Praying for a moment of epiphany.

For years now, I have come to expect to see a police presence at high holiday services. I first noticed it a decade or so ago at our synagogue in Media, Pennsylvania. One or two police officers showed up in a radio car. It was at once comforting and disconcerting. It was comforting because, like many parts of the United States, Delaware County had its lunatic fringe. It was disconcerting because it was a reminder that, once again, Jews were understood to be outsiders in a Christian society.

This year, living in Boulder, Colorado, I thanked the Boulder police officer who stood by the door as I walked in to Kol Nidre services, the evening service that marks the beginning of Yom Kippur. The police presence struck me as odd, as Boulder is a college town on the edge of the mountains that feels safer than Media with respect to the possibility of random acts of hatred. Then I recalled that the Denver area has had more than its share of tragic mass shootings.

As saddened and disheartened as I felt – and continue to feel – upon hearing of the mass shooting by Robert Bowers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, as well as Cesar Sayoc's failed pipe bomb plot, I was not surprised. Those attacks – along with the murder the same week of two African Americans at a convenience store in Louisville, Kentucky after the killer failed to gain access to the black church down the street – seemed to be inevitable outcomes of the path we have been heading down as a nation.

Nor was I surprised by the public response to the attacks on social media or in the public square. Fox anchor Lou Dobbs and right-wing icon Rush Limbaugh spoke for the masses of defenders of Donald Trump across social media when they immediately decried the pipe bombs as a "false flag" operation; a plot by instigators on the left – libtards in the right-wing social media vernacular – to make Republicans look bad in advance of the election. Any suggestion that the past several years of hate-filled rhetoric from the President might have emboldened Sayoc and Bowers was unacceptable to commentators whose own words mirrored the contempt so often evinced by the President.

Playing on racial animus as a means to political advantage has been central to Donald Trump's public persona, dating back to the Birther movement and his attacks on the Central Park Five. In the early months of 2016 presidential primary season, he foreshadowed how his flirtations with racist supporters on the right would play out eighteen months later in Charlottesville, with his stumbling, reluctant disavowal of the endorsement of his candidacy by David Duke. House Speaker Paul Ryan scolded Trump for his ambiguous language and cozying up to the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard with words that have long since been rendered quaint. "If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln." Mitt Romney, the standard bearer of the GOP barely three years earlier, similarly chimed in, suggesting that "the coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of America."

But Trump would quickly prove the two erstwhile Republican leaders wrong. Sayoc and Bowers – like the Nazis that paraded through the streets of Charlottesville – read the signals from Donald Trump that attitudes once deemed unacceptable now have a place at the table in our partisan world. Two years ago, when Ryan and Romney lambasted Trump for sidling up to the Klan, they thought that they were leaders of a Republican Party whose members would follow them. Nine months later, the Never Trump movement collapsed and Republican voters stood foursquare behind Donald Trump as their nominee. Now, almost two years into his presidency, he enjoys the highest approval rating among Republicans of any president on record.

And Donald Trump has not changed. Not one iota. As with his grudging disavowal of David Duke's endorsement and his weak-tea rebuke of Nazis in Charlottesville, Trump was quick to follow up his critical words toward Cesar Sayoc and Robert Bowers with a return to the vitriolic campaign rhetoric that nurtured their hatreds and – at least in their minds – gave license to their actions. Trump did describe Sayoc and Bowers as evil; but evil is a term he throws around loosely. Just a few weeks ago, he declared Democrats en masse to be evil – to the vocal dissent of his outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, but few others of note – and no doubt he will do so again soon.

What changed were Republicans themselves. Of the two-thirds who disavowed him early on, a large share have simply chosen to turn a blind eye to the President's willingness to pander to extremists within his base, whether out of enthusiasm for tax cuts, for slashing the regulatory state, or for the appointment of conservative judges. Others convinced themselves that Trump's willingness to confront China or play nice with North Korea offered the prospect of benefits that outweighed the damage that he might do to the fabric of the nation along the way. The simple truth is that Donald Trump did not create the conditions that has led synagogues to need police protection – or even to the mailing of pipe bombs – but the exacerbation of those conditions are the bricks and mortar upon which he has built his political movement. It is the willingness of mainstream Republicans – who in another era might have rejected Trump because of his abject coddling of bigotry – to go along for the ride that has brought us to where we find ourselves today.

Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham and one of Donald Trump's earliest and most vocal supporters in the evangelical community, commented on Facebook that he was shocked when he heard about the pipe bombs sent to many Democrat leaders. "Disagreeing with someone's politics or their stand on issues does not justify violence, harassment, or intimidation tactics." But he shouldn't have been shocked. Of all people, he should have learned that language matters back when the vitriol of the anti-abortion movement in the 1980s and 1990s led to killings at women's health clinics. Evangelical leaders at the time didn't pull the trigger or detonate the bombs, but they created the conditions in which their followers felt license to do what they did. Yet Graham has excused Trump's worst excesses every step of the way, even as Trump has routinely applauded harassment, reveled in intimidation tactics, and condoned violence by his supporters against the press and his opponents. How else would one interpret Trump assuring his supporters that he will pay their legal bills if they "knock the crap out of" someone.

The anger and deep sadness that I have felt in the wake of the mass shooting in the Tree of Life synagogue is not just about the attack itself, but in knowing that those killings, as well as the murders in Louisville and the attempted pipe bombings were inevitable. From the moment in June 2015 when Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower and announced his candidacy, he let the world know that he intended to use conspiracy and hate mongering to bond himself to his base, and he has remained stridently true to that plan. In the ensuing years, he has relished his role as an instigator of partisan rhetoric, and in the social media world, he has turned up the heat in a landscape where threatening language and simmering rage has become widespread. It seemed only a matter of time before that language and rage was translated into action.

To paraphrase Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, it does not matter if Donald Trump believes that Democrats are evil and the media are enemies of the people, what matters is if his supporters believe that he believes it. (I actually do not believe that personal animus enters into much of what he does, which makes his indifference to the impact of his words all the more pernicious). Then you apply Dick Cheney's "one percent" counterterrorism doctrine: if one percent of Trump's 60 million supporters take his rhetoric seriously, and one percent of those who take him seriously decide to act on those words, then there are 6,000 crazies out there ready to take up where Sayoc and Bowers left off.

When I think about those who died at the Tree of Life synagogue, I think about the long chain of events that led us to a place where police stand at the ready when Jews gather to worship. I think about those who continue to support Donald Trump, ignoring or excusing how he has emboldened racists and bigots who for so long have been shunned from our politics. And I wonder, as the City of Pittsburgh buries those who died at the hands of a man who declared “There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation,” whether some of them might finally have a moment of epiphany and reject a President who sees all of this hatred as nothing less than a means to his own advancement.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit! To Save Our Democracy, It’s Time to Let Alabama Be Alabama and Set California Free."

Artwork by Joe Dworetzky. Check out Joe's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

Angela's story.

Angela, a friend I have known for many years, called last week to tell me her story.[1]  She was raped when she was 14 years old.

"He was a popular boy. No, actually, he was 18, not a boy.  He was a senior on our hometown high school football team. He was from a respected family. He was one of my brothers’ close friends. I was 14 years old. He was just supposed to give me a ride home."

She never said a word to anyone. She did not report it to the police. She did not call the FBI. She lived in the real world.

"I lived in a small, rural town that lived for Friday night high school sports, and high school sports heroes. I would have been shamed, blamed, not believed, diminished, insulted, my reputation ruined.

"I would have risked social relationships. I would have risked familial relationships. I would have risked those all too important college recommendation letters from the powers that be in every high school.

"Yes. I kept my mouth shut. I said nothing."

