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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 10, 2023; see related February 17, 2017 two-part article: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies and Trump, the Global Democratic Fascist Movement, Putin’s War on the West, and a Choice for Liberals: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part II; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

SILVER SPRING—I am giving myself the privilege of reading Orwell in Spain, the Penguin Classics edition of Homage to Catalonia by Eric Blair of the immortal pseudonym George Orwell and one of the original antifascists, bookended by a number of relevant letters written by Orwell and those in his circles and with context from editor Peter Davison throughout.  The volume also includes occasional files from archives of the Soviets, who were targeting Orwell, his wife, and his other comrades for a future show-trial just as Orwell and his wife slipped out of Spain; some of his comrades were not so fortunate as he by far.

Orwell went to Spain in late 1936 in the spirit of pitching in for the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on behalf of the Spanish Republic, supported by numerous liberal and leftist volunteers from around the world and ostensibly supported by dictator Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union against General Francisco Franco’s fascists, in turn supported by Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  For his efforts, Orwell took a bullet through the neck but survived that and many other hardships, acquitting himself well in having genuinely sacrificed for a cause worthy of such sacrifice, but one that was undermined in part by Spain’s supposed ally, the Soviet Union, whose agents in Spain often focused on settling scores within the international leftist/socialist/communist movement and who turned on many of their supposed allies to engage in purges and trials based on lies and gaslighting.  This would be a main reason that the Republic would fall completely to Franco’s fascist Nationalists in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II.

Hitchens on Orwell, Ringing with Urgent Relevance for the Present

As usual, the late legend and one of the few humans who could rightly be described to be at least a partial heir to Orwell, Christopher Hitchens, provides an introduction to Orwell in Spain that is as mind-blowing as it is well-written and pithy (the introduction was also published around the same time as Orwell in Spain as an essay in The Los Angeles Times).  Hitchens’ essay on his hero Orwell’s experiences in Spain includes some points that hit all too close to home in the here-and-now:

The history of the May events in Barcelona in 1937 was certainly buried for years under a slag heap of slander and falsification.  Orwell, indeed, derived his terrifying notion of the memory-hole and the rewritten past, in Nineteen Eighty-four, from exactly this single instance of the abolished memory.  ‘This kind of thing is frightening to me,’ he wrote about Catalonia, ‘because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world’:

But in our very immediate past, documents have surfaced to show that his vulgar, empirical, personal, commonsensical deposition was verifiable after all.  The recent opening of communist records in Moscow and of closely held Franco-era documentation in Madrid and Salamanca has provided a posthumous vindication.

The narrative core of Homage to Catalonia, it might be argued, is a series of events that occurred in and around the Barcelona telephone exchange in early May 1937.  Orwell was a witness to these events, by the relative accident of his having signed up with the militia of the anti-Stalinist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) upon arriving in Spain.  Allowing as he did for the bias that this lent to his firsthand observations, he nonetheless became convinced that he had been the spectator of a full-blown Stalinist putsch, complete with rigged evidence, false allegations and an ulterior hand directed by Moscow.  The outright and evidently concerted fabrications that immediately followed in the press, which convinced or neutralized so many ‘progressive intellectuals,’ only persuaded him the more that he had watched a lie being gestated and then born.

Hitchens continues later in his introduction:

…‘History to the Defeated’ is the underlying subject and text of this collection of pages and fragments.  Like several others in the ‘midnight of the century,’ the glacial period that reached its nadir in the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Orwell wrote gloomily but defiantly for the bottom drawer.  He belongs in the lonely 1930s tradition of Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine and David Rousset — speaking truth to power but without a real audience or a living jury.  It is almost tragic that, picking through the rubble of that epoch, one cannot admire him and Auden simultaneously.  ‘All I have is a voice,’ wrote Auden in ‘September 1, 1939,’ ‘To undo the folded lie,/The romantic lie in the brain … And the lie of Authority.’  All Orwell had was a voice, and to him, too, the blatant lies of authority were one thing and the ‘folded’ lies that clever people tell themselves were another.  The tacit or overt collusion between the two was the ultimate foe.

Let’s let that sink in: it is not the generally bad-faith “blatant lies of authority” that is “the ultimate foe,” but the “tacit or overt collusion between” those “blatant lies of authority” and that authority on one side with the “’folded’ lies that clever people tell themselves” and those clever people on the other.  As a consistent antifascist, Hitchens himself often energetically dedicated himself to taking on such “clever people:” intellectuals and leaders who should know and act better but in their actions still give aid and comfort to the “blatant lies of authority,” often unintentionally making good faith yet terrible arguments as “useful idiots” (to borrow the phrase attributed to Lenin, perhaps falsely) but other times lying deliberately (hello Ted Cruz).  Thus, Hitchens happily took on fellow leftist intelligentsia members and activists like George Galloway, Julian Assange, and Noam Chomsky (almost?) as fiercely as he critiqued Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Kim Jong-il.

Fighting the Rewriting of History from 1937 to 2023

For the Stalinists and their apologists Orwell stood up against (and, indeed, for the fascists of that era as well), the fastidious, near-robotic repetition of baseless lies and disinformation over and over and over again served to give reality to such “alternative facts,” to borrow former Trumpist mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway’s Trumpian phrase.  And, of course, it is altogether fitting to quote that disgraced woman—her own daughter and now former husband even very publicly more honorably refused to support Trump’s lies and hers—because what is terrifying my soul even as I write part of this is that the Trumpist movement—now one of the two largest political factions in the United States of American in 2023—is very much successfully engaging in that tactic Orwell dedicated much of his writing to combatting, a tactic used by the people Orwell spent much of life fighting.

A stark example is the recent Ohio Republican Jim Jordan-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the so-called “Durham Report”  and the related investigation of Trump’s Justice Department-appointed Special Counsel John Durham’s pathetic, embarrassing, and failed attempt to find proof that the U.S. government’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties and 2016 election interference was a baseless, politically-motivated witch hunt; this in and of itself is gaslighting and “hypocrisy” in the extreme, as the opposite is true, a truth I spent years of research and writing on in detail.  Short of ending in appalling violence, is there anything more politically Stalinist than an investigation ordered in bad-faith and/or extreme delusion to smear and undermine a good-faith investigation into topics most deserving of investigation, that then twists the results of the failed counter investigation to continue to make claims wholly unsubstantiated by reality??  In this vein, Republicans even spitefully, shamelessly, and wholly inappropriately censured—censured!—Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) the same day as the Durham hearing for his work against Trump on impeachment and his efforts to get answers on Trump-Russia, a ridiculous act of distraction from their embarrassing failure of a Durham hearing and in spirit also a pure act of abusive political retaliation: only five members of the House were censured in all the twentieth century and Schiff is only the third member of the House of Representatives this century and only the twenty-fifth member of the House in all of U.S. history to be censured, an act that is for generally serious offenses, including violence or incitement to violence, sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, and—at the time of the Civil War (1861-1865)—supporting the rebel “Confederacy.”

To go back to Durham and his probe, former Special Counsel Durham seems to be at least a partly honorable fool.  On the one hand, Durham seems to incorrectly accept as articles of faith that the Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller probes were baseless political hit jobs (the first in his deluded mind concocted by the Clintons) and that there is nothing to Trump-Russia to the degree that he is unaware of many of the facts and much of the evidence and context surrounding team Trump’s deeply troubling ties to Russia, his perspective warped enough to believe in the nonsense and/or gaslighting his higher-ups—including then Attorney General Bill Barr—and others fed him and that he fed himself: during the Judiciary Committee hearing, I heard him tell Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) that he did not think Barr’s infamous memo had “blatantly mischaracterized” the Mueller report, which it clearly and obviously very much did, even according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller himself.  On the other hand, Durham more or less carried out an investigation that at least mostly adhered to rules and the law within the confines of his warped worldview even as that worldview was biased, selective, and inaccurate when it came to the issues between Trump and Russia, and that is why his results were so limited along with the reality that the evidence he sought didn’t exist because the investigation’s premises were false.

Both those who put Durham in place as Special Counsel and the rest of the Trump faithful were hoping as much as possible over the course of the four years of the Durham probe of to undermine investigations into Trump, playing politics with legitimate, serious investigations. Durham’s disappointing results—0 for 2 on prosecutions that went to trial, defeated twice by unanimous juries that returned “not guilty” verdicts and one plea deal with no trial for an FBI employee doctoring an e-mail who was determined by the presiding judge not to have acted with any political bias (confirming the previous findings of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s far more credible report) and who only received a year of probation—speak volumes about Durham’s probe’s credibility despite the spin of his “report” and show just how baseless was his effort to show that the Biden Administration Department of Justice was weaponized as a tool of political persecution.  In the end, it was Durham’s and Barr’s own conduct that actually revealed it was the Trump Administration Department of Justice that fell into being weaponized, yet Jordan, Trump, and many other Republicans and “useful idiots” insist on persisting in gaslighting or making unsubstantiated arguments with their original unsubstantiated claims even after Durham’s probe failed to prove them (ironically, it seems the probe did find enough evidence of possible financial criminal wrongdoing involving Trump that the Durham probe was forced to launch a criminal investigation into that, which, unsurprisingly, we have heard very little about…).

And herein is one of the more horrific aspects of this Jordan’s show-hearing that should be giving us all trouble sleeping at night: some of the Republicans on Jordan’s committee, most notably the vile Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), are furious at Durham not for the degree to which he was inaccurate, ignorant, or possibly dishonest but for the degree to which he did not go into full Stalinist show-trial mode because he did not run wild with lies and falsehoods but, rather, still operated within some level of orbit of reality.

To be clear, this hearing is not a Stalinist show-trial, and does not carry the consequences of them.  But they do share, on the part of today’s Republicans and their accomplices on one hand and the those of the Stalinists and their accomplices of yesteryear on the other, absolute contempt for truth and justice and an absolute commitment to pursuing the party line relentlessly.  And both Orwell’s and Hitchens’s words rang loudly in my mind throughout my viewing of the hearing as I digested it in terror, far more profoundly for having recently read certain pages of Orwell in Spain.

The gaslighting is also strong with the claim that Trump is being persecuted unfairly and Hunter Biden might get off with a “sweetheart deal” should a submitted plea deal between Hunter and the government be approved, which was reported the day before the Durham hearing and Schiff censure.  Again, the opposite is true: people in a position similar to Hunter Biden when it comes to gun possession while being an addict are rarely criminally charged or see jail time, as are first-time offenders in terms of the tax violations he had committed and has since paid off his debts in relation to, including back taxes and penalties.  If anything, his treatment has been harsher because he is Joe Biden’s son and the government is going out of its way to avoid any credible suggestion that the son of the sitting president is being treated lightly while the former president, Trump, is not; and, if anything, Trump has been treated with an extraordinarily light touch, given the nature and severity of his crimes and the more than two-years’ worth of blatant obstruction of justice committed by Trump to further his crimes.  The gaslighting only becomes even more ludicrous when Trump’s defenders claims there is a “two-tiered” system of justice, with the Trumps of the world being the victims, a deeply “insulting” claim coming from many white Republicans who have been loath to acknowledge the very real systemic racial disparities in the American criminal justice system—let alone do anything about them—but now whine for “justice” (i.e., impunity and immunity) for Trump.

The gaslighting is also front-and-center when Trump’s insanely ridiculous classified documents case for which he has been indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith is claimed to be equivalent or close to the Biden classified documents case or Hillary Clinton’s (conspicuously omitting Pence’s case, which is pretty similar to Biden’s), all the other cases including Clinton’s case were dramatically different especially regarding intent and when the Biden/Pence examples only turned up a comparatively small number of documents which were promptly returned and both of them agreed rapidly to have their respective locations searched, bearing no resemblance to Trump’s obstructionist and gaslighting conduct and the severity of the material at issue.

And those are merely a few current examples…

Orwell and His “Power of Facing”: A Ghostbuster to the Gaslighting Ghosts of Nazism and Stalinism Rearing their Ghastly Heads Today

We fought a world war some eight decades ago against a totalitarian fascism that I have previously noted gaslit reality to the point of being at war with reality itself, and we triumphed some four-and-a-half decades later against a Soviet totalitarian communism that similarly gaslit reality and also, like the Nazis it defended its homeland against in the earlier world war, used disinformation as a preferred weapon of choice in its losing ideological struggle against the capitalist democratic West.

After the West’s victories in World War II and the Cold War, how depressing is it, then, that, in 2023 the West finds itself embroiled both internally and externally with major forces practicing and embodying much of the same spirit of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany when it comes to waging new wars on reality, with its biggest centers of gravity in Putin’s fascist Russia—resurrecting the Soviet war on reality as the successor state to the Soviet Union—and in the Trumpist fascist movement and its media and political allies within the West (if you doubt the appropriateness of the label fascist for Trump or Putin, read my two-parter [part I and part II] and realize that was written well before the violence of January 6, 2021 or the massively increased levels of violence and war crimes Russia has been perpetrating in Ukraine since February 24, 2022).  While the Chinese Communist Party helms a Chinese state that is increasingly totalitarian under the leadership of Xi Jinping and also embraces a war on reality, it is not nearly as aggressive with this tactic on the international stage as Russia, thus, China’s current relative restraint means its threat to the West is, for now at least, far less potent than that of both Russia and Trump as it is Russia that routinely engages in electoral and political interference in the West and Trump’s brand of fascism and its like-minded allies are a clear and present danger within the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, with fascists having real chances of gaining political power—even the U.S. presidency once again, though I do not believe they will succeed in this coming American election in 2024.  Other countries, such as France and Italy, are far more vulnerable, and some, like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Israel, are veering hard in that direction.  Indeed, while I have been warning of this possibility since just after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and even earlier in 2016, it brings little comfort to see the modern versions of fascism and their accompanying wars on reality staring us down directly in the face while also staring deeply into the past at horrors that we had vanquished twice in living memory, drawing power from their zombie-Frankenstein cousins from the Cold War and World War II.

Orwell would truly be rolling over in his grave were he aware of what was happening today, after so much blood and toil and sacrifice in the twentieth century to defeat fascist and communist regimes, to transcend their lies and assault against reality, and yet, he could take comfort in his words standing the test of time, not only validating his prescient view of past evils, but that his words could still be so useful and relevant today.  Yes, this is bittersweet, for we should have transcended those phantoms from past eras, but at least we have in Orwell the perfect guide to fighting these nefarious forces, that honesty, reality, truth, persistence, and simple eloquence can confront the enemy and defeat their lies, sometimes even without the forces of arms.  Orwell did risk life and limb (and was even shot) in Spain against Franco’s fascists (and Soviet agents), but it was in his writing that he made his largest contributions in the fight for freedom against fascism and communism.  Like Orwell and like his admirer and perhaps his heir Hitchens, we can and must be unflinching in the face of the gaslighting of Trump and Putin and their allies who constantly assert “that two and two are five” and that things that happened “never happened” (from the January 6 U.S. Capitol Insurrection—team Trump claiming “it was Antifa”—to the Russian military torturing and executing civilians in Ukraine—Putin saying, ludicrously, that: “The Russian army does not strike at civilian facilities. There is no need for that.”).  Though Orwell had “the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world,” he never gave up and never ceased articulating the truth through his brave and, it seems, timeless writing.

As Hitchens wrote in his magisterial and pithy Why Orwell Matters:

‘I knew,’ said Orwell in 1946 about his early youth, ‘that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.’  Not the ability to face them, you notice, but ‘a power of facing’.  It’s oddly well put.  A commissar who realizes that his five-year plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact.  So, for that matter, may a priest with ‘doubts’.  The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the ‘power of facing’.  Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of an evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious.  The ‘unpleasant facts’ that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

In the spirit of Orwell and (even if to a somewhat lesser degree) Hitchens, we must wield a similar “power of facing” in the face of the fascisms of Trump, Putin, and their lesser emulators.  In particular, the “clever people” and “progressive intellectuals” that Hitchens and Orwell single out who “tell themselves” Auden’s “’folded’ lies” that, when in “tacit or overt collusion” with “the blatant lies of authority,” become “the ultimate foe.”

Prominent “useful idiot” fools on such matters include Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Briahna Joy Grey, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, Michael Tracey, Caitlin Johnstone, Katie Halper, RFK Jr., Russell Brand, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Rogan, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard, Cornell West, Jordan Peterson, George Galloway, Scott Ritter, even Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s own rather less impressive brother) and others who fancy themselves public figures displaying freethinking but who ultimately do little more on these matters than to give aid and comfort to fascism and even colonialism and imperialism in the name of supposed “pacificism” or “free speech.”  Those people and their ilk make their arguments in ways that usually show they have little understanding of peace or the U.S. Constitution.  In particular, they often keep parroting debunked Kremlin talking points about Western “escalation” and NATO expansion, which I have debunked myself repeatedly.  Or they will conflate moderation of disinformation on private platforms with unconstitutional “censorship.”  Orwell has the best of possible responses to the first group, the so-called “pacifists,” here in his perfect essay from 1942 “Pacifism and the War” in which he noted that “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.” Orwell therein further elucidated his views:

What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-Fascist, but who don’t care to say so and take refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-fascist as anyone, but—’.  The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda.  Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.

He added: “My case against all of them is that they write mentally dishonest propaganda and degrade literary criticism to mutual arse-licking” and that “It is just because I do take the function of the intelligentsia seriously that I don’t like the sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching which flourish in our English literary world, and perhaps in yours also.”  Better descriptions of that crowd’s heirs in the present cannot be written, and, as before in Orwell’s day, many of those in this crowd today are often caught “back-scratching” and “arse-licking” each other in echo chambers.  To listen to them, rather than blatant Russian imperialism and colonialism, the greater evils are supposedly the Western exercise of power in daring to aid a Ukraine that, they will stress, has been dominated by and even been part of Russia for centuries (as if that should matter when Ukrainians themselves have earned their freedom and independence, recognized by formal treaty repeatedly by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union) and, even more so, in asserting either that there is, in fact, a moral dimension to supporting Ukraine or a false equivalence in equating Russia’s exercise and practice of its power in comparison with the America’s and the West’s: whether knowingly or unknowingly, these supposed and self-proclaimed “anti-imperialists” engage in behavior that dismisses, excuses, deflects from, or even advances Russian imperialism and its supporting false narratives. 

There can be but one course of action against today’s “intellectual” descendants of Orwell’s critics and enemies among the intelligentsia, and it must be that we especially utilize our “power of facing” to face them because they are usually the ones weakening the front against today’s fascists without claiming to actually be “for” those fascists, they are the ones who might persuade those with less moral discernment who would never think of consciously siding with fascists and who would be susceptible to low-hanging fruit of arguments relying on “free speech” and “peace” that objectively advance bad-faith disinformation and war against those fighting for their actual freedom.  And perhaps, with relentless opposition to their nonsense, some may even realize their folly and find their own “power of facing” directed back at themselves even though this may “put …[their] own position or preference to the test.”

Hitchens opens his introduction to Orwell in Spain with following two magnificent paragraphs:

The grandeur of George Orwell, in our store of moral and intellectual memory, is to be found partly in his very lack of grandeur.  He is remembered, with different and varying degrees of distinctness, as the man who confronted three of the great crises of the twentieth century and got all three of them, so to speak, ‘right’.  He was right, earlier than most, about imperialism, viewing it as an unjust and unjustifiable form of rule, and also as a cause of war.  He was right, early and often, about the menace presented by Fascism and National Socialism, not just to the peace of the world but to the very idea of civilization.  And he was right about Stalinism, about the great and the small temptations that it offered to certain kinds of intellectual, and about the monstrous consequences that would ensue from that nightmarish sleep of reason.

He brought off this triple achievement, furthermore, in his lowly capacity as an impoverished freelance journalist and amateur novelist.  He had no resources beyond his own, he enjoyed the backing of no party or organization or big newspaper, let alone any department of state.  Much of his energy was dissipated in the simple struggle to get published, or in the banal effort to meet a quotidian schedule of bills and deadlines.  He had no university education, no credential nor area of expertise. He had no capital. Yet his unexciting pen-name, drawn from a rather placid English river, is known to millions as a synonym for prescience and integrity, and the adjective ‘Orwellian’ is understood widely and – this has its significance – ambivalently.  To describe a situation as ‘Orwellian’ is to announce dystopia: the triumph of force and sadism and demagogy over humanism.  To call a person ‘Orwellian’ is to summon the latent ability of an individual to resist such triumphs, or at least to see through them and call them by their right names.

We don’t have to take a bullet in the neck like Orwell did in Spain in 1937, but the least we can do is call out the lies, disinformation, and misinformation religiously in the cause of reality, as Orwell seems to have pretty much always done and Hitchens mostly did (even when Hitch Hitch erred—most notably on Iraq—he usually did so for principled and admirable reasons).  We can, sadly, fall into either of the definitions Hitchens enumerates for “Orwellian,” but we must strive to be his latter definition and we can do so by calling out the imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism of today as Orwell did for the versions in his lifetime.  We can also be sure that Orwell’s stances on Trump, Putin, and their movements and allies would not be doubt were he alive today.

Herein, then, has not been any kind of comprehensive catalogue of Trumpist and Putinist attempts to rewrite history—those of you following these stories are all too familiar with too many of those examples—but a clarion call to honor the spirit of those two writers departed from us, whose careers were mostly dedicated to opposition to lies but fidelity to the truth should inspires us even if we, too, feel frightened like Orwell because we have “the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”  Orwell consistently and unflinchingly spoke truth to power with “a power of facing unpleasant facts” and so must we.

Brian’s Ukraine analysis has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces; Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commanding general, U.S. Army Europe; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) April 13, 2023

SILVER SPRING—After disgraced former President Donald Trump’s first (and hardly rushed) indictment, this one at the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (I posted the full indictment here, read for yourself), there have been and are many—oh, so many—takes being offered on television, in print, and on social media.

A few are pretty solid.

But many takes—oh, so many—are hyperbolically dramatic, breathlessly stupid, and/or wildly inaccurate.  Most of the worst takes are coming from the right: wild, irresponsible, and nonsensical accusations of political persecution and miscarriages of justice (some are comparing to the tale of the persecution of, wait for it… Jesus) or literally painting the picture with the exact opposite of what is true.

But there is some criticism that is more measured and nuanced, even partly coming from figures or outlets on the mainstream left or conservatives who have consistently opposed Trump, that “the Democrats” are bungling the timing and/or order of Trump’s prosecutions and this indictment may undermine the other cases arrayed against him, that this case is problematic and “the least significant” and “weakest” of the potential charges and prosecutions should not even be pursued (from The Washington Post Editorial Board!), that prosecutions should be withheld because of how Trump’s cultists might react (Bill Maher), that if this indictment is successful it will fool the left into prematurely thinking Trumpism has been defeated, that this opens a Pandora’s box and sets bad precedents as to how other former presidents and officials could be treated down the road.

Yet many these criticisms are incredibly dangerous and seriously undermine the rule of law and democracy in general, empowering illiberal fascist tendencies in our country that are already out of control and that mean that any major election could be our last free and fair election.

Unreasonable from the Right

The first type of commentary, coming from the right, is exceedingly easy to toss aside.

Firstly, pretty much that entire crowd was saying the same stuff before the indictment was unsealed; they had no ability before that to definitively assess the quality of evidence and charges and most are clearly making their mind up (or lying) based on personal partisan political allegiances, not the law or the facts of the case of which they are in large part ignorant, but there are already indications the evidence will be strong:  two people very close to Trump at the time of his crimes  in question—Trump personal “fixer” lawyer Michael Cohen (who blocked me years ago on Twitter when he was still on Trump’s side in response to my investigative pieces on his shady history operating in Trump’s orbit) and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg—have already been convicted in directly related successful prosecutions, with Cohen even robustly cooperating with Bragg’s office in its current case against Trump.  Furthermore, key figures deep inside Trumpworld besides Cohen, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, have been providing the testimony on which the Manhattan grand jury proceeded with its recommendations and Bragg decided to prosecute.

Secondly, events in question were late in the game in the 2016 presidential campaign but with extramarital affairs that happened years before the 2016 election (all the way back in 2006 and 2007!): that means there is a an overwhelming logical burden that would take extraordinary evidence to overcome to prove that paying off pornstar Stormy Daniels and with whom Donald Trump had an extramarital affair and taking other methods to quash another story about Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal with whom Trump also had an extramarital affair was not in large part done to prevent new stories of negative media coverage of Trump circulating in the months, days, and weeks before the incredibly close 2016 presidential election, one which Trump only narrowly won and with decisive outside interference from Putin’s Kremlin (which I have explained in detail before), so any idea that keeping these stories secret and using illegal accounting methods to keep this from having to be reported to federal election oversight authorities is patently absurd, full stop: there is no rational way to view any payments or efforts to bury these stories in 2016 a decade or nearly a decade after their occurrence not in large part as substantive efforts to aid the Trump presidential campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton.  Keeping such truthful scandalous stories about a candidate from appearing while voters are making up their minds and actually voting during early and absentee voting—regardless of any other reasons involved—is a massive boost to any campaign in any similar position, including Trump’s, and thus it is impossible to argue that the crimes of misreporting and concealing these financial moves are not directly related to clear violations of federal election law.

Think of it this way: imagine any candidate running for office engaging in illegal financial reporting to hide paying someone with whom that candidate has had an extramarital affair a decade ago and that this payment came at the height of that candidate’s political campaign, then consider the idea that the candidate would have done so at that time only for either or some combination of personal financial gain or to prevent personal damage to the candidate’s family to the exclusion of any political considerations… that second thought is simply nonsensical.  An attempt to argue it was not designed at least in part to benefit the candidate politically is an impossible sell, then, given that even the most inexperienced consultants or students of politics would be well-aware of the political benefits of such an act and would have to know engaging in such behavior would bring about considerable political benefits to any American political campaign.  Unlike other cases, here the intent-as-a-basis-for-arguing-innocence argument falls short in the realm of believability (as oppose to, say, considering Hillary Clinton’s e-mail/server woes under the Espionage Act).  And, all things being equal, again, the 2016 election was so razor-thin-close that any significant alteration of its equation against Trump would have seen Clinton triumphant; thus, it is far from unreasonable to argue that one or more of these stories about Trump’s extramarital affairs breaking late in the 2016 election cycle could have swung the election to his opponent and thus spared the nation the insanity of Trump’s four years as president.

Less Hysterical, Still Wrong

The other type of commentary generally critiques the strategy or risks of the indictment, but these arguments are also logically well into absurdist territory.

We have one case now unfolding from the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, and another that has yet to drop an indictment from Fulton County, Georgia, from its elected Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis, one concerning efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results.  A third investigation into Trump personally for his crimes related to Trump’s (ongoing!) insurrection campaign, his willful theft of classified materials, and his obstruction of justice in relation to returning them and to the relevant investigations is being handled by an apolitical Department of Justice appointee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has experience prosecuting war criminals at The Hague.  A fourth $250 million civil case is targeting the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump, one conducted by elected Democratic New York State Attorney General Laetitia James (and for which even just today, Trump had to sit for some seven hours of deposition).  There is also a civil rape case in New York involving Trump that is set to go to trial and a related defamation case, both brought by his accuser E. Jean Carroll.

While three of the four government officials leading the government cases are elected as Democrats and the fourth is appointed by the Democratic Biden Administration’s appointed and U.S.-Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, it is horribly misleading to portray their investigations somehow as being carried out by or at the behest of Democratic Party, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), elected Democratic legislators in Congress, or any political wing of the Democratic Party, let alone liberal media or political organizations.  These are four separate investigations being carried out by two top local law enforcement officials (from Manhattan, a borough of New York City, and Fulton County in Georgia), one top state official for New York State, and one federal Special Counsel appointed by the U.S. Attorney General, and they are making their own separate decisions.  While there may be some areas where there is overlap between the Manhattan and New York State probes into Trump Organization finances and between the Fulton County and Special Counsel probes as far as Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, the idea that they are coordinating between themselves or with Democratic Party organizations for political framing or advantage as to what, how, when, and if they will prosecute is not only entirely speculative and wholly without evidence, it goes contrary to how these things have worked over recent decades in the American justice system.  While, as noted, there are certain overlapping areas of focus where different government prosecutorial offices might exchange notes or potential conflicts, anything beyond that, especially the idea that these prosecutors are working with Democratic Party leaders in Congress, with the White House, with state legislatures, with left-leaning or leftist media outlets and figures, or with national, state, or local Democratic Party organizations at all, let alone in concert for some sort of political strategy for the coming elections, goes contrary to how these investigations have operated by and large for decades.

