Is Doug Jones Running for President in 2020? –

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
– Poverb

U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama talking to a member of his staff in his office in the Russel Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.: Glynn Wilson

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room was described as “hell” last week by not only President Donald J. Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

A number of Senators echoed that description, including most forcefully Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who now seems more than willing to take on the mantle of white male defender-in-chief without the white robes in a brazen effort to stay on Trump’s good side to succeed Jeff Sessions of Alabama as attorney general after the election.

Talk about a devil’s bargain, not the drinking game or the sex triangle. It is a bet that somehow Trump and the Republicans will come out on top, because truth really doesn’t matter anymore.

Conservative talk radio and Fox News are now rife with heated testimony from poor white males who are trying to convince sympathetic Trump voters that they are somehow the minority victims here. Rush Limbaugh first made this type of language acceptable in post-Civil Rights era politics. Trump has blown down the levy flood gates and let the racist bigots out of their life rafts and onto the ship stern again. Not since before George C. Wallace was shot in a Maryland parking lot have we seen this level of racial ugliness in American politics.

It reminds me of a slogan from the Civil War: “It’s a rich man’s war, and a poor man’s fight.”

Trump is the latest rich man to exploit the votes of poor men, although he may not be as rich as he claims and he certainly got most of his money from his daddy, much of it in potentially illegal tax dodges, as the New York Times proved this week. The poor men are the modern descendants of soldiers from the war, some of whom wore Yellow Hammer cloth patches on their sleeves representing the state bird of Alabama, the yellow-shafted flicker, including some of my relatives.

It’s probably lucky for Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, the Democrat who overcame ole teen skirt chasing judge Roy Moore last year, that he did not end up on the Judiciary Committee after all.

The Kavanaugh fight has roiled the midterm elections and is being used by both sides as a rallying cry to get voters to the polls in record numbers. But it has just intensified the partisan divide in America to a whole new level of vitriol.

What is a mainstream, moderate person who truly believes in American democracy and would like to do things and say things to bring the country together again to do in such a hellish situation?

Senator Jones came to Washington to try to work both sides of the political aisle to get things done. He’s no raging liberal, to the consternation of many of his followers on Facebook, and he has sincerely worked with Republican Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Ted Cruz of Texas on bills.

This week he stood side by side with conservative Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Tuscaloosa, Republicans Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, John Cornyn of Texas and John Kennedy of Louisiana to ask the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to ensure that coastal states receive their fair share of revenues from any new federal mineral reserves development. The majority of this funding would be generated from offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which many activists on the left oppose.

Under the current Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which governs offshore federal mineral development in the region, the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas only receive about 38 percent of the revenue generated from oil and gas reserves within their borders. Revenue is capped at $500 million and must be divided among the four states. Other states receive 50 percent of the revenue generated from mineral development within their borders and those revenues are not subject to an arbitrary cap.

He’s also worked with Republicans and Democrats to help pass a bill to tackle the opioid crisis, which passed both houses and is on its way to the president for his signature, and a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration.

But in this highly charged partisan environment, not many people care about all of that. It will get scant news coverage if any and almost no engagement on social media. All anyone cares about right now are the midterm elections and the fate of Kavanaugh and Trump.

Staff Threats

Since we broke the news last week that Senator Jones announced his intention to vote against Kavanaugh’s nomination — after spending the time to study the record and see what happened before the Judiciary Committee — in a media conference call on Thursday he revealed that some female staff members in his Senate offices have received threats from Kavanaugh supporters.

“The hate and ugliness I have witnessed is unprecedented, and I hope, God I hope, does not reflect who we really are as Americans, and it has been on both sides,” Jones said in the conference call with news reporters, mostly from local news outlets in Alabama. “I’ve even had callers telling the young women who’ve answered my phones that they hope they are sexually assaulted.”

Most of the media participating in the call are from local newspapers and television news stations. This week, someone from the tea party blog Yellow Hammer was in on the call, but asked no questions. Playing the role of the right-wing Brietbart News in Alabama, it has led the attack on Jones on the web and social media, fueling the hate. Yet even liberal Democrats share their links, just as they shared the fake news links back during the 2016 election in the Russian hacker led assault on Hillary Clinton.

When asked by Kim Chandler of the Associated Press if he still intends to vote against Kavanaugh, Jones dodged the question and said things can change in 24 hours “up here” in Washington.

“I’ve tried to do my due diligence and exercise my best judgement. This has not been a political call for me,” Jones said. “Throughout this process I have tried to maintain an open mind.”

But after hearing the allegations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, which he said sounded credible to him, and then Kavanaugh’s angry, partisan defense, he said: “I’ve got concerns that Judge Kavanaugh is more of a partisan and has more of a judicial agenda rather than a judicial philosophy and would not follow the independence that I think is necessary and that which he said he would follow. I just think he demonstrated to the country the contrary.”

In response to other questions, Jones said Kavanaugh “demonstrated a partisan agenda, not a judicial philosophy.”

He said Kavanaugh had a right to defend himself and to be angry if the alleged incident didn’t happen. He understands this has been difficult on his family. But Kavanaugh didn’t call for a full investigation to clear his name.

“The manner in which he went attacking and blaming others (Democrats, the Clintons, etc.) I thought was incredibly unfortunate,” Jones said. “It demonstrated a partisanship and lack of independence.”

The Senator said he will be viewing the FBI report Thursday afternoon and voting in the procedural motion on cloture on Friday, and expects to vote no in the final vote on Saturday, unless things change up here.

Senator Jones had called the process flawed from the beginning, and had called for a full FBI investigation. But he indicated the one allowed but limited by the president this week was not comprehensive or complete. While Kavanaugh’s friend and alleged co-conspirator Mark Judge was interviewed by the FBI, he was not subpoenaed and ordered to testify under oath. Many other witnesses who could have been interviewed were not.

“The way the procedure has gone on now there will always be a cloud” over the nomination, Senator Jones said. “They will never get to the bottom of this at all, and that is unfortunate not just for Judge Kavanaugh. It’s unfortunate for Dr. Ford and it’s unfortunate for the Supreme Court and the American public.”

The outcome in the full Senate could come down to the votes of Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona, who called Trump’s mocking comments of Dr. Ford this week “kind of appalling,” along with the two Republican women, Susan Collins of Main and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and perhaps Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

If these Senators split, the vote could end up in a tie, which would be broken in Kavanaugh’s favor by Vice President Mike Pence. But if it ends up being 51-49 against Kavanaugh, the vote of Senator Jones and other red state Democrats will prove critical.

Running for President?

Apparently the bipartisan courage of Senator Doug Jones has earned the respect of national public opinion pundits. Nate Silver included the name Doug Jones on a list of potential presidential candidates for the Democrats in 2020.

No. 1 overall picks:
Sept. 2017: Warren
May 2018: Sanders
Oct. 2018: Warren https://t.co/NFNw1WTrAs

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 3, 2018

When I asked him in a text message after the press call if he was really planning to run for president, he said, and I quote: “Hah!”