{"id":2450916,"date":"2019-11-09T22:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/mike-littwin-whos-in-a-bigger-panic-a-warren-stricken-bloomberg-or-an-impeachment-stricken-trump\/"},"modified":"2019-11-09T22:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T05:24:00","slug":"mike-littwin-whos-in-a-bigger-panic-a-warren-stricken-bloomberg-or-an-impeachment-stricken-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/mike-littwin-whos-in-a-bigger-panic-a-warren-stricken-bloomberg-or-an-impeachment-stricken-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Littwin: Who\u2019s in a bigger panic, a Warren-stricken Bloomberg or an impeachment-stricken Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was a long while coming, but I believe we have now officially moved into the early-panic stage of the Democratic presidential primary. This won\u2019t be the last one. Democrats routinely panic during election time, and also during non-election time, but in the run-up to 2020 \u2014 with, yes, the future of American democracy on the line \u2014 the panic attacks will likely reach Tony Soprano levels.<\/p>\n

As of now, they\u2019ve reached Michael Bloomberg levels, in which the multi-multi-billionaire and former New York City mayor is prepared, once again, to rescue the Democratic field and, thereby, the nation. Unless he decides, once again, not to run as he did \u2014 checking calendar \u2014 just last March.<\/p>\n

It seems that with Joe Biden fading among Democrats \u2014 although still leading in nearly all the national polls \u2014 and Elizabeth Warren gaining among Democrats \u2014 despite battleground-state polling showing her struggling against Donald Trump \u2014 Bloomberg has decided someone is needed to change the dynamic. And that someone, in Bloomberg\u2019s view, is Bloomberg along with, of course, his $52 billion.<\/p>\n

All right, that\u2019s still pretty low-level panic. I don\u2019t know anyone who thinks Bloomberg would do anything much in the Democratic race except get in the way. You can argue, as I would, that if Bloomberg is panicked about Warren, he gives her the opportunity for a pre-Trump showdown with a billionaire who won\u2019t call her Pocahontas. He already has compared her wealth tax to chaos in Venezuela. And you can argue, as I would, that if Bloomberg wants a moderate to win and is worried that Biden is having trouble raising money, that Bloomberg would just get in the way of Pete Buttigieg, a moderately liberal Democrat who is on the rise, not to mention other moderates like Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and even Colorado\u2019s own Michael Bennet.<\/p>\n

And I would definitely argue the last thing Democrats are looking for in 2020 is a stop-and-frisk defender and #MeToo-challenged self-funder who pledges to spend $100 million of his own money on his campaign and who plans, his supporters are saying, to skip the early states and wait until Super Tuesday to join the fray. Who wants to bet that Bloomberg has, uh, reconsidered his presidential considerations by then?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it, whethert you think Bloomberg is what Democrats \u2014 now reduced to a mere 17 candidates \u2014 need at this point, the strange thing about this particular panic is that it comes just as Donald Trump is having the worst run of his presidency, far worse than the Robert Mueller probing, the James Comey firing or the Vladimir Putin poodling.<\/p>\n

You may recall that Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry and the likelihood \u2014 OK, near certainty \u2014 of the House voting to impeach him. No, he won\u2019t be removed, thanks to Cory Gardner and the rest of his weak-kneed pals in the GOP Senate caucus, but he\u2019ll almost certainly be weakened.<\/p>\n

As the impeachment inquiry picks up speed, we\u2019ve seen Trump become increasingly unhinged. I particularly like his comedy bit about impeachment being unconstitutional. On Friday, even funnier, he defended himself by saying he alone had \u201ccaught the swamp.\u201d Maybe he meant he had caught swamp fever, which would be understandable. Each day House Democrats are releasing the transcripts of the depositions they\u2019ve conducted on Trump and Ukraine and those three magic words \u2014 quid, pro and quo \u2014 and each day the messaging becomes more deadly.<\/p>\n

The transcripts show that Trump was holding back desperately needed military aid from Ukraine unless President Zelensky publicly announced he was going to investigate the Bidens and the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, had hacked the Democrats in 2016. You can call it bribery or extortion or abuse of power or a high crime or a misdemeanor. This is how Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman put it in testimony released Friday:<\/p>\n

According to The Washington Post\u2019s reading of the transcript, Vindman was asked if he had any doubt that Trump, in his infamous July 25 phone call, was asking to investigate the Bidens \u201cas a deliverable\u201d \u2014 meaning, as part of a quid pro quo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no doubt,\u201d Vindman said.<\/p>\n

And beginning next week, Vindman and the rest will give their testimony publicly. Yes, the erstwhile Trump supporters as well as life-long diplomats will line up to testify about how Trump gave over the running of diplomacy in Ukraine to Trump\u2019s TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and, it seems, Rudy\u2019s henchmen to put the pressure on Zelensky. It\u2019s all farce, or would be if it weren\u2019t so critical. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Giuliani\u2019s henchmen were making the same ask of the previous Ukraine president.<\/p>\n

Republicans are at a loss as to what to do to defend the indefensible Trump. They no longer have the holding-hearings-in-secrecy complaint to make. They don\u2019t have the lack-of-transcripts complaint to make. The smears that some Republicans have tried to make, accusing diplomats of being deep-staters or double agents or whatever else comes to mind, won\u2019t survive the public hearings. And how do they defend, in a Senate trial, the fact that Trump won\u2019t allow his senior officials to give testimony?<\/p>\n

Well, there is the most recent tactic, which is to say that the Trump team is too inept to have pulled off any kind of deal with Ukraine. As Trump\u2019s buddy Lindsey Graham put it, \u201cWhat I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine, it was incoherent. \u2026 They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know who should be more panicked by the fact that Graham\u2019s description of events \u2014 that Trump and his Ukraine team are basically a bunch of clowns \u2014 is the easiest one to believe.<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin runs Sundays in The Aspen Times. A former columnist for the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, he currently writes for ColoradoIndependent.com.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a long while coming, but I believe we have now officially moved into the early-panic stage of the Democratic presidential primary. This won\u2019t be the last one. Democrats routinely panic during election time, and also during non-election time, but in the run-up to 2020 \u2014 with, yes, the future of American democracy on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 07:36:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}