(As an aside, let’s contrast this against zealous Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s 1990s investigations of the Clintons when they were in the White House.  It is because of Starr the that special counsel regulations were crafted to replace the independent counsel statute to avoid overreaching politicized witch-hunts like Starr’s, which proved none of the original alleged crimes for which it had begun but did uncover a salacious extramarital affair between then-President Bill Clinton and then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky, catching Clinton perjuring himself to cover up the affair, for which Clinton was impeached, a far lesser matter than the two Trump impeachments, in which some Republicans who were in office for Clinton’s impeachment had voted as representatives to impeach in 1998 or as senators to remove Clinton in 1999 but, tellingly, declined to vote to remove Trump from office as senators during his two far more serious Senate impeachment trials in 2020 and 2021; to add to the extreme irony, Starr himself was part of Trump’s defense team during his first Senate trial in 2020, further cementing who he really was to the public before he died in late 2022).

As opposed to Starr, we have nothing at all to suggest anything other than that Alvin Bragg simply finished his investigation and preparation first and, therefore, filed his indictment first: anyone suggesting otherwise, the burden of proof is on them and no proof has emerged.

So when people suggest that “the Democrats” are not putting their best foot forward by going with these charges first, they are grossly mischaracterizing how these things work in this country.  This is not some coordinated political campaign, and language suggesting that is deeply corrosive to the public’s trust in our institutions of justice, indeed, this destruction of faith in institutions is a lesser side of the coin that Republicans are explicitly screaming and that is one of the key hallmarks of its Trumpism as well as being a disturbing rising trend on the Bernie Sanders-left.  Just assuming bad faith and corruption without strong evidence to support that supposition—in such an unwarranted manner from the beginning before the processes even plays out—is dangerous, and can culminate in even far worse than what we saw on January 6 with the failed insurrection-coup attempt.

What people on the left and other principled Trump critics need to understand, then, is that when they criticize “the Democrats” for supposedly overplaying a political hand in reference to these separate investigations, they are adding fuel to the same fire of cynicism about our institutions that fuels Trumpism’s fascist populism.  The other officials will file their indictments if and when they are ready, but each case will rise of fall based on its own evidence and its own merits, regardless to what any of the other cases lead.  One or more cases may ultimately inform one or more of the others, but they are still their own cases and suggesting otherwise is detrimental to “the rule of law and not of men.”

And the issues surrounding Trump’s first indictment are “serious.”  Especially considering that all this is related to essentially cheating in the 2016 election, no one should view these charges as “weak” or “minor;” as I argued above, the political dimension is not “alleged” or a supposition: it is central to the financial crimes committed just before the 2016 election to suppress decade-old infidelities with a pornstar and a Playmate in a way that substantially politically benefitted the campaign of a candidate in Trump whose most loyal voters were Evangelical Christians (even more so than for George W. Bush, who was himself an Evangelical).

Republicans know this, so does Trump, and they are worried regardless of their gaslighting claiming the opposite.  Why else would drama-queen (this is objective, as he seems to have as his default tone “yell”) Trump devotee and powerful Republican Jim Jordan, preposterously the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, be trying to run unconstitutional interference from Congress already on Bragg’s case, for which Bragg has just sued Jordan, making it clear his Manhattan District Attorney’s office will not tolerate such brazen challenges to the rule of law (see the detailed 50-page filing submitted by Bragg: he brought receipts!)?  If it is no big deal, why not let a free airing of the evidence in the case prove Trump’s innocence, as a failure to convict would surely help Trump?  The answer is fear that the case may actually turn out to be strong.

As to the order of the charges, why not begin with the earliest of Trump’s crimes?  Yale professor, lawyer, and former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa adroitly points out that Trump’s crimes for which he has been indicted by the Manhattan DA are the first in a series of major crimes all related to skewing or overturning the outcomes of his elections, followed by accepting Russian malign assistance during the campaign, by his attempts to get Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to damage Joe Biden politically with a false pretense of an “investigation” in exchange for military aid that had already been approved by Congress (including the Javelin anti-tank missiles that have been so crucial for Ukraine in defeating Russia’s current military onslaught), and the whole series of efforts to overturn the 2020 election through actions such as attempting to pressure Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” Trump votes (see my interview with Sec. Raffensperger conducted just a few days before that “perfect phone call”) and fostering a violent coup-insurrection attempt against Congress, the peaceful transfer of power, and our constitutional order.  In pointing out the linked nature of these offenses and cases, Professor Rangappa obliterates both the argument against the timing of Bragg’s indictment and the idea that the crimes laid out by the indictment are minor, exaggerated, or not worth pursuing.

Rangappa also did an excellent job putting out the structure and merit of Bragg’s case in visual form, whether involving federal election violations or not:

In terms of thinking we should not pursue justice and uphold the law against a man who is wholly unrepentant, still pursuing his crimes, and is obviously still a clear and present danger to our democracy (as in, not behaving at all the way Richard Nixon did after he resigned), well, there is a word for using the threat of violence to affect a political outcome in this way, and that word is terrorism.

When it comes to the idea that choosing to prosecute Trump is opening a Pandora’s Box, I do not take this lightly at all and I have done my own detailed research on how political witch-hunt prosecutions in the ancient Roman Republic (including threatened against Julius Caesar himself) helped to launch a spiral of extreme partisanship that destroyed the Republic’s democracy and brought about the autocratic Roman Empire.  But it is not the choosing to prosecute Trump that is the problem: it is that Trump, unlike any predecessor, has committed such criminal activity outside the bounds of misguided policy and very much about his own personal self-centered conduct, that he is so unrepentant and continues to advertise he will further his crimes, that he makes not prosecuting him worse than prosecuting him as far as the consequences for our nation.

And the idea that Republicans might politically persecute Democrats mainly because of what Bragg and other prosecutors do now is farcical: since Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, Republicans have been abusing their power in pursuit of political witch-hunts for decades regardless of what investigations or prosecutions are being pursued now against Trump and are obviously already ready to abuse their power with enough numbers on their side in the way people strangely consider hypothetical or dependent on the Trump prosecutions…

Republicans Are the Actual Witch-Hunters

And let’s be honest and more detailed about the track record here:

• Republicans tried going after Bill Clinton for nearly purely partisan political reasons while he was in office and, again, found nothing related to the serious allegations against him.
• They “investigated” Hillary Clinton more intensely than Watergate for “Benghazi” (but really about her e-mails and server), but the nine Republican-driven/led investigations concerning her role in Benghazi were unable to uncover any serious wrongdoing by or fault with Clinton on Benghazi, while James Comey’s FBI correctly determined that Clinton’s issues around her e-mails and server did not warrant a criminal prosecution, however much Comey erred in other ways.
• Trump’s partisan attorney general, Bill Barr—as part of his interference and smearing of the Mueller probe and other legitimate probes into Trump—authorized another partisan in eventual Special Counsel John Durham to investigate the investigators of Trump, an investigation endlessly hyped by right-wing Trumpist media but that failed miserably: of three cases Durham brought, two went to trail with indictments accusing the defendants of lying to the FBI—one filed against Igor Danchenko, a source for the Steele dossier, and another filed against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who had been working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—both embarrassingly ending in unanimous acquittals by the juries and not convictions.  A third case resulted in a plea deal for an FBI lawyer at the time of the matters in question in which the lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to altering a single email related to the FISA court actions towards the Trump campaign staffer Carter Page (whose incredible sketchiness I have previously outlined); the federal judge overseeing the plea deal agreed with an earlier Justice Department Inspector General conclusion there was no political bias behind the actions of Clinesmith and believed Clinesmith’s assertion that he believed at the time that the information he inserted into the email was accurate and that he did not know it was erroneous, with the judge only sentencing Clinesmith to probation and no prison time.  Thus, over three cases involving one judge sentencing and two juries, the claims of a “deep state” bias against Trump and Republicans turned out to be nonexistent, yet Durham’s whimper of a probe lasted for close to four years and cost taxpayers $6.5 million by at least late December 2022; if there was such a conspiracy, Durham would have found it with that much time and effort and he most certainly did not.
• In contrast, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found a lot of damning evidence of collusion and achieved successful convictions or plea deals against thirty-four individuals and three companies with sentences including prison time for multiple targets of these cases; a referred case ended in an additional guilty plea deal for a thirty-fifth individual.
• Trump eventually pardoned three of the more high-profile individuals against whom Mueller earned convictions—Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort—as well as two less- prominent individuals Mueller had convicted—George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan—a clear assault on the rule of law in encouraging others to commit crimes on Trump’s behalf in exchange for presidential pardons.
• It needs to also be noted here also that throughout his time as would-be president, candidate, and would-be president again, Trump has repeatedly threatened or tried to use the government to persecute his political enemies beyond his and his people’s efforts to pressure Zelensky to “investigate” Biden, leading to Trump’s first impeachment.  Even now, he is atrociously calling for Alvin Bragg to be prosecuted for daring to indict him and is calling to “defund” the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice alongside other Republican allies of his.

Conclusion: Do Better, Media

One recent New York Times article proclaimed in its headline “Biden Has the Oval Office. But Trump Has Center Stage,” seemingly blithely unaware of its own leading role in creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of any kind of news coverage environment resembling its own proclamation.  Much of the mainstream press seems blithely unaware of the damage these narratives they are parroting may inflict (as it is wont to do), while Trump and his allies know how damaging these narratives can be and seek to inflict that damage to further their ends, regardless of the costs to our democracy.

The simple facts are these: before the indictment was unsealed, there was far too much mindless speculation about what would or would not be in it when we would clearly eventually know once it was unsealed and, before that, time could have been far-better spent on other topics; now, with the indictment released, there is far too much mindless speculation about the quality of the case and the evidence that has yet to be presented to the jury.  No one would sanely ask the jury to make a decision before seeing the full presentation of the prosecution and the defense, so no one should ask audiences to that now, just as they should not have speculated ad nauseum about an indictment before it became unsealed.  The press can and must do better, and it can start by not giving any more than just a little bit of airtime to these ludicrous and dangerous “hot takes,” if only to swat them down rather than to give them credence.  Then again, the press is already back to covering Trump’s plane on tarmacs and his motorcade, and, for much of 2022, the press was speculating about the 2024 presidential race, so expectations should not be high.

In the end, Bragg’s case may not be the strongest of all the cases arrayed against Trump, but that is not terribly important and Bragg has yet to fully play his hand.  When it does finally get presented, the evidence may very well still be damning and more than enough to erase any “reasonable doubt” as to the illegality of Trump’s financial shenanigans surrounding his hush money payments and their clear link to Trump’s political efforts to attain the presidency in 2016, and commentary that is prematurely dismissive of these realities or of the case’s potential should not be aired or taken seriously by anyone.  If somehow the case fails, that will not because of anything Trump partisans can know yet before the trial and presentation of evidence takes place, and that should be noted any time such partisan blind utterances are spewed.  Ultimately, given what we know so far and the arguments and context I have endorsed herein, when the wheels of justice are finally done turning in this case, it will likely not be a good result for Trump.

What is certain besides the premature nature of the bad arguments criticized herein is that interfering with and attacking valid legal proceedings undermine our democracy, the rule of law, and the principle of equality before the law, all consequences Trump and his Republican Party overall sadly find more than acceptable as part of their pursuit of power and furthering of their illiberal, fascist agenda.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 6, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) June 6th, 2018 (based in part on an earlier piece published on October 29th, 2016: Comey Damages Clinton With Horribly Timed Weiner Speculation in Historic FBI Injection Into Election)

Michael Conroy/AP, Cliff Owen/AP

AMMAN — Former FBI Director James Comey might be more of an anti-Trump hero now, but that does not erase the stain of the spectacularly bad he showed throughout 2016 in his handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail server probe. As Justice Department Inspector General Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigative report is about to be released, now is a good time to revisit these issues in a way that finally avoids the myopia of much of the previous discussion that nearly always missed or failed to give enough attention to the issues discussed below.

But first, a quick recap:

After Comey’s unprecedented disclosure eleven days before the election that potentially relevant e-mails may have been on Anthony Wiener’s laptop, two days before the election he let it be known that she was, again, in the clear. 

It was later revealed that Huma Abedin had only forwarded two e-mails to Weiner’s computer relevant to the investigation, duplicate e-mails with classified content that had already been reviewed by the and that ten other relevant e-mails with classified content had been automatically backed up to Wiener’s laptop, also duplicates that had previously been reviewed by the FBI. None of the e-mails were marked as classified.

All that was over just 12 duplicate e-mails. And by itself (hardly ignoring other major factors that could also be characterized the same way, not the least of which involve Russian cyberwarfare, racism, misogyny, and absolutely atrocious media coverage), this can be said to have cost Clinton the election.

*****

Beyond the above, there are deeper, neglected issues with how Comey looked at and framed core issues of the investigation throughout 2016, most notably how he characterized Clinton “extremely careless,” beginning in an extremely controversial (to say the least) 2016, press conference.

Now, before I continue, I want to stress that I still believe Comey was and is a straight shooter and public servant of honesty and integrity, and that it is clear many of Trump’s and Republicans’ attacks against Comey are absurd, disgusting, blatantly false, and hypocritical in the extreme; but all that does not mean Comey is infallible, and Comey was flat-out wrong and myopic in his famously characterizing Clinton and her team as “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information, mainly because of five things:

1.) Numbers

To delve into the topic of classification itself, there are the only three actual levels of classification: CONFIDENTIAL (the lowest), SECRET (the middle), and TOP SECRET (the highest). It has often been erroneously reported that SAP (Special Access Program) is a higher level of classification, but it is actually a special type of TOP SECRET or SECRET information, designed to give people who “need to know” that information access to it but not indicating a higher level of sensitivity within the classification level. These days, SAP often has to do with the U.S. drone program (more on that later).

In 2016, the FBI’s “July” report (released in early September by a clearly-exasperated-with-the-brouhaha-and-political-criticism-Comey) and information provided by the State Department detail how many e-mails had contained classified information at the time they were sent to or received by Clinton’s server: about 200 e-mails in 82 e-mail chains that passed through Clinton’s server out of about 47,000 e-mails were what was at issue in 2016. All but 13 of these chains were turned over by Clinton as part of 30,000 emails Clinton’s team had determined were work-related (most can be read here), and none of those other 13 e-mail chains—which were found among some additional 17,000 unique work and personal e-mails recovered by the FBI—were TOP SECRET.

Overall, of the 82 e-mail chains: 69 were still classified in 2016 (16 of which have been downgraded in their classification level), and 13 have been declassified, suggesting that at least those 16 and 13 are not involving anything particularly serious or particularly sensitive, even at the time.

8 chains were classified as TOP SECRET (7 of those, consisting of 22 e-mails total, were SAP), 37 chains were classified as SECRET, and 37 chains were classified as CONFIDENTIAL. 

So, out of over 47,000 e-mails under consideration, let’s remember that about 200, or about 0.425%, were deemed to have contained classified information at the time of sending and receiving and at least half or more were either the lowest level of classification or concerned publicly available information, and some of them were not even considered classified at all by Clinton’s own State Department. 

This means over 99.5% of the e-mails reviewed had no classification issues whatsoever.

No official in the history of the modern United States has ever so much of her communications material examined (or released so much to the public) so thoroughly and so soon after her time in office, and she used e-mail more than any of her predecessors because of the increasingly technological times in which we live. If most other senior government officials had an audit like Clinton’s it is safe to say that she would hardly stand alone in having less than 0.5% of her content containing some sort of classified information; some would very likely have more, given the problems with overclassification…

2.) Overclassification

The available reporting on the subject suggests that nearly all of the most sensitive TOP SECRET information (7 of 8 TOP SECRET chains) in the classified content that passed through Clinton’s server had to do with SAP-related, publicly available information on the drone program or other publicly available information about North Korea, which might be included in the 7 or could even be the 8th; the State Department did not consider the North Korean e-mail classified at the time, through at least one other agency did. In both cases, anything from an eyewitness account published by an NGO to a newspaper report about drones would be considered classified. This raises the issue of rampant & unnecessary overclassification  in the government, often more about interagency turf wars than national security, to the extent that prolific national security officials of both major political parties have publicly testified that “between 50% and 90% of all classified material could even be disclosed without any detrimental effect on national security.” Objectively, then, much and perhaps all of the information with the highest classification labels in Clinton’s e-mails were objectively not really sensitive or secret in nature. And it should also be noted that CONFIDENTIAL generally describes information that is so mundane and harmless that America’s intelligence chief in 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was considering a move to do away with the CONFIDENTIAL classification level entirely, noting that this is something the UK did recently in 2014 “without [adverse] impact.”

The only indications we have in terms of the content of the most sensitive material of the highest classification level is that it was publicly available information.

3.) Labels

Zero of these e-mails were properly marked as classified. All e-mails that are supposed to be classified are supposed to have clear, obvious headings and subject lines indicating that they contain classified information, but not one of the roughly 200 e-mails had anything indicating it contained classified information in any header or subject line. In fact, only 1 classified e-mail chain contained any classified markings whatsoever; this involved one or a few simple “portion mark” “(C)”(s) that preceded material that was specifically classified as and appeared in the body of the emails within the chain (two other e-mail chains had the same markings but the information in question in those chains was not actually classified and should not have been marked in the body with “(C)”s at all).

That’s right: only 1 e-mail chain with classified information had any classification markings, and it was not properly marked, with no headers and only the “(C)” indicator showing up buried in the body.

Practically no one ever reads every part of every work e-mail. Many people probably don’t fully read even a majority of their work e-mails, as so much content is sent and received and often people have to ignore much of the content and many e-mails entirely for the sake of time; still others will be ignored out of simple prioritizing or would even seen as a nuisance.

The idea that Clinton was careless and irresponsible because she a.) did not know that about 200 e-mails out of tens of thousands were classified but had no classified markings and b.) that she did not know that classified material was in 1 e-mail chain that had 1 or more little “(C)”s buried in e-mail bodies that any person skimming could easily miss is preposterous; in fact, it is possible she did not even read some of these e-mails in question or only read them in part, so considering this, holding her responsible for being aware of every detail of every e-mail sent to her has an added layer of ridiculousness.

None of the people involved were expert specialists on classification, and they and Secretary Clinton relied, as most non-classification-specialists would rely, on proper and clear headings to warn that classified information was at hand and that people sending them knew they were following proper procedure. That was clearly not the case here.

As Comey said during congressional testimony, the absence of the classification markings in all e-mail headers meant that it would be “a reasonable inference” to “immediately [conclude] that those three documents were not classified” even for an “expert at what’s classified and what’s not classified.” In fact, it seems it would be reasonable to assume, as Clinton did, that, in the absence of any other markings, such “(C)”s could at a glance seem to be a selection from an alphabetical list. This directly contradicts Comey’s assertion that Clinton was “extremely careless” with classified information.

4.) Sending vs. Receiving

The FBI report only mentions others sending Clinton material that was classified to begin these exchanges, not the other way around, suggesting that she may not have started any of the e-mail chains with classified material, essentially meaning that people were sending this information to her.

Returning to the issue of labels, taking into account that neither Clinton nor her people sent anything properly marked as classified on this e-mail system would actually mean that Clinton and her people were quite carefully trying not to send anything that was and that they knew was classified, contrary to the popular narrative and the conclusion of Comey, who even told Congress that there was no evidence to suggest that Clinton or her people were aware that any of the material passed through that server was classified.

5.) State Isn’t the FBI

Another important thing to note is that agencies often differ as to both what they classify and on levels of classification. Thus, something would still be considered classified even if the State Department did not feel it needed to be but another agency did, as happened with information in some of Clinton’s e-mails; to expect the head of one agency to be aware of other agencies’ classifications of information that that head’s agency did not feel the need to classify is, indeed, quite unreasonable.

The information we do have from the investigation shows that much of the material that was classified and passed on through unclassified e-mail channels was information that senior leaders needed to have to address pressing issues; thus, using standard secure terminals was impractical, impossible, or both, and skirting around that was the common practice under certain conditions.

The last point makes it clear that official procedures for the dissemination of classified information to senior officials when that information is needed in a timely manner are grossly inadequate and impractical to the extent that they are not followed so that important business may be done when it needs to be done. Comey would have to basically call the entire State Department extremely careless, for the classified content being improperly sent and improperly labeled was the product of unofficial but standard practice before Clinton’s tenure, and though he did note that the State Department was “generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government;” that seems to be decidedly less harsh language (“extremely careless”) than Comey used to describe Clinton’s similar (the same?) behavior, even though State overall was just as big a factor in creating the situation as Clinton, if not more so.

Comey’s viewpoint as an FBI man failed to give proper weight to or understand the unique challenges and responsibilities of a global and very fluid State Department and the distinct culture it has in terms of handling classified information as a result of all that and why this unique approach is necessary. The FBI uses and handles classified information in ways that differ greatly from the State Department, and, if anything, it seems Comey imposed the FBI’s standard on Clinton and the State Department, without considering that the different approaches at State were longstanding necessary workarounds for a problematic system that was a particularly bad fit for the State Department.

*****

Conclusion: Clinton & Co. Were Careful, Comey Was Careless in His Characterization

Taking into account the aforementioned five points, at least as much an issue as Comey’s July press conference and his handling of what went down late in October and early November 2016 was his understanding of the underlying issues surrounding the whole Clinton e-mail saga.

In the end, no evidence existed that any sensitive information was given to the wrong people or enemies of America or that America’s national security was compromised in any way by Clinton’s use of a private server or the fact that some classified material passed through it. This was less by luck and more because Clinton and her people actually were careful with how they handled the information as they understood it and could have been expected to have understood it in the condition they received it.

If anything, the focus on Clinton herself has been a distraction from the real problem at hand: the lack of reform of a system that few seem to have confidence in or respect for under certain important conditions, a system that is outdated and not taking into account more rapid forms of information dissemination that are common in the twenty-first century and necessary for modern diplomacy. But that has been lost in the conversation. And that itself is a true scandal, one which Comey’s report would have addressed had he been more careful.

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg in an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. The views expressed here necessarily represent only his own, not necessarily the views of any organization with which he has been, or is currently, associated. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and  are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 28, 2017

by Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 26th, 2018

California State University, Fullerton

Support Brian and his work by donating here

AMMAN — In the Age of Twitter, a deep myopia seems to have set in among far too many editors and journalists. While the need to be competitive in a chaotic and challenging media business environment is certainly understandable, what is unforgivable is the lack respect and effort accorded to analysis for analysis’s sake.

The major media outlets often excel at providing up-to-the-minute coverage of details of big stories as they unfold. The race is on to see who can provide a new detail, and that new detail becomes the new headline, only to be eclipsed by another detail which becomes another headline. For stories that last a few cycles, this is not too bad because it is fairly easy to connect the dots even without news outlets providing analysis. Something like a sex scandal or a response to an outrageous statement or even, sadly, a mass shooting nearly always all follow predictable patterns of development and, therefore, coverage.

When dealing with incredibly complicated stories with many moving parts, however, it is necessary to take time off from the search for that new detail and take a step back to provide context and analysis to the public, free from the focus on adding new details (even if there are a few), giving the public an article that simply pauses time to say, this is what has already been reported, this is why it matters, and how much each previously-reported detail matters and fits with the other details.

Except this basically does not happen: the race for new details never stops and it becomes impossible for the general public to take stock of the bigger picture and to weight the importance of each detail; this is what matters most, in the end, but it is what gets the least attention from major media outlets, whether in print, on television, or, especially, on social media. So many new stories pop up that there is little focus or deep-diving into major stories that merit such attention, as the focus is on the newest shiny object that is part of the larger story but not the story as a whole. 

As a result, there so many big-headline new details, coming out faster and furiouser in the Trump era than ever before, that the people are simply overwhelmed. Since the race to get that new detail never stops in a competitive environment, resources—time, money, reporters—are not assigned or given time to really present the bigger picture or give stories proper depth, and, in fact, a number of individuals working for major outlets I have personally contacted seem trapped in a mentality of “If there’s not a big new specific reveal, it’s not news!”

This all contributes to an increasingly-present mentality spread throughout major media outlets and their staff that overhypes any new tidbit of information at the expense of being able to place it in its proper context. It is hard to find a story that demonstrates this troubling dynamic more than the Clinton e-mail story, as experts from the indispensable Nate Silver to those at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center have demonstrated. And, even worse, there has been very little of an honest effort at having public reflection on this, even as the media hypocritically focuses on the damage that Facebook and Cambridge Analytica did during the election.

But if the Clinton e-mail story is an example of how the media can oversensationalize details to make something minor and moderately embarrassing into a game changer, never putting it in its proper context, the Trump-Russia story is something of a flip-side of that coin: a story so complex and that takes so much time to contextualize for easily distracted consumers that outlets do a good job of keeping up to date with the breaking details but almost never give proper consideration to a bigger picture. There is almost no effort to see, anticipates, or reflect on where existing evidence will lead Mueller down the road; at best, the usually only look forward and/or backward one or two steps.

“This is good analysis,” some would say. “It’s avoiding speculation.”

Since when has solid, reasonable big-picture analysis become “speculation?” 

The CIA has desk analysts whose entire job is to put together the details collected in the field by others, to put together intelligence reports on everything from Putin’s intentions to North Korea’s nuclear program to how Cuba might transition from communism to how a two-state solution might look for Israel and Palestine. Sometimes intelligence can be wrong, but that does not make reasonable intelligence analysis “speculation.” 

Of course, they value raw intelligence at the CIA, the equivalent of journalistic scoops. But no one goes to a top general or the president or a cabinet secretary with a whole lot of scoops, one after the other, with no attempt to weight them and an opposite attempt to hype them simply because they are the latest pieces of information. The field operative might overhype the information he provides because he is personally, emotionally attached to it: it is his information he succeeded in providing, so he wants to justify his work and efforts. This is natural, and it is why field operatives are not the people who usually brief senior officials; rather, the desk analysts see what the field operative cannot see: they see the big picture and are able to put all those incoming reports together to create a portrait of the big-picture that is elusive to field personnel. It is the desk analysts or senior CIA staff using desk analysts’ reports who are the ones who generally brief senior officials, then.   

Especially today, many excellent reporters are tasked with being the equivalents of both the field operative and the desk analyst, and the quality of both products suffer: journalists today keep reporting new facts in narrative way that is often highly speculative, overhyping the new information reported in analysis that does not go very deep and serves to further justify the importance of material that is not going through a serious weighting process. These trends even reinforce each other in a destructive feedback loop. 

For a great example of this, just look at the The New York Times’s front-page stories today vs. those of 15 years ago. I say this as one who finds the Times to be the best paper we have, so the criticism is meant constructively, but all the same, far too many journalists and editors look at reporting new information as the be-all-and-end-all and sneer disdainfully at pure analysis. 

Remember—and miss—the Times’ Week in Review section? It was retired mid-2011 and replaced with the Sunday Review, which was sold as something that would preserve analytical content while providing more exposure for opinion writers. A quick look at the section now shows it to be almost entirely composed of opinion pieces, and it is hard to find any hard analysis content.

I can remember when opinion, reporting, and analysis pieces were clearly delineated. But today? A huge problem for The Times is a problem that is industry-wide: opinion, analysis, and reporting are melding together in ways that should be raising alarms among not only journalistic ethicists but all of us. The Times’s current dynamic duo of Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush (both with tabloid backgrounds) are perfect poster children for this trend, one that they admittedly did not create but one to which they are contributing as much as anyone within the mainstream press (let us be clear that Fox News is not part of this crowd, as its model is the very reason it cannot be considered mainstream in the traditional sense, despite its popularity). One can look at Haberman’s and Thrush’s coverage of, say, Hillary Clinton and/or Donald Trump, and it doesn’t take long to see that within the reporting of the facts, controversial and speculative assertions are made in a matter-of-fact manner in between actual facts that do not actually back up those assertions. They and many others are basically mixing in their opinions and passing them off as analysis.

It might seem like a moot point, but the difference is actually crucial: in analysis, an expert on a subject expresses his professional opinion as to what the assembled facts mean, and either avoids venturing past where the facts create a high probability such a venture is very likely correct or explicitly states when venturing past fact-based conclusions is occurring. What compounds the problems surrounding this in some of these examples from today is that the writing of people like Thrush and Haberman mix in excellent reporting, solid analysis, poor analysis that is actually closer to opinion, and clear opinion throughout individual pieces all couched in the same newsy-tone and style. Less discerning readers (let us be honest: that would be most people) might easily confuse one type of writing for the other in such pieces and this now enters the territory of a dangerous, subtle bias that is hardly as obvious and easy to spot as Fox News-like bias.

The traditional divisions between opinion, analysis, and news also served to bolster accuracy. 