Sexual assault and learning to listen to victims has been an area of societal growth over the past years, but this week demonstrated how far we have yet to go. I grew up in Boston, where rumors of sexual abuse of boys within the Boston Archdiocese were flatly denied for years before the dam finally broke. As men, those boys could offer little ‘corroborating evidence’ of the crimes against them. At the end of the day, the Church – and society at large – was forced to recognize that the lack of such ‘evidence’ did not mean that the crimes were not real.

Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee chose from the very beginning to evade acknowledging this. And, make no mistake, it was a choice; denying the validity of Christine Blasey Ford's story was a matter of political expediency. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham demonstrated the urgency of the political moment when he became a vocal leader of those Senators who prefer to dismiss Dr. Blasey Ford’s story, and chose to set aside his own searing experience as a military prosecutor of rape cases while in the Air Force

"I tried rape cases that still bother me," Graham wrote in 2016, "including the prosecution of several GIs who had gang raped a young German girl. She was just destroyed by it. I learned how much unexpected courage from a deep and hidden place it takes for a rape victim or sexually abused child to testify against their assailants. Trying to get a scared, confused, little kid or a young woman who feels the best part of her life is over to recall a memory that their every psychological impulse is trying to suppress is not something you forget. It has stayed with me ever since."

Like that German girl, Angela feared the impact of confronting her assailant. She did not say anything, determined not to let her rapist ruin her life.

"I would have been the victim. It would have been my fault. All of the boys would have rejected me. The teachers would have been uncomfortable around me. The ones who were also sports coaches would have been angry, and my lifeline to something bigger than my little hometown would have slipped away. No, I kept my mouth shut because speaking as a victim would have only driven me deeper into the victim experience." 

Instead, as a 14 year-old girl, alone with the pain of the rape she had just endured, she steadied her courage and fought to keep her focus on her future.

"Had I spoken out at that point in time, it was clear to me that my lifeline to something bigger and better would have been cut. I needed to stay on my feet. I needed those references and teacher recommendations if I was going to make it out of that small town.  And I did make it out and, with a lot of hard work, graduated from Princeton, then Harvard Business School and have had a long career now in tech and entrepreneurship.

"But back then, no, I did not say a word. When I was 14, the price was too high. But it was all wrong."

Angela only told her story this week for the same reason that so many other women have come forward to tell their stories. Because decades of silence do not mean that something did not happen. Because lack of 'corroborating evidence' does not mean that a crime did not occur.

"I knew that if he was suddenly nominated for a lifetime appointment to the pinnacle of justice in our oh-so-wounded democracy, yes, I would come forward now. Any person who lacks an innate respect for those more vulnerable in their midst belongs not on the Supreme Court."

Angela told her story because of the deep pain she is experiencing in the wake of the Kavanaugh debate. She has come a long way, a successful entrepreneur, with a beautiful family. Yet here we are in 2018 – almost four decades after that otherwise ordinary afternoon when she stepped out of that car, all alone – and she finds that her children are subject to a national spectacle that tells them, "yet once again, to keep their mouths shut if they are harmed."

Years later, Angela did tell her mother. But almost four decades have passed and she never told her brothers about their friend, who raped her. He moved on with his life, seemingly oblivious to the impact that afternoon in a car had on her. "He sent me a friend request on Facebook. Really?"

With the week's respite they have been granted, each Senator should step back and take a lesson from the experiences of the Catholic Church. The desire to ignore the reality of sex crimes in one's midst is powerful; but the lies and cover-ups will only deepen the personal and political consequences for each of them, for the Senate, and for the Court – just as it did for the Boston Archdiocese.

As hard as it may be for those in the midst of the battle to believe, this is not just about politics. It is about the secret pain carried silently for decades by millions of women –young girls like Angela and the German girl that Lindsey Graham represented years ago – who were told by society "to keep their mouths shut." And it is about choosing to stop perpetuating a society that forces victims to remain silent as a matter of self-preservation.

____________________
[1]  Angela worked with me on the writing of this blog. Her name and some identifying details were changed at her request.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit! To Save Our Democracy, It’s Time to Let Alabama Be Alabama and Set California Free."

Guerrilla warfare in the GOP.

As Crazytown erupted last week with the publication of excerpts from Bob Woodward new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, and the anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times, it was easy to dismiss the lurid stories of deceit and betrayal as just more evidence of the chaos and backstabbing that has characterized the Trump White House since the beginning. Jeb Bush, the early frontrunner for the Republican nomination, warned early on during the Republican primaries that Donald Trump was a chaos candidate who would be a chaos President. And so he has turned out to be. What's more, by all accounts he likes it that way.

There is certainly nothing earth-shattering in hearing more stories quoting anonymous sources about senior administration officials trashing their boss. Even before Michael Wolff published Fire and Fury earlier this year, we had been treated to stories of Rex Tillerson, John Kelly and Jim Mattis – along with any number of lesser lights – making snarky comments behind Donald Trump's back. No doubt Bob Woodward brings greater credibility and attention to detail to bear on the subject than Wolff did, but as troubling as the widely circulated stories from Woodward's book might be, none of it is particularly surprising.

The anonymous op-ed mirrors Woodward's accounts of senior Trump officials taking it upon themselves to undermine the President's agenda. The salience of the op-ed, however, is not the shock value of the insubordination of top Trump officials, or even suggestions that the President is unfit to serve; rather, it is the author's defense of a tight knit group of "adults" within the administration who are "choosing to put country first" as they seek to subvert what they view as Donald Trump's worst instincts. These are, the author, submits, the heroes of the Trump era.

But the truth is, their opposition is not rooted in a higher calling of service to the nation. It is about politics, pure and simple, and reflects the dilemma that the Republican Party has faced since Donald Trump won the GOP nomination over two years ago.

In the spring of 2016, two-thirds of Republicans polled suggested that they could never vote for Donald Trump for President. Yet, by the time Election Day rolled around, the lion's share of GOP voters dutifully fell in line. Today, Trump's approval rating among Republicans is among the highest for any Republican President on record. Nonetheless, for many Republicans – like the op-ed author – that support remains equivocal. The op-ed applauds the President's success in delivering on tax cuts, deregulation and increased military spending, even as it trumpets the success of the "resistance" in undermining Trump's efforts to deliver on those policies that are most loved by his base, but which the "resistance" find morally objectionable. 

The author's stance reflects that of many in the GOP, most notably Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. The two congressional leaders have made no bones about using Donald Trump to pass long-standing priorities of Ronald Reagan's GOP – cutting taxes and regulation, confirming conservative judges, and boosting military spending – even as they have quietly sought to undermine the President in those areas that have the most emotional resonance for his core supporters, and which constitute the essence of Trumpism – building the Wall, shutting down DACA, cutting back both legal and illegal immigration, getting out of trade agreements, and the like.

There is a war simmering in the GOP, just as the op-ed describes a guerrilla war inside the Trump administration. For decades now, the Republican Party has been a coalition of numerous groups with diverse interests. Half of those in the GOP who support the President do so because they believe in him. They believe in what he does. They believe in what he says. And they believe in who he is. They are the base of the Republican Party that have loved Donald Trump since the days when most Republicans said they could never vote for him. The Trump base tends to be white, less educated and less well off than other Republican voters. Within the GOP coalition, they are the descendants of the southern and white working-class voters that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan brought into the party, and who formed the political base of Pat Buchanan's Peasants with Pitchforks insurgency in the 1990s.

The other half – like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the author of the op-ed – support the President not because of his rhetoric, but because of what he has delivered for them. They are, for lack of a better word, the Republican establishment. Steve Bannon got it right this week when he described the actions reported in the op-ed as a coup by the Republican establishment against the ascent of Trumpism.

