provoke an immediate economic crisis, but after a few hours’ reflection I decided that this was probably wrong. I’ll write more about this in the coming weeks, but a best guess is that there will be no immediate comeuppance.
Trumpist policies won’t help the people who voted for Donald Trump — in fact, his supporters will end up much worse off. But this story will probably unfold gradually. Political opponents of the new regime certainly shouldn’t count on any near-term moment of obvious vindication.
So where does this leave us? What, as concerned and horrified citizens, should we do?
One natural response would be quietism, turning one’s back on politics. It’s definitely tempting to conclude that the world is going to hell, but that there’s nothing you can do about it, so why not just make your own garden grow? I myself spent a large part of the Day After avoiding the news, doing personal things, basically taking a vacation in my own head.
But that is, in the end, no way for citizens of a democracy — which we still are, one hopes — to live. I’m not saying that we should all volunteer to die on the barricades; I don’t think it’s going to come to that, although I wish I was sure. But I don’t see how you can hang on to your own self-respect unless you’re willing to stand up for the truth and fundamental American values.
Will that stand eventually succeed? No guarantees. Americans, no matter how secular, tend to think of themselves as citizens of a nation with a special divine providence, one that may take wrong turns but always finds its way back, one in which justice always prevails in the end.
Yet it doesn’t have to be true. Maybe the historic channels of reform — speech and writing that changes minds, political activism that eventually changes who has power — are no longer effective. Maybe America isn’t special, it’s just another republic that had its day, but is in the process of devolving into a corrupt nation ruled by strongmen.
But I’m not ready to accept that this is inevitable — because accepting it as inevitable would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The road back to what America should be is going to be longer and harder than any of us expected, and we might not make it. But we have to try.