When a reporter is just reporting the facts and leaves analysis to others who specialize in that, it is relatively hard for the subject of the report to get angry at the reporter getting the information directly from the subject himself; rather, the subject’s ire will more often be directed at opinion writers or analysts who might interpret the facts gathered by the reporter in an unfavorable light. This is healthy in that the reporter can preserve access to the subject and not worry so much about the tone of his own coverage potentially limiting his access to the subject or even ending that access altogether, since tone is easy to keep fairly neutral when just reporting facts and leaving analysis to others. But when the reporter collecting the facts starts to mix analysis and opinion into stories, relationships can becomes potentially much rockier, and the reporter may soften her tone or criticism of the subject to better be able to preserve access to that subject. This creates another destructive feedback loop: the reporter keeps covering the subject more generously than the subject deserves and this means the subject keeps giving special access to that reporter because that reporter generates relatively more favorable (or at least less critical) coverage, while those being harder on the subject in a more accurate way find their access being reduced or find they are even iced out. 

This is how journalism compromises and destroys itself, and given Trump’s über-sensitive per, über-vindictive, and über-punitive personality, it is more of a problem with this presidency than any presidency in recent memory.

I would say it would be unfair to be singling out these two and the Times except they are star trendsetters on a national stage, and that makes them even more powerful and accountable for wielding that power responsibly. I am not here to specifically dissect their work, which I feel does an excellent enough job of clearly backing up my characterizations without me engaging in a guided tour; my point is to note two prominent examples at America’s premier newspaper of a disease that is destroying the walls throughout the industry between reporting, opinion, and analysis that are supposed to be the foundational structures of journalism. And to be fair to Haberman and Thrush, it so really more so the editors’ responsibility to stop them from writing like that. Instead, editors are rewarding it and elevating such reporters to their star slots à la the Times.

Perhaps nothing is more illustrative than that last point as to why we got the type of woefully inadequate media coverage across the board from the major outlets during the 2016 election cycle, as Harvard’s Shorenstein Center has pointed out quite masterfully. For reporters to dismiss solid analysis as “speculation” would be like analysts dismissing news reports as a mere string of factoids, and both attitudes are wrong. It would be absurd for CIA field operatives to deride the work of desk analysts, and it is absurd that so many journalists minimize the value of analysis. But while analysts are consciously in debt to those getting the primary information they are analyzing, the reporters getting the info often do to not return the respect to analysts (“armchair reporters,” they may say).

One particularly excellent reporter even went as far as to tell me the whole reason the U.S. is in this mess of having such a dysfunctional society (media, government, & president) today is that too many people writing the news are not out there getting new information for themselves. I found this to be incredibly odd considering the opposite is, in fact, the truth and is also a much better explanation for why “we’re in this mess.”

In our current era, so many journalists are out there chasing new pieces of information that they are basically throwing puzzle pieces in the public’s face; the pieces hit people and fall to the ground in clumps, often unrelated to each other. At best people start putting a few pieces—maybe even a section—together, but before there is ever a chance to actually put the puzzle together, or even a majority of it, the whole press corps is back, flinging their individual pieces or a few pieces joined together back in people’s faces, and the whole process repeats, until people are buried by small clumps of pieces that turn into mountains of confusion, ones that obstruct the larger picture since it is not being assembled, and the continuous piling of new chunks prevents this from ever happening.

*****

Much like the intelligence community separates and values intelligence gathering and desk analysis as two separate yet inextricably linked processes, each held in high accord and given proper resourcing to function and produce its independent products, knowing that the latter has nothing without the former but that the latter is really the end product formed from multiple instances of the former, it is time for newsrooms—reporters, editors, managers, and funders—to realize that analysis for its own sake, not forced to be just background for the latest developments, is an integral and crucial part of the whole concept of news and of making sure the public is properly informed. 

It is the lack and a strong analytical core in today’s media landscape that explains why coverage of Clinton and Trump failed so miserably to provide a sensible, accurate sense of who they were and what they stood for to the public, but instead presented something of Picassos of each. And it is also this lack of strong analytical core that the Russians found so easy to fill with their information warfare, with which it twisted and warped the mainstream media to unwittingly do its very bidding.

Since Russia won what I call the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar, countries like France and Germany faced the same threat but handled it with far more mature media and public responses that gave pause for analysis and context to be emphasized, reducing the effects of Russian (dis/mis)information warfare. 

If America is going to be serious about confronting Russia’s information warfare in the future, there will surely need to be a robust government response, one far tougher than anything either Obama did or Trump is doing. 

But just as importantly, America’s fourth estate needs to be conscious of efforts to twist and weaponize it, to first acknowledge to itself and then come clean publicly about its responsibility in letting itself be weaponized by Russia in the 2016 presidential election, and to have a clear plan to avoid the mistakes of 2016 going forward. Perhaps most terrifying for those who truly understand how well Russia played our system in 2016 is that neither the government nor the news media seem to be taking even the most modest and basic steps to be better prepared for this information warfare.

A great starting point for the media would be to realize that its role vis-à-vis the public is much the same as the intelligence community is for the government’s decision-makers: not one of throwing a bunch of pieces of information at people, but one of collating the pieces, putting the puzzle together into a faithful representation of what rigorous analysts indicates it (very likely) is, and presenting that picture to the public, caveats and all. Even worse, most outlets do not even have staff that would be the equivalent of CIA desk analysts. Even now most outlets and reporters bristle at constructive criticism of their work, with the spats between Nate Silver and Maggie Haberman being quite telling. As long as the news media continues to overemphasize collection while dismissing analysis as somehow not being journalism or just being mere “speculation,” it will be impossible for it to fulfill this necessary role as a bulwark of a free and democratic society; rather, it will play into Putin’s hands all too easily (again).

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 8th, 2017

Andrew Harnikfi

AMMAN — On one level, I can’t blame the media for having days-long count-downs and hyping today’s hearing as much as any anticipated domestic non-election event in living memory. And there certainly was a singular, unprecedented historical significance in having a recently fired FBI Director who was fired while investigating the associates and administration of a sitting president only a few months later come and testify publicly before Congress and under oath that, essentially, the president was a liar and directed that he as FBI Director back off said investigation. That is certainly a big deal to anyone who can appreciate reality, politics, the rule of law, and what makes the American system of government fairly unique in the world.

And yet, there was little new in today’s proceedings: Comey released his main account the day before, and even much of that and other relevant details had dripped out in media reports over the course of previous days, weeks, and months. These media outlets are not perfect, but are by and large credible, and the way these details were reported left only the most conspiratorial among us to flat-out deny their credibility. Still, even with Comey’s public testimony today, we still have a he said/she said situation (Comey said Trump was a liar, then Team Trump said Comey was a liar), and anyone who wants to believe Trump over Comey has seen nothing new today to incline them to believe otherwise: these were still private moments between two men that can’t be legally proven without some sort of recording.

While I give “credit” to the Republicans of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for being less nakedly partisan than many GOP senators serving on other committees, we still saw today plenty of evidence that Republicans, by and large, are finding ways to more subtly cover for Trump and shift the focus to leaks or Hillary Clinton’s email server woes (oh, McCain…) rather than to hold Trump accountable, and many other Republicans are being far less subtle. More importantly, we need to acknowledge that this hearing, for all its hype, is unlikely to actually change much, if anything, outside of experts and aficionados recognizing its unprecedented nature.

Not “the public” – Doug Mills/Twitter

For one thing, the media made much of the long lines of members of “the public” who were waiting to get a seat in the hearing room before the hearing. In the interest of full disclosure, I lived in the Washington, DC, area for some seven-and-a-half years, including spending four months interning on Capitol Hill, and the pictures and video of the lines made clear that these were not members of the general public; no, just looking at the outfits they were wearing, it was clear these were Congressional interns and staffers, media folks, and other DC politicos (there is a fairly narrow range of how such people dress for work and it is most certainly not the same as the rest of the general public). The point I am making here is, as interested as people like myself are in things like this, and as much as this was undoubtedly a hearing that generated far more public interest than usual, there are still going to be many people who either do no watch this or pay close attention. And most Americans have their mind made up about Trump at this point, one way or another; only a small sliver would possibly change their mind, and, despite all the hoopla about today’s proceedings, there is no reason to think that Trump’s supporters saw or heard anything today that would make them dramatically change their mindset, a mindset that believes the media, liberals, the government, and others are unfairly out to destroy Trump, regardless of the facts.

Sure, the president may see a dip in his poll numbers, but he has plenty of time for new outrages, distractions, even a war to make today’s events seem like a distant memory. I am nowhere near convinced that anyone who voted Trump or Republican in November won’t do so again because of what happened today, let alone switch to the left, or that people not already planning to vote for Democrats will now be convinced that, as of today, supporting the Democratic Party is the course of action to take. Bernie Sanders will not suddenly announce tomorrow that he will formally join the Democratic Party, nor will he stop slamming it or stop prioritizing his “movement” over registering Democrats and strengthening the Democratic Party. It won’t make anyone who voted Green or Libertarian in November even though they knew Trump was worse (or even if they didn’t) start supporting the Democratic Party. And it won’t change the minds of Trump supporters who already don’t trust the media, Comey, or the “Deep State” FBI over Trump.

However, in the near future, we may be able to test is there is any effect: the special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional district, exit pollers have a chance to ask if today’s hearing affected anything. Yet even if Democrat John Ossoff beats Republican Karen Handel, that is hardly proof that this hearing made a difference, and I doubt it will do so; if he loses, it becomes harder to make that case, and the possibility that it did make a difference but that it still didn’t affect the final outcome would indeed be a bitter pill to swallow for excited liberals prematurely plotting Trump’s impeachment and reveling in visions of sugar plumbs dancing in a Democratic House.

What we saw today was a preview of what Special Counsel Mueller is investigating, but he has far more information that anything we saw in the reports leading up to today’s hearing or that was “revealed” in today’s hearing. But that investigation is a long way from being completed, and that investigation will carry far more weight and have far more substance than today’s hearing and, if anything is to have a serious impact, that will be what does.

People expecting today’s events to have major substantive effects are simply setting themselves up for disappointment. In our era of hyperpartisanship and alternative realities, it will take more than objectively damning and historically unprecedented sworn testimony from a non-partisan, career civil servant to sway hearts and minds, sadly, much, much more.

What we are generally hearing about as far as Trump’s people being investigated might result, eventually, in some resignations or criminal prosecutions, but that is just part (if more than just a tip) of an iceberg that still remains submerged and out of public view; no, if Trump is brought down, it will be because of his long-term business deals that involved laundering Russian money tied to Putin and the Russian mafia, as I’ve been writing about for close to a year now.

My pre-hearing predictions turned out to be spot on: today’s hearing was a big deal for history and the pundit class, but not myopic Trump voters and purist liberals whose grip on reality and objectivity loosened long, long ago.

See related work:

The Trump-Russia-Mob Connections Details You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Nevada Key: State-by-State Predictions for Election 2016: Barely or BIGLY, Trump Likely to Lose

It could be close, but it may not be: Democrat Hillary Clinton should still win at least 274 Electoral College votes even if she loses big states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, thereby defeating Republican Donald Trump on Election Day, and Nevada is the likely key; below, a state-by-state analysis of every competitive state.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 7/8, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 7th/8th, 2016

270towin

AMMAN — I wrote after the third debate that the election was over and that Clinton would win unless there was some kind of major Surprise. Then, FBI Director Comey spoketh… And it’s closer than many thought possible.

As we pass through the homestretch and near Election Day, the discussion inevitably turns to maps and geography more so than any other time in the general election, and Americans get to reacquaint themselves with states other than their own, the existence of which they tend to forget when there is not a presidential election at hand. “Who are these mysterious denizens in distant lands who look at the same sky we do, can agree we both seem the same color, and then agree on nothing else whatsoever?” many ask.

Well, here is your guide to the map, states, and math of the Electoral College that will determine who will be the next president of the United States of America.

In order for Trump to defeat the favored Hillary Clinton, he would have to win almost all the battleground states. Now, this is why Clinton is favored in every major statistical model, and the gold-standard in polling analysis, Five Thirty Eight, has two models—one taking into account only polls and another taking into account polls and a few other factors like demographics and economics; the thing is, it’s not as daunting a task to win for Trump as one might think, hence Five Thirty Eight’s models wisely have Trump at about a 1-in-3 shot to become president.

And keep in mind folks: our magic number here is 270.

The Locks:

First, we have the states that are locks, barring a polling disaster or a political miracle (for all states, the number in parentheses is that state’s—and DC’s—number of Electoral College votes):

Hillary’s got these locked down: Vermont (3), Massachusetts (11), Rhode Island (4), Connecticut (7), New York (29), New Jersey (14), Delaware (3), Maryland (10), Washington, DC (3), Illinois (20), Washington (state) (12), Oregon (7), California (55), and Hawaii (4), for a total of 182 certain electoral votes for Clinton.

Donald’s got these states locked down: West Virginia (5), South Carolina (9), Kentucky (8), Tennessee (11), Alabama (9), Indiana (11), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Arkansas (6), Louisiana (8), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (5, but only 4 are certain because the state splits its votes), Kansas (6), Oklahoma (7), Montana (3), Wyoming (3), and Idaho (4), for a total of 116 certain electoral votes for Trump.

Locked electoral votes: 182 Clinton, 116 Trump

The Near-Locks:

For Clinton:

Then, we have states which look like they could be competitive in theory, but will not be unless something crazy happens: Virginia, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, New Mexico, Alaska, plus Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District; let’s go through each by which candidate is an overwhelming favorite and why.

Virginia (13): Before Obama won Virginia in 2008, the last time Virginia voted for a Democrat was in 1964, but since 2008 it’s been solidly blue, only sending Democratic U.S. Senators to DC since and reelecting Obama in 2012. Its main population growth has been in the DC suburbs, an area with a young, diverse increase in population mainly working for or contracting with the much-reviled status-quo “Establishment” government; they are the system and won’t vote for someone who advocates tearing it down. So while Clinton’s pretty steady lead is modest, don’t expect it to succumb to a Trump assault. Virginia will almost certainly stay in Clinton’s camp.

New Mexico (5): While Trump appears within striking distance in New Mexico, don’t let that fool you: only once since 1992, in 2004, has New Mexico voted for a Republican for president, and both of its senators and 2 out of 3 House seats are Democratic. Also, Clinton’s polling lead there has generally fluctuated between modest and good, but her lead has been steady. And, of course, Trump’s ridiculous comments about Mexican immigrants has riled up the normally relatively apathetic Latino bloc: Latinos—and Mexican-Americans especially—are coming out to vote for Clinton in record numbers, and New Mexico is fertile ground for this trend to keep it solidly in her column on Election Day. It should very much end up in with Clinton’s in the end.

Minnesota (10): Minnesota is the most liberal state not on a coast in the country: it hasn’t gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Nixon in 1972 and did so only two other times—each time for Eisenhower in the 1950s—since 1932. In addition, 6 of its 8 House (and both Senate) seats are in Democratic hands—the only state in between the coasts with such an imbalance in favor of Democrats other than New Mexico—and Minnesota polls have shown a consistent and generally sizable lead for Clinton there. Keep dreaming, Trump.

This gives us an addition 28 electoral votes that are almost certainly going to Clinton

28 near-lock + 182 lock = 210 in Clinton’s column total

For Trump:

Georgia (16): The polling has been mighty close in Georgia, but, for the most part, it’s been a consistent lead for Trump, if only a small one; but Democrats shouldn’t kid themselves: while Georgia is changing demographically and is becoming a more diverse state, the state-level political machine is very much dominated by Republicans, who have ensured that only about 28.5% of its House delegation is Democratic and both of its senators are Republicans even though nearly 45.5% of its voters voted for Obama in the 2012 election; the state system is clearly stacked against Democrats. There is a reason the Voting Rights Act (VRA) preclearance provisions were so focused on the South: white conservative southerners had used the state and local governments for generations there to disenfranchise southern blacks; with the conservative Roberts Supreme Court striking down the preclearance provision of the VRA, in 2013, overall in the South it is quite clear that Republican state authorities are engaging in systematic attempts to make it harder for people to vote in heavily Democratic and heavily African-American areas, with at least 655 polling locations closed since the Supreme Court decision in the six southern states where data is available. Georgia is not included in the available data-set, but Georgia can almost certainly be sure to be part of this trend and, especially with African-American turnout seemingly down compared to when Obama was running, it would take a miracle for Clinton to win Georgia.

Texas (38): Yes, a large number of polls show that Clinton is within striking distance in Texas (and, personally as a Democrat, I can’t wait for that state to go purple and then blue), but it’s not going to happen in 2016, barring some crazy miracle. And yes, while unlike African-Americans, Latinos will be turning out in historic numbers for Clinton, with Republicans firmly in control of the state (the state hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, only about 30.5% of its House delegation are Democrats and both its senators are Republicans both even though almost 41.4% voted for Obama in 2012) and trying to suppress voter turnout (at least 403 polling places have been closed in the state since the 2013 VRA decision), it would take something pretty crazy for her to top Trump in Texas.

Alaska (3): Though polls have shown a highly unusually close race in Alaska, and Five Thirty Eight’s models show Clinton with roughly the same chance of winning Alaska as Donald Trump has of winning either Wisconsin or Michigan, calm down, people, Trump is still up and it’s Alaska: this state only voted for a Democrat once, in 1964. Alaska is a diverse state, with Alaskan Natives/Native Americans a large portion of Alaska’s population—nearly 15%—and though they vote heavily Democratic, they have some of the lowest voter turnout rates of any group in the United States and hopes of Clinton taking the state would ride largely on the difficult task of turning them out. Don’t stay up late expecting Alaska to surprise anyone; it’s almost certainly going to be Trump territory.

Then there’s Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (1), which famously voted for Obama in 2008, but not in 2012; whispers of Clinton having a shot have been heard, but in the scant polling we do have, nothing showed Clinton to be competitive, and there is no other evidence that this will be the case. Yes, there’s so little data that anything is possible, but take it to the bank that this is going stay Trump territory.

This adds another 58 electoral votes that are pretty definite for Trump

So 116 lock + 58 near-lock = 174 total for Trump total

So, certain/virtually certain Electoral Votes: 210 Clinton, 174 Trump

Now, below is where it gets more interesting…

The Upsets-Are-Very-Possible-States

Departing from the above states, we have a number of states where one candidate is moderately favored but where an upset is quite possible: Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Utah, and Arizona. Let’s break them down by which candidates are favored.

Advantage Clinton:

Maine (4 at stake in total, 3 at stake for the 1st Congressional District and overall winner): Overall, Maine is surprisingly close, and while a few polls have it very close, most have given Clinton a healthy lead; still, Maine is a very white state, and the whitest states have been her weakest during the primaries against Sanders and are also her weakest during this general election at the same time, but unlike most very white states, Maine’s population is relatively well-educated, a trait that hurts Trump’s chances. It is not very populous state, so any swing can make a big difference; Clinton is still an overwhelming favorite, and the state hasn’t voted GOP in a presidential race since 1988, but don’t count Trump out. Trump is far more likely to get 1 of Maine’s 4 electoral votes, from the state’s 2nd Congressional District (see further below), than he is to win the state outright.

Pennsylvania (20): While Pennsylvania has tightened in recent days, Clinton’s lead here has been averaging a very consistent moderate one, though one that has shrunken a bit in recent days. It’s not big enough to close the window on Trump but isn’t so small that it doesn’t make her a clear and substantial favorite. Yet possibly lower African-American turnout could mean Clinton doesn’t get quite the boost she is hoping for from Philadelphia.

Ballotpedia

And another point, and this is where we get into the whole early-voting situation and FBI Director Comey’s letters: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where there is no early voting and where only a specific set of reasons allow a person to absentee vote. Before Comey’s latest public statement, released yesterday, which exonerates (for a second time) Clinton of any prosecutable wrongdoing in her e-mails/server situation, I would have said that his previous incredible statement of October 28th—that new e-mails were found in the process of a possible sex-crime investigation on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which he apparently shared with top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, which may be relevant to the Clinton investigation but which neither Comey nor the FBI has begun examining, meaning there was no evidence to report yet (a statement that altered the race, hurt Clinton, and helped Trump)—could have led to a dip in Clinton’s support in general and especially in states that do not allow early voting, since very few people there would have been allowed to vote before that damaging statement from Comey came out, and since people voting on Election Day would have had this e-mail thing as likely the last revelation of the 2016 campaign and the piece of information most fresh in their minds in the voting booth. 

In other words, in a close race, that October 28th Comey revelation could have made it closer or even changed the outcome. With the new revelation exonerating Clinton from wrongdoing coming only 48 hours before Election Day, on one level, this probably reduces some of the damage from the earlier statement; but the fact is that that previous statement gave America a week of non-stop negative coverage of Clinton and this new one came so late it might not make much of a difference at all: people might even miss the information depending on how busy and engaged they were/are with just two days left (a further question that will be very difficult to answer is: how many people would have voted differently during early voting if they had known now that they know from Comey’s latest revelation and/or if they had never heard the previous Comey statement; that is a mighty difficult question to answer, yet it is still very troubling that we even need to be asking this question, much to the discredit of Comey and the FBI). Another thing to consider is that even though this is “good” news for Clinton, it is still news that keeps the spotlight on this e-mail/server issue, one of Clinton’s worst, and not the issues, not her positives, not Trump’s negatives. Especially in a close race that does not allow early voting, the whole FBI e-mail stuff is still what has colored the last stretch of the campaign, so even with the latest exoneration this stuff probably hurts, more than helps, Clinton.

Still, Pennsylvania looks good for Clinton, and the state hasn’t picked a Republican for president since 1988, but it doesn’t look that good for her, and Trump has a decent chance of winning, or failing that, quite a good chance of making Pennsylvania a very tight race and much closer than expected. Bet on Clinton, but don’t bet the house.

Michigan (16): Michigan is quite an interesting state; on paper, it’s generally shown a steady and moderate Clinton lead in the polls, but with a few exceptions. However, Michigan became one of the greatest polling disasters in polling history—and the greatest in primary history—during the Michigan Democratic Primary, when Bernie Sanders ever so narrowly upset Hillary Clinton; it was the surprise Brexit (so far) of the 2016 election season. There are plenty of reasons—lower black enthusiasm, higher white enthusiasm, anger at trade deals, etc., that Trump won big in the primary and Clinton lost to Sanders—to look at a Trump upset as a serious possibility in this state. Plus, the state-level government is totally controlled by Republicans. And oh, Michigan is another state without early voting and which is strict with absentee voting, raising the possibility of Clinton’s e-mails weighing disproportionately heavily on voters’ minds here. She is definitely favored, and Michigan hasn’t gone Republican for president since 1988, but the people at the Clinton campaign sure aren’t taking Michigan for granted; nor should they. 

Wisconsin (10): With a generally steady and moderate lead for Clinton, Wisconsin isn’t quirky like Michigan, and it isn’t as close in polling as Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t mean it is out of Trump’s reach: the state government is totally controlled by Republicans, with controversial Gov. (and former 2016 presidential candidate) Scott Walker at the helm. Conversely, if Michigan is possibly weaker for Clinton because she narrowly lost to Sanders there, it must be mentioned that former 2016 Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz trounced Trump in the Wisconsin Republican Primary; additionally, Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1984. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania are better bets for Trump, though he still has a decent, if smaller, shot at Wisconsin.

This adds 49 more electoral votes to Clinton’s column, probable but far from certain or even close to certain

49 likely + 210 lock/near lock = 259 looking good for Clinton overall

Advantage Trump:

Iowa (6): For a while it seemed like Iowa would be pretty competitive, but as the campaign draws to a close, the polling trends have moved decidedly in Trump’s favor; Clinton still has a shot, but that shot has become smaller just when she would have hoped the opposite would be true. Expect Trump to prevail in Iowa.

Utah (6): Utah undoubtedly has to win the novelty prize of “most interesting race:” For a while, the state was host a tight three-way race between Trump, Clinton, and independent conservative and one of the last true standard-bearers of the conservative #NeverTrump movement, Mormon Utahn Evan McMullin. Unlike the vast majority of conservative Christians—who have proven themselves little more than rank hypocrites in supporting Trump after harping so long on “family values” as an issue, Mormons have admirable actually demonstrated a fidelity to their principles and have never warmed up to Trump; in fact, they really don’t like him. But polls in the last few weeks have shown Trump with a moderate and steady lead, and Utah seems to be his to lose. Still, with many Mormons being so principled and passionate in their feelings against Trump, it’s quite possible that anti-Trump Mormons may turn out in higher numbers than expected and vote for their fellow Mormon. McMullin has been surprisingly impressive, and still has the ability to shock and be the surprise of the election, but it is still an uphill battle for him, and even more so for Clinton in a conservative state, no matter how close they are; expect Trump to win but allow room for a surprise.

IF McMullin does pull off an upset—hardly inconceivable—his victory could throw a monkey wrench into the whole Electoral College math in some interesting scenarios where neither Trump nor Clinton hit 270 Electoral College votes, sending the election… to Congress? See more at the end of my article (coming soon)…

Arizona (11): Arizona has only gone once for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1952: Bill Clinton, in 1996. This time around, there has been a mostly steady and moderate lead for Trump, though a few more relatively recent polls have it very close and a few even have Clinton up a sliver. It should still go Trump, except… as mentioned, there is a dramatic increase in Hispanic voter turnout this election, and this could put Arizona in play. But there is also an increase in white turnout, as well, which may even outpace the big bump in Latino participation. And Republicans control the entire state government, having at least 212 polling places been closed in the state since the 2013 Supreme Court VRA decision. Even with a Latino surge, with the polls the way they are, a competing white surge, the state dominated by the GOP, and a longer-term national Republican strategy of voter suppression already in place, Arizona is likely to remain with Trump.

This gives another 23 likely, but hardly certain, electoral votes to Trump

23 likely + 174 lock/near lock votes = 197 for Trump

So far, that’s 259 for Clinton and 179 for Trump

The Battlegrounds

Finally, true battleground states where things are most in doubt are Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada, as well as Maine’s 2nd Congressional District; we’ll divide these into leans and true tossups.

Leans Clinton

Colorado (9): Clinton had a good-sized lead in Colorado for most of October, but after the Comey announcement of October 28th, polling showed the race here tightening considerably. Still, even though the race is closer, she is shown to have a clear if slight lead, and the fact of the matter is that the demographics of Colorado are very much against Donald Trump, not just because the state is diverse, but because much of the white population is young and Millennial-heavy, profusely college-educated, and liberal. It may be a very close race, but this ground is not favorable to Trump, not enough to give him a victory without a lot of luck and a big surprise. Colorado is a state that has changed a lot and now seems firmly on a path that will keep it a blue state in terms of presidential politics for the foreseeable future.

Nevada (6) TIPPING POINT: The polling in Nevada—perhaps the most difficult state of all to poll for a mix of reasons—has been balanced out to being pretty much tied (not so much with actual ties but with a number of polls canceling each other out), and it would be easy to include it in the tossup category… Except that a lot of early voting data suggests that the race is basically over, that Latino and Democratic turnout has so exceeded expectations in favor of Clinton and without an increase in whites large enough to offset this, that the race can already be called for Clinton in the eyes of the most reputable authority on Nevada politics, Jon Ralston, especially considering that the vast majority (70%) of Nevada voters voted early in 2012.

So Clinton might have already won Nevada before Election Day, with the Nevada State Democratic Party and Harry Reid’s political machine delivering her a victory through an exceptional early-voting-drive effort; it would be fitting particularly for Reid, since it was arguably his machine that delivered Nevada to Clinton in the contest with Sanders, and, as I have pointed out, that was the point where Clinton effectively defeated Sanders for the nomination, even if many others did not realize this at the time. Yes, this would be quite a curtain call for Reid, set to retire after suffering a terrible head injury while exercising back on New Years’ Day in 2015.

Given what we know from early voting, it’s very hard to see Trump winning Nevada.

This means that looking at how uncertain other parts of the race are, considering how in-doubt Nevada was until early voting data came in and how Colorado was thought to be much less competitive than Nevada, if we look at the map and do the math, if we consider Colorado a state more secure for Clinton than Nevada, then we can basically say that Nevada is the tipping point, because it is with Nevada secure—the least secure of all the contests for her in which she is favored—that she has enough Electoral College votes to win the election regardless of who wins New Hampshire, North Carolina, or Florida, the outcomes of which are far more in doubt; Nevada in this case is the kingmaker, then, or, rather, we should say queenmaker.

So 15 electoral votes (with Nevada being the final 6) + the 259 we already gave to Clinton = 274.

Game over.

*****

But, let us finish our analysis:

Leans Trump

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (1): Polls previously had this very rural, extremely white part of Maine solidly in Trump’s camp, but over the last month is has tightened and now the polls indicate it will be a toss-up. But aside from very being white, it is also not as well-educated as the rest of Maine, making it fertile ground for Trump; thus, even with the numbers indicating a tie, in the end, the demographics suggest that Trump is more likely to prevail than Clinton.