At some point, that war has to break out into the open. Despite all the talk about Donald Trump owning the Republican Party, he is going to wake up one morning and realize that he – and his core supporters – have been had. They did all the heavy lifting to get him to the White House, but it is Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and wealthy Republican donors – who supported Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in the primaries – who have gotten everything they ever wanted from his Presidency. Meanwhile, due in large measure to the efforts of Ryan, McConnell – and the cabal of senior officials described in the anonymous op-ed – the President has been able to deliver relatively little for those voters those who have been most loyal to him.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Joe's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

What if Andrew Gillum actually didn't win?

Earlier this month – which seems like eons ago in the current political landscape – Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson caused an uproar when issued a statement suggesting that Russian hackers pose a threat to voting systems in several Florida counties, and had the ability to wreak havoc on upcoming elections. Nelson had been briefed on the matter by Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA), the co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

There was nothing particularly new in Nelson's comments. Four months earlier, Florida's other U.S. Senator, Republican Marco Rubio, raised similar concerns about the vulnerability of local election systems. And this past July, at his press conference announcing the indictment of twelve Russian military intelligence officials for their efforts to undermine the 2016 Presidential Election, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein described continuing Russian intelligence operations targeting state election systems and software providers.

Nonetheless, Florida Governor Rick Scott expressed outraged at Nelson's warning. Scott – who is running for Nelson's Senate seat and currently leading in the polls – suggested that Nelson's claim of a Russian threat was an election dirty trick of sorts. Scott did not state exactly what he viewed Nelson's ulterior motive to be – nor did he acknowledge that Rubio and Rosenstein had raised similar concerns – he only demanded that Nelson "put up or shut up"; that Nelson either present evidence proving that the threat was real or admit that his comments were an election ploy.

As if on cue, the day after Scott's outburst, a group of kids participating in a voting machine hackathon at DEFCON 26 – an annual hacker convention – threw gasoline on the Florida controversy. In just ten minutes, an 11-year old boy, Emmett Brewer, hacked into a replica of the Florida state election website and changed the voting results. And Brewer was not alone; in all, 35 kids participating in hackathon successfully manipulated election results on replicas of election sites from 13 battleground states.

The DEFCON hackathon was intended to bring public attention to the continuing vulnerability of state election systems, and it did. The National Association of Secretaries of State – those obscure state officials responsible for overseeing actual voting – were understandably embarrassed by the DEFCON results, and insisted that their sites would have greater security than the replica sites that the young hackers successfully hacked. In any event, the officials pointed out, state election sites only publish the results of elections; they are not the voting machines where actual votes are cast and tabulated. Those officials, however, missed the point. They chose to disregard the utter chaos that would ensue should fake results be published on an official state site in the wake of elections, only to have a secretary of state come out some number of days later and declare that the published results were not correct, and that the real winner was not the person that the public had come to believe had won.

The Nelson-Scott kerfuffle and the DEFCON hackathon were the first things that came to mind last Tuesday evening when I heard that Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum had upset three challengers to win the Florida Democratic Party gubernatorial primary. The Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party was ebullient in the wake of Gillum's surprise victory over the mainstream frontrunner. Earlier that day, before the votes were in, a post on Nate Silver's hallowed 538.com political prognostication website had described Gillum as the fourth of four entrants in the race, "dogged early on by poor fundraising and an FBI investigation into his city hall." Now he was the party nominee.

I had no reason to believe Andrew Gillum was not the actual winner, but as I considered the New York Times post-election headline, Andrew Gillum Shocked Florida With a Primary Win, a voice in the back of my head kept asking, how do we know who actually won? 

In our electoral democracy, the credibility of voting systems is the coin of the realm. We accept election results, in part, because the consequences of not accepting them are so dire. In 2000, after an excruciating recount – and the 5-4 Supreme Court vote in Bush v. Gore that called an end to things – George W. Bush defeated Al Gore to win Florida by 537 votes out of the total 5,963,110 total votes cast. After weeks of hand-to-hand combat on the ground – with arguments over butterfly ballots, dimples and hanging chads – one thing was clear: no one could state with certainty which candidate a plurality of voters had actually intended to vote for. The simple truth is that when six million votes are cast, the margin for error is greater than 0.01%. But we accepted the results and moved on.

The Florida recount in 2000 has had numerous consequences. It laid to rest any doubts that the Supreme Court is a political institution. Indeed, in the wake of Bush v. Gore, it seemed safer to question the partisan action by the majority on the Court – or Ralph Nader's third party run for that matter – than to focus on the larger implication of the Florida vote: the inherent inexactness of voting systems themselves. If one concludes that voting systems do not reliably transmit the intended will of the voters – and that the reported results of elections lack credibility – the viability of our winner-take-all electoral democracy quickly comes into question.

That, ultimately, was the implication of Bill Nelson's cautionary words, as well as why it raised Rick Scott's hackles. As the frontrunner in a Senate race, Scott has little interest in taking his eye off the prize that lies within his grasp to ponder the implications of the threats to the integrity of our election systems that Rod Rosenstein laid out in July. Nor are we, riven as we are by political animosity, capable of rising to the challenge that Rosenstein laid down at his July press conference: “When we confront foreign interference in American elections, it is important for us to avoid thinking politically as Republicans or Democrats, and instead to think patriotically as Americans. Our response must not depend on which side was victimized.”

From the vantage point of someone weaned in Philadelphia politics, Rosenstein was making a seemingly untenable ask. Politics is a blood sport focused on a single objective: Winning. There is no prize for coming in second, for fighting a good fight, or for following the rules when the person that beat you didn't. Since the founding of the Republic, we have come to accept all manner of tactics in pursuit of victory in democratic elections. In Philly, it seemed as though anything that increased votes for your candidate or suppressed votes for your opponent was fair game, from the wads of cash distributed as "walking around money" on Election Day to get your folks to the polls, to throwing voting machines down the elevator shafts of high-rise housing projects to suppress votes on the other side. Anything, in the name of winning – as long as it didn't land you in jail.

At the national level, tactics ranging from the use of wedge issues and coded language to motivate one's own voters, to voter suppression in myriad forms to suppress voting on the other side, to gerrymandering legislative districts to tip the scale in favor of the party in power, have been facts of democratic life, at least as far back as the famously nasty election of 1800. That year, Thomas Jefferson played on the resentments of rural and southern voters toward urban, Northeastern elites to topple President John Adams, as Jefferson surrogates questioned whether Adams was really a Christian, accusing him both of being an atheist and a closet Muslim. Little, it appears, has changed.

Rod Rosenstein is now insisting that we set aside this long, partisan history and collectively understand the threat that Russian operations represent. He is arguing that our commitment to liberal democracy must supersede the passions and partisan identities that drive democracy on the ground.

No doubt, he is right. Liberal democracy and thinking patriotically, as Rosenstein defines it, is elemental to what it is supposed to mean to be an American. But, it may be that Vladimir Putin has a clearer grasp of our political realities than Rod Rosenstein does. Liberal democracy – the bane of Putin's world view – is an intangible concept that appeals to the better angels of our nature. In contrast, democracy on the ground – the world in which Putin has sought to intervene – is messy, passionate, and often driven by our worst instincts and emotions.

Indeed, for many Americans, the line that Rosenstein is drawing may seem arbitrary. For those who have historically been disenfranchised by any number of domestic political strategies that have manipulated our elections – such as voter suppression, unlimited money, or domination by elites, to name a few – foreign meddling may not look as qualitatively different as Rosenstein suggests.

For others, particularly those embroiled in the winner-take-all of electoral politics, looming threats to the nation take a back seat to threats to one's own election. Were Rick Scott thinking patriotically when faced with Bill Nelson's warning words about the threat Russia poses, he could have simply embraced Nelson's words; after all, Nelson wasn't actually accusing Scott of anything. But, immersed as he was in the middle of a high-stakes electoral contest, the notion of agreeing with his adversary probably never crossed Scott's mind.

