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Making a List, Checking It Twice... [1]
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Date: 2025-04-20
Making a List, Checking It Twice...
James Carville has asked democracy-loving Americans to make a list of people and entities cooperating with Donald Trump so we can hold them to account after this MAGA fever has passed. The Democratic Party is fortunate to have such a fighter. The United States - not so much.
I know James Carville. We worked together many years ago on a campaign in Philadelphia. While his sentiment is on point in several respects - certainly those who fear Trump now should be a little concerned about consequences later - his blind loyalty to the Democratic Party has left his thinking flopping around like a fish on dry dock. To help James, I’ve bolded names of people who should have been added to his list years ago.
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Popular sentiment against Democratic Party policies took the form of a Trump protest vote in 2016. Time and time again, the Democratic Party thought it could squash and mold the electorate until the only answer for Americans was a wild card. It would do Carville well to reflect on how we got here:
2008
But before that string of error and betrayal, there was 2008. In 2008, Democrats had the perfect chance to divert history away from the hellscape we endure today. Instead Americans got Democratic Party failures:
It concludes that torture is only: extreme acts according to the United Nations Convention against Torture; that severe pain (a requisite for this definition of torture) is "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"; that prolonged mental harm is harm that must last for "months or even years"; that "prosecution under Section 2340A may be barred because enforcement of the statute would represent an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority to conduct war"; and that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A."
Every lawyer who told doubtful soldiers, “I’ll go to jail before you go to jail” for torturing people without even a trial to prove guilt must be disbarred.
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Barak “I don’t want to look back, I want to look forward” Obama vowed not to prosecute any soldier who was told torture was legal at the time. See Clinton’s testimony saying:
However those who formulated the legal opinions and gave those orders uh should be reviewed and the President has referred that to the attorney general and has also said that there may be uh an opportunity for a non-political bi partisan I might say nonpartisan uh review uh to get all of this uh out in the open in the way that we function best as a democracy well.
Needless to say, there were no consequences for any of the attorneys who wrote the Torture Memos.
Not All Bad
Carville’s idea of making a list is good. We just should have done it after the torture years of George W. Bush’s presidency and the near-collapse of the American financial system. As even Trump will tell you, that is the best time to make a deal, when they are crawling on their knees asking for help.
Many institutions had to be melted and twisted for Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo Bay, black site torture centers, widespread mortgage securities fraud and suspension of Habeas Corpus. If an accounting had been done in 2008, our democratic institutions would have the resiliency to rebuff Trump’s attempt at decimation.
But here we are.
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