Ohio (18): Ohio always seems to be a crucial state in elections: since 1804—its first election—the state has only failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate 9 times, and only twice in the 20th century, in 1944 (weirdly enough) and 1960.  But there’s a pretty good chance that Ohio will pick the loser in 2016, for the first time in 56 years. Clinton has a decent shot, but not a great one: for most of the last month, Trump has had a steady and moderate lead, but very recently a number of very close polls came out; if not for these polls, I would have had Ohio in the previous category. On one level, Ohio is mad about Bill Clinton’s NAFTA trade deal, plus African-Americans, as mentioned, have been coming out to vote in lower numbers than in 2008 and 2012, Ohio included; on another level, Clinton still managed to beat Sanders soundly here in the primary, while Trump was embarrassed by then-rival and sitting governor of the state John Kasich, who refused to vote for Trump and wrote in John McCain’s name in early voting. Still, the Republicans control the entire state government and Trump is definitely favored here: Clinton has about as good a chance of winning Ohio as Trump does of winning the whole election: according to Five Thirty Eight models, about one-in-three. It could be really close, but Trump should win here.

This means we have 19 electoral votes that lean trump

19 leans + 197 likelies, locks/near locks = 216 electoral votes for Trump

That’s 274 electoral votes for Clinton, 216 for Trump even before the most in-doubt races are factored into the mix, but let’s go into them anyway, since the above numbers are likely, but hardly guaranteed.

True tossups:

New Hampshire (4): Clinton had a relatively steady lead here, but polls tightened over the last week or so, and even though she still seems to have an overall edge in polling, there are many contradictory polls; given New Hampshire’s famous propensity for bucking trends and defying prediction, being independent-minded, and having a strong libertarian streak, it’s just too hard to predict this one. Clinton got crushed here by Bernie Sanders, and Trump dominated his opponents here on the other side of that primary, but the state also voted for Obama twice and voted for Kerry in 2004. The state is also overwhelmingly white, but also very educated. On top of it all, New Hampshire is one of those few states that does not have early voting and has strict absentee voting, begging the question of how the whole FBI/Comey stuff will play out. New Hampshire, you’re tough, and I honestly don’t have a prediction to make.

North Carolina (15): Going into the final few weeks, a number of conflicting polls emerged, with a majority showing Clinton with a slight-to-moderate lead, but a strong minority giving Trump a lead, and most of those a slight one; the final poll showed a tie. If this wasn’t confusing enough, North Carolina is a relatively educated state, with a strong number of college-degree holding whites and a large African-American population; conversely, white turnout is up in North Carolina and African-American turnout is down in the state after the GOP closed a number of polling sites, and the state government is totally controlled by Republicans, who have been exposed there as systematically trying to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” with voter suppression in a federal appeals court rulingfrom late July that struck down some of the North Carolina Republicans’ attempts to restrict voting, a ruling which a 4-4 deadlocked Supreme Court was unable to overturn at the end of August (had Scalia survived, he certainly would have made that a 5-4 decision overturning the federal appeals court ruling). The state voted for Obama in 2008 (the first time a Democrat won the presidential race there since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976), but then went for Romney in 2012, and with plenty of reasons for both campaigns to be optimistic and both campaigns to worry, it is unclear how the state will go once all the votes are counted in 2016.

Florida (29): Oh, Florida, it’s always crazy in Florida on Election Day. Polls in Florida have been a bit all over the place, about half showing Clinton with a small lead and half showing Trump with a small lead (plus one) tie. And there are reasons for both sides to be optimistic: Clinton is happy that Florida is a diverse state and that in its vibrant Latino community turnout is dramatically up in early voting, but the white vote is also way up, the Democrats’ lead in early voting is less than it was in 2008, and Republicans control the entire state government, a position from which they may be engaging in voter suppression, as Republicans have been apt to do this election cycle: after Hurricane Matthew hit, Republican Governor and enthusiastic Trump supporter Rick Scott did not even want to extend voter registration, but he was sued by the Florida Democratic Party and a federal judge forced him to extend the deadline. Thus, Florida, as usual, is also too close to call, give the polling and what I laid out.

I really think these last three states are just too close to call, so that’s 48 electoral votes that are anybody’s guess. But this still gives us a range:

Likely closest result: 274 Clinton, 264 Trump

Likely biggest gap: 322 Clinton, 216 Trump 

The Crazy Scenarios if Nobody Gets to 270

Then, there are the crazy scenarios with a realistic chance of actually happening, where neither Clinton nor Trump hit 270.

For starters, let’s say that the states go as I have predicted and say that New Hampshire goes for Clinton with North Carolina and Florida going to Trump, with the exceptions that Trump pulls off upsets in Nevada and Colorado: ladies and gentleman, we would be tied 269-269, and the election would go to the incoming Congress (more on that in a bit, and wow, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District would look mighty important in such scenario).

But then we have other crazy scenario: if Evan McMullin wins Utah (hardly an extremely remote possibility given what I laid out) there are a number of very close scenarios where candidates could be just a few electoral votes shy of getting 270, sometimes just a single vote (Maine’s 2nd Congressional District could be a kingmaker here if it went Clinton) . And, again, we go to Congress.

There are other scenarios where neither Clinton nor Trump reaches 270, but these are easily the most likely, the other being dramatically more remote but hardly impossible (scenarios involving less competitive states above the battleground tier, as outlined above).

I’ll avoid going into those since they are far more remote, but feel free to play with your own maps.

But, under the Constitution, when the election goes to Congress, the president is chosen by the state congressional delegations from the incoming House of Representatives class (extremely likely to be majority-Republican), with each delegation getting one vote: all of Texas’ congressmen are equal to Montana’s one congressman. They would be allowed to choose from the top three electoral vote receivers, and if McMullin’s Utah delegation could pull in other Republican states’ representatives who are hostile to Trump into a bloc, they could prevent enough delegations from picking Trump, who would need 26 out of the 50 delegations to win. Meanwhile, the Senate would select the VP from the top-two electoral-vote receivers for the vice presidency, with senators voting as individuals; if the House could not pick a winner with at least 26 delegations by the inauguration, the VP chosen from the Senate would become president; if Senate was deadlocked, the president would be the incoming Speaker of the House (likely Paul Ryan but not certainly so).

On top of all of this? A Bernie Sanders support who is 1 out of 12 electors in the Electoral College for Washington State, which a lock for Clinton, has explicitly said he will not vote for Clinton in the Electoral College regardless of how his state votes; if he stays true to his statement, then Clinton will lose 1 electoral vote. If some of the aforementioned wackier scenarios play out, this one obnoxious man may decide the fate of the nation, and perhaps Western democracy and the world…

About That Popular Vote…

With lots of close races, it’s going to come down to turnout. Can Obama’s personally hitting the campaign trail help to make up some of the gap between black turnout in 2012 and 2008 compared to reports of lower turnout thus far in 2016? Can Trump turnout whites in record-enough numbers to upset Clinton? Will Latinos, like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings, wake up to their potential power and be kingmakers in key states like Florida, Arizona, and Nevada?

As for the numbers of popular vote, the best pollster in politics, Ann Selzer, just released a national poll which had Clinton at 44%, Trump at 41%, 4% for Gary Johnson, and 2% for Jill Stein; 1% did not know, 3% voted/intended to vote but not for president (think of this as the disgusted vote), and a whopping 4% did not want to tell their choice; as I wrote in my early October prediction of how voters might shift before Election Day (I seemed to have underestimated the collapse of Johnson and Stein, but my best guess from then was about Clinton 45%, Trump 43%, Johnson 6% and 2-3% for Stein, with about 4.5% undecided that I wouldn’t dare guess), I noted how I thought the vast majority of those who said they did not want to share their intentions were probably Trump voters; if I am right here, the popular vote margin could be very close; Clinton could even lose the popular vote while winning the electoral college, something that, given what I just mentioned, seems a more likely scenario that any would have thought previously (I didn’t say likely, just more possible). If I am wrong about those people who didn’t want to share their choice with pollsters, Clinton should win the popular vote by a small but clear margin, but perhaps the Latino surge will outperform these surveys and give Clinton more than a small margin in the popular vote; probably the main reason she will win by a larger margin if so, and, possibly the main reason she will win in general.

It’s also quite reasonably possible that the polls are off by “a normal polling error” across the board, kind of like with Brexit; if this is the case, we could see a decent-sized Trump win, but that could mean a Clinton blowout.

We’ll know very soon. Nothing to worry about here, only the fate of American and Western democracy…

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 29, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 29th, 2016

Michael Conroy/AP, Cliff Owen/AP

AMMAN — James Comey, the FBI, and the media have failed to be fair to Hillary Clinton and to the country and its politics with what amounts to a ridiculous decision to pour gasoline onto a fire that may not even have any wood left burning, and we have a news media that is generally unable to note this when it does its reporting on the subject.

Another Dreadful News Media Fail

Friday it was revealed that e-mails of Huma Abedin—Clinton’s longtime right-hand woman—were found on a laptop of her disgraced separated husband Anthony Wiener in the course of an FBI investigation into this sexual outreach to a 15-year-old girl: FBI Director James Comey that day revealed he had learned a day earlier of “the existence of emails pertinent to the investigation” of Clinton’s e-mails and her server in a short letter of three small paragraphs that he sent to the relevant committee leaders in Congress, 11 days before Election Day.

The New York Times utilized one of its rarer BIG fonts for the headline of its story on this, which was the first headline on its website when it broke yesterday and for much of today (succeeded by related articles). So this means it’s “really important.” Yet, from said article:

Mr. Comey’s letter said that the F.B.I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information, which is tightly controlled by the government. Senior law enforcement officials said that it was unclear if any of the emails were from Mrs. Clinton’s private server. And while Mr. Comey said in his letter that the emails “appear to be pertinent,” the F.B.I. had not yet examined them.

But that doesn’t stop the drama queens in the media and in the Republican Party from making as much out of this as possible to either bring in viewers/readers or hurt Clinton politically (or both). Supposedly biased-for-Clinton outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC all led with this as THE major story; Trump and Republicans exuded glee and relished the chance to go on offense on this familiar ground once again. Thankfully, Newsweek today leads with a sensible take that cuts right to the chase, starting with the article’s first paragraph:

The disclosure by the Federal Bureau of Investigation late on Friday, October 28 that it had discovered potential new evidence in its inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of her personal email when she was Secretary of State has virtually nothing to do with any actions taken by the Democratic nominee, according to government records and an official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity.

The revelation that the FBI has discovered additional emails convulsed the political world, and led to widespread (and erroneous) claims and speculation…

It then continues:

The truth is much less explosive. There is no indication the emails in question were withheld by Clinton during the investigation, the law enforcement official told Newsweek, nor does the discovery suggest she did anything illegal. Also, none of the emails were to or from Clinton, the official said*. Moreover, despite the widespread claims in the media that this development had prompted the FBI to “reopen” of the case, it did not; such investigations are never actually closed, and it is common for law enforcement to discover new information that needs to be examined.

*(Another leak confirmed this to The Los Angeles Times, but a leak to The Washington Post contradicts this and another in The New York Times leaves it an open question, highlighting why it is imperative more information come out ASAP directly through official FBI channels to clear up any confusion)

A Dud of a Bombshell

Newsweek here is more the exception. Its article goes to explain how Abedin had four e-mail accounts: one official account at state.gov that contained the vast majority of e-mails relevant to the FBI Clinton investigation; a second clintonemail.com one she used for assisting Clinton with issues related to Clinton’s private life; a third Yahoo one (presumably Abedin’s personal account?); and a fourth linked to her husband’s e-mail, which she used in support of his work as a congressman. Abedin occasionally used the second of third accounts to print material Clinton needed to have when it was not practical or possible to use her state.gov account. Having seized Weiner’s devices that he shared with Abedin, in all likelihood, the FBI will have probably only have come across her e-mails from that fourth account linked to her husband, and if that is the case, the overwhelmingly likely situation is that only a small portion or even none of these e-mails are going to be relevant to the FBI investigation. If there are any other e-mails related to the case, it is probable that many or all are duplicates of previously reviewed material because Abedin would send the material to be printed from her state.gov account to her other accounts, because they would have been captured in the sweeps of the state.gov accounts and Clinton’s personal server, or because of everyone else’s accounts having Abedin’s e-mails they sent to or received from her preserved on their ends. I would be shocked if anything particularly shocking occurs, and the worst that is likely to happen is that some e-mails which contained information that was classified at the time but had absolutely no classified markings in their subject lines or in them are found and that a few may even be new material, virtually certainly nothing that would have endangered American lives or national security. And officials are unsure if or how many of these e-mails may be duplicates of previously reviewed material.

So this story is a big fat nothing.

Like a teenage boy who just can’t control his hormones, the chance to lead with Weiner’s sex scandals being tied to the Clinton e-mail server scandal was just too great to pass up, despite the fact that there is no indication or reason to believe anything significant will come out of this given how mundane the vast majority of the e-mails reviewed earlier by investigators turned out to be.

Comey Crashes the Election Party

But the real problem here is in Director Comey’s choice to publicly release what he did when did.

Now, before I continue, I want to stress that I still believe Comey is a straight shooter and public servant of honesty and integrity; that doesn’t mean he is infallible, and I have already pointed out Comey was wrong in characterizing Clinton and her team as “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information, mainly because of three things: issues of overclassifcation and differences on what is classified between agencies, because only one e-mail chain out of many thousands was actually classified at the time and had any proper classification markings—a few small “(c)”s in the body, with none of the other proper, required markings in the headers or subject line to give any context to the “(c)” markings—and because Comey’s viewpoint as an FBI man failed to give proper weight to the unique challenges of a global and very fluid State Department and the distinct culture it has in terms of handling classified information as a result of all that and why this unique approach is necessary. Still, I think it is beyond question that overall, Comey oversaw a fair and thorough investigation of Clinton’s e-mails and server and that his decision not to prosecute her was the only rational or fair decision in the eyes of law.

But his releasing this information at this time is a colossal mistake on Comey’s part. In his letter, he wrote that “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant.” If there is any significance to these newly discovered e-mails, then the American people deserve to know with all possible speed and before the election. But throwing a monkey wrench into this election 11 days before Election Day when it is entirely possible that there is both nothing new and nothing incriminating, when it is known that Clinton herself was not involved in any active way—sending, receiving, or otherwise—with any of these e-mails found on Weiner’s devices, when the FBI has not even begun reviewing these e-mails, creates the appearance of impropriety and wrongdoing when there is zero evidence that these e-mails are indicative of that.

In fact, it is therefore actually misleading.

The FBI needs to prioritize this as much as is humanly possible without setting back any cases where lives are at risk; the review should be round-the-clock and nonstop so the public can get as much information about this as possible before the election, and Clinton herself has called for all the information to be released as soon as possible, the opposite behavior of someone trying to hide something. And this review should have been happening and ideally completed before anything was said publicly but also before the election. 

Because nobody knows what’s in these e-mails, the benefit of the doubt is warranted that until something incriminating is found, the privacy and good public standing of Clinton are also considerations that should outweigh such a hypothetical, speculative statement. And to release no information about how many e-mails are being reviewed in relation to Clinton, to leave that wide open for speculation, is also irresponsible and unfair to Clinton. There is a reason why it is standard procedure to not comment on an ongoing investigation: any partial release of information that does not provide the whole story in context risks prejudicing the public against someone in a way not merited by the full facts and risks hurting that person’s public standing, and that person is entitled in our system to the presumption of innocence; in other words, law enforcement, including the FBI, must take a “do no harm” approach to a person in an investigation until they are certain there is something incriminating or damaging, especially since many in the public are apt to assume guilt when they hear the FBI is investigating anyone in the first place.

The simple fact is that this is damaging to Clinton and yet there may be nothing improper in any of these just-discovered set of e-mails; we can’t know and we shouldn’t be given something so vague and unspecific just days before an election when anything can make a huge difference. If there was some sort of major discovery with evidence of something incriminating, even at this late stage in the election a public update from Comey would be justified and proper, but what has been discovered now is neither major nor incriminating nor even anything that constitutes hard evidence.

Once Comey has actual specific information to report—how many e-mails were classified or not—then it is fair to begin discussing with the public. But now he has done a great disservice to Clinton, the electoral process, and the American people. It may well be that Team Clinton deserves additional scrutiny because of what’s in these e-mails, but right now we have no idea and as such she does not at this point in time—this crucial point in time—deserve additional scrutiny. I do not think Comey intended this as a political move to harm Clinton, and I think he was just doing his job in the way he thought best. But he is 100% wrong here, and he has failed to take into account the realities of politics, the media, and voter psychology even if he thought he was. Some may say that his job is to ignore such things, but you cannot do something like this that damages a person and candidate just days before an election when there is not yet anything incriminating or any evidence of wrongdoing with what you are discussing.

And unlike the last time he issued a public statement on the investigation, after Clinton was interviewed, this time a number of his peers who aren’t engaged in current politicking—former federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials—are condemning his decision to release this information and to release it so close to the election, something generally unheard of in presidential elections; furthermore, this was a decision he was pressured not to make by both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates because it violated longtime Justice Department and FBI rules that barred officials from commenting on politically sensitive investigations within 60 days of an election.

Conclusion: Another Precedent Shattered in a Year of Precedent-Shattering

In the end, Comey’s decision lacks moral, ethical, and practical grounds for being carried out and, as polls have already been tightening whereas before Clinton’s leads seemed safe, he may have done this country immense damage by helping to elect the worst ever major party candidate in American history and helping Republicans in down-ballot races. He may have also damaged the FBI as an institution. In all likelihood, the FBI will not finish its review in time before the election and this may be the last update the public has before then. Whatever happens, it’s going to be a tense few days between now and the election, that’s for sure, far tenser than it would have been without Comey’s monumental and ill-timed blunder.

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

With the race starting to pull away from Trump, he needed last night’s debate to be a change-changer or at least a game-alterer; it wasn’t, and it’s now over for The Donald unless something super-crazy breaks in the next few weeks.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 20, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 20th, 2016

AMMAN — It’s over for The Donald.

Ladies and gentleman, the long national nightmare is almost over; not the other nightmares that existed before this election season that are alive and well, but, still, the current elephant in the room is being shooed out, and, barring a disaster or something incredible or crazy, Hillary Clinton will defeat Donald Trump and take office as President on January 20th, 2017.

I know many people were saying this as of several weeks ago, as of the “#TrumpTakes” sex-groping scandal, even before that. I maintain that such pronunciamentos were premature and reflected wishful thinking—hardly entirely baseless, but wishful thinking nonetheless—that made the mistake of saying the door was shut, the window closed for Trump. But after this final debate, we can now safely say Clinton will be president unless something crazy—a major terrorist attack, an economic crash, incredibly high and consistent polling errors, some shocking WikiLeaks revelation (none have been shocking so far), etc.—happens in the next few weeks.

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and a (at least slightly surprisingly) fair-minded Chris Wallace each did their part at the debate last night to ensure that Trump’s path to victory—again, barring something shocking even by the standards of this election—is now blocked beyond any ability of Trump’s to break through.

Why do I say this? Given the current state of the race, in order to stay competitive in the final weeks, Trump needed one or more of the following to happen last night: he needed to really seriously damage Hillary, she needed to inflict serious damage upon herself, the moderator had to significantly damage Clinton, or he had to have done something himself to grow his shrinking tent of support.

None of this happened.

Let’s look at each and how the outcome Trump needed did not happen regarding of these hypotheticals.

Trump Did Not Hurt Clinton: Trump failed to land any big blows on Clinton. He got some great blows in during the second debate, but his attacks this time were so unfocused and rapid that his flurries either failed to really have an impact or missed entirely. And it’s not like he did not have ample opportunity to provide focused attacks on Clinton: he could have gone into detail on any number of issues, including some new ones that have just surfaced in recent reporting. He could have given a shout out to Pat Smith, the mother of a victim of the Benghazi attacks who blames Clinton for her son’s death, but he didn’t; it would have been smart for him to say to Clinton “Pat Smith is here, and her son, who died bravely in Benghazi, is dead because of you. What do you have to say to her, and to the victims of those attacks, who are dead because you failed them?” He actually didn’t even mention Benghazi at all during the debate. He mentioned Clinton’s e-mails only three times, twice just in passing, and didn’t really sustain his attack the other time. In fact, he spent more time talking about himself and defending himself that attacking Clinton, responding to every little needle and bait she laid out, diverting precious time away from being on offense and keeping the focus on himself rather than focusing on what would have been either tactically or strategically beneficial to his candidacy. He actually had ample chances to go into detail uninterrupted with deep, specific attacks, but his lack of preparation was so painfully obvious as he kept repeating himself with lists that were more often mere mentions than any built-up, organized, coherent attacks.

Clinton Did Not Hurt Herself: Clinton herself also performed extremely well. Was it an amazing performance, or full of things that would increase her support dramatically? Was she as bold as she could have been in her attacks? No, and that was not necessary. But her performance was a masterclass in demeanor, in self-control, in maintaining composure, in maintaining focus, in staying on offense, in how to pivot from explanation to attack, in how to deliver succinct yet substantive explanation, in how to get under an opponent’s skin and baiting him into behaving on her terms. She didn’t stumble once, she didn’t lose her cool once, she didn’t appear weak once, and she took every swing from him gracefully and came back with a solid response each time, as well. Clinton in no way can be said by any reasonable person to have damaged herself, then, with this performance.

Moderator Chris Wallace Did Not Hurt Clinton: When it comes to Chris Wallace, after having some time to process the debate more I have to say he was the best moderator of all moderators at the debates. He was fair, tried to keep both candidates in line, was quick to tell the audience to stay quiet, allowed both candidates to speak while also keeping them mostly on topic. He stayed away from the muck and the tawdry and from spending too much time on the scandals, and kept the debate focused on issues. He asked Clinton questions that could have damaged her but she was prepared for them and no damage was done. I’ve had my issues with Chris Wallace in the past, and he’s still one of the least fat kids at the Fox News fat camp, but last night he did an exemplary job. Rather than attacking either candidate, he let the candidates attack each other and performed his moderation role well. So, no way did Wallace do any damage to Clinton. It is very possible that Wallace could have been much harder on her, and been much more aggressive in asking her about her e-mail problems. But he wasn’t, just as he wasn’t terribly aggressive with Trump either. Fair and balanced, in the end, and I am not being sarcastic.

Trump Did Nothing or Next to Nothing to Increase His Support: OK, so, no we know that the debate did not do anything to bring Clinton down from her current, rising levels of support. So Trump’s final option to make himself competitive again was to increase his support. While Trump by far had his best tone and kept his composure the most throughout this debate relative to his other two performances, it is hard to imagine this alone leading to anything but perhaps the slightest of gains, if any. What he did do was just repeat the same policy quips he used in the other debates, nothing new that would grow his tent, especially not with his poor handling of the questions about his “lewd” talk and the swamp of sexual assault allegations in which he has found himself. He even failed to bring up his new policy ideas of congressional terms limits or a bold new student-debt plan, some of his best ways to possibly bring in undecideds. For the most part, Trump did not cover any new ground during this debate and it is extremely hard to envision people not in his camp moving into it as a result of said debate.

So, with Trump currently substantially behind Clinton both nationally and in most battleground states, he needed the debate—the last time substantially large numbers of Americans will see the two of them together or talking in any detail about their plans—to fundamentally change the race or at least its trajectory. That did not happen. And, yes, I noted how bad the second debate was, but if you think this last debate redeems out democracy, think again: that only 1 of the 3 presidential debates was serious, and that it has come this close, and that so much damage has been done, so many bad precedents set and normalized, so many dark doors opened for future demagogues, should worry us all. 

But at least Trump won’t be entering the White House, barring a political miracle. The real battles now are over control of Congress and, after that, the fight over governance once Clinton takes office. But for now, the worst has been avoided.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

The run-up to the the second Trump-Clinton debate, the debate itself, and the debate’s aftermath expose the simple truth that our democracy is failing: the appalling spectacle was anything but a debate, and our society is currently incapable of producing a substantive debate or a substantive election because far too many voters abhor substance and seriousness. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, and it’s a large portion of the American electorate, among other things.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 11, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 11th, 2016

AP / John Locher

AMMAN — As I am forcing myself to write this, my mind, body, and what’s left of my soul is reeling from this campaign, and, in particular, the transpirings of and since this weekend, including the second debate between Clinton and Trump and its aftermath, and not just because I live in the Middle East and the debate started at 4AM my time.

There is so much that is deplorable in this election cycle that we could start from the very beginning, with Ted Cruz being the first major candidate to announce back on March 23rd, 2015, over a year-and-a-half ago. But I don’t have the heart to inflict more discussions of Ted Cruz on my audience after what I just witnessed this weekend. So, for simplicity’s sake, let’s start with this weekend.

What exactly happened?

Well, just days before the second general-election presidential debate between Clinton and Trump—given where the race is now, the most important debate in modern American history thus far in the most important election in modern American history—pretty much all that was discussed before the debate was a recording from 2005 of Trump, unaware that he was being recorded, talking about his sexual exploits with women that involved him bragging about extremely aggressive sexual behavior that he said he could get away with because he was famous, a conversation that included both language and discussion of behaviors that many found quite offensive. This burned out all the public discourse oxygen from late Friday though most of Sunday. Then, on Sunday night, Trump trotted out four women at a press conference just before the debate: two who have accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances, one who has accused him of rape, and one who as a twelve-year-old girl has accused of rape a man whom Hillary Clinton represented as a court-appointed public defender in the related trial and for whom she won a reduced sentence.

As for said debate, the moderators right away led with questions about the sex-talk scandal, and in response Trump opened it up with meandering mentions of a number of past Clinton scandals. Clinton spent much of the debate responding to Trump’s attacks and insults, including much talk about her tired, over-covered e-mail scandal. Trump basically threatened to jail her if he won. I won’t blame the moderators for the way all this transpired, but the format basically allotted two minutes for answers and the moderators were strict in trying to cut off candidates rather than open up a deeper discussion, with both candidates frequently deflecting tough questions (Trump more so, of course), and attempts by the moderators to make them answer when they didn’t want to were for naught (not sure how they could force answers). In the end, despite some discussion of policy, most of the second debate involved bickering, insults, discussion of scandals already oversaturated with media coverage, and Trump arguing with the moderators, and even when there was actual discussion of policy, it was not terribly deep. With so much at stake, this is what our system—our society, our people, our media, our political parties, our candidates—produced with an unprecedented election a month away. No truly in-depth discussion of education, poverty, taxation, the budget, race-relations, or jobs occurred, even if such topics were lightly touched upon.

The news cycles after the debate focused and continue to focus on the insults and personal attacks at the debate, Trump’s sexual recording scandal, Bill Clinton’s past sex scandals, the candidates’ demeanor and body language, America’s new favorite undecided voter named Kenneth Bone and his sweater, anything but the issues. For most Americans, then, this debate was one of the only chances to hear Trump or Clinton explain what they would try to do as president in detail with at least some force holding them accountable in real time; that did not happen.

Why Is This Happening?

Hillary Clinton is quite capable of talking at length about at number of substantive issues, but a majority of voters seem to respond to such talk with revulsion, boredom, and by not voting for whomever emits such talk. Add both the media’s and the public’s focus on scandals and, of course, Donald Trump into the mix, and it’s almost impossible to have any kind of a substantive discussion about anything, even if you replaced Hillary Clinton with Neil deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking; even though one party has chosen a serious person of substance, the overall tone has been set by the lowest behavior of the non-serious and non-substantive, chosen by non-serious and non-substantive voters: essentially, roughly half the voters are dragging the other half down with them and has reset the political arena to match their own ridiculousness despite the maturity of the other half; the food fight on the debate stage turns said debate into a food fight by default.

That, dear readers, is what should terrify all of us: this is no way to conduct a campaign, a debate, an election, a democracy. Because without a doubt, the function of a political debate must be to give candidates who can demonstrate expertise and realistic plans on substantive issues of concern to American citizens the chance to do so while simultaneously exposing candidates who cannot not do so as being clearly unable to do so. And yet, so much about the current setup makes either action close to impossible to any meaningful extent (with the exception to some degree of the Democratic primary debates, in which Clinton’s depth shone through and found millions of more voters support and Sander’ naïve, shallow idealism fell flat for a strong majority of Democrats). But even worse is that in 2016, it seems anywhere from one-third to half of voters would not base their votes on a substance and reason even if the debates functioned the way they should. Yes, the media is certainly part of the problem, but as part of market-driven forces, news outlets are forced to a large extent to give consumers what they want. Newspapers that try to be substantive and in-depth are losing readers and money to less objective and less accurate bloggers and extremist cocooning outlets. The real problem is the American people: an increasing number are turning away from substance, whether it’s their politicians or their news. Many of the same dynamics that explain the rise of Trump and the Tea Party phenomena explain the rising popularity of Breitbart and Druge, basically right-wing media 3.0 after talk-radio (1.0) and Fox News (2.0).