If Putin was looking to continue to wreak havoc in our politics, helping Andrew Gillum win on Tuesday would have been a good next step. Just look at how things have played out. Within hours after the results were posted online, racial animus was in full bloom, and within days virulently racist robocalls from white supremacists were up on the air, further stirring the pot.

And Russian intelligence operatives would not have had to actually tamper with voting machines to achieve that outcome. They would only have to be able to do what the kids at DEFCON did, and manipulate how the votes were reported online. After all, just imagine the pandemonium and rage that would tear the Democratic Party apart if one day next week, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner were to announce that his website had indeed been hacked, that the wrong results had been posted online, and that the actual winner was the establishment candidate, the pre-election polling frontrunner, Congresswoman Gwen Graham.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Joe's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

Throwback edition: Cyber warfare comes of age.

For those who may have noticed David Sanger's article today in the New York Times, "Russian Hackers Appear to Shift Focus to U.S. Power Grid," the piece that I published on March 20, 2018 entitled "Cyber warfare comes of age" provides some historical context. Here it is.

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Consider this possibility: What if Russia's information operation targeting the 2016 presidential election was just a side show, a distraction that has drawn our attention away from more significant cyber operations. It is one thing to get people yelling at each other online, and to instigate marches and demonstrations in the streets. It is another thing altogether to derail trains loaded with lethal chemicals, contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.

Last Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security published a Technical Alert authored by DHS and the FBI entitled "Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors." It was a notification that Russian government "cyber actors" have compromised energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing facilities in the United States. The story made the front page of the New York Times – below the fold, overshadowed by the latest happenings in the Mueller investigation – and got a few quips from late night comics, and then quickly receded from the news.

In all of our yelling back and forth about what Russia did or didn't do around the 2016 presidential election – and whether it constituted an act of war or just some kind of geopolitical mischief – we may have deluded ourselves into believing that this is what is meant by cyber warfare.

Of course, we know that it isn't the extent of it. We hear Ted Koppel's warnings of the cyber apocalypse to come. We worry about the attacks on credit reporting companies, and hackers stealing our identities and selling them on the dark web. And we know that all sorts of actors, from Russia, China and Iran, to 400-pound guys sitting on their beds in New Jersey, are in on the game. Yet, somehow, as much as we understand the threats are out there, we show little concern over the extent of the risks that cyber warfare could mean to us, as evidenced by how little heed was paid to the DHS alert.

According to DHS, Russian cyber efforts accelerated in 2015 – around the same time as its information operation with respect to the election began – and they have advanced their capabilities to wreck havoc in the United States from being a theoretical risk to literally having their finger on the trigger.

“We now have evidence," observed Eric Chien, a security technology director at the digital security firm Symantec, "they’re sitting on the machines, connected to industrial control infrastructure, that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage... All that’s missing is some political motivation.”

If this sounds like something out of an action movie, it should. Ten years ago, the plot of the 2007 film Live Free or Die Hard, centered around Thomas Gabriel – played by Timothy Olyphant – a disgruntled Department of Defense software engineer who went rogue after the Joint Chiefs of Staff ignored his warnings about the vulnerability of the country's cyber infrastructure. Gabriel decides to prove his point through a cyber attack blowing up a gas pipeline network and utility plant. Of course, the eternal Die Hard hero, Bruce Willis, playing NYPD cop John McClane, thwarts Gabriel's plans and saves the day, aided – notably – by Fredrick Kaludis, aka Warlock, a seriously overweight computer hacker living in his mother's basement, probably in New Jersey.

As it turns out, movies have played a significant role in our understanding of cyber warfare. In the opening pages of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, author Fred Kaplan tells the story of when President Ronald Reagan watched the movie War Games in June of 1983. War Games stars Matthew Broderick as David Lightman, a high school teenager who unwittingly hacks into a Pentagon mainframe computer and sets the world on a course for thermonuclear war. Broderick and his girlfriend, played by Ally Sheedy, spend the balance of the film trying to undue the havoc he has wrought.

The next day, President Reagan asked his national security staff whether what happened in the movie was plausible: Could someone hack into our defense computers and launch a nuclear war? According to Kaplan, Reagan's question took Pentagon and National Security Agency officials by surprise. The whole cyber world was in its infancy, and, apparently, it had not occurred to the best and the brightest of the military and intelligence communities that while they were developing new forms of cyber warfare to unleash upon America's enemies, our enemies might be preparing the same capabilities to unleash against us. Yes, they concluded, to their chagrin, it was plausible. The episode changed the course of America's cyber warfare efforts.

A decade later, in 1992, the writers of War Games collaborated on the movie Sneakers. As Kaplan tells the story, that movie created a similar ah-hah moment for the incoming director of the National Security Agency, Rear Admiral Mike McConnell. Sneakers revolves around efforts by the NSA to recover a mysterious cryptographic device that, it turns out, can hack into any computer system – the Federal Reserve Bank, air traffic control, missile defense, whatever. In a climactic moment, Cosmo, the teenage hacker-turned criminal mastermind – played by Ben Kingsley – who created the device, describes the new cyber world to his erstwhile college hacker friend, Robert Redford: "The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It is run by ones and zeros, little bits of data. It's all just electrons... There's a war out there, old friend, a world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information: what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It's all about the information." Admiral McConnell had been struggling to define the mission and purpose of the NSA he had been appointed to lead. When he saw the movie, he realized that Ben Kingsley had defined it for him.

In 2013, Vladimir Putin's top general, Valery Gerasimov, emphasized the elevated role of cyber warfare in the Russian strategic arsenal: "The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness." The Pentagon, in turn, showed its heightened concern earlier this year in a Nuclear Posture Review that proposes to expand its policy regarding appropriate first-use of nuclear weapons responses to include significant cyber attacks.

Cyber warfare capabilities as described by the DHS are part of a new strategic balance. In the 1980s, we won the Cold War and beat the Soviet Union into submission through a strategic arms race that only we could afford. Now, the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review – viewing a significant cyber attack on par with a nuclear one – suggests that Russia has successfully recreated a balance of power with the United States without having to match our spending on missiles and bombs. Recreating a balance of power has been central to Vladimir Putin's ambitions. The Russian president – who was re-elected this week to a new six-year term – will soon stand with Joseph Stalin and Catherine the Great among Russia's longest-serving and most consequential potentates. Putin has made no secret of his desire to push back on western encroachment toward Russia's borders since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to return to the great powers world of the 19th century, where the dominant states each had their respective – and respected – spheres of influence. Russia's strategic concern about being encircled by hostile forces may smack of paranoia, but it is useful to keep in mind that the Russian nation has been invaded by foreign powers at least once each century for the past half-millennium.

While the Pentagon's cyber warriors have offensive cyber capabilities equal to, if not greater than, Russia's, our cyber defenses are more problematic. As Mike McConnell has observed, while the lion's share of cybersecurity expertise rests with agencies of the federal government, more than 90% of the physical infrastructure of the Web is owned by private industry, making investments in adequate cyber defenses problematic. The DHA alert specifically focused on this vulnerability.

