NO SHAME - FROM MAY 2018

Throwback Thursday.  Though comfortably ensconced in  Congress, for now, it appears that California may lose a House seat.  And speculation is centered on the 49th Congressional District seat held by Michael Ted Levin is endangered in redistricting. So though my partisanship here is a bit obvious, my prediction of Mr. Levin's political demise  might just have been a bit early. Whatever happens, Mendacious Mike will be fighting like a trapped badger regardless. Enjoy. 

Like the last moanings of a dying mastodon, after the big meteor hit, the mendacious campaign of Michael Ted Levin campaign is breathing its last gasps. Despite protestations of being an "environmental attorney" MT Levin is killing trees quicker than an uncontrolled forest fire. In an effort to marriage shame his single opponents, we have a Nixonian trotting out of his wife. In the meantime, the California 2020 poll shows Mike Levin running third. 

From the SD Free Press and Doug Porter comes this:

"Mike Levin is clearly the candidate favored by Democratic Party insiders. He’s well-known to Orange County voters; not so much in San Diego. It should be noted that seven Democratic Clubs in San Diego have rated Levin “Unacceptable” due to the manner in which they perceive his campaign is being run. Please don’t vote for Mike Levin"

Stopping by the usual FB groups, we see the usual trash talk about Doug Applegate's divorce and Sara Jacobs' inexperience. These comment strings are a microcosm of the social media strategy of the Levin campaign. Someone posts an objective poll or factually sourced analysis, and the lead gets buried by an onslaught of attacks on the messenger. The debate gets hijacked into a protracted and uninformed discussion on the most mischaracterized divorce since 'Wales Vs. Wales". Fevered tags and PM's go out demanding that defenders of some online taste and decency are banned from Facebook groups, not because of any TOS abuse, but because it does not fit their narrative.

When the Facebook profiles of the commenters and group admins are revealed, many are not even residents of the District. Some are not even residents of the state.  The usual technique is to frame insulting and demeaning discussions about Sara Jacobs, Paul Kerr, and Doug Applegate as "vetting" the candidates, and their potential "baggage".  Usually, this is followed by boilerplate appeals to strategically vote, usually framed as "we need to be careful and smart." A synonym for "Strategic Voting" is "insincere voting." It seems fitting that appeals to do so are advanced daily by the online surrogates of Michael Ted Levin. 

Psychology Today notes : "Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders."  Though the linked article has a variety of gaslighting techniques, this particular one is salient. "They tell you or others that you are crazy....The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It's a master technique."   

These are the "talking points" the Levin team and its online surrogates were given to discuss the race. This was approved by Mike Levin. It is a widely circulated internal document that accidentally went public. The narrative points about Applegate and Jacobs speak for themselves.

Porter is hardly an enemy of MT Levin. He was highly critical of the candidates not attending the "viability forum." and a primary researcher for it. But he also understands that SEVEN Democratic Clubs are not lying when it comes to the "UNACCEPTABLE" votes. In order to support the Levin, campaign one has to ignore the voices of hundreds of activists