In other words, even when it comes to the most important debate thus far in the most important election in modern American history, our system and our society—our people most of all—are not capable of having a substantive discussion and an informed weighing of issues and candidates. Thus, we get a debate is hardly a debate at all but becomes more about performance art and driving headlines and news cycles. No matter who wins, what has gone down this election cycle is a serious wound in our body politic that has it in critical condition, and Trump is a significant symptom but is not the disease itself, which is the mentality of a huge number of American voters who voted for this and got what they voted for.

This Living Nightmare Is Awful, But Not Hopeless

As this nightmarish and nightmarishly long election cycle winds down to its final, most awful phase, leaders of both parties need to figure out how to come together to promote people of reason, stature, seriousness, and depth, and to find ways to actually be leaders, to lead the American people in spite of Americans’ baser desires, to push the public to value substance over style, to do more than simply what an angry mob craves and wants by finding ways to elevate enough of us to save us and our country from ourselves, rather than simply be tools of self-destruction who are chosen democratically but are but tools of self-destruction nonetheless. As of now, I wouldn’t bet on this happening anytime soon, and if Republicans hold onto the House, we are likely to see extreme partisanship and gridlock on the domestic front even if Clinton wins; and yet, if Clinton is able to win and come into office with a Democratic House (I’m doubtful) and Senate (looking good), there is a chance that we can lead the country into a new, better era, one in which results will be achieved and in which results will trump the noise and propaganda and create a new, strong, and progressive majority that will pick up even some skeptics when it delivers these substantive results. Because it this doesn’t happen, I am not sure how long or how well our system can survive continuing like it has these past few years, and especially this election year. That hope—that opportunity—is worth fighting for.

Getty Images

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  Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 26, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 26th, 2016 (Edited/updated slightly September 27th)

Getty Images/Reuters/NY Post

AMMAN — This is too close for comfort, people. And it’s important to understand why. Here are ten reasons why what some call the “Trumpocalypse” is a real serious possibility, one with about the same odds of happening as Hillary saving America, Western civilization, and the world from a President Trump. Any exaggeration in the preceding sentence is slight, if it exists at all, I’m sorry to say.

1.)   This Isn’t like 2012. Or any other year, for that matter; the past cannot provide comfort

Numerous times I’ve experienced liberals who are confident saying “This is just like when it was close with Mitt Romney and Obama. We’re going to win.” Or pointing to this trend or that swing from another election year. This boggles my mind because I thought one of the most obvious—even omnipresent—themes from this year’s election is so much being so unpredictable and so unprecedented. Republicans had 17 candidates running for president, nearly all of whom were better qualified than Trump. And Trump won. A declared “democratic socialist” won about 4 in 10 votes in the Democratic contest. So, please, don’t tell me not to worry because X happened in X past election. This year, the rulebook seems to have been thrown onto a bonfire of the vanities. Obviously, this is because of Trump (and the people backing him) more than anything else, and he seems to pay no long-term prices for his many gaffes and scandals and outrages.

2.)   Republican voters really are a mob and “principled” Republicans actually willing to stand against Trump on principle are a nearly extinct species

I will be giving myself credit, and then say what I got wrong. In August 2015, I was one of the only non-pro-Trump people to recognize Trump’s potential to win the nomination and that important factors favored his chances of doing so. But at the time I predicted he would be a disaster as a general election candidate; that is still possible, but seems very unlikely now; what seems more likely is that it will be very close either way.

How did I get this wrong? I put too much emphasis on “The Republican Establishment” and assumed it actually represented more people in the party than it actually did. One of the reasons both Mitt Romney and John McCain lost is that, unlike George W. Bush, both were relatively unliked by Republican voters for being too moderate. But in both 2008 and 2012, a number of Christian conservatives split the base votes in favor of one main moderate “Establishment” candidate. The “Establishment” elites in backed McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2004, both of whom during important early stretches only won a plurality and not a majority of GOP voters. In 2008, John McCain only won 3 of 7 contests in January, failing to even reach 40% of the vote in any contest, and on that year’s Super Tuesday on February 5th, out of 20 contests McCain only won over 50% of the votes in 3 even though he won 9 contests overall. Then in 2012, Mitt Romney won 2 of 4 contests in January, but did not win a majority of votes in either and won less than 40% in one; for all of February, he won less than half the vote in every contest save one in Nevada, where he won 50.1% of the vote, even though he won 4 out of 6 contests. In both situations, other candidates divided votes that went towards less moderate, less “Establishment”-backed candidates so that solid chances to derail both McCain and Romney and allow a single other candidate to gain clear momentum early in the campaign were lost. Conversely, there were so many candidates in 2016 that were “Establishment”-oriented and moderate that the dynamic worked somewhat in reverse, so that even after the first Super Tuesday in March, such candidates has only won a single state (Rubio in Minnesota), and the rest went to Trump and Cruz, two solidly anti-“Establishment” candidates, with Kasich being the only other candidate to win one of the fifty states, his home state of Ohio.

What I and I think many others thought is that “Well, that crazy base Republican was beaten in 2008 and 2012, and while they weren’t enthusiastic about their candidates, the more typical and moderate Republicans who voted in the general election but not the primaries were more solidly behind McCain and Romney.” What 2016 has taught us is that there are very few “typical moderate” Republicans in any meaningful sense, because such people would not be supporting Trump; I had not realized how far gone the vast majority of Republican voters are down the rabbit hole; the Kasich-Kristol-National Review-wing of the Republican Party is only a tiny fraction of the Party overall and has little sway with Republican voters in general. Sure, when the “Establishment” candidates won in 2008 and 2012, most rank-and-file Republicans had no problem supporting them over Obama but did not do so enthusiastically; yet the assumption that many Republican being rational and principled and unable to support Trump was always a myth, as Trump’s numbers now mean that he has pretty much all Republicans in his camp. The public intellectuals, commentators, and national security professionals who are Republicans and speaking out against Trump are merely a detached intelligentsia who influence the small group of elites like them and, clearly, virtually no other Republicans. I have lost track of the specific items of behavior that should have cost Trump a significant number of Republican voters—from disparaging both John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and a reporter for being disabled to talking about his penis at a presidential debate to seeming to instigate both violence (repeatedly) and Russian hacking against Clinton—but as we approach Election Day, that support has only increased and is at comparable levels to Clinton’s support among Democrats. In fact, Trump’s behavior has in no way disqualified him from receiving support within his party comparable to levels of what other recent Republican nominees have enjoyed.

In other words, I foolishly believed that enough Republicans would be better people than to be able to support Trump. But if anything, enthusiasm is higher for Trump than Clinton. Granted, I didn’t expect this number of Republicans to be large (and knew it didn’t need to be that large to still make a big dent in Trump’s support level), but it’s pretty much nonexistent relative to other candidates, and thus, the race is basically a dead heat.

3.)   Millennials

Much has been written of Millennials’s lack of support for Clinton. It’s not a fading thing: it dogged Clinton all through the primaries and it’s still a major problem six weeks before Election Day. Echoes of Brexit—when an outcome that a vast majority of Millennials in the UK did not desire and that has drastically negative long-term consequence occurred because Millennials pathetically couldn’t motivate themselves to get out and vote—can be heard now in America, with not only worries about whether or not Millennials will turn out and votebut worries about who they will vote for even if they do turn out. Clinton’s relatively and notably strong weakness with Millennials compared to Obama is evident across all ethnic, racial, and gender groups, including with African-Americans and women. It’s not that they support Trump more, it’s that they often tend to support other third-party candidates or seem less likely to vote for Clinton or vote at all: polls tend to show Clinton’s support among Millennials from being close to significantly behind the combined Johnson-Stein vote, and the trendline for Clintons’ Millennial support is (mostly) moving down. 

In a close election, Millennials are a key part of the Obama coalition that Clinton cannot afford to do without. But perhaps even most frustratingly, such behavior on the part of Millennials is something the country and especially they themselves cannot afford. In the words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, “As Bernie Sanders himself said last week: “This is not the time for a protest vote.” Protest voting or not voting at all isn’t principled. It’s dumb, and childish, and self-immolating. I know you’re young, but grow up!” James Kirchick, writing for The Daily Beast, echoes a similar sentiment: “…[M]illennial opposition to Clinton and the attendant blitheness toward the prospect of a Trump presidency…[can] best [be] described as a mix of moral relativism, historical ignorance, and narcissism.” However, some good news below…

4.)   Sanders Supporters

There is a lot of overlap here with the Millennials section above, but here, we must ask why so many Millennials think of Clinton as a soulless hack, the epitome both of corruption and a selfish “Establishment,” and a “warmonger.” Where, you ask, did they get such an impression? Easily more than any other source, the answer is Bernie Sanders. I have laid all this outin detail in the past, but what is important to note here is that before Sanders began his presidential campaign, this narrative of Clinton was basically nonexistent. Then he repeated it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again at every rally over many months, skillfully blaming Clinton for an entire system implicitly at first with a guilt-by-association campaign, then progressing to letting surrogates do his dirty work and not reigning them in, then becoming more direct, even to the degree of whipping up crowds into a frenzy and pausing to let them boo Clinton and the Democratic Party, thus creating an atmosphere of hatred of Clinton (as evidenced by many signs and just listening to Sanders supporters talk about her at rallies) that culminated in a mini-riot at the Nevada Democratic State Convention in May that I dubbed a mainly non-violent form of political terrorism. Now, is it any wonder, after claiming before that the contest was “rigged” against him and implying that Clinton was a monster, that many of his backers didn’t still don’t support her, despite his endorsement? 

Of course, many of the earlier discussed Millennials are Sanders supporters, as he was wildly popular with the younger crowd. 

As for that good news: just yesterday, an Economist/YouGov poll was released that showed a dramatic increase in a key stat: 70% of Sanders supporters were now saying they would support Clinton, up from 57% a week ago, which was up from 52% in a poll released on the 15th. The new poll also saw Trump’s support from Sanders supporters increase to 13% from 12%, which was 15% before that, while Stein’s support shrank dramatically to 6% from 11%, which had been 13% before that; as for Johnson, his support dropped dramatically as well, to 4% of Sanders supporters, down from 9% in the previous two surveys. This is welcome news, but is just one pollster’s group of polls and its findings do not seem to fit in the larger patterns that now have the race virtually tied. And despite the increases in these examples, they still show 3 out of 10 Sanders supporters are not backing Clinton, and when factoring in the fact that 13% of them are saying they will support Trump, Clinton is left with a net level of support of only 57% of Sanders supporters over Trump. These specific Economist/YouGov polls notwithstanding, Sanders supporters and Millennials, two groups with huge overlap, are groups Clinton needs to really focus on in the final weeks of her campaign in order to ensure a victory in November.

5.)   Dr. Stein and Gov. Johnson

In most polls, when third-party candidates are factored in, Clinton does worse than when the same poll shows just Clinton and Trump, the clear conclusion is that the two third-party candidates are taking more votes from Clinton than from Trump. When this trend first became clear, it was shocking: obviously the far leftist Stein would be taking virtually all her support from the left, but Johnson has between two and three times as much support as Stein, and he, as a L/libertarian, would be expected to be drawing more support from the right, and yet, the net advantage has been to Trump, meaning Johnson has a considerable portion of his support—roughly half—coming from the left. Since Johnson is “cool,” very independent-minded, very anti-foreign intervention, and very pro-weed, this means he is taking vital votes away from young Millennials all over the country and in key battleground states where marijuana is very popular, especially Colorado but also Michigan, Nevada, surprisingly-close Maine, and New Hampshire; New Hampshire and Nevada are also two of the states with the most libertarian support, and Colorado is also in the top third; in all five states, Johnson’s polling average is 8% or higher, and in New Hampshire, Colorado, and Maine, it’s above 10%; this is all in five states where the polling average gap between Trump and Clinton is 0.2% to 5.4% (and we did not even get into Stein). In other words, there is a very real chance that Johnson and Stein being on the ballot will end up covering the difference if Clinton loses any of these states even when just factoring in their liberal support (according to FiveThirtyEight, she’s currently favored in Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine—which is one of two states that does not award all the electoral votes to the statewide winner but splits some of its electoral votes based on Congressional district, with Trump up in one district and likely to get 1 of Maine’s 4 Electoral College votes because of that—and is favored slightly in Colorado, but is slightly behind in Nevada; Trump has recently closed the gap in the other four, as well). If she loses any of the states where she is favored and Trump holds onto every state in which he is favored, Clinton loses…

The situation of a third-party candidate acting as a spoiler is not merely hypothetical: in 2000, liberal Ralph Nader voters could easily have put Gore in the White House instead of Bush; Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Nader got almost 100,000 there; in New Hampshire, Bush won by 7,211 votes, where Nader got over 22,000 votes; exit polls told us that if Nader had stayed out of the race, 47% of his votes would have gone to Gore and only 21 percent to Bush. Objectively, then, Nader and his voters cost Gore the presidency, and a similar situation could be giving us a President Trump in a few weeks.

Before Nader, the last time a third-party was a spolier was when Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party run cost Republicans the presidency in the election of 1912.

6.)   Clinton isn’t Obama

Obama was an exceptionally charismatic candidate and came into the public eye with barely a hint of scandal (in part because he was so new). Hillary Clinton simply doesn’t have the same personality and charisma as Obama. Two points here: first, I would hope liberals/Millennials can energize themselves to vote on critical issues concerning our future without needing to have someone with an exceptionally charismatic personality as a candidate. I’ve had it with liberals not supporting the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry who may not have been “cool” but who would have been great presidents and would have spared us the human disaster that was George W. Bush (although if we have a President Trump I will imagine that I will recall the Bush years fondly) had younger voters then been able to put aside “cool” and focus on substance. But especially with liberal Millennials now, I am not sure we can trust them to do their fair share in this election or over time without the dangling of shiny new objects in front of their faces; Clinton is like the perfectly functioning and incredibly useful iPhone that just happens to have the misfortune of being two or even three versions old; there is very little difference between it and newer models, but it’s not the cool-thingy-of-the-moment, and therefore earns something between indifference and scorn from the typical Millennial liberal. It’s more about an individual and their personality that supporting a political party over time. In fact, when it comes to their politics, Millennials are pretty political party averse: about half identify as independents (hence they came out to vote for Obama twice, but voted in significantly lower proportions in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms, helping to give rise to the Tea Party and contributing to the inability of Obama and Democrats to enact key parts of a liberal agenda. The above factors are big parts of the reason why Trump is now competitive and basically even with Clinton.

Second point, related to the iPhone analogy: I would hope liberal Millennials can realize that the iPhone Hillary is much like the iPhone Barack, for even without the cooler design of the iPhone Barack, they are almost the same in many substantive ways; in other words, that Clinton is essentially running for a third Obama term but has a big gap between the level of support he enjoyed and that she is enjoying now is mainly due to a combination of one of three things: 1.) she’s not (as?) cool, 2.) she’s a woman (black men voted before women in America, and we had a black man as president before a woman), so “HELLO, sexism!”, and 3.) negative recent branding of Clinton by her former rival, Bernie Sanders, and by her current and decades-long-enemies, the Republicans. In the end, there IS SO MUCH MORE IN COMMON between Clinton and Obama than any differences that exist between them that it is hard explain the gap otherwise. In fact, it is very telling that Obama is still loved by Millennials liberals, but Clinton gets castigated and deemed evil incarnate for Libya and TPP, among other policies, that were actually Obama’s calls to make and more his than her policies because he was president, not her; listening to elements of the angry left’s denunciations of Clinton, you sure wouldn’t know this.

7.)   Ann Selzer, polls, and momentum.

Who, you ask? Only “the best pollster in politics.”  Her outfit just released a poll, conducted September 21st-24th, which has Trump up 2 points (43% to Clinton’s 41%), Stein with 4% of the vote, Johnson with 8%, and 2% of voters saying “don’t want to tell,” which sounds an awful lot like embarrassed Trump voters to me; the last poll her group conducted had Clinton up 4% (44% to Trump’s 40%), with the same 4% for Stein and Johnson at 9%, meaning their latest poll had Trump up 3 points and Clinton down 3 points from the last one. Oh, and the averages of all the other polling shows a tightening of the race both nationally and in key battleground states. At a time when it would be great for this to not be happening. Trump is gaining support, and Clinton losing support, with only weeks to go and just as the debates are starting.

No pressure Hillary.

8.)   Trump has spent very little money relative to Clinton

Since mid-June, Clinton has outspent Trump more than 5-to-1 ($109.4 million to $18.7 million) on television ads through September 13th and has spent far less than any major-party candidate since at least 2008. The fact that they are basically tied in light of this info is, frankly, terrifying and terrifyingly efficient.

If that isn’t bad enough, Trump’s campaign just announced it will spend $100 million in TV and $40 million in digital ads between now and the election. Imagine the potential difference that could make… and imagine if the billionaire decides to throw a lot more of his own money in as a surprise right before the end…

9.)   The major media outlets have generally done a terrible job covering this election

A whole article can (and will be) written about this, but we should briefly look at the dynamics behind how bad the coverage has been and how important the media is in shaping this race. It basically boils down to this: Trump has so much baggage and spews so many lies and misstatements that the media barely scratches the surface of them before it decides to move onto something else without properly revisiting what it had started exploring, but spends an inordinately disproportionate amount of time going over every little detail of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails/server (since that is basically all that can compete with the scandals on Trump’s side) and yet cannot even provide proper understanding and context for that (which I provided in my last article); there were even times that it seemed the news cycle contained nothing else about Clinton other than her news scandal, not her policies, not her ideas, not anything else, except maybe her falling favorability/trustworthiness numbers. The same can be said for the lazy, facile coverage of the Clinton Foundation arising from content in certain e-mails of Clinton and her staff, content that was anything but scandalous, yet you wouldn’t know this from the coverage. This has created a dangerous false equivalence in the coverage of Clinton and Trump, with the New York Times’ Paul Krugman noting a similar dynamic helped to destroy Al Gore’s candidacy in 2000. As for Trump, I myself wrote an in-depth article on his and his associates’ ties to Russia, making several connections before any major media outlet made them; there is no way that I should have been the one to do this, and not a major paper (but I’ll take it as a freelancer!); this is just one example of the general lack of proper coverage of Trump.

The end result has been that Trump is now more trusted than Clinton, as many Americans are getting a distorted view of Clinton and one that makes her seem in many ways to be on the same level as Trump, where people just seem to shrug off his scandals in part because there has been too little of a focus on really digging deeper, following up on unanswered questions, and getting the full, complete picture. In many ways, the damage is done and attempts at self-correction (some just starting) may very well be too late.

10.)  Americans are stupid

Rationality dictates that Clinton would have a sizeable lead. But we are not a rational country. It’s so glaringly obvious to the rest of the world, which is also increasingly irrational. I seriously have no idea how people will react, decide, or change their mind between now and the election because any rational person would choose Clinton and I do not know if we have more rational than irrational people. I hope we do, but for now, about 6 in 10 voters are saying they will vote for Trump, Johnson, or Stein. I’m not going to cite anything to show how stupid we are a nation; rather, I’ll let you, dear readers, engage in the mental exercise of looking up how bad our public education system is, how ignorant people are about basic history and geography, how crazy are some of the beliefs Americans have (like evolution and climate change), how many people believe in debunked conspiracy theories, and any other number of other topics.

Democracy may be failing in places like the EU, Turkey, Israel, India, & Russia as right-wing, racist, and/or xenophobic demagogues, from Modi to Netanyahu, from Le Pen to Erdoğan gain power, but far be it for the U.S. to be a spectator: it’s trying as hard as it can to follow suit, embrace hatred and irrationality and tribalism as well as groups in Syria, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, just in less violent ways. But such tribalism almost invariably leads to violence, and we are seeing racial unrest and disturbances not seen in a generation in America. If Trump wins, these fault lines can be expected to be the location of earthquakes.

*****

On top of all this, there’s always the room for late-game surprises: terrorist attacks could increase a climate of fear to favor a candidate presenting himself as a strong-man—like Trump is—and push the country to the right as has happened in Europe, Turkey, and Israel; even non-terrorist mass shootings may do more to contribute to fears about security more than add to any support for gun control; there’s also room for one or two bad jobs reports between now and the election, something which would cause the voters to blame Democratic Party of Obama, the sitting president, and of Clinton. Then there’s the promised “October surprise” coming from Julian Assange of Wikileaks, one which will release more Clinton-related hacked files and be sure to keep that topic in the limelight in the final days of the election contest…

And let’s not forget the possibility of Russia hacking our election to put try to put Trump in the White House…

And even amid the litany of well-documented lies and distortions coming from Trump of just the past week, the voters are moving slightly towards him and slightly away from Clinton. Some of these people are liberals who are ignoring political reality and suffer from any of a series of personality syndromes and have no business voting for anyone but Clinton when she is running against Trump. Well, one thing which hasn’t changed this cycle compared with others in the key final months: the left is still great at shooting itself in the foot while the right is making sure to be unified. Do I think Trump will win? I can’t say yes, but I can’t say no either. I feel ever so slightly more confident that Clinton will win instead of Trump, but now that is only by the faintest of margins and accompanied with a sense of dread. Whatever the outcome, shame on America and American voters that it was ever as close as it is now, that someone like Trump can get this far in our political system. 

Even if Clinton wins, we are a country with serious problems and will be an extremely divided nation. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote with perhaps millions of liberals voting with Johnson and Stein, outnumbering conservatives who vote Johnson, even as they are not enough to swing the Electoral College to Trump. It would be a kind of revenge for 2000, but one that at this point in time could really damage the credibility of the system in eyes of voters and greatly harm the ability of Clinton to govern or the government in general to function. I would be shocked if Republicans didn’t try to impeach Clinton on the “scandals” of Benghazi and her e-mails; like the last time a Clinton was impeached, the case will be ridiculous and the motives will be almost entirely political. No matter who wins, it will be difficult, but no question will America still be far better off with Clinton than with Trump. 

But on those hypotheticals another time…

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 23, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 23rd, 2016 (UPDATED September 24th with further details on server security; see separate post-October-Surprise-Comeygate article here)

Richard Drew/AP

AMMAN — Well, a lot has happened since my last update on this story in January.

Or has it?

More Much Ado About Nothing: Summer of Sadness

The conventional wisdom is that yes, it has. But as is so often with this story, what often seems to be a big deal or raises questions actually is more of the same or has answers that are more boring and mundane than anything else (Occam’s razor, anyone?). 

After an FBI investigation, the Republican and well-regarded FBI Director, James Comey—known for his “independence” and “aggressive” upholding of the law—recommended to the Justice Department in early July that Hillary Clinton not face any prosecution for both her use of a private e-mail server and the fact that some classified material passed through this server, and publicly explained his decision to not recommend prosecution. The recommendation was followed on by the Justice Department and no prosecution of Clinton has been pursued.

Republicans, outraged that they did not get the result that they wanted, had Comey testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform soon after his announcement. Repeatedly throughout the hearing, Republican lawmakers seemed far more concerned about their feeling that Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted than with any proper understanding of the evidence or how that evidence would or would not merit prosecution under a proper understanding of the relevant statutes and their broader history of application.

Espionage Act: 18 USC 793(f) and Its History

AP

A brief explanation should make Director Comey’s decision and why it was the right one clear for our readers…

The law under which Clinton could have been prosecuted was a statute dating back to WWI, the (problematic) Espionage Act of 1917, an anti-espionage law enacted during the height of war with Imperial Germany, and in nearly 100 years of its existence, no one has ever been convicted in civilian court of violating the statute without demonstrating clear intent to do material harm to the United States. Intent has been one of the major required components in determining in civilian court culpability within a formal understanding of the law that has existed ever since a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in a case dating back to 1941. This can be confusing based on the wording of the 18 USC’s relevant section 793(f) alone, but a key element of the overall law of which that section is a part is that the whole law was supposed to be based on prosecuting those intending harm to the United States in the form of espionage, sedition, or worse. In fact, only once has anyone ever been charged by the Justice Department purely on gross negligence without intent—an FBI agent who was arrested in 2003 for having an affair with a Chinese mistress and who unknowingly gave her access to classified information by not locking or paying attention to his briefcase when spending time with her—and, in the end, this charge was dropped in 2004 when he settled and was thus not convicted of that charge but another, lesser crime. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that officials, aware of the law and its application history, may have regarded conviction of that charge as unlikely or even impossible, but may have included it in an array of charges thrown at the defendant in order to help intimidate him into accepting a plea bargain, which he did. 

Military courts-martial did twice charge and obtain two convictions without using the intent standard under section (f) of the statute—one stemming from an incident in 1979 and one from another incident in 1989, the only two court convictions unearthed thus far under this statute without the intent factor over a nearly 100-year history of this law’s existence (neither person found guilty served more even a full year of time)—but it is important to note a few things: 1.) military personnel are generally held to, and military courts generally use, a stricter interpretation of the law and enforce stricter penalties than their civilian counterparts, 2.) the cases were dramatically different than Clinton’s and each included clear, indisputable obstruction, which tends to make prosecutors go for harsher penalties, 3.) at least one of the cases including overruling earlier precedent, an overruling on which the conviction likely depended, and 4.) the cases were not subject to civilian court appeal rulings, and, given the Supreme Court’s ruling and precedent established in 1941 and other civilian court rulings, it is quite possible these convictions under 18 USC 793 (f) could have been overturned should civilian courts have dealt with them.

The point is that as a civilian official operating in the civilian legal system, Director Comey was completely right when he stated that “No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in 100 years based on gross negligence” because the case history is clear and the only cases where charges were brought under such pretenses, including military cases, bear no resemblance to the circumstances of Clinton’s case; when myopically accused of by Republican congressmen of a double standard in not prosecuting Clinton, he noted that the “double standard” would be “If she were prosecuted for gross negligence,” and that such an act would amount to “celebrity hunting.”

Of course, none of this matters to the bulk of Republicans, who have been predetermined to find criminal wrongdoing with the Clintons for decades (again, only perjury relating to Monica Lewinsky has ever been proved). With Hillary, when the GOP was unable to prove any specific wrongdoing after nine Benghazi investigation, they were only too happy to discover this e-mail server and the classified contents that passed through it in the course of their ninth Benghazi investigation, which was such a sham that by the end it tended to focus more on Clinton’s e-mails than anything else, since everything else they threw at her on Benghazi either stood on incredibly flimsy ground or was demonstrably false, as I noted before. Basically, the whole e-mail situation looked bad and raised some questions, but now those questions have been vigorously pursued by professional investigators, and what may have looked bad turned out, upon closer inspection, to not contain anything criminally prosecutable, and no matter how much Republicans want it, the aura of something bad or questionable is not enough to warrant prosecution, certainly not in our American justice system.

About Those Classified E-mails…

How Many?

The FBI’s “July” report (released in early September by a clearly-exasperated-with-the-brouhaha-and-political-criticism-Comey) and information provided by the State Department on July 6th detail how many e-mails had contained classified information at the time they were sent to or received by Clinton’s server: we know that there was information that was classified at the time of sending or receiving in just about 200 e-mails in 82 e-mail chains* that passed through Clinton’s server. All but 13 of these chains were turned over by Clinton as part of the some 30,000 emails Clinton’s team had determined were work-related (most can be read here), and none of those other 13 e-mail chains—which were found among some additional 17,000 unique work and personal e-mails recovered by the FBI—were the highest level of the three levels of classification, TOP SECRET. Overall, of the 82 e-mail chains: 69 are still classified (16 of which has been downgraded in their classification level), and 13 have been declassified (suggesting that at least those 16 and 13 are not involving anything particularly serious or particularly sensitive, even at the time); 8 chains were classified as TOP SECRET (7 of those, consisting of 22 e-mails total, were regarding Special Access Programs [SAP, more on this below]), 37 were classified as SECRET (the middle level of classification), and 37 were classified as CONFIDENTIAL (the lowest classification level). The report only mentions others sending Clinton material that was classified to begin these exchanges, not the other way around, suggesting that she may not have started any of the e-mail chains with classified material, essentially meaning that people were sending this information to her, and none of the e-mails contained classified material warnings in the headers, as is standard practice (more on that in a bit), so it would have been reasonable for Clinton to assume that the people sending her this material knew what they were doing; in fact, it would be a terrible use of a Secretary of State’s time to parse through every e-mail and ask if material that was not labeled as classified was actually classified: that would be a recipe for endless inquiries and not getting anything else done. Out of the 82 chains, Clinton herself weighed in and responded in 4 chains that were CONFIDENTIAL, 3 that were SECRET, and 4 that were TOP SECRET (all 4 of these were SAP related, see below), and 67 times she passed on information from chains classified CONFIDENTIAL or SECRET (frustrating that the report inexplicably did not detail how many of each!).

So, out of over 47,000 e-mails under consideration, let’s remember that about 200, or about 0.425%, were deemed to have contained classified information at the time of sending and receiving and at least half or more were either the lowest level of classification or concerned publicly available information, and some of them were not considered not to be classified by Clinton’s own State Department. 