A balance of power in the cyber world is fundamentally different from a balance of power with respect to nuclear weapons. Unlike nuclear war, cyber warfare can be fought in many ways – as the 2016 election interference campaign suggests. Cyber attacks can be launched in an unlimited degree of gradations, from small air traffic control disruptions at a single airport to the destruction of the utility grid in a major city. These gradations, as well as the challenges of attribution inherent in cyber events, are particularly well-suited to Putin's purposes. The balance of power of the Soviet era was based around the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction, which meant that both sides had their finger on the button, but neither had an incentive to push it. In contrast, cyber warfare is already in active use, with myriad variations in its targets and scope. This suggests that it cannot be contained as the Pentagon imagines – other than, perhaps, with respect to catastrophic events – which begs the question: what are effective responses?“

Attribution is a critical issue, as it is essential to effective deterrence. The essence of deterrence is the certainty of consequences for proscribed behavior, but it all rests on "ascribing agency to an agent." As we have seen in events from the little green men that led Russia's incursions into Crimea and Ukraine, to the poisoning of former Russian spies Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko, Putin likes to push and prod, to test limits and gauge reactions, as he pursues his objectives, even as he denies responsibility and minimizes consequences. So, too, with respect to the election hacking, where attribution of responsibility to the Russian state has been difficult to prove, much less the determination of an appropriate response. Given these considerations, one can imagine that Vladimir Putin will have significant incentives to expand his use of cyber, and the leverage that flows from it, to achieve his strategic goals.

The brilliance of the Russian strategy – if indeed it was a strategy – of paring the attacks targeting our political institutions through social media, and those that now threaten our critical public and economic infrastructure, is that the degrading of our political infrastructure has undermined our capacity to respond to threats to our physical infrastructure. If we cannot manage civil discourse around the most mundane issues in our day-to-day politics, imagine what our discourse looms to be when we seek to ascribe blame because the lights have gone out and airports are shut down in the midst of a tit-for-tat cyber escalation.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Joe Dworetzky. Check out Joe's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

Spies, sex and the demise of the Grand Old Party.

If polls are to be believed, Republicans are pretty happy with Donald Trump. With approval levels among Republicans nearing 90% , the President is more popular in his party than any president in the modern era, with the exception of George W. Bush in the days following 9/11. While Republicans in the Senate panicked in the face of Trump's Helsinki press conference with Vladimir Putin last week, polls suggest that their reaction was overwrought, as 70-80% of Republicans appear to have been just fine with the President's performance.

Old school Republicans – a dying breed – are wondering what happened to their party. They dream wistfully of the days when the GOP demanded moral rectitude in its leaders, and Ronald Reagan celebrated America as a shining City on a Hill, inspiring people around the world with his principled defense of democracy, liberty and freedom. Freedom is on the march, George W. Bush used to say, and the Republican Party was the tip of the American spear. Republicans cheered the spread of democracy across the world, as, in the decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, autocrats and dictators from Asia to South America and ultimately Africa gave way to democracy's march.

But a virus infected the Republican Party during the Reagan years that is only now becoming evident; it was the virus of single issue voting. While Ronald Reagan was off giving high-minded speeches, his political Svengali Grover Norquist was building the Election Day turnout machine that continues to enable the Republican Party to dominate the levers of power at both the federal and state levels, despite much-touted disadvantages in demographics and party registration. Norquist's coalition of passionate, single issue voters – anti-tax, anti-abortion, pro-gun, etc. – delivers for the GOP because, for decades now, the GOP has delivered for them.

Donald Trump grasped an essential truth of the Norquist coalition that many in the GOP never considered: It provided a path to power for a candidate indifferent to – or even hostile to – what many Republicans long viewed as core principles of the GOP. He understood that as long he delivers on tax cuts, judges and guns – and a few other issues for good measure – those Republican voters would forgive him everything from his philandering with porn stars and to turning his back on Ronald Reagan's lofty vision of America's role in the world.

Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity as well in the Republican Party's reliance on single issue voters. The Russian intelligence operation that was disclosed last week in the action filed by the Department of Justice against Russian agent Maria Butina sought to test the premise of whether those voting groups were actually committed to GOP principles beyond their own single issue. Specifically, Putin and his team sought to cultivate the National Rifle Association and conservative Christian organizations as allies of the Russian government, and use their influence to steer the GOP away from its long-standing anti-Russian hostility.

It turns out that Putin hit the nail on the head. Over the course of just a few years, seduced by Maria Butina's cunning advances, the leadership of the National Rifle Association and conservative Christian organizations in the nation's capital turned a blind eye to GOP objections to Russia's invasions and occupations of its neighboring countries, and its continuing efforts to instigate social discord and undermine European democracies, and bought into the vision of Vladimir Putin's Russia as their pro-faith, pro-gun comrades-in-arms.

As I read the material filed by the Department of Justice, I could imagine the satisfaction that Putin and the leaders of the Russian intelligence services must have felt as they gathered in his office and reviewed Butina's operation. Everyone in the room knew the operation itself was a long-shot, but by the time Barack Obama was in his second term – and Obama and Hillary Clinton had successfully orchestrated the Orange Revolution in Ukraine – the threat of western democracy had reached Russia's doorstep, and Putin's bag of tricks was running out.

Putin had almost gotten to George W. Bush, early in his presidency. Bush shocked the Republican establishment when he claimed that he gazed into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. John McCain burst that balloon when he ridiculed Bush in public, suggesting that if one gazes into Putin's eyes, all you will see is K.G.B. It was a good line – all great humor has an edge of truth – but it derailed Putin's efforts to win over the younger Bush and temper decades of Republican hostility.

The bad-cop, good-cop routine that Putin and his Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, tried on Barack Obama seemed to make progress as well. Obama had the optimism inherent in being a community organizer, and he almost bonded with Medvedev, but like Bush's flirtation with Putin, Obama's 'reset' foundered in the face of Republican ridicule – and came to a screeching halt when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.

By 2013, Putin had come to realize that he had to tackle the elephant in the room, and Butina was part of that effort. Rather than just go the K Street lobbying route and throw a lot of dark money at the problem, this operation was a bit more subtle – and ambitious. Putin needed to change how the Republican Party viewed Russia. In doing so, it turns out, he was going to challenge what it means to be a Republican.

I imagine the group gathered around Putin couldn't help but chuckle as they walked through the progress of the operation as it advanced. A stunning redhead in her twenties, posing as a pro-gun Christian conservative, Butina quickly bedded Paul Erickson, a big time, fifty-something, GOP operative. According to the detailed information provided in the court documents, Butina's pitch was that she was linked to people who would be powerful in the post-Putin world, a story that Erickson pitched to others as he walked her around the corridors of power. In an email from Erickson to Butina, Erickson understood the balance she was striking between focusing on life after Putin, while never criticizing Putin directly.

Taking Down Reagan's GOP: A Pretty Girl With a Gun

It was the image of Butina cradling an ORSIS T-5000 tactical assault rifle that must have gotten the group giggling. The T-5000 was Moscow's latest entry into the world's arms bazaar, but there was no way that an average Russian could get their hands on one. Russia's gun laws are the stuff of Democrat dreams. Russia limits ownership to hunting rifles and shotguns; no handguns and no clips holding more than ten rounds. The implausibility of Butina's legend – that she was a country girl from Siberia who came up with the idea of starting gun clubs in Russia while chatting with friends in a cafe, and came to America because she thought it would be cool to partner those clubs with the NRA – never seemed to occur to Erickson, or to Wayne LaPierre at the National Rifle Association, for that matter. It never seemed to occur to either of them that the only way Butina could be so familiar with the T-5000 was if she was trained in the Russian military, or – perhaps – by Russian intelligence. Putin and his compatriots must have marveled at their gullibility, but they knew – as Butina had now proven – that in America, a pretty girl with a gun can accomplish just about anything.

And then there was Butina's outreach to conservative Christian groups. The Russian Orthodox Church – which Putin and Russian intelligence services have used for years as a foreign policy tool – played an important role in Maria Butina's operation. Her pitch was straightforward: Russia and America are the two most observant Christian nations, and should stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of a hostile secular world.

