,
14 tweets,
5 min read
Read on Twitter
True. Trump has a point about the Baltimore Democrats, but as usual, he's (1) apparently reacting mostly to Elijah Cummings pushing investigations & criticisms Trump dislikes, rather than suddenly discovering the plight of Baltimore & (2) doing it in the crudest possible way.
If you're concerned about investigations, it's more relevant that Elijah Cummings devoted the bulk of all his energies in office from 2011-16 as a vocal opponent of investigations & oversight of the president.
On the other hand, if you're actually concerned about how Baltimore is governed, the trail of corruption & government malfeasance in a one-party Democrat city is staggering, & it would do Democrats good to reflect on why that is rather than just blaming Trump for noticing.
A sampling of why Democrats would be ill-advised to defend their governance of Baltimore cnn.com/2019/05/02/pol…
washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
theguardian.com/us-news/2015/s…
baltimoresun.com/maryland/balti…
nypost.com/2019/07/22/bal…
washingtonexaminer.com/politics/chari…
thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03…
washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
theguardian.com/us-news/2015/s…
baltimoresun.com/maryland/balti…
nypost.com/2019/07/22/bal…
washingtonexaminer.com/politics/chari…
thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03…
Exactly.
Look, Trump is responsible for Trump, & is an expert at distracting from that. There is also a reason why guys like Cummings also don't want anyone looking to hard at their own record or that of the political organization they come from. Easier to rant about Russia.
Look, Trump is responsible for Trump, & is an expert at distracting from that. There is also a reason why guys like Cummings also don't want anyone looking to hard at their own record or that of the political organization they come from. Easier to rant about Russia.
The longstanding pattern is that corruption flourishes best when a single party controls an area - especially one with lots of poor & working-class voters - & cements that control by racial/ethnic/cultural appeals, so the voters will put up w/anything before changing sides.
That dynamic is not unique to one party, one race, or one ethnicity, but historically it's much more likely to flourish in the kinds of urban enclaves that Democrats have dominated since the 1830s.
1 of the reasons for conservatives to dislike Trump: he reeks of the same political style Dems have deployed to run those urban machines as a grift on the backs of a variety of racial & ethnic & immigrant groups for nearly two centuries, playing to their resentments & tribalism.
1 of the reasons Trump's fans love him: they see the immune-to-everything partisan hammerlock that Cummings & the Baltimore Dems & other urban machines have on their voters, & they want one of their own who fights the same way.
The reason 'whataboutism' comes up so much with Trump is that Trump as a politician is practically the living embodiment of whataboutism. He's half a century of pent-up Republican frustration at things Republicans saw Democrats get away with: "none of that matters? Here. Enjoy."
The big internal fight among Republicans on this style of politics is between people who think that what works for Democrats is simply "what works" & those of us who think, in the long run, voters come to Republicans for something *different* from what they seek from Democrats.
All of which comes back to my previous thread on how Republicans have traditionally differed from Democrats in philosophy, structure, & appeal
Look, I have no illusions about the fact that positions on oversight in the House, in particular, have been at least 99% pure partisanship on both sides for as long as I've been alive. Nobody who lived through 2011-16 should take this Tweet seriously;
Agreed. Cites in this thread.