*(Side note on above numbers: for the above numbers, I presumed the “July” report—almost inexplicably no specific date is given as to the completion of the report, just the month of July—was more recent/complete than Comey’s press conference on July 5th and testimony on July 7th, in which that information given at those times, combined with the information from State, provided a lower figure of 113 or 114 emails in about 53 or 54 e-mail chains that had classified information in them at the time they were sent/received; the FBI report also states that the number of e-mails and chains is subject to change as the FBI was still waiting on responses regarding some of the content in question from several relevant agencies; the lack of clarity,lack of a clear specific presentation, the inability of the whole of the government to just be able to produce a single, clear figure on this is somewhat remarkable; since the report had larger figures than the one Comey gave in the first week of July, it is reasonable assume to the number was higher because other agencies had provided subsequent updates, thus the assumption that the “July” report came some time after the 7th, when Comey gave lower numbers during his testimony to the House committee; if, somehow, the updates would have involved the less likely scenario of reductions in the number of e-mails and chains identified as classified, Comey’s lower numbers would be more current)

How Serious?

To delve into the topic of classification itself, contrary to almost all the reporting I’ve seen, there are the only three actual levels of classification; I myself erroneously reported that SAP (Special Access Program) was a separate level of classification, and many other major mainstream sources have reported that and that SAP is a level of classification above TOP SECRET, when actually it is just a special type of TOP SECRET or SECRET information, designed to give people who “need to know” that information access to it but not indicating a higher level of sensitivity than the classification level; these days SAP often has to do with the U.S. drone program, and the available reporting on the subject suggests that nearly all of the most sensitive TOP SECRET information (7 of 8 TOP SECRET chains) in the classified content that passed through Clinton’s server had to do with SAP-related, publicly available information on the drone program or other publicly available information about North Korea; in both cases, anything from an eyewitness account published by an NGO to a newspaper report about drones would be considered classified, pushing us to the issue of rampant & unnecessary overclassification in the government, often more about interagency turf wars than national security, to the extent that prolific national security officials of both major political parties have publicly testified that “between 50% and 90% of all classified material could even be disclosed without any detrimental effect on national security,” as I have discussed before; objectively, then, much and perhaps all of the information with the highest classification labels in Clinton’s e-mails were objectively not really sensitive or secret in nature. And it should also be noted that CONFIDENTIAL generally describes information that is so mundane and harmless that America’s intelligence chief, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is considering a move to do away with the CONFIDENTIAL classification level entirely, noting that this is something the UK did recently in 2014 “without [adverse] impact.”

How Would Clinton Know They Were Classified? (It’s All About the Labels!)

Another important thing to note is that something would still be considered classified even if the State Department did not feel it needed to be but another agency did, as happened with information in some of Clinton’s e-mails; to expect the head of one agency to be aware of other agencies’ classifications of information that that head’s agency did not feel the need to classify is, indeed, quite unreasonable.

But this next point is a crucial one: zero of these e-mails were properly marked as classified. See, all e-mails that are supposed to be classified are supposed to have clear, obvious headings and subject lines indicating that they contain classified information, but not one of the roughly 200 e-mails had anything indicating it contained classified information in any header or subject line. In fact, only one classified e-mail chain contained any classified markings whatsoever; this involved one or a few simple “portion mark” “(C)”s that preceded material that was specifically classified and appeared in the body of the emails within the chain (two other e-mail chains had the same markings but the information in question in those chains was improperly classified and should not have been marked in the body with “(C)”s at all). Some important things to note here:

1.) As Director Comey said as much during his testimony, the absence of the classification markings in all e-mail headers meant that it would be “a reasonable inference” to “immediately [conclude] that those three documents were not classified” even for an “expert at what’s classified and what’s not classified.” In fact, it seems it would be reasonable to assume, as Clinton did, that, in the absence of any other markings, such “(C)”s could at a glance seem to be a selection from an alphabetical list.

2.) Nobody ever reads every part of every work e-mail. Many people probably don’t fully read even a majority of their work e-mails, as so much content is sent and received and often people have to ignore much of the content and many e-mails entirely for the sake of time; still others will be ignored out of simple prioritizing or would even been seen as a nuisance. The idea that Clinton was careless and irresponsible because she 1.) did not know that about 200 e-mails out of tens of thousands were classified but had no classified markings, 2.) that she did not know that classified material was in 1 e-mail chain (2 including the mislabeled ones) that had 1 or more little “(C)”s buried in e-mail bodies that any person skimming could easily miss is preposterous; in fact, it is possible she did not even read some of these e-mails or only read them in part, so considering this, holding her responsible for being aware of every detail of every e-mail sent to her has an added layer of ridiculousness.

3.) Taking into account that neither Clinton nor her people sent anything properly marked as classified on this e-mail system, this would actually mean that they were quite careful not to send anything that was and that they knew was classified, contrary to the popular narrative and the conclusion of Director Comey. After all, he told Congress that there was no evidence to suggest that Clinton or her people were aware that any of the material passed through that server was classified.

About That Server…

Clinton Did Not Make the Decision to Have Private Server

The FBI report also helps shed light on some other details: while Clinton directed her people to set up a specialized personal e-mail account, the decision to set up a private server in her Chappaqua, NY, basement was not something she directed her staff to do, though she later did become aware that there was such a server after it was established; rather, it was a decision staff made agreed to with technical experts. One thing that is clear is that Clinton and her staff were scarred by such a tumultuous political past of being subjected to so many politically-motivated witch hunts, acting in a very secretive way that actually helped to foster some of the issues about which we have now heard altogether too much. One of the most crucial examples of this is that Brian Pagliano, the IT expert from the Clinton 2008 campaign tasked with setting up the personal server, at first was not apparently not aware that then-soon-to-be-Secretary of State Clinton would even be using this server to host her e-mails, though the FBI was unable to specifically verify exactly what he knew at this time; still, this is an indication he very well may have had no idea Clinton would be conducting any official business using this server, let along using it, at the time. It is ironic that Team Clinton’s penchant for privacy in this case may have possibly prevented Pagliano from having knowledge that may have made him set up the e-mail server differently for a sitting Secretary of State than for a retired president’s staff in ways might have shielded Clinton from some of the criticism levied against her since the e-mail server’s discovery and may have even led to some coordination with the State Department.

The Server Was Not Insecure When Clinton Used It (9/24 UPDATE)

One thing the report makes clear is that the email server was not up and running, or even physically installed, until March 2009, when Pagliano also set up the SSL security encryption. This invalidates a major line of criticism thrown at Clinton, that from when she took office in January and until March, when the SSL encryption was installed on the server, her e-mails were somehow totally unprotected, but we know that the server was not installed or in use before then, and that Clinton’s e-mail domain was being used on the previous Apple Server, installed by Apple; though very little is known know about that server, it is inconceivable that Apple would not have included security protocols, such as SSL, in the process of installing a server for such high-profile clients (Occam’s razor, again, for all you conspiracy theorists that believe Apple would install a server without no security features to prevent hacking; and, frankly, Pagliano would not have gotten as far in his field of IT administration if he is someone who would have had set up a server with no safeguards). This means, contrary to previous suspicions, her server was not insecure for months as headline after headline has trumpeted and countless other articles assumed.

The FBI report notes that the Server was “operational” starting March 19th, and that SSL security was installed by Pagliano on either the 29th or 30th, and Pagliano stated that he was not the one who set up an e-mail account on the new server for Clinton; it seems that another IT specialist working for the Clintons, Justin Cooper, did that, though Cooper could not recall the details but assumed he was the one who performed that task. An e-mail from Cooper to Clinton indicated that in April he was readying to move her Blackberry (and thus, her e-mail communication) over to the new system, meaning Clinton was not conducting work through the new server before April and before the SSL was set up and that the server was not insecure at all when she used it as Secretary of State.

Conversely, the State Department’s state.gov system has been hacked on a regular basis. Perhaps her private system was relatively more secure since nefarious actors would have been extremely unlikely to have known of its existence and, therefore, would have been unlikely to deliberately hack it knowing what and who they were hacking.

No Evidence She Deliberately Hid Anything Work-Related

Another point which has been shamefully and myopically not had appropriate emphasis given on the part of the media is that nearly all of the e-mails would have been backed up by State Department servers: only thirteen people were regularly in touch with Clinton through her private e-mail, and most of those were people using state.gov e-mails, thus, anything sent to her e-mail from a state.gov e-mail or from Clinton to a state.gov e-mail would have been automatically captured and preserved by State’s record-keeping system. So the idea that Clinton was trying to hide her work-related e-mails is ludicrous because it would be incredibly easy to expose her for doing that using State Department records, and, in any case, there is no evidence-based reason to think that she did, considering that the work-related e-mails that have been recovered after being deleted from her server contained absolutely nothing worth hiding or incriminating and many were already captured and publicly released by State.

Which brings us to this Judicial Watch nonsense, what would mercifully seem to be the near-final chapter, at least for some time, in this faux saga. Judicial Watch has long been a right-wing advocacy “investigative” group looking to smear Democrats with a long, partisan history of targetinganything and everything Clinton. The group’s efforts have led to court-ordered releases of more Clinton e-mails, and, so far, they have shown pretty normal operations in terms of deals and influence and arranging meetings despite attempts to scandalize their content. More e-mails will be coming out between now and the election, but, like the other tens of thousands which had no incriminating content, these will almost certainly be more of the same.

There was 1 new e-mail about Benghazi, though: a congratulations from the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil on Clinton’s solid congressional testimony on Benghazi, while 29 other Benghazi e-mails that were part of the recent release were already part of State’s records. The right’s desperation to open any Clinton closet it can find in the desperate hope that something will reflect badly on the Clintons or that the very process of opening the closets will cast doubt on Bill or Hillary and damage their reputations, regardless of reality, is all too apparent (as usual).

Why, oh WHY?

It is also important to remember why there is so much scrutiny about these e-mails to begin with: when eight previous investigations had failed to unearth any wrongdoing on the part of Hillary Clinton or her close personal aides in regards to the Benghazi tragedy, the crusading, witch-hunting Republicans who drove the formation and/or ran the ninth Benghazi investigation and came across the existence of this server were ostensibly convinced that the e-mails contained on the server would confirm their wild conspiracy theories that they had had all along, that Clinton deliberately lied and covered up information about Benghazi and that she ordered rescuers who were ready to save the four fatal victims of the Benghazi attacks to stand down (the e-mails held no such information, in part because none of this ever happened, as I and many others have demonstrated in detail before). I have no doubt that many fanatics within the GOP were convinced at the time they would find such non-existent evidence, but the then-#2 Republican in the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, foolishly publicly confirmed what everyone already knew: that this ninth Benghazi investigation’s main raison d’être was to damage Clinton politically to lower her chances of becoming president (this screw-up was largely thought to have cost McCarthy his chance at succeeding Boehner for the #1 GOP House spot as Speaker of the House); in this, it was undoubtedly a success, even as it failed to unearth any new dirt on her conduct regarding Benghazi. The Committee’s quest to find quest to find wrongdoing by Clinton vis–à–vis Benghazi had about the same odds of success as Frodo and Sam running around alone in Mordor without Aragorn marching on the Black Gate, and it is telling that the Republicans who ran the hearings were at least subconsciously (and at least some must have been consciously) aware that the the “Benghazi” hearings ended up spending just as much—maybe even more—time on Clinton’s e-mails, her use of a private e-mail and private server, that classified information had passed through the server, and that the server was a possible security risk as they did on anything related to their committee namesake of Benghazi. So much for justice for the victims of Benghazi…

Conclusion: This Is Ridiculous: 15 Takeaways

So, below, we can outline my findings/conclusions which, at the risk of sounding egotistical, are far fairer and sounder that what we’re getting from large swaths of the media and certainly many politicians.

1.)   As Comey made clear, neither Clinton nor her staff or associates gave any indication they knew any material was classified when they were passing it around through the private server or ever had any intention of using this much maligned private e-mail system to disseminate classified information, and the FBI has no evidence to point towards a coverup or Clinton or her people lying to FBI investigators. 

2.)   Only 3 e-mail chains had any indications whatsoever that they contained classified material (only one actually did), and the markings were themselves not clear, were not accompanied by required classified markings in headers and subject-lines, and only referred to the lowest level of classification.

3.)   None of the people involved were expert specialists on classification, and they and Secretary Clinton relied, as most non-classification-specialists would rely, on proper and clear headings to warn that classified information was at hand and that people sending them knew they were following proper procedure.

4.)   The only indications we have in terms of the content of the most sensitive material of higher classification levels is that it was publicly available information.

5.)   Over 99.5% of all e-mails in question had no issues as far as classification was concerned; no official in the history of the modern United States has ever has so much of her communications material examined (or released so much to the public) so thoroughly and so soon after her time in office, and she used e-mail more than any of her predecessors because of the increasingly technological times we live in; if most other senior government officials had an audit like Clinton’s it is safe to say that she would hardly stand alone in having less than 0.5% of her content containing some sort of classified information; some would very likely have more, given the problems with overclassification.

6.)   No evidence exists that any sensitive information was given to the wrong people or enemies of America or that America’s national security was compromised in any way by Clinton’s use of a private server or the fact that some classified material passed through it (remember, the server was not insecure early in her tenure at State while she was using it as had been previously speculated/assumed in many a report).

7.)   Even if Clinton had used state.gov servers for her e-mail and never set up a private server, the information would still have been sent improperly through non-classified channels (her successor, John Kerry, was the first Secretary of State to ever use a state.gov account; why so little interest in Rice or Powell? Oh, yeah, they’re both Republicans and they aren’t running for president).

8.)   Yes, there were issues with having a private server (not initially her decision, which was just to have a private e-mail address) and it was not the best judgment call, but was hardly among the worst decisions made by a cabinet-level-or-higher official in modern history or even recent memory (the Benghazi investigation lasted longer than the Watergate investigation), yet Clinton has been investigated more thoroughly than any other official in the modern era for something that is at best a moderate mistake, not one that caused grave damage to anything other than her reputation and her poll numbers and not one that seemed to put any serious state secrets at risk, because, for all the talk of her “lack of judgement” in this case, we have no information yet that any of the information in question was of major consequence, the release of which could have had serious ramifications for the U.S. In other words, her staff and she were careful not to use the system for anything clearly sensitive, overclassification notwithstanding, at least based on what we know up to this point.

9.)   Basically, Clinton dove into a gray area with the personal e-mail/server that walked a line when it came following the exact letter and spirit of preferred policy, but from my earlier research, it was clear there was no outright prohibition on what she did. In an era of extreme partisanship, she should have known, just like Bill Clinton when he engaged in sexual relations with an intern, that such behavior would open her to serious attacks from her political enemies. It was an error in judgement, but hardly one that would be a tipping point in evaluating her performance as Secretary of State or her record as a public servant overall. 

10.) We can easily see that Clinton’s understandable main motivations were in seeking a convenient way to communicate both professionally and personally using the same device and to shield her private affairs from the public and her political enemies after years of witch hunts conducted by her rivals and the media. Nothing in the Constitution or the law states that senior government officials have no right to private communication for personal business.

11.) So Clinton is not perfect, but if this is the worst thing or one of the worst things we can come up with about her and her judgement and career, well, that’s a historically strong candidate, folks, no matter how you slice or dice it, at least if you slice or dice it in a reasonable way. Which Republicans and the media are not. But more on the media another time…

12.) In fact, I expected the investigation by the FBI would explain in considerable detail whose job it was to have labeled the material as classified and at what stage and when this should have occurred, because by the time any of that info reaches senior official that process should already have been completed; this to me seems a bigger issue than Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server, because if people had properly labeled this information it would not have passed through Clinton’s server to begin with. There is no attempt to blame any specific officials for not labeling classified information as classified, and the illogical burden of blame has been put on Clinton and her people for receiving information they accepted in good faith mostly from within their own State Department (certainly the blame cannot be on them for that!). Strange that the focus for blame has been on the use of a server and not that the e-mails were improperly marked, which, again, is the only reason they ended up on said server. Also frustrating, if understandable, that major parts of the FBI report dealing with these issues were redacted. Still, contrary to what many have said, including Comey, it does not appear that Clinton herself or her senior staff were careless in the handling of classified information, as, again, they were careful not to use the private server for anything properly labeled as classified. Such conduct does not seem to fit Comey’s words of “extreme carelessness.” 

13.) The information we do have from the investigation shows that much of the material that was classified and passed on through unclassified e-mail channels was information that senior leaders needed to have to address pressing, time sensitive issues, where using standard secure terminals was impractical, impossible, or both, and that this was common practice.

14.) The last point in particular makes it clear that official procedures for the dissemination of classified information to senior officials when that information is needed in a timely manner are grossly inadequate and impractical to the extent that they are not followed so that important business may be done when it needs to be done. Comey would have to basically call the entire State Department extremely careless, for the classified content being improperly sent and improperly labeled was the product of unofficial but standard practice, and though he did note that the State Department was “generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government;” that seems to be decidedly less harsh language than Comey used to describe Clinton’s similar (the same?) behavior, even though State overall was just as big a factor in creating the situation as Clinton, if not more so.

15.) The above may be the most important controversy of all, but the fact that this all arose from investigations borne out of efforts to politically damage Hillary Clinton always meant that she, not these other important issues, would be the focus. It would have been useful to task the FBI investigators with recommendations for reform, but this was not done. If anything, Clinton herself has been a distraction from the real problem at hand: reform of a system that few seem to have confidence in or respect for under certain important conditions, a system that is outdated and not taking into account more rapid forms of information dissemination that are common in the twenty-first century. But that has been lost in the conversation. And that itself is a true scandal.

*****

I’m almost 35, and this is easily the most overblown, blown-out-of-proportion thing I’ve ever seen in politics, and may also be the most poorly-reported-on “scandal” I’ve ever encountered, as well, but more on that another time…

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Related articles: Comey Damages Clinton With Horribly Timed Weiner Speculation in Historic FBI Injection Into Election

THE DEFINITIVE Clinton E-mail Scandal Analysis: The Real Scandals are the Benghazi Committee GOP Witch Hunt & Media Hype

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 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 3, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 3rd, 2016, also published by StupidParty Math v Myth here

All photos taken from the Clinton Foundation website

AMMAN — If you listen to many conservatives, the Clinton Foundation is little more than a personal, criminal stash for cash for the Clintons (one big “scam,” to quote Trump).  But like so many other things that conservatives claim, upon closer inspection, efforts to tarnish or call into question the Clinton Foundation fall flat, quite like their efforts to dismiss the good work of the United Nations, even for all the UN’s faults.  In reality, the Clinton Foundation is a massive organization, atypical of most charities but one that does a staggering amount of good all around the world.

Love or hate the Clintons’s politics, it is an objective and indisputable fact that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton have been involved in programs that have bettered and save the lives of millions of people.  Even without Bill’s political career, his work with the Clinton Foundation would be enough to make him one of the great philanthropists of our time, and Hillary Clinton has also been getting increasingly involved, as has Chelsea.

What the Clinton Foundation Is and How It Works

The Clinton Foundation is actually a public charity that mainly does direct charity work, which can be confusing since many foundations primarily funnel money to other charities.  While conservative media and political figures (like serial liar Carly Fiorina) have claimed that only a small portion (Fiorina said 6%, hot-air-dispenser Rush Limbaugh said 15%) of the money going into the Foundation goes to charity, this statistic is in reference to the money that the Foundation gives to other charitable groups; the vast majority its money still goes to charity, its own charitable works, with 87.2% of all funds going directly to either their or others’ program activities/beneficiaries.  Unsurprisingly, conservatives myopically failed to do even this basic level of research before making their wildly off-base claims, which is par for the course in these hyperpartisan times. 

What is now the Clinton Foundation began in 1997 as an organization that began helping then-President Clinton set up his presidential library, but since then it has grown to be a global foundation that encompasses eleven initiatives, has raised over $2 billion for charity and development work, and now raises about a quarter of a billion annually.

Let’s look at these eleven parts, and a twelfth that was recently ended:

Clinton Foundation:

2014 expenses: $249,545,030 (12.3% overhead, including management, administrative, and fundraising expenses; 87.2% directly to program activity/beneficiaries; and 0.5% to make up for shortfalls in donation pledges)

Clinton’s Presidential Center (library) (1997-present)

2014 expenses: $13,501,618 (5.4% of Foundation total)

Presidential libraries serve as something of a combination of a museum and an archive for the particular presidency they showcase.  The Clinton Foundation was formed in 1997 to help raise money for Bill Clinton’s presidential library, which it did to the tune of $165 million over some years plus over $11 million in the form of grant of land from Little Rock, Arkansas, on which the library was built (in comparison, Reagan’s library cost $60 million at the time it was built, and George W. Bush’s presidential library cost about $250 million).  Clinton’s library, which includes the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service and provides year-round educational programs and camps for students of all ages, has benefited the city of Little Rock greatly, as well.

Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative (2002-2013)

The Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative began in 2002 by helping small businesses in Harlem and grew to focus on promoting entrepreneurs and small businesses in cities across America.  Through partnerships with successful entrepreneurs who acted as mentors and major business institutions like Booz Allen Hamilton and UBS, the Initiative specialized in providing consulting and mentoring to small businesses and small business owners.  The 2012 annual report for the Clinton Foundation noted that the Clinton Economic Initiative had provided 75,000 hours of pro bono consulting and mentoring hours, over $15 million in pro bono consulting, that 92% of businesses that received assistance from its Entrepreneur Mentoring Program said that that assistance had helped them deal with the recession, that all these the businesses assisted had an average of a 16% increase in workforce, and over 600 volunteers provided long-term pro bono services for small businesses in nine different U.S. cities.  Another example of the type of work the Initiative engaged in, as highlighted in the 2009 annual report, was helping to provide banking services to struggling populations in America that were underserved by the banking industry. The program was shuttered in 2013 because the Foundation found that the efforts were too labor intensive and dependent on many too outside factors to be replicated on the larger scale the Foundation had hoped for it.

Clinton Health Access Initiative* (2002-present, *now affiliated but separate entity)

2014 expenses: $143,041,357 (57.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Health Access Initiative began in 2002 as a big push to provide HIV/AIDS patients with low-cost access to life-saving drugs, and since then has expanded to include treatment for malaria and vaccine access, among other programs; nearly 10 million people have received access to lifesaving treatment at low cost through the Initiative since 2002, to name its most significant achievement.  It now operates directly in more than 33 countries benefiting over 70 countries overall.  Its 2014 annual report noted that it was also heavily involved in assisting Liberia with its recent Ebola epidemic.

Clinton Alliance for a Healthier Generation (2005-present, *now affiliated but separate entity)

2014 expenses: $16,436,262 ($2 million from Clinton Foundation, 0.8% of Foundation’s total expenses; rest is (presumably) raised by Alliance on its own, outside of the efforts of the Foundation)

The Alliance for a Healthier generation was founded by the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association in 2005 to fight America’s childhood obesity epidemic by providing alternatives to soft-drink sodas in schools and other facilities used by children, all through making deals with the soda industry.  It is the nation’s largest effort to fight childhood obesity, and in large part because of the Alliance’s efforts, the calories of drink products sent to school locations fell 90% from 2004-2010.  Through 2015, the program has spread to help affect 18 million students in over 31,000 schools in all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, as well as over 6,300 locations used by children outside of school grounds.  There is also an effort to help students improve health in other ways, engaging over 56,000 doctors and health professionals.  The Alliance also engages companies like McDonald’s to improve the level of healthier offerings within their product lines, in McDonald’s case covering 85% of its worldwide sales.

Clinton Global Initiative (2005-present)

2014 expenses: $23,544,381 (9.4% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Global Initiative began as way for President Clinton to bring together world leaders and thinkers as only he can together in one place and to get them to make substantive commitments towards tackling major global problems.  Through 2015, it has engaged over “180 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media, which has resulted in $90 billion in commitments representing over 3,100 Commitments to Action, which have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries,” spanning issues as diverse as job creation, training, education, human rights, gender equality, health, medicine, conservation, ecology, endangered species, and international development, among others. 

Clinton Climate Initiative (2006-present)

2014 expenses: $8,293,416 (3.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Climate Initiative has been working for years to address fundamental drivers behind dangerous man-made climate change using easily replicable and cost-effective methods that the Initiative is spreading throughout the U.S. and the world.  The Initiative’s Forestry Program is helping governments together with other partners to better manage their forests and forested lands and to help plan and enact forest restoration, with major programs in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. The Islands Diesel Replacement program helps small island countries transform their energy sectors into ones that involve far more clean energy and far more sustainable practices, and also assists with waste and water management, which all, in turn, spur new jobs and markets for the green energy sector.  An energy-consumption-reduction program and a Home Energy Affordability Loan (HEAL) program that both began in Arkansas have both spread to six other states—California, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin—and allowed both employers and employees to greatly improve energy efficiency and reduce costs, with the HEAL program alone helping over 5,600 people and both programs together reducing U.S. carbon emissions by over 33,500 tons every year.

Clinton Development Initiative (2006-present)

2014 expenses: $4,482,714 (3.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Development Initiative has been helping small farmers in Tanzania, Malawi, and Rwanda by leveraging knowledge, resources, and partnerships to help over 105,000 small farmers improve their efficiency and access to markets.  In addition, its Trees of Hope program in Malawi has helped over 2,300 farmers plant more than 2.6 million trees to help offset their carbon footprint and create a new opportunity in tree farming, where it is also helping local farmers and their families by establishing local health clinics.  In Rwanda, the Initiative recently helped to create two local businesses based on producing soy in one case and coffee in the other that are combined expected to create hundreds of jobs and help 150,000 farmers with their livelihoods.  With a New Seeds to Sale Project in Myanmar, the Initiative also helps to reach some 15,000 farmers there over the first 3 years of implementation.

Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (2007-present)

2014 expenses: $7,358,967 (3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership seeks to implement the best of non-profit and for-profit approaches to help emerging-market-nations around the world deal with major gaps in either supply chains or distribution chains in ways that improve both the social and financial situations of poorer, underserved populations by bringing them into one of three-market driven approaches: supply chain enterprises, distribution enterprises, or training center enterprises in the hopes of providing economic opportunities through which people can find social mobility and lift themselves out of poverty.  Distribution enterprises can make a huge difference in rural areas where many small villages and towns and farmers often find it very difficult to obtain basic supplies.  The Partnership in one instance found almost 3,000 women in one of the most remote parts of Peru and trained and equipped them with the help of major corporations to be able to sell many basic, in-demand products to their own communities; these women are expected to double their income within a year of beginning the program.  Supply chain enterprises help small farmers in developing countries obtain ways to get their products to the right markets and improve their business as a result as well as help developing markets fill their shelves with appropriate and better quality products.  A Partnership enterprise in one region of India was able to help small farmers get cashew products to new customers, and another Partnership program set up many small farmers with PepsiCo’s local juice operations; along with efforts to help local farmers become more efficient and produce better crops, the Partnership hopes to see these farmers’ incomes double within 5 years and to spread these models to encompass some 15,000 local farmers in the region in the near future.  Another project is helping over 12,000 peanut farmers in Haiti get their crop to markets.  Finally, training center enterprises help to provide youth in developing countries the skills needed to get decent jobs in places where there is often a skills mismatch.  One such enterprise in Cartagena, Colombia, is training some 20,000 young people to be able to find jobs in the hospitality industry.  The Partnership will be expanding to new regions and countries soon, and thus far has helped to train and empower more than 450,000 people in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Clinton Health Matters Initiative (2012-present)

2014 expenses: $3,696,323 (1.5% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Health Matters Initiative works in the United States through a wide variety of public and private, local and national entities to reduce the occurrence of preventable health problems, conditions and diseases, while also working to bridge inequality in health and healthcare access and to improve access for all Americans.  Its national-level programs focus on “employee health, military and veteran health, health disparities, access to nutrition, access to sport and physical activity, and prescription drug abuse,” while a variety of local and regional programs (mainly focusing on working through many hundreds of partners to help some 8 million people in specific regions in the U.S.: California’s Coachella Valley, Central Arkansas, Northeast Florida, the Greater Houston Area, and, most recently, Adams County, Mississippi) combine with the national programs to be projected to be able to benefit some 85 million Americans.  The initiative has also created over $200 million in partnerships with various organizations to help improve Americans’ health, is helping to innovate new technology to improve healthcare across the country and access to information about health and healthcare, is improving substance abuse and mental health programs on over 60 college campuses, is pioneering fitness programs, is working with 40 different organizations to improve employee wellness, and is bringing together experts from many different organizations to plan new ways to tackle health problems in America.

The following programs fall under the “other” category as listed in the Foundations’ financial statements/annual reports, as is (presumably) the $2 million grant that goes to the Clinton Alliance for a Healthier Generation; the “other” category comprised $13,789,165, or 5.5% of the Foundation’s 2014 expenses; minus the Alliance grant, these below programs would be part of $11,789,165, or 4.7% of the Foundation’s 2014 expenses.