As with the NRA, the leaders of the Christian groups Butina cultivated apparently evidenced little concern about Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine and Georgia, or the growing threat Russia posed to America's European allies. Two years into Butina's operation, Patriarch Kirill, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church hosted American evangelical leader Franklin Graham in Moscow. Graham, the son of Billy Graham and now among Donald Trump's most avid supporters, embraced Kirill and his church, just as Butina's handlers had hoped. On his Facebook page after their meeting, Graham praised Kirill as an ally of American evangelicals in their common cause opposing same sex marriage and abortion, as well as their shared "need to reach a younger generation brought up in secular schools surrounded by a secular culture who know nothing of God and His love for them." By 2018, according to participants, a delegation of visiting Russians constituted the largest group of participants at the National Prayer Breakfast, and Butina had secured an invitation for Putin himself to attend.

Grover Norquist never suggested that the pro-gun, pro-life, anti-tax and other single issue voters that he cultivated as cornerstones of the GOP coalition cared about what Ronald Reagan cared about; he only claimed that he could deliver their votes to the GOP as long as the GOP delivered on taxes, judges and guns. It was, and remains, the definition of transactional politics – and for the GOP – it was the virus that ended up consuming the host. As Donald Trump has confronted our traditional allies across the world in one setting after another, Senate Republican have derided his trampling of Ronald Reagan's vision of America and the post-World War II order; but, if polls are to be believed, there has been no outcry among Republicans voters.

As to Russia itself, Vladimir Putin must surely be pleased. In short order, Maria Butina bedded a senior GOP operative, gained access to the corridors of power of Russia's great adversary, and got the leadership of the NRA and National Prayer Breakfast to turn the GOP on its head. Since 2014, according to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who view Russia as an ally has nearly doubled – from 22% to 40% – and, for the first time in decades, Republicans view Russia more favorably than do Democrats.

Last week, Donald Trump put a fine point on his attack on the global order one championed by the GOP. During an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he questioned the rationale behind the NATO alliance, asking specifically whether Americans were really prepared to go to war for Montenegro, a NATO member country most Americans have never heard of. Trump already knew the answer: outside of the U.S. Senate, few in the GOP care about those issues anymore. For Vladimir Putin, this is wonderful news; by the time Donald Trump is done – with the help of Maria Butina and the Russian intelligence services – Ronald Reagan's vision of America as a shining City on a Hill – a beacon of democracy, liberty and freedom for people's across the globe – will have faded into the recesses of memory.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

Watching Vladimir Putin's dreams come true.

When Vladimir Putin looked ahead after the 2012 election to who might succeed Barack Obama, he faced the unpalatable prospect of a President Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Putin knew Clinton well, of course. As Secretary of State she had aggressively supported the Ukrainian pro-democracy movement that had ousted the Putin-controlled government in 2011. Putin saw both Bush and Rubio as traditional anti-Putin, pro-democracy, Republican hawks. He knew he needed to change the American political landscape; and he has.

Putin's ensuing plan was not about Donald Trump; it was not even primarily focused on the 2016 presidential election. This is a point that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sought to emphasize at a press conference this week, where he laid out the range of Russian intelligence strategies targeting our political system. Rather, Putin's plan was – and continues to be – about Russian sovereignty over Ukraine and Crimea, and Putin's longstanding determination to break down the post-World War II international order and reassert Russia's authority over territory it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it is about the United States' long-standing opposition to his ambitions.

Buried among all the sturm und drang this week among Republicans, particularly in the U.S. Senate, about whether Donald Trump could be forced to utter the magic words "Russia meddled in our election," was the criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice against Russian spy Maria Butina. Together with the indictment a week ago of twelve Russian intelligence officers by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the documents filed in Federal Court continue to flesh out the breadth of Russian intelligence operations targeting the United States. Those filings also illustrate the extent of electronic evidence – online activities, emails, texts, etc. – that is available to FBI counterintelligence investigators as they seek to track what has been going on.

In marked contrast to Trump's continuing efforts to deny or downplay accusations of Russian election meddling, Rod Rosenstein emphasized that while Putin's intelligence operations targeted the 2016 election, the scope was far broader.  "Focusing merely on a single election misses the point." Rosenstein argued this week. "These actions are persistent, they are pervasive, and they are meant to undermine America’s democracy on a daily basis, regardless of whether it is election time or not.” An FBI affidavit filed in the Butina case fleshed out Rosenstein's warning: "Moscow seeks to create wedges that reduce trust and confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken U.S. partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions, encourage anti-U.S. political views, and counter efforts to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European institutions."

The cunning irony of the Putin's mix of strategies targeted against the U.S., as well as against several European countries, is that those strategies mirror the pro-democracy efforts that the U.S. and its allies have been pursuing in the states of the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War. The efforts of the U.S. and its allies to transform the autocratic norms and political culture of the former Soviet bloc focused on building institutions of civil society. Building the infrastructure of civil society was seen to be a critical step in developing the social trust necessary to allow those countries to successfully migrate toward liberal democracy. In contrast, a central objective of Putin's intelligence operations against the U.S. and western democracies has been to break down institutions of civil society and undermine trust across social groups, and in so doing sever the ties that bind democratic societies together.

As Rod Rosenstein laid them out this week, Putin's efforts are wide ranging, and several have proven to be highly effective. Russia's use of Facebook and other social media platforms to instigate social distrust, propagate conspiracy theories, and exacerbate sectarian, racial and other divisions, has been widely recognized. Another approach, described in Mueller's recent indictment, involved stealing internal Democratic Party electronic communications and using information found there to sow discord and exacerbate divisions between Clinton and Sanders supporters, and ultimately push Sanders supporters away from Clinton on Election Day. Both strategies met with some degree of success. As Russian cyber operatives anticipated, we eagerly take the bait on social media, where we have learned to turn on each other with a vengeance. And one factor in Clinton's electoral defeat in 2016 is the number of Sanders supporters in critical states who either voted for Trump or declined to vote at all.

Maria Butina: One Part The Americans, One Part Red Sparrow

The intelligence operation with Maria Butina at its center represents a third kind of strategy. Dating back to at least to 2013, the operation described in the criminal complaint filed this week reads like one part The Americans and one part Red Sparrow. Posing as a gun-lover, Butina's marching orders from Moscow Center were to cultivate relationships with key pro-Republican operatives and groups and promote pro-Russian views. The operational objective was to use those groups as inroads to the Republican Party, to soften the GOP party platform and attitudes toward Russia. As described in the court filing, Butina successfully seduced – both literally and figuratively – key Republican operatives, and gained access to and influence with leaders of the National Rifle Association, the former conservative – now Trumpian – activist group CPAC, as well as religious groups that sponsor the National Prayer Breakfast. Those pro-Republican advocacy groups, in turn, became assets of Russian intelligence in its efforts to push the national Republican Party toward a more pro-Russia stance. Shortly after Election Day, in what could have been a culminating moment for the operation, Butina apparently helped to kill the looming appointment of Mitt Romney – who was noted for his anti-Russian views – as Secretary of State.

As with the strategies described above, this approach appears to have been effective. The Republican Party platform committee did remove anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine language, and both the NRA and a number of prominent religious leaders became publicly engaged with Russia. Whatever the combination of factors might have been, Pew Research data suggests that over the past several years the percent of Republicans who view Russia as a threat to the United States declined significantly, from 58% to 38%. Of course, attitudes among Democrats have moved in the opposite direction.

It is too soon to know how enduring Putin's efforts will prove to be in destabilizing our democracy. Perhaps, in time, it could have the opposite effect; public blowback against Trumpism and the exposure of Putin's strategies could actually strengthen our democracy.

