Undaunted

Blanche opponents; Buttigieg illuminates as a progressive role model

Blanche's antagonists shine

Courageous individuals this week showed tenacity and devotion to the rule of law in confronting acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, an unapologetic presidential flunky nominated for AG who lacks rudimentary legal ethics and has consistently subverted justice to meet the whims of his boss.

U.S. Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Southern District of Florida, in a ruling on Monday, demolished Blanche in finding Donald Trump’s IRS lawsuit a scam used to concoct a slush fund for insurrectionists and grant Trump and his family immunity from future tax audits. Williams further held that Blanche’s role in devising a collusive suit violated federal Rule 11 and warranted referring him for Florida state bar discipline.

“[T]he Court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact,” Williams wrote, noting Blanche’s glaring conflict of interest (namely: having previously represented Trump personally).

In her unequivocal slap down of Blanche and the other DOJ attorneys, Williams removed any doubt about the current DOJ’s utter lack of integrity and, specifically, the unfitness of Blanche to serve in, let alone lead, DOJ.

Well in advance of Blanche’s appearance Wednesday, the survivors of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein launched a massive campaign to block his confirmation as AG. They continued their efforts the week, flooding the airwaves to urge the Senate not to reward Blanche, the architect of his scheme to illegally withhold release of the Trump-Epstein pedophile files. Their PSA was courageous and compelling:

After Blanche’s deceitful testimony in which he falsely stated he was prohibited from meeting with victims, survivor Lara Blume McGee said at a press conference:

Under Mr. Blanche’s watch, the Department of Justice has released materials tied to the Epstein investigation in ways that exposed survivors’ names, medical and financial details, and other identifying information that should have been protected.

She continued. “For many of us, the DOJ’s redactions were not merely inadequate — they were another violation, reopening wounds we had fought to keep closed.”

Survivor Dani Bensky’s gut-wrenching testimony put the blame directly on Blanche for releasing victims’ names and images:

She attested to “real and irrevocable harm” and called him out for refusing to meet with victims despite spending 9 hours to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell.

“To add insult to injury, the information that Todd Blanche gathered in the White House Situation Room last summer to curb the political fallout from the Epstein files was absolutely abhorrent. Instead of following investigative leads, our government treated and continue to treat this as a political crisis that needs to be managed,” she explained, utterly demolishing Blanche’s credibility.

Senators who vote to confirm Blanche in the face of such damning evidence of ethical depravity and professional unfitness should face the wrath of voters and the condemnation of history. By contrast, Judge Williams and the Epstein survivors deserve full credit for courageously defending truth, decency and the rule of law.

Don’t forget about Buttigieg

Democratic fresh faces such as Texas Senate nominee James Talarico, thirty-seven, and midterm standout campaigner Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), thirty-nine, have earned praise for their media savviness and ease in connecting with voters. However, Democrats should not ignore the continued maturation of former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as a first-rate political leader and communicator.

Of the current batch of lithe, highly articulate, Obama-level-cool political stars, Buttigieg, forty-four, is literally and figuratively the veteran — given his military service, tenure in the Biden administration, and extended national media presence. Thanks in part to his greying beard, he no longer comes across as a precocious college kid. Instead, he brings a unique degree of gravitas and refreshing distance from the internecine squabbles between factions of the party.

As the 2020 Iowa caucus winner, he snagged the plum spot of headlining last Sunday at Iowa Democrats’ “Liberty and Justice Celebration” fundraising dinner, a high-energy affair that benefited from Democratic enthusiasm over its strong contenders for governor, Senate, and the 1^st and 3^rd House congressional districts.

Buttigieg argued persuasively that the elite corruption endemic in our politics is why “we cannot have nice things.” Reminding the crowd that “[o]ur political and economic and social systems have been letting us down for a long time,” he explained that “our economy is unfair because our politics is unfair.”

Our democracy has been hijacked by the current “carnival of corruption,” Buttigieg observed, pointing to Trump’s defective jet gifted by the Qataris and his grotesque self-enrichment, including crypto graft; the Supreme Court’s indulgence of Trump’s tyrannical whims with a grant of absolute criminal immunity; and congressmen’s participation in ethically galling insider trades and utter lack of interest in checking executive overreach. “This hurts us. This is why things aren’t working properly,” he explained. “This is why they can make you pay more at the pump for a war you never asked for; how they burned down the Department of Education while we are worried about kids who cannot do math or read like they are supposed to.”

Buttigieg conceded Democrats have too often gotten “boxed in” as defenders of the status quo. “But the answer cannot be to put everything back the way it used to be. We are not going to all this trouble to find the shards of everything they smashed up and try to tape it back together to look just like it used to,” he implored the crowd.

Eschewing buzzy descriptors (“socialist” or “center left”), Buttigieg demonstrates that the real imperative for Democrats is boldness, the determination to offer concrete, dramatic solutions to bolster our democracy and ensure widespread prosperity for ordinary Americans.

“Don’t tell me we cannot take big swings, take real risks, do big work,” he proclaimed to rising applause, “Don’t tell me it’s bad politics to talk about diesel prices and democracy in the same breadth because they are all part of the same picture.” Buttigieg says that it is not too much to demand a political system in which everyone’s vote counts the same and the top vote getter is the winner (i.e., dump the Electoral College), or in which we redesign the Supreme Court’s size and jurisdiction to re-establish its legitimacy, or in which we end — by constitutional amendment if needed — dark money’s iron grip on our politics.

Rather than hector one part of the party, Buttigieg leans into his Midwestern values and speaks to unifying sentiments. He insists that “the American flag does not belong to one political side in this country, just as surely as we know that God does not belong to a political party in the United States of America.” And he argues that genuine aspirations for security and stability do not require we bathe in reactionary nostalgia. “We know it means to know your past without going back to it.”

Buttigieg offers a formula for unifying Democrats and forging a broad pro-democracy coalition: dramatic political reform; wages sufficient for an ordinary worker to live on one job; access to affordable childcare, worldclass healthcare, and public schools; and taxing corporations and the richest people at least as much as working people.

Whether he runs for president in 2028 (why wouldn’t he?), Buttigieg deserves kudos for his undaunted, unabashed, and unequivocal defense of America’s foundational values and commitment to pursuing our “more perfect union.” Democrats are fortunate to have him as a model for progressive, dynamic, optimistic political leadership.