Clinton Foundation in Haiti (2009-present)

The Clinton Foundation in Haiti began in 2009 as a way to specifically help the beleaguered Caribbean nation, but when a major earthquake devastated the nation in 2010, the program focused for some time on disaster relief, recovery, and rebuilding but is now back to its original intent: helping to empower the people of Haiti through education and economic opportunity by engaging a wide range of actors.  Since its inception, the program has raised some $36 million for Haiti (including $16.4 million in for immediate relief after the earthquake tragedy), and has also been instrumental in bringing about $120 million in direct investment to Haiti, including in Haiti’s agricultural, artisan, and environmental sectors, helping some 117,000 Haitians and creating some 11,200 jobs.

No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project (2013-present)

The No Ceilings: Full Participation Project, led by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, aims to bring women and girls around the world to points of full participation and equal opportunity in their societies using data-driven methods.  To this end, the Project partnered with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to produce a detailed global report on the status of women and girls worldwide, identifying specific areas of concern that can be targeted by various organizations around the world.  As part of this process, the Project began a global conversation about the status of women involving over 12,000 people, and conducted a survey about the status of women of over 10,000 people in over 150 countries.  The Project also teamed with The Brookings Institution to secure pledges from over 30 partners to provide $600 million to help girls get access to and do well in secondary school, which has since been increased to $800 million through 50 partners with plans to reach 15 million girls.  Another initiative plans to facilitate access to mobile technology for women in Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Arab Gulf States in order to help empower disempowered women in those locations.

Too Small to Fail (2013-present)

The Too Small to Fail project, also led by Hillary Clinton, seeks to help different parts of society to come together to provide solid heath and growth environments for children from when they are born to age 5, focusing in particular on interactions involving talking, reading, and singing.  Such interactions foster vital early brain and language development among our youngest children, ensuring that they enter school not in a mental state behind that of their follow classmates and in a better position to succeed in life.  This helps to fight the “word gap” in which lower-income kids by age 4 hear an average of 30 million fewer words than their better-situated counterparts, causing their brains and language skills to develop more slowly.  With partners like Sesame Street, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Univision, Text4baby, and Scholastic, Too Small to Fail was a major force in efforts to donate some 500,000 books, reach 700,000 parents regularly with parenting information and tips through text messaging, use television programming to get important information and tips out to parents, get over 20,000 families to take pledges, and distribute 62,000 literacy toolkits to pediatric professionals.

*****

In addition:

In America, the Clinton Foundation has also helped to organize thousands of volunteers for “Days of Action” that have resulted in over 18,000 hours of volunteer service since 2012, at first in response to Hurricane Sandy and later to include other projects.  There is also the Job One initiative, designed to help young Americans find meaningful employment in the wake of the Great Recession; so far, the initiative has secured promises from 13 companies to focus on mentoring and hiring young people, has generated commitments worth $37 million, and expects to be able to help some 150,000 young Americans in the near future.

*****

All in all, The Clinton Foundation is a unique thing in the world, one of the world’s largest charities on its own, but then transcending even that status when the extensive action it has led indirectly through its special partnerships and relationships is taken into account, amplifying its already staggering scale of impact on people all over the world.  It’s time the media and even the Clintons’ critics clearly acknowledged this basic truth.  And for Trump to criticize the Clinton Foundation, when nothing he has done has even come close to a fraction of this level of charity, is shameful.

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

A deep look at the Clinton vs. Sanders fight: the history, the present, and a path forward. Sanders never had more than the slimmest of chances. Besides never winning over even close to a majority of the Democratic constituency on a state-by-state basis, Sanders also failed to understand even the basics of politics, which is more than just haranguing special interests and saying what you think with no filter. Clinton knows this, and it is a big part of how and why she has accomplished more in her career than Sanders. Ultimately, if you don’t share the same beliefs as the political party you want to lead and don’t know how to play the game of politics, you won’t be successful, no matter how much you and your supporters would love to ignore the game. But the game is part of reality, part of politics, and part of winning. And, like in sports, in politics, winning is not only everything, it’s the only thing. It doesn’t mean you need to sell your soul, but it does mean that the model Sanders has laid out is both naive and ineffective, even more so in a general election. Still, we come here not only to criticize, but to both praise and bury the Sanders campaign.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 29, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) April 29th, 2016 

CNN/NBC News

AMMAN — Now is a critical time for the Democratic Party. There are two candidates vying for the presidential nomination of the Party. One is Hillary Clinton, very active in Democratic politics for almost half a century since her rejection of Republican ideology in 1968, coming after her days as a “Goldwater Girl” and being raised by a very conservative father, a political transformation she underwent during her days as an undergraduate at Wellesley College.

The other is Bernie Sanders.

*****

How We Came to This Point

The official Senate page listing all the senators of the 114th Congress does not list Bernie Sanders as a (D) for Democrat, but as an (I), displaying his status as an independent. Bernie’s own Senate website still proudly states that he is “the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history,” in his “About” section. As a non-Democratic who in twenty-five years in the House and Senate combined refused to declare himself as or officially become a member of the Democratic Party, and who proudly maintained his independence as a democratic socialist, he has clearly, beyond any reasonable doubt, failed to take over the Democratic Party as a shining outsider white knight he had hoped to be, an outsider that would have forced the Party hard and far to the left. And it was a Democratic Party that he only just joined (apparently) in time for this election season, but one for which for he so long clearly harbored disdain.

Listening to his rhetoric on the campaign trail, he clearly still harbors this disdain, playing a delicate balancing act of repeatedly decrying “The Political Establishment” that favors Clinton while simultaneously seeking its approval and endorsement (even to the degree of trying to get superdelegates to switch their support from Clinton to him), a contradiction that increasingly has not gone unnoticed. 

Despite his surprising early success (a near-tie in Iowa and a resounding, crushing victory in New Hampshire), it has been clear to those willing to look at the hard numbers of electorate beliefs and trends, supported by masses of polling and social science research, from quite early in the race that Sanders’ ability to win the diverse type of constituency necessary to clinch the Democratic nomination was practically nonexistent. As I noted before, this precise moment came in Nevada, when Hillary Clinton won by staggeringly dominant support from African Americans and Latinos. Prior to this win, the polling data already heavily confirmed that Sanders’ core of support consisted of white liberals and young people, a core nowhere near large enough win the majority of the overall national Democratic constituency. The main question was as to if Sanders’ very strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire would give African Americans and Latinos pause enough to consider, and then vote for, Sanders in large enough numbers for him to win the nomination. The Nevada contest on February 20th, coming just a week before South Carolina’s heavily black Democratic base would vote in its contest, and that coming just a few days before (the first) Super Tuesday contests that would award the most delegates in any single day and that would include most of South, with its heavily black Democratic constituency and with Texas and its huge Latino constituency, was Bernie’s one chance to show he could win over a diverse coalition of support before the South Carolina and the rest of the South would create a reality of, votes, delegates, numbers, and probabilities that would effectively end his candidacy in all practical terms if he failed to do so. 

After all, the laws of human behavior show that if a certain demographic of people favor one candidate generally by more than 4 to 1 (African Americans) or more than 2 to 1 (Latinos), those ratios will not switch in a matter days and weeks in the absence of some sort of remarkable event.

Such an event never happened in the run up to Nevada, and it has not since.  Clinton was not indicted by the FBI in relation to her e-mail scandal, a probability that might have even been lower than Sanders’ miniscule chances of winning the nominations, nor did she suffer a dramatic collapse or series of gaffes. On Sanders’ side, he stubbornly failed to tailor or alter his message in any significant way to appeal to new groups who had thus far not bought into it. Aggressively trying to court African Americans on his terms, not theirs, was never a sound strategy.

Sanders’s Ideological Disconnect

Yet it is a hallmark of his idealist, socialist, even pseudo-Marxist theories of social change that maintain if only the masses were educated in the right ideology, they would largely come on board and support the revolution (never mind that time and time again people have proven this theory wrong, from Russia to China and elsewhere). “Educating voters” was a phrase Sanders and his supporters constantly used when explaining how a conservative country like the United States would suddenly elect a socialist president despite a fierce, visceral opposition to socialism among huge swaths of voters, particularly many millions of voters in key, populous battleground swing states that are crucial for victory in November. Like many Russians, Yugoslavs, and others before them, African Americans are not receptive to ideas of Bernie’s socialist “political revolution,” its prospects even far dimmer than his sliver of a chance at winning the nomination. If Sanders can’t win over such staunch Democrats, how will more conservative non-Democrats and Republicans respond to his message?

In constant use of phrases like “political revolution” and “educate the American people,” Sanders, like most ideologues, demonstrates his disconnect with—even war against—reality. For the ideologue, data, facts, context, research, all matter little; ideas, inspiration, and ideals are what matter most; and yet, that is why the vast majority of ideologically-driven revolutions have failed miserably and have often descended into mass-murder of the very masses the revolutions are ostensibly designed to save after these masses speak out and say “no, thank you,” to revolution. 

Of course, Bernie Sanders and his movement are not violent like the Bolsheviks, Maoists, or Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

But there are similarities in mentality. 

That’s why the nickname applied to Sanders supporters of Sandernistas is so apropos; the revolutionary Nicaraguan Sandinistas were also self-styled populist “democratic socialists.”

One similarity that I’ve already noted is the arrogance of belief that most people are simply with them, a belief that is simply an assumption and not based on any wider research and is based at best on anecdotal experiences. Another similarity in mentality is that those who disagree must have been brainwashed. Still another is that every single power structure or mainstream institution is nefariously stacked against them. There are not rational people, institutions, or credible authorities that disagree with the revolutionary ideals and plans, these ideologues say, because the powers that be have either warped or bribed the vast majority of policy, political, and economic experts and academics, as well any non-“alternative” news media (“alternative” meaning media that is for the revolution, its plan and ideals, not critical of them). And Mayor of Burlington Bernie Sanders in the 1980s vigorously supported the Sandinistas, even arranging to have their TV programming broadcast on Burlington’s local public-access cable stations.

Rob Swanson/File

The idea that thinking people can either rationally disagree or rationally conclude that such ideas might be nice but are not practical on a variety of levels simply does not occur to the ideologue. In my many exchanges with Bernie Sanders supporters, I have to yet to hear or watch or read, or even see from the candidate himself, any kind of thought-out, intelligent, detailed, worthwhile response to this concept of rational disagreement. Instead, the response is snark and slogans, castigation and conspiracy theories, as if somehow, to question Bernie Sanders (!) even on his quest for the presidency automatically makes us somehow deficient, all the while these ideologues never question their own deficiency when it comes to anything regarding the nuts and bolts of actual governance. This campaign has, among too many of Sanders’ followers, become something of a messianic cult, where the messiah is come and if you don’t get it you’re part of Team Devil. And, to a degree, the contempt that Sanders’ supporters have for anyone who disagrees with them—regardless of how rational the disagreement’s basis is—is mirrored, though more politely if still quite rudely, by the candidate himself.

Decoding the Debate

This contempt was on full display in the last Democratic debate, but has hardly been limited to just that stage.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Without a doubt, that latest Democratic debate in the Brooklyn Navy Yard (you can watch the full debate here) was the most spirited, eventful debate on the Democratic side yet: nasty, full of contrasts, and even with a few big surprises. But like all the other debates, in which Hillary Clinton had commanding leads in some sort of combination of delegates, votes, and polls, this debate once again featured a Bernie Sanders that needed to do something dramatic to alter the dynamics of the race to have even a prayer of a chance of winning the nomination, and, once again, that he failed to do.

It wasn’t for trying or lack of trying, but, as has often been the case with Sanders, the level of effort and level of strategic and tactical planning did not match each other. Both candidates were claiming that New York state was their home turf: Sanders, with his thick Brooklyn accent and his youth spent growing up in Brooklyn, and Clinton, with her service as a New York’s Senator from 2001-2009 and living in the state since those days up through the present day. Sanders made the calculation that perhaps he could afford to be, by far, his most aggressive and condescending yet to Clinton, perhaps feeling that NY would, in the end, prove to be more his home state than hers. He was snide, dismissive, and sarcastic; he laughed at her, mocked her, repeatedly used sarcasm; his body language and motions all evening were hostile, with him contorting his face constantly in expressions of derision and amusement while Clinton was talking (she, conversely, was often calm and stoic while he spoke) and literally pointing his finger at her incessantly, wagging and waving it at her invasively, raising it often while she was still talking, interrupting her, too (not that she did not interrupt him a few times as well). He was hypocritical in his modes of attack (her tiny amounts of fossil fuel industry contributions that her campaign and PACs received are, apparently, fair game, but not the small amount of high per-capita guns coming from Vermont into New York City; her votes should be viewed in black and white, his with respect to his environment and details). He even questioned her motives, again—what has been a staple of the Sanders campaign—implying that Clinton is a corrupt hack, bought and sold by her special interest donors, without actually directly leveling the accusation. Apart from interrupting Sanders, Clinton did none of these things. She stuck to a more elevated tone and to the issues, and did not question his motives for voting on gun issues the way he did with her even though he did not return the favor on other issues. 

Some would say because Bernie did not attack Hillary on the e-mail and  Benghazi issues that this is somehow him taking the high road, an example of his being exceptionally civil. I find that to be wholly unconvincing; unlike Republicans, Democrats do not see these issues as either terribly substantive or evidence that Clinton did something seriously wrong. Like most politicians, Sanders decided to attack Clinton where he could gain points for doing so; in a Democratic nomination contest with mainly Democrats voting, that was on issues of campaign contributions and super PACS, not on what Republicans were throwing at her. If anything, Bernie holding back on the e-mails and Benghazi is a just sign that Democratic voters would not have responded well to such attacks. Had he gone down that road, Bernie would have looked and sounded just like the desperate Republicans have if he had attacked her on those issues; it would have hurt Brand Bernie. So no, Bernie didn’t avoid those lines of attack out of charity and kindness; it was in his interests not to come off sounding like Republicans. When the topic resounds with the Democratic base, he has been happy to attack Clinton.

Conversely, I have not heard Clinton attack Bernie Sanders for broadcasting Sandinista propaganda in Burlington, for how he campaigned during the Vietnam War to reduce the American military to “local citizen militias and Coast Guard,” for how in 1980 he served as an elector in an obscure Trotskyist political party that called for “solidarity” with the Iranian Revolution even as its regime held Americans hostage, among other gems from Sanders’ past. And yet, you never hear Clinton being given credit for playing nice with Sanders, even though she clearly is, overall. The general approach for both seems to be that they attack each other from the left, not the right or with other tabloidy-stuff. And, as nasty as this race has gotten, the tone is astronomically more mature, substantive, and polite than the race on the Republican side. 

Of course, as the front-runner, it makes sense that Clinton would not come out swinging the way Bernie did, who was far behind and had to make up a huge gap. That is politics, and Sanders, lest we forget, is still a politician, much like Clinton. Neither has been a saint, but Sanders campaigns on being one while Clinton never has. So attack her he does, and often not fairly, often by insinuation, often indirectly, and often letting his surrogates and supporters do the dirty work, whom he often fails to restrain. That has not been much of a high road for those who have been playing close attention, although this has largely escaped scrutiny because of the outlandish conduct on the Republican side that has made it seem tame in comparison.

And in the debate, happy to attack her he was; Bernie clearly felt comfortable not holding back much against her. 

This calculation, in the end, would prove to be disastrously wrong.

In Bernie’s opening statement, he noted how far behind Clinton he was at the beginning of the race, and attributed how close it was to what claimed was the “radical” move of “telling the American people the truth” (the clear implication is the Clinton is not).

As usual, Sanders attacked Clinton for the support that she and organizations that support her received from special interests, including Wall St.

Sanders’ first big stumble was in saying he didn’t think the government should break up the banks, that the banks should break themselves up, a thoroughly unconvincing response from a man who has made the big banks one of America’s great public enemies in his campaign.  The second came right after, when he could not name a single instance of when Clinton’s money she received from Wall St. influenced a specific decision of hers when she was in power in the Senate. He followed up with his inability to do this with a salvo of nasty sarcasm belittling her speaking out against the big banks, noticing mockingly and acerbically that the bankers “must have been crushed by this.”

One line of attack that I thought was particularly unfair was Sanders’ minimum wage cheap shot swipe against Clinton. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. I will point out that from 1998, when I had my first job one summer while I was in high school, through mid-2013, the vast majority of the jobs I had and the vast majority of the hours I worked were at or near the minimum wage ($7.25-$8.25 an hour). Much of this was in the retail industry while I was in school or trying to transition to something better suited to my background and skills. So I know what it’s like to work a minimum wage job more than many Americans, and I care about this issue a lot. Hillary Clinton wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour, a huge increase of over 65%. She further thinks that in many localities, like New York City, $15 makes more sense, and she has supported such efforts at the state and local levels to make the minimum wage $15. The thing is, Clinton and many experts recognize that a one-size-fits-all minimum wage is not a good solution for the country as a whole; the cost of living in Northern Virginia, New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston, among other places, is dramatically higher than in most other parts of the country, particularly rural areas and small towns. A $15 minimum wage in the near future would be very difficult for many small businesses outside of major U.S. metropolitan areas to handle or afford. Clinton’s nuanced approach is very much called for, Sanders’ oversimplistic approach (as is often his type of approach to many issues) is not and would harm the economy in many parts of America. For Sanders to try to portray Clinton as if she is somehow against American workers, as if she has not fought for a $15 minimum wage in important instances, and to attack her so strongly on this issue, to me does not seem fair. Sanders’ calling for a nearly 107%, unrealistic increase in the minimum wage across-the-board, period, and to attack Clinton’s over 65% increase—still a major, historic increase—is attacking someone who is still fighting hard on an important issue to most Democrats, just in a different way than Sanders, and seems to be splitting hairs on an issue where they are far closer than they are apart. I would also add that it is telling that Sanders wants to discuss who wants the higher federal minimum wage instead of actually discussing the actual policy itself and the differences between $12 in a rural area and $15 in NYC, between federal efforts and state and local efforts. Sanders should, if his mantras are to be believed, be better than hyperinflating such differences. 

One could be tempted to say the same for Clinton on Sanders with, say, guns, except that she is generally responding to attacks from Team Sanders that have been going on for months. If he is going have some major attacks that focus on minor differences, it is entirely reasonable that Clinton respond in kind. Further, I would argue that their differences in guns are more substantive than their differences on the minimum wage

Bernie, as was his usual response to the issue of gun violence, noted that he had a rating grade of a D- from the NRA. Hillary was very effective in attacking his votes that were in line with the interests of the NRA (for these he had a nuanced explanation, but for all the issues with Clinton where her votes are questionable, it’s black and white to him!), but she should have mentioned that her grade is an F, and while that might not seem like a big deal to some, Sanders voting against the Brady Bill five times and for shielding gun manufacturers from liability are not insignificant differences; they are differences that may very well account for lives lost and lives saved, and certainly account for the different grades they have received from the NRA and for why Clinton’s grade was lower than Sanders; even in the NRA’s view, Sanders did not do everything he could to restrict guns; in its view, Clinton did; otherwise, both candidates would have received and F. And, while only a tiny number of the overall traced guns from crime scenes in New York came from Vermont, Clinton is still absolutely right that Vermont had more guns per capita showing up in New York crime scenes than any other state, so using that statistic to point out that that laxer gun laws in Vermont have had negative consequences for New York—an effect outsized for its tiny population—is fair game when discussing gun policy in general before the New York state primary, since both Sanders and Vermont have been less tough on guns than Clinton and New York.

Israel, Palestine, and the Politics of Political Theater

The one moment where I was by far the most impressed by Sanders was when he was bold in speaking out on the plight of the Palestinian people. I have written numerous pieces in which I have been extremely critical of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians, of its tactics and strategy, of its occupation, of Netanyahu.  I agree with Sanders 100% that, overall, the military intervention in Gaza in the summer of 2014 was disproportionate. A part of me was disappointed that Clinton did not express some of the same sentiments time in her recent AIPAC speech that Sanders has expressed, but at the same time, Sanders did not make the comments in question to AIPAC, which he skipped and which would certainly have been hostile to his message, and made the comments instead in an interview with the New York Daily News. Rather, Hillary (understandably if not admirably) tailored her message in a close race with Sanders, where even some polls in NY had them close, and, while not denying Sanders’ points, certainly avoided discussing them at all in favor winning over America’s Jewish political establishment in what has been a difficult primary (with NY state voting soon after this speech, NY being home to a huge portion of America’s Jews and, therefore, the world’s) and looks to be a difficult general election, one in which Republicans will try to make Democrats and Clinton look weak in terms of support for Israel. Sanders, as an American Jew and as many Jews do, may feel freer to criticize Israel than Americans who are non-Jews. Sanders also made the aforementioned comments to the New York Daily News as someone whose chances of ever being president were very slim; months from now, when Sanders is not the nominee or the president, he will face little scrutiny, and pay few penalties, for uttering them. Yet, if Hillary Clinton had said these things the way Sanders had said them, she could very well pay a price in November in a close race with Trump, or even once in the White House as she seeks to engage Israel and win reelection.

I can’t fault Hillary for not taking a big political risk on publicly speaking out for Palestinians the way Sanders has, though I would have preferred that her AIPAC address contained more lines addressing the plight of the Palestinians. Playing her cards closer to her chest is more than warranted in this instance, and I take far more comfort in Clinton’s actions over her long career rather than ascribe much to her statements made on the campaign trail when it comes to demonstrating fairness to both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She came out for a Palestinian state as First Lady, before her husband, and when she was Secretary of State, she repeatedly criticized Israel and Netanyahu for their treatment of Palestinians and settlement expansion, both privately and publicly.

As admirable, then, as Sanders’ speaking on the plight of the Palestinians was, it also demonstrated how politically unsavvy he is.  And political savviness is a crucial trait that one trying to run the American political system and run one of its two major political parties must possess. Sanders was even forced to suspend his Jewish outreach coordinator after it was discovered just days before the NY primary that she had posted some very pointed criticism of Netanyahu, utilizing offensive language, on social media. It is entirely possible, even probable, that Sanders comments and the story of his outreach staffer may have cost him some Jewish support in NY; Clinton did, after all, outperform the final polling that was conducted in the state, and Sanders underperformed. If she campaigned strongly right now during the election for Palestinians rights, it might cost her votes in a crucial state like Florida, and if she lost the election, she would also lose her ability to push for those very rights even as she spoke for them on the campaign trail. Sure, she slyly dodged the issue at AIPAC and the debate, but doing so was simply smart if not admirable politics (the former often more effective than the latter in terms of public discourse), and her record shows that there is little reason to believe she won’t stick up for Palestinians while still vigorously defending Israel’s right to defend itself.

If only politics were as simple as simply saying what you think, directly, all the time, consequences be damned, then Bernie’s style would make sense. But it’s far more complicated. Sometimes politics involves holding your tongue, playing your cards close to your chests, not saying everything you believe, tailoring your message, waiting for the right time. People who support Bernie like him for generally doing none of these; even some people who don’t support him like him for the same reason. 

But politics is often a dance, a game, kabuki theater; in Bernie’s world, most people agree with him (the silent masses!), and if you just mobilize their support, presto! That’s how you get change done, that’s how you transform America from a plutocracy to one of shared socialist values.  And that is what Sanders and his supporters believe.

Except it’s never that simple, that is not the real world, that is not the real America. 

The bottom line is that such an approach has not made him a winner in this race (it was clear since Nevada he would not win, clearer since Super Tuesday I, and now only painfully, obviously clear to all but his most die-hard, delusional partisans). But even before this presidential campaign, his approach has only led him to pass one—just one—of his own bills in twenty-five years in Congress to Clinton’s ten bills in eight years. His mentality and worldview have not made him an effective legislator; relative to Sanders, Clinton was a very and far more effective legislator. Sanders might not realize this as deeply as he should, but there is a hell of a lot more to politics than simply standing up and saying what you believe. Millions of people in the streets may sound nice, but that is not how any major change came about in America, certainly not without numbers and leadership in Congress to back up such forces. As Sanders’ candidacy has proven beyond a doubt, filling tens of thousands of people in a park, street, or stadium is hardly representative of the level of support a candidate has: Sanders drew a remarkable 27,000 people to a rally in Washington Square in Manhattan about a week before the New York primary, yet lost 42% to 58% to Clinton, by about 300,000 votes.

Truce, Peace, or an Alliance with Sanders and Sandernistas?

I know I’ve been hard on Sanders, and his followers. I just don’t have much patience for “movements” that are clearly doomed from the start, that at best, succeed only in highlighting a few issues a bit more than usual, but that most often simply succeed in inflaming the passions of a minority of millions, filling their heads with unrealistic expectations, causing their hearts to swell with hope, a hope that will only be crushed and let down, feeding a roller coaster of emotions that crests mightily, continues to crest well-after all reason has warned them this will not end the way they envision, and inevitably leads to disappointment in one way or another. The Sanders “movement” is but one of many of such “movements,” and whether or not it is generally forgotten and just a minor blip on the political radar, has less to do with Sanders himself and more to do with whether his adherents buy into the two-party system, make their peace with reality, and start to work on their causes as active, registered members of the Democratic Party, bolstering it during mid-terms (when it has recently suffered losses), and thereby earning a seat at the table and a right to help steer the course of the Party, having put in their time, having voted with Democrats for repeated election cycles, have been there to withstand the onslaught or organized Republicans. Because what is perhaps most offensive to me about the typical Sandernista, besides the gleeful and inaccurate denigration of Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the sense of entitlement that most Bernie Sanders supporters—most of them non-(registered)-Democrats, independents, unaffiliateds, who are and have been supporting third-parties, whose inaction or misdirected action has been as responsible for the Tea Party takeover of Congress and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 as any other single group of people—feel that they automatically have the right to participate, take over, and lead the Democratic Party for which they have long held disdain and have not fought for over the years. 

Sorry, but you haven’t been with us, you haven’t supported us, not enough. If you get to take part in an open or mixed primary, good for you, welcome to the action, but this is rightfully at the discretion of state parties, and the state parties that say “Democrats only for the Democratic primary” are perfectly within rationality and their legal and political rights to make their contests closed to non-Democrats. Nothing entitles you to have power in my party, not when you’re not a member, not when you haven’t been there fighting on our side. 

Sure, we appreciate the level of enthusiasm you have displayed; now, let’s see if you have the patience and maturity to stay engaged over time and apply that enthusiasm to actually making a difference. Simply latching onto a single candidate in a single election cycle that you think will change everything is not only foolish, but is the lazy, easy way out, when far more is required of you as a citizen over far longer a period of time than months or one year. I could have—and did—say many of the same things about Obama supporters in 2008; we got a fine president in Obama, to be sure; but the “hope and change” he campaigned on in that election, the transformative persona that so many of his supporters believed in, turned out to be a big disappointment, to no surprise to me. And yet with Obama, even if that more emotional aspect of his appeal never came to fruition, we had a candidate and a president who at heart was also a deep, substantive thinker, and thus disaster was averted and a pretty decent presidency emerged where “hope and change” failed. I was able to proudly cast my vote for him in November, both in 2008 and 2012. Bernie Sanders, as he has amply demonstrated time and time again, in interview after interview (most clearly in the now infamous New York Daily News interview), is not a man of substance, is not a deep thinker. It would have been with a large sense of unease if I had to vote for him in November in order to prevent Trump from winning the White House.

So no, I will not apologize for not respecting your movement, for not respecting your candidate, for not respecting the awful way you and he have treated the remarkable if imperfect woman who will be our standard bearer this fall. I was right to declare war on you when you and your candidate were out of hand and going to far.

But now I offer an olive branch: I offer a truce if you reign in your atrocious attacks on her, if Sanders is careful to encourage you to do the same, if Sanders stops allowing crowds to loudly boo Hillary at his rallies, if he himself reigns in his attacks on Clinton and focuses primarily on the issues for which he has been such a vocal and passionate advocate, then I happily offer a truce. I offer peace if you vote for Hillary in the fall, and do your part to stop a Trump and Republican takeover of the government. And I offer an alliance if you will register as a Democrat, be there election after election including midterms, stick with the Party and try to slowly change it from within, and maturely note as adults that, like in any relationship, there will be times that the Democratic Party will disappoint you, and such are no times to childishly storm off and say “I’m through.” 

Believe me, I understand being frustrated with the Party; I thought a few times about leaving myself, so full of disappointed was I. But that is no way to help the party, to change it over time, to make a difference. And the sidelines are no place to be for anyone who claims to care about politics, their countrymen, their nation, is not place for doers; the sidelines are for the narcissists, the delusional, the selfish, the self-indulgent, the noisemakers. And it’s not about me, about whether or not I respect you or vice versa, about any personal anger you may or may not feel in reading this or any of my other pieces, comments, or tweets, or those of anyone else; it’s about whether or not Bernie Sanders supporters are mature enough to become part of the solution—swallowing some bitter pills, compromising, even putting up with some things and policies they don’t like (gasp!) in the interest of the greater good—rather than being part of the problem.

There will be no revolution, no unicorns. Just the same type of political warfare we’ve had for generations. You have two sides; you don’t have to love one or both, but you either pick the one that is closest to you on the issues and help it move policy and itself in the better direction on those issues, or you are irrelevant at best, or empowering the side that moves policy in the worse direction on the issues at worst. This is reality. Declaring war no reality has not worked out well for you or the Sanders campaign. But history will judge you if you declare war on reality, if you aren’t part of the solution, of the real fight for real change.

Bernie Sanders is a passionate, exceptional advocate for the small number yet incredibly important types of issues he has chosen to take up, and he has drawn in millions of people who, together with him, can make a difference if they are willing to dance. They don’t get to dance on their terms; newcomers seldom do, and if they try to dance on their terms, they will dance alone, in a void, with no music. And even someone like Hillary Clinton is very constrained by both the realities of the political system and the American electorate. Operating within those constraints, and knowing how to do so, is the key to success in politics. And Clinton has understood this from her days as an undergraduate; even then she pushed against the Saul Alinksy tactic for disruption, and passionately knew that the best way to affect change in a messy system was to take responsibility for that system by working to change it from within, something Clinton has done ever since her days as an undergraduate at Wellesley, as this must-read article notes. 

This is the difference between her and Sanders, the realist and the fantasist.

Sure, it would be wonderful to destroy what we don’t like about the system by simply willing and haranguing it away. But that does not happen in reality, revolutions are incredibly rare, successful ones even rarer, non-violent ones that are successful even rarer than that. 

Sanders and his supporters never had more of a chance than hope and prayer; it is now time for responsible citizens to come together and to stop dreaming of a longshot Hail Mary, to not to make demands on a front-runner who will have more than enough delegates to seal the nomination, but to roll up their sleeves, and to get ready for the long-hard work of bringing about real change, to not bank an entire critical election against a terrifying opponent and the fate of a nation to hope and a prayer, but to bet more solidly on thought-out plans of workable change within the constraints of present reality and to back a candidate with an actual record of bringing about change by working practically within the system.

To be fair to Sanders, he and his wife Jane have signaled and begun to demonstrate over the last few days that the campaign will be toning down its attacks on Clinton and that they have no plans to play a “spoiler” role or run as a third party. This is both a welcome and a necessary step, if overdue. If this is indeed what they are doing, this is great news for all of us.

Join Us and Vote Democratic in the Fall

George Takei/Facebook

I know many of you Sanders supporters are angry and bitter. But that’s life. I was angry and bitter in 2008 when Clinton lost to Obama, but I came around to support Obama by November; Clinton lost and I did not feel she was entitled to make any major demands. I was also bitter and angry when Kerry and Gore lost in 2004 and 2000, respectively. But I didn’t give up. 

George Takei’s recent eloquent plea to unite for this fall election, to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho, should not go unheeded. We are defined just as much by what we do in defeat as what we do in victory. Sore losers and sore winners are both noxious forces. Yet as a Hillary Clinton supporter, I don’t feel like we’ve won anything yet. It’s all about November. And it’s been clear since the last Republican debate that the Republicans will not be nearly as big a mess as liberals were hoping they would be, as I have noted before, and the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party will deny Trump the nomination if it comes to a contested convention, thereby leading to a Republican meltdown and schism and the Party’s destruction, is misleading, as I have also noted before. In other words, Democrats will face an organized and tough foe in the fall, one led by Trump, who has an unprecedented ability to play the media in his favor. Unless Trump and the Republicans are kept out of the White House, their hands kept far away from Supreme Court nominations, we will all have lost. Like it or not, you’re stuck with Clinton if you’re on the left. But it’s up to all of us to make sure we aren’t stuck with Trump and the Republican Party that produced and empowered his rise over many years of anti-intellectualism, nativism, hatred of government, of division. Love or hate Hillary, she is against all of these things. So the choice in November is no choice at all. Are you with me? Are you with her? Are you with us? Or will you help them, even by inaction or misdirected action?

I’m with her. And you should be too, Sandernistas. And who knows, once you see what she can do in power, maybe you will actually like her. Even if you never like her, you still have a part to play if you want to be a responsible citizen in stopping the Republicans and Donald Trump. It’s up to you to convince your most die-hard compatriots that Clinton is better than Trump and worth supporting against him.  Get to it!

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Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Maring Photography/Contour/Getty Images

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 21-22, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 21st, 2016 Updated February 22nd to discuss new polls

AMMAN — The contests of February 20th—a caucus for the Democrats in Nevada, a primary for the Republicans in South Carolina—will quite likely be remembered as the contests that set the final field for November, as the victors of each will now almost be impossible to stop given the realities of the here and now and the rapidly approaching nature of key contests.  There will be a lot of noise between now and when each candidate is the indisputable nominee, noise that will likely change very little in the end.

Clinton:

CNN

First, let’s discuss Hillary Clinton. After losing so badly in New Hampshire, Clinton had reason to be nervous: Bernie Sanders had a big wave of momentum he was riding from his big New Hampshire victory, momentum that was generating a lot of good media coverage and millions in new donations, while Team Clinton was beset by negative press coverage and a Sanders campaign that was out-fundraising a Clinton campaign that was finding it harder to bring in new money. Recent polls even showed a much closer race between her and Sanders nationally, and one Fox News poll even had him slightly ahead. To make matters worse, polling data on Nevada, the first contest after New Hampshire, was particularly sparse and known to be unreliable, and the few polls that did come out showed a very tight race between her and Sanders there. It was very possible that Sanders would win Nevada. In that situation, Sanders would then have won two, and barely lost one, out of the first four contests; in such a situation, Clinton could have seen her sizable lead in South Carolina shrink (even if not overcome), raising questions about how loyal key Clinton constituencies would be going into Super Tuesday. A narrative of significantly weakening support would be one of the last things she needed at this point.

As I wrote earlier, Nevada was going to be an opportunity for Sanders to steal some support from Latinos and African-Americans, the latter being such a crucial demographic in next Saturday’s upcoming South Carolina Democratic primary and in the following Super Tuesday contests a few days later; Sanders’ coalition had thus far been narrow, and it would be do-or-diefor him to win voters from more diverse backgrounds than his largely white and liberal base.   A debate shortly before Nevada was a chance for him to gain with these groups, but this he failed to do as Clinton skillfully targeted her message to address the concerns of these groups, compared with his more modest attempts to speak to them using that national stage. When the Nevada caucuses finally happened, Sanders lost by a clear margin and did terribly with black voters, and while the entrance poll showed he won Latinos, 1.) most (about 90%) of those people were surveyed when the poll results showed Sanders beating Clinton in the early wave and only about 10% were surveyed after the initial wave, when far more people went for Clinton, 2.) there are difficulties in accurately polling Latinos in these situations, and 3.) the preponderance of evidence showed that Clinton outperformed Sanders with Latinos, showing that she did very well in the most heavily Latino precincts, so despite a confusing entrance poll, it seems Sanders did not beat Clinton with Latinos.

More importantly for Clinton’s immediate concerns, she demolished Sanders in terms of support for African-Americans one week before the South Carolina Democratic primary on February 27th, when huge numbers of black voters will participate. With Clinton already leading by a spread that ranges 18-38 points in South Carolina, there is almost no way to envision Sanders, after Nevada, breaking into this lead in a significant way with less than a week to go. And just a few days after that, on March 1st’s Super Tuesday, eleven states, including delegate-rich Texas, vote, with a significant portion of the overall delegates for the whole contest being awarded that day and many of the contests taking place in states with diverse population far more inclined to support Clinton.

Nine days from today is not much time for Sanders to stave off crushing defeats in almost all those states as Clinton has huge double-digit leads in nearly every state, many by more than 20 percentage points. There is no sign that Sanders’ narrow message will be able to broad support in time, but even if he altered his message now it is almost certainly too late.  This clear win in Nevada and a likely blowout in South Carolina will do nothing to dramatically shift the overall picture in Sanders’ favor, and with Clinton’s already huge lead in delegates that’s about to get astronomically huge in a matter of days, and with a large number of other states voting just days and weeks after the first Super Tuesday contests throughout March, it is almost impossible to see a path for Sanders’ winning the nomination absent a health crisis for Clinton or an FBI indictment related to its probe of the handling of subsequently classified material in relation to Clinton’s personal e-mail server, both extremely unlikely scenarios despite loud right-wing claims to the contrary regarding the latter.

Sanders did have a viable path to the nomination that still would have been difficult but far from impossible to achieve: a win in Nevada, a show of clear gains with African-Americans and/or Latinos heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday, and picking up sizable numbers of delegates in the process of all this through early March. Now, that simply won’t happen, not in time for these key contests; the idea that huge masses of voters who already have not will quickly and suddenly buy into his objectively unrealistic program and its near-zero chances of being implemented are tiny and decreasing every day as time runs out. Instead, Clinton will be picking up more money and positive media coverage and more endorsements just when she needs to, and will almost certainly win the nomination.

The Nevada caucus will go down as the moment when Clinton secured her path that led to her nomination.

Andrew Harrer

Trump:

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Now, it’s time to discuss Trump. I’ve been saying since early August that Trump was in a good position to win the nomination. Trump was expected to win big in South Carolina’s February 20th Republican Primary, and even when, just days before the contest, he attacked George W. Bush’s presidency, got into a fight with the pope, and said nice things about Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, he still won the state by 10 percentage points and won every delegate at stake, shutting out his opponents. As a result, Trump is without a doubt the clear front-runner and is now likely to win the nomination, and Republican elites are in full panic mode, desperate to find someone to topple him from his lead position. It was clear even before this contest that the at least a big chunk of Establishment Republicans wanted Rubio to be their man (especially clear when they packed the audience with people very favorable to Rubio and Bush and hostile to Trump and Cruz at the last debate in South Carolina just days before the primary). Yet the Establishment pinning its hopes on Rubio to dislodge Trump is a fool’s move for a fool’s quest: the idea that a candidate who came in 3rd in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire, and 2nd in South Carolina (barely edging a 3rd-place Ted Cruz there) is somehow going to now win a bunch of states and delegates is truly absurd; I would be impressed if he wins more than a couple of the next few contests, and it is quite possible he will not win of them, given that Trump is dominating almost every poll in almost every state. It is hard to see Rubio getting a significant bounce after just losing to Trump by ten points and barely edging Cruz.

The Establishment may not want to admit it, but, as I pointed out before, Rubio is a weak and shallow candidate who wilts under pressure. And that does not even go into how vulnerable Rubio is on the hot-button issue of immigration in the eyes of Republican primary voters. There are four other candidates still in the race besides Rubio, and to simply assume that Jeb Bush voters who had have favored the graying, experienced, moderate former Governor will mainly flock to a junior freshman Senator who possesses none of the experience or gravitas that Bush does and is far less moderate is quite a faulty assumption; if anyone is likely to gain the most from Bush’s departure, it will be Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who may yet outperform Rubio when more moderate states get to have their say. Rubio has no victories so far (don’t let his speeches behaving as if he has actually won anything fool you), and Cruz’s only victory has been Iowa, on the backs of Evangelicals, who now seem to be favoring Trump and clearly did so in South Carolina. Dr. Carson will still keep many die-hard Evangelicals away from Cruz, and Cruz’s best bet for a big win, Texas, is a state that will divide delegates up proportionately in a way that will minimize any delegate lead from that state Cruz will have over Trump, there while some other states that are winner-take-all could favor Trump over his rivals.

What’s more, while all the remaining Trump rivals save Kasich have raised and spent large amounts of money, Trump has dramatically less compared to Cruz, Rubio, and Carson (and, including PACs, less than Kasich, too), winning with minimal effort in terms or organization and money. Trump is essentially dominating with one hand tied behind his back.

Obama’s victory was fueled by a lot of passion, but also a lot of money and a top-notch organization; Sanders is also fueled by passion, but is also raising and spending a lot of money; alone in the modern era, Trump is winning almost solely on passion and media exposure. This is remarkable and unprecedented. Furthermore, Trump has played his rivals so skillfully that most of them save their fiercest attacks for each other, and the only ones who took him on strongly and consistently have now dropped out, most notably Bush. Imagine if Rubio seems to truly be gaining steam, and Trump starts to actually spend money and organize heavily, or to focus his attacks on Rubio… No, Rubio will almost certainly not be taking Trump down. Cruz will almost certainly not be taking Trump down even more so.

Fresh off his victory, Trump heads into the February 23rd Nevada Republican caucuses, where polls even before his big South Carolina win already had him an overwhelming favorite; a win there seems extremely likely, and that would be three wins in a row going and a lot of momentum going into Super Tuesday and beyond, contests where he is dominating in most polls in most states; a dominant, delegate-accumulating performance early in March will only further lead to more success as many more states vote later in March. The window for someone else to come out on top in such a short period of time is dramatically low, and probably beyond Rubio’s capabilities.

Getty Images

Rubio being taken down by Christie in the New Hampshire debate, Cruz not winning Evangelicals in South Carolina, and Trump’s dominant victories in both states will remembered as the events that sealed the deal for Trump and doomed Rubio and Cruz.

*****

It’s obvious now to those who follow these kinds of things that the tops of the tickets in November will almost certainly be Clinton and Trump; in a few weeks’ time, it will be undeniable to just about everyone.

Update 2/22: Brand-new polls in Massachusetts and Michigan are very telling; a poll conducted 2/19-2/21 in Massachusetts, state that would supposedly have support for more moderate candidate’s, has Trump blowing out his competition 50 to Rubio’s 16, Kasich’s 13, and Cruz’s 10.  Even if this poll is somewhat off, it suggest a certain win for Trump.  Another poll has him doubling the support of his nearest competitor in Michigan (35 to Kasich’s 17 and Rubio, Cruz each with 12).  If a non-Trump can’t win moderate Massachusetts and/or Michigan, and if Trump can win states like those and South Carolina, the rest of the process will just be a formality.

For Clinton, as I’ve noted before, Bernie’s base is mainly white liberals, and the state with the most white liberals is Vermont (Bernie’s home state), the 2nd most New Hampshire (Bernie’s only victory so far), and Iowa and Massachusetts are tied for 3rd; Bernie only came close to a tie in the Iowa caucus and the new poll has her tied with Clinton in Massachusetts; if he can’t win the two states that are tied for being the third most favorable to him, his appeal is truly remarkably narrow, indeed, and he will have virtually zero chance of winning the nomination.  Like most other states, Michigan was polled as having Clinton up significantly, 53-40.

Every day, Trump vs. Clinton in November becomes more and more certain.

Getty Images

See an expansion of this analysis in a follow-up piece here discussing (the first) Super Tuesday

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

The events of the past summer and fall have clearly shown that there is only one major political party for rational, thinking adults in America, and here you will see the eleven major events from this period that have shown beyond all reasonable doubt that the Republican Party is no longer a serious political party and that only the Democrat Party provides Americans with an actual ability to govern.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 13, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 13, 2015

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

AQABA, EILAT, HAIFA, and TEL AVIV — An extraordinary series of events has occurred over the past few months: more so than at any other time in recent decades and possibly far longer than that, the American people have been treated to an exceptionally clear, stark contrast between its two major political parties. The contrast clearly shows there is a moderately-left-of-center Democratic Party that is inclusive, interested in governance, and pursues data/study-informed policy competing with a far-right, being-pushed-farther-to-the-right Republican Party that is exclusive, hates government, and is increasingly basing its positions on fear, irrationality, emotion, and anti-intellectualism.

Several events of late have made this contrast absolutely clear:

1.) Trump and Trumpism

When Donald Trump exploded onto the scene this summer, he immediately catapulted to the top spot in the Republican race and has held steady nationally there and in most states ever since, only recently sharing that spot with Dr. Ben Carson. There is no equivalent to The Donald on the left, or anywhere else, for that matter. That a loud-mouthed, brawling TV personality and real estate magnate like Donald Trump could rise to dominate the Republican Party is a uniquely Republican phenomenon.

The contrast is clear: if there was someone like Trump running for president now on the Democratic side, he would be shunned as a fringe candidate by Democratic voters and would likely not have even been invited to participate in the debates. There is not a chance the Democrats would flock to a Trump the way Republicans have, and this is a glaringly obvious difference.

Furthermore, his style of trading playground insults, making grandiose claims without providing details, and constantly describing one’s self in an unending stream of superlatives (“HUGE” and “THE BEST”) is simply anathema to the Democrats’ style: they have preferred candidates who are more measured, wonkish, and specific for many years.

2.) Everything about the Iran nuclear deal

I have written about this before, so I will just reiterate here: on an issue of such momentous and historic importance as finally being able to thaw our-decades-long cold war with Iran, the Republican Party has shown itself to not only to be blindly ignorant of the real world consequences having this deal or not having this deal, but also of the very basics of how diplomacy and international negotiation work. As I wrote previously, there simply is no logical argument against this deal when it stacked up against the real-world feasible alternatives. Republican (and Israeli) opposition only takes us far closer to war, further instability, and nuclear proliferation. In addition, the Republicans showed they were far from above treating this issue in the most partisan manner possible. That the GOP is willing to play politics with global war and peace and issues of national security is not something lost on the experts, and even some major Republicans who have held significant security-related positions in the past, like Gen. and Sec. of State Colin Powell, Sec. of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and NSA Director Zbigniew Brezinski, have come out for it. But the people in the driver’s seat of today’s Republican Party did not seem to notice this. Many others will.

3.) The Republican debates

One after the other, the Republican main-stage debates provided a juvenile attempt at kow-towing to the base and trading insults in an atmosphere of fantastical illogic, devoid of substance and reason. The most substantive candidates were relegated to the sidelines, while the least qualified and most foolish were front and center. The leading Republicans candidates tended to focus on issues that are hardly the main issues affecting the American people: a blatant distortion of Planned Parenthood resulting from some highly edited videos, thus returning to the culture-war issue of abortion, along with a heavy and illogical focus on illegal immigration and vague talk of “leadership” in international affairs. The first two debates, especially, had a real circus-like atmosphere, while the third saw the candidates behave as if they finally realized they looked like a circus in the previous two and then saw them unite to whine about the so-called “liberal media” asking unfair (i.e., tough) questions. This is from the party that says Obama is not tough enough to stand up to ISIS, China, and Putin, but who cry like babies because of a few low-stature cable news moderators giving them a tough time. Most recently, Dr. Carson has engaged in a megawhinefest just because the media is asking reasonable questions about his background and his rather shocking claims on everything from boyhood fights to the Egyptian pyramids. I have not seen the latest GOP debate, but from all the coverage I have seen, little seems to have changed.

4.) Relative position of more extreme candidates in terms of support in Republican, Democratic Parties

While I touched on this in the last section, this point is important enough to make it separately: in the Republican race, generally the crazier less serious the candidate, the more popular that candidate is with Republican voters: hence, Trump and Dr. Carson are vying to be #1. Rubio seems to be a semi-exception in the #3 spot, but the champions of irrationality and foolishness can be happy again with Ted Cruz solidly in the #4 spot. That’s right: 1, 2, and 4 are extremists who say the most outlandish things. One can accuse Bernie Sanders with some fairness being a relatively extreme candidate in terms of his rhetoric, and he is a declared socialist. And yet, Sanders has pretty much always been far behind Clinton nationally, and never been close to being supported by a majority of democratic voters. He has only led temporarily in two states (Iowa and NH) and has since lost ground to Clinton who now leads handily in Iowa and is neck-and-neck in NH. Clinton is a moderate, pragmatic, and practical politician who is focused on results and not ideology or crowd-pleasing rhetoric. So, with the Democrats, the electable, mature, more serious candidate has dominated almost entirely, while the on the Republican side the candidate who is a verbal brawler and has no political experience—Trump—has dominated the race national and locally since he announced his candidacy and now shares the top spot with Dr. Carson, who has zero political experience as well and is a virtual wind-up-toy that spews nonsense and offensive commentary non-stop. The contrast in the thoughts and composition and maturity of the two parties could not be clearer.

5.) The Planned Parenthood “scandal”

It is a well known fact that in general, Republicans oppose abortion. Less well known factually is that Planned Parenthood is not an organization whose primary purpose is to provide abortions and access to them, but, rather, focuses on a variety of other health services to women; abortion accounts for only about 3% of its activities for roughly 12% of its clients. But Republicans don’t seem to want to know such details, and seek to 1.) frame the organization as “an abortion factory” and 2.) to completely defund all government funding for the organization regardless of how it would negatively impact the 97% of non-abortion activities and how that would harm millions of women who otherwise have limited access to certain health services. The Republicans have made so much noise about this you would think it is both the #1 issue on the minds of Americans and the #1 issue in terms of importance (it is hardly either). They have also engaged in outright massive distortion of the issue, trying to portray Planned Parenthood as some sort of organization that is focused mainly on abortion and on harvesting organs from live babies to sell to research organizations based on a few isolated, misinterpreted anecdotes. Republicans even went to the extent of the threat of a government shutdown over the funding of this organization; basically, the House, controlled by the Republicans, would refuse to pass any spending bill that would include funding for Planned Parenthood, including routine bills to increase the debt ceiling (without which the United States would default on its debt payments and jeopardize its credit rating) and keep the government fully open and functioning; such bills completely defunding Planned Parenthood would not pass the Senate and would not come anywhere near enough the two-thirds support required in either the House or the Senate to overcome a presidential veto from Obama.

And as far as the Democrats distorting an issue and an organization that provides invaluable services to women’s health and trying to defund said organization by using the threat (on ANY issue!) of a government shutdown and/or the U.S. defaulting on its debt obligation? Yeah, that’s just the Republicans, 110%.

6.) The first Democratic debate

By the time the first Democratic debate occurred, the Republicans had made clear to the world what they were about and how they conducted themselves. In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton engaged with Bernie Sanders in a relatively substantive discussion that showed they had a command of the issues and that was mostly cordial, polite, and focused on problems that Americans are actually concerned about. The discussion was more about policy and less about rhetoric, slogans, and talking points. Even the “attacks” that came most often from the (distantly) second-tier candidates were low-intensity and far more civil than the insults being flung at the Republican debates. But even the fringe candidates came off as serious and able to discuss issues of substance in a way the Republican front-runners have generally been unable to do. Jim Webb, the conservative Democrat who dropped out after the first debate, would immediately be one of the more substantive candidates in a Republican debate.

So, on the Republican stage, you have a massive clown car stealing center stage, and the substantive people are kept of the car and struggle to be relevant in the race; on the Democratic stage, the most serious candidates dominate, and even the lesser candidates behave like relatively substantive adults. That’s about as different as it gets.

7.) The Benghazi hearing fiasco

I wrote quite a bit about this before, so I will just give a brief summary here: a bunch of junior upstart House Republicans decided it would be a great idea to investigate Hillary Clinton on Benghazi even though there have been eight previous investigations (one State, two Senate, and five Republican-led House investigations) that did not succeed in tearing her down. Their committee uncovers Hillary’s ill-fated decision to use a private e-mail server in her home for her work as Secretary of State and, rather than focus on Benghazi, it focuses on her e-mails. Several Republicans came out and admitted that this is a political witch hunt. The Republican upstarts then confront Hillary Clinton, one of the most seasoned and experienced and articulate politicians still in service in America, in an eleven-hour public hearing that totally exposes them for the ill-prepared, ignorant, imbalanced, rude, and partisan hacks that they are while practically turning the hearing into a campaign commercial highlighting Clinton’s many strengths. On top of that, her fellow Democrats on the Committee fully exposed the hypocrisies, falsehoods, and inconsistencies in the behavior of the committee’s Republicans. Basically, the GOP came off looking like total ignorant fools whose partisanship knows no bounds and in front of the whole nation and they succeeded in enhancing Clinton’s national position greatly by sending such underwhelming nobodies to take on the force of nature known as Hillary Clinton.

8.) Pope Francis comes to America

Pope Francis came to America recently. Besides moving Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner to tears (repeatedly!), Pope Francis reminded Americans that Christians can at least have the ability to be loving, kind, inclusive, open, warm, and fun. In other words, cool. Like Pope Frank. We even found out that the Pope did not want to meet right-wing intolerantand religiously crazy Kim Davis and that his people distanced the Pope from herafter the “meeting” was made public. Basically, Frank was letting America know that he did not endorse her views, actions, or brand of Christianity. Yet Kim Davis’s Evangelical version of Christianity—intolerant, hypocritical, imposing, harsh, exclusive, judgmental, and white ethno-centric/nationalistic—is the version that the Republican Party has embraced; Francis’s Catholicism, on the other hand, was a stark contrast as he surrounded himself with the poor and people of color and all nationalities during his visit. A Republican Francis ain’t.

9.) The exit of John Boehner

Partly moved by the Pope’s visit, partly frustrated with being one of the only pragmatic, practical, and realistic voices in the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and getting little love on the right or the left for his heroic and taxing roles in preventing government shutdowns, longtime conservative and Republican leader and Speaker of the House John Boehner surprised Washington with his resignation. The Republican base cheered, making it clear they felt there was no room in their party for pragmatic compromisers. As a parting gifts to America, Boehner avoided a shutdown and then rammed through a spending bill to prevent further shutdown fights for the next two years, with mostly Democratic and only modest Republican support. When the Republican party base and many of the Republican presidential candidates complaining that Boehner isn’t conservative enough and cooperated too much with Obama, it’s clear something is rotten in the state of Denmark…

10.) The rise of Carson and Carsonism

Add the inexperience of trump, but take away Trump’s brawling approach and the desire to actually govern and add a whole lot of right-wing Christian religious gibberish, and you get the soft-spoken Dr. Ben Carson. Carsonism combines the lack of political and governance experience of trump with an even higher level of irrationality and the big addition of the Evangelical Christian worldview, based wholly on nonsense. His unexpected rise to the tophas confounded all stripes of pundits and is even more shocking than the rise of Trump (I personally predicted Trump would be a force to be reckoned with but dismissed Carson almost immediately and was definitely wrong about his ability to gain voter support). Together, he and Trump speak for half of Republicans, and when you add in support for the super-Christians Cruz and Huckabee, you get closer to two/thirds of Republicans that are for Trumpism, Carsonism, or a governing style awash with Evangelical Christianity. Carson is a combination of Trump and Cruzism/Huckabeeism, which can be said to make him worse because there is even more content undeserving of respect in governance. Like Trump (and like Cruz and Huckabee), there is no equivalent on the left that has any real support. Just another crystal-clear contrast.

11.) The fall of Bush

Finally, we have the failure of the Bush campaign. Yes, I am already calling it a failure because I just don’t see how he comes back from where he is now(and where he’s been for some time) to win the nomination. I come to bury Bush, not to praise him, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, so I’m not saying Bush is great. But especially in this field of Republicans, Jeb Bush speaks with a moderation in tone and language the leaders of his field do not, and has some moderate policy positions to back that up that they do not. He has years of experience in politics and governance, and while not a good governor, it is hard to argue he was awful in the mold of, say, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, and at the very least, he stakes out reasonable positions on immigration and on not using the threat of government shutdowns to achieve political goals. This makes him a dramatically more reasonable candidate that those leading the Republican field, and yet, even with $100 million in PAC money, Bush is at best in the middle of the second-tier candidates, polling in single digits; he is also in fifth-place even in Florida, where he was governor for eight years. Just like Boehner not doing well with his own party, if a man like Bush is losing to the likes of Trump, Carson, and Cruz, that says a heck of a lot about the party.

*****

Yes, when all this is added together, it is clear: we have one party with a strong majority ready to project a strong, experienced, accomplished, mature, and moderate candidate to the American people, and you have another party with a majority of voters ready to project weak candidates devoid of relevant experience, who engage in either brawling public spats of a childish nature or spew irrational conspiracy theories and extremist Christian theology as a substitute for an actual political campaign. The majority of the top Republican candidates and a majority of their voters are committing seppuku (Japanese samurai ritual suicide), disemboweling themselves in front of all of America. Hillary is looking with bemused disdain at the mess to her right, and is marching forward past the mess, along with the majority of her party and what should be a clear majority of the American public come November 2016. The nearly certain inevitable result—the return of the Clintons to the White House—will belong to Hillary and her coalition, but it will in no small part also come about because of the insanity of the Republican Party and in all the many ways this was made obvious in the summer and fall of 2015.

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Republican “Debate” Circus Round 2: Trump vs. Fiorina and Why the Kids’-Table Debate Was Better

Scott Walker’s Weak Wisconsin Record (and What His Candidacy Says About Today’s GOP)

The State of Illegal Immigration 2015: Reality vs. Republican Fantasy

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)