Whether or not Russia's intelligence operations turn out to have an enduring impact on our politics, it is increasingly clear that they did impact results in 2016. In his new memoir, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper makes the case that Russia's efforts did affect the results in 2016. “Of course the Russian efforts affected the outcome. Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense, and credulity to the breaking point. Less than eighty thousand votes in three key states swung the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by this massive effort by the Russians.” 

Clapper's assessment flies in the face of the stock Republican talking points, which Paul Ryan reiterated this week. "Russia meddled," Ryan conceded, but then quickly added the standard Republican codicil that "it’s also clear that it did not have a material effect on our elections.” But as more information is being made public about the range of Russian operations affecting the 2016 election, Ryan's stock assertion is becoming less and less credible.

This does not mean that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia's efforts. Whether Russian intelligence operatives penetrated the Trump campaign, or whether Trump and others otherwise actively colluded with them, remains to be seen. However, based on the extensive electronic surveillance data presented in the court filings over the past two weeks, it is becoming increasingly evident that if the Trump campaign colluded with Russian intelligence, Robert Mueller will have access to that information.

Either way, as Trump rampaged across Europe this week – alienating our friends, undermining our alliances, and lending tacit support to Russia's occupation of Crimea – at each stop along the way, he seemed to do something that supported Putin's goals, as summed up in the FBI affidavit. Putin's plans may have predated Trump's arrival on the scene, but – knowingly or otherwise, blackmail or no blackmail – Donald Trump is proving to be the greatest gift that Vladimir Putin could have hoped for.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

The joys of blackmail.

Germany, Donald Trump declared before the gathered NATO leaders and press of the world, is in Vladimir Putin's pocket... It was a classic Trump comment: Democrats colluded with Russian intelligence in 2016, Trump has charged repeatedly, to deflect those same charges against his campaign; he brought Bill Clinton's accusers to a Presidential Debate in the face of accusations of his own sexual assaults; and now, as he prepares to meet with Putin alone in Moscow, he reflexively insists that it is Angela Merkel who is doing Putin's bidding.

Trump's schoolyard "I know you are, but what am I?" tactic is central to his playbook, as Ted Cruz pointed out early on. "This man is a pathological liar," Cruz warned, "And he has a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook. His response is to accuse everybody else of lying... it's simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing."

Everyone expected fireworks at the NATO meetings, but just when you think Trump had stretched the limits of hubris, he steps it up a notch. It is truly remarkable to watch in real time. The United States has become too limited a stage; he is now trolling the entire planet. There he was, deconstructing the world order with the cameras rolling, step by step, daring anyone to stand up to him. Sitting across the table from him as he attacked Germany, not one of the European leaders rose to the challenge. The best they could do was mumble platitudes about having fought a couple of wars together; muttering words about friendship and enduring alliances, sotto voce, as if not to prod the bear.

"Everything Trump is doing is on Putin's anti-America wish list," a Republican operative insisted to me the other day. "Putin is blackmailing him, there is no other way to explain it." He assumes that Putin is blackmailing Trump with the infamous "pee tape" described in Christopher Steele's dossier, or perhaps some other incriminating material. But there is another answer, a simpler answer, an Occam's Razor of sorts: Donald Trump is not serving anyone's interest but his own. Trump has demonstrated over and over that he respects strongmen. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping fit the bill, as does Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and even Kim Jong-un, about whom Trump spoke so admiringly after they spent time together. They are strong like Trump imagines he is strong.

European leaders, on the other hand, are weak, in Trump's estimation. No one cowers when they walk into the room; instead, they are the ones who cower. They cower before right wing, nationalist challenges that are shaking the Continent. They cower before the self-righteous press. And, as they demonstrated this week, they cower when Trump walks into the room.

Trump evinces a feral pleasure as he seeks out opportunities to taunt America's erstwhile allies. He delighted in mocking Canada's Justin Trudeau as a lightweight. He was all the more happy to twist the knife in the backs of Great Britain's Theresa May and Germany's Angela Merkel as their governments teeter, knowing that tormenting them about how 'immigration is destroying European culture' would play perfectly to his core supporters at home, and to his growing right wing following overseas. When Trump commented this week in the face of public protests that "they like me a lot" in Great Britain, the mainstream media back at home may have snickered, but he knew who he was talking about.

It may be that Vladimir Putin has something that he is holding over Trump, but Donald Trump does not have the look of a man who is  being dragged kicking and screaming to the task at hand. When Trump tears down the rule-based global order that America has nurtured over the past 70 years, it may be because it is one of Putin's core strategic ambitions, or simply because in Trump's mind, there is nothing fundamentally admirable about rules; he has chafed against them his whole life. Now that he has the power to break that order apart, Trump appears more than happy to do so. He lives for the attention, and relishes the anger he is provoking – no longer just among Democrats at home, but among the whole, global liberal democracy crowd.

If Putin actually has something on him, we will likely never know for sure; at least not until this historical moment is long past. In his book Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore revealed the inner workings of Stalin's rule, based on archives that for half a century had been buried deep within the Kremlin walls. Montefiore's is a gruesome story, detailing, among other things, the orders that Stalin gave to his lieutenants, specifying how many thousands of people each of them were responsible for killing each month. We all knew about the millions who died during Stalin's reign, but the documentary evidence was hidden away until long after he and his regime were dead and buried.

If Trump's undermining of the post-World War II order – with a speed and breadth that must surpass even Vladimir Putin's wildest dreams – is explained by the existence of Christopher Steele's tape, or some other evidence that Putin holds over Trump, we will likely never see it. Like the documentary proof of Stalin's crimes, that evidence is surely buried away, far beyond the prying eyes of the world, probably in a special vault in the Lubyanka Building in Dzerzhinsky Square that holds the deepest secrets of Russian intelligence. 

If we are waiting for Robert Mueller to confirm the truth of the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and, in so doing, to resolve the chasm of public discord surrounding the whole Russia affair, we are likely to be disappointed. This week, Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for cyber warfare operations targeting the 2016 election. The 29-page indictment reads like an intelligence briefing that Putin might have received over the course of the operation. Yet, for all its detail, the indictment begs the question that remains central to the Mueller investigation: What was the extent of Donald Trump's collusion with Russia, and what is the evidence upon which that conclusion is based. And this question increasingly begs consideration of a second one: When Mueller finally delivers his report, will his conclusion – whatever it might be – help to resolve the deep-seated animus that is now roiling the nation, or will it only exacerbate the situation in which we find ourselves.

Trump supporters and Trump haters may be equally unwilling at this point to accept any conclusion that Robert Mueller presents in his report that does not comport with the view of the world they have come to embrace. There is little doubt that Trump supporters will reject any conclusion that suggests active collusion by the President himself, absent the contemporaneous publication of the "pee tape" on YouTube, or comparable irrefutable documentary evidence. And even that evidence will likely be claimed across Trump World to be a fabrication of the Deep State, providing further evidence of treachery by the intelligence community. With respect to charges relating to obstruction of justice, those will be rejected out of hand, absent proof of the underlying crime of collusion.

On the other hand, should Mueller conclude that there was no evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia – perhaps suggesting instead that Russia's actions were aligned with the interests of the Trump campaign, but that no significant coordination was evident – that will only prove to Trump haters the depth of Putin's cunning, and the limits of documentary evidence. Absence of evidence, many will no doubt observe, does not constitute evidence of absence, and those who believe that collusion took place will remain convinced that somewhere deep in the  Lubyanka Building lies a thumb drive... but it will be decades, at least, before that evidence sees the light of day.

As the months go by, more and more seems to ride on the Mueller investigation, but it is becoming increasingly hard to imagine that his report is going to solve anything; potentially leaving the sides arguing about the very real crime of obstruction of justice, with Congress unwilling or unable to act. The larger question that is emerging seems to be how and whether our democracy can return to some semblance of normalcy once the Mueller report is submitted. Fixing a nation whose polity has been torn apart – even before the report arrives – is going to be where the real test of our political institutions lies, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone in Congress is preparing to meet that challenge. Meanwhile, blackmail or no, Donald Trump is heading to his sit down with Vladimir Putin, having spent the better part of the past week trolling his way across Europe, basking in the attention, stopping in for tea with the Queen, playing a little golf, and having the time of his life.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.

It turns out, Ralph Nader was wrong.

The Democratic Party is heading in the wrong direction. For months now, activists – as activists are wont to do – have seized the high ground and pushed the party further and further to the left. First Medicare for all and free college tuition – the defining issues of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign – became litmus test issues for aspiring party leaders. Then came the idea of a government guaranteed job for all. A few weeks ago, in the face of tragedy at the southern border, the cry went out for the elimination of ICE. Now, with the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the prospect of his being replaced by a younger, more conservative jurist, packing the Supreme Court has emerged as a solution to what ails the party.

Democrats need to step back consider two things as they blaze their path forward. First, the Blue Wave that so many are counting on to sweep the nation this November is not written in stone. The Democratic Party advantage on the "generic ballot" has been cut in half from its peak levels late last year. Indeed, one long-time Republican campaign strategist commented to me this week that GOP internal polling suggests that if the election were held today, they would keep control of the House by five or six seats. Second, the vision of children being taken from their parents and disappeared into a bureaucratic wasteland, and the prospect of Amy Coney Barrett being appointed to replace Kennedy – putting overturning both Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges within striking distance for the "religious liberty" crowd – should stand as stark reminders that in this historical moment winning is the singular imperative for Democrats, and it is highly debatable whether a surge to the left is a step in the right direction.

The emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the new paragon of the Democratic Party has contributed to the distorted perceptions of the political landscape that have gripped many Democrats. The 28 year-old Ocasio-Cortez is an impressive political newcomer, and her take-down of Congressman Joe Crowley was the most startling loss for a national party leader since House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated by David Brat four years ago. Nonetheless, despite the excitement her success has engendered, Ocasio-Cortez' victory as a self-proclaimed democratic socialist in a deep blue district in the Bronx – in an off-year race that had 11.8% turnout – should offer minimal, if any, implications for Democratic Party strategy going forward.

Source: Gallup

Most of the American electorate does not identify as Democrats – much less democratic socialists. While slightly more Americans identify as Democrats than Republicans, that does not make Democrats the majority party; it simply makes them – at best – the plurality party. In contrast, far and away the largest political cohort in the country is the nearly half of Americans that identify as Independents. Faced with this electoral landscape, one might imagine that one party or the other would seek to temper their respective party's push to the edge of the political spectrum and focus instead on moving to the center, but that is not the world we seem to be in. The Republican Party's commitment to Trumpism is now complete, while leading Democrats appear to have decided to turn their backs on the political center and pander to the activist progressive wing of the party.

Two decades ago, Ralph Nader took the Democratic Party to task just as activists are today, when he famously derided the notion that there was any material difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. "The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush," Nader commented before the 2000 presidential election, "is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door... It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote." Nader, of course, went on to throw his hat in the ring, and arguably threw the election to George W. Bush, as Nader's 97,421 votes in Florida overwhelmed Bush's 537 vote margin of victory.

One might have thought that seeing two wars launched and two conservative Supreme Court jurists appointed by Bush over the ensuing eight years would have taught Democrats a lesson, and tempered their urge to seek a savior on the left, but just sixteen years later Bernie Sanders took Democrats down the same path. Like Nader, Sanders was a political independent who embraced the Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum perspective on the national political parties. And, as with Nader, one can argue that the 20% of Sanders supporters who chose not to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election because she failed the test of doctrinal purity, tipped the balance for Trump. The difference this time is that despite losing to Hillary in the primaries – and despite her winning the popular vote nationally – it was Sanders who emerged from the 2016 contest as the undisputed winner on the Democratic side. Today, the curmudgeonly grandfather figure is leading a movement of youthful zealots who imagine that by pursuing his progressive agenda they will redeem the Democratic Party, even as they ignore the very real risk that they will simply assure its continued minority status.

Lest Democrats are letting their anger delude them into thinking otherwise, that is the objective reality of what is at stake. Right now, Republicans hold not just the White House – and thus the privilege of making Supreme Court nominations and dictating ICE policies and practices – but the Senate, the House of Representatives, 33 of 50 governors, both legislative chambers in 32 of 50 states, and a tightening grip on the Supreme Court. To put it in even more stark terms, the GOP is just two states short of being able to call a Constitutional Convention and seek to enshrine its political priorities in the U.S. Constitution; and don't think for a minute that possibility is lost on Republican strategists. So much for the demographics is destiny notion that is supposed to portend the Democrats being the majority party for decades to come; if there is a political party in America that is slipping into irrelevance, it is not the Republicans.

It feels like we are watching a slow-motion train wreck. One week after another, Donald Trump hands Democrats issues around which they might build a broad-based political coalition. One week he is actively destroying the alliances that have been central to America's post-World War II leadership in the world, while the next week he is cozying up to dictators – petty and otherwise. His growing trade war has conflated Canada with China, and has had the unintended consequence of torching the agricultural sector. Trump's attacks on foreign automakers at a rally in Greenville, NC marked the highpoint in political irony, deafness or hubris – take your pick – as Greenville-Spartenberg is the home to BMW America, where the German automaker builds SUVs that it sells across the globe. When Trump vilified Harley-Davidson on Twitter a few weeks ago for responding rationally to his tariffs, he demonstrated to corporate America the risk of a president who is willing to use his bully pulpit and regulatory powers to settle political scores. And then, of course, there is his administration's treatment of asylum-seekers and their children, which has marked a fundamental assault on American notions of decency.

Just at the moment when one might imagine that a trans-partisan political response to Trumpism would be so easy to assemble – after all, a large subset of Americans must be yearning for a government that evinces a modicum of integrity, pursues reasonable and moderate public policies, provides desperately needed leadership against the rise of nationalism across the world, and does not assault their notions of integrity, fair play and decency one day after the next – the Democratic Party has chosen instead to turn its back on the political center and chart what could be a path to its own destruction. Nate Silver summed it up the other day, when he commented that "The notion that moderation wins elections more often than not isn’t going to persuade many people after 2016, even though it might happen to be true. The mostly young Democratic activists who are pushing to abolish ICE feel like the Democratic establishment totally misunderstands politics and are responsible for the Democrats’ electoral predicament." 

Progressive Democrats may be convinced that a majority of the country think the way they do; that if given the chance, a majority of Americans would vote for their agenda, despite the fact that just two years ago a majority of Democrats chose not to. Those who are inspired by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' inspirational words should take note of the fact that her victory was hardly a robust endorsement of her democratic socialist platform: Her 57% winning percentage in an election that had 11.8% turnout means that only 6.7% of eligible voters in her district actually cast a ballot for her.

Nate Silver may be right that young progressives don't want to hear that moderation wins elections, but they – and aspiring party leaders pandering to them – should consider the alternatives. Given the Trump administration policies – and what the future could look like if Republicans gain rather than lose ground in the fall – even progressive Democrats might conclude that this time around, to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, winning isn't everything, it is the only thing.

Follow David Paul on Twitter @dpaul. He is working on a book, with a working title of "FedExit: Why Federalism is Not Just For Racists Anymore."

Artwork by Jay Duret. Check out Jay's political cartooning at www.jayduret.com. Follow him on Twitter @jayduret or Instagram at @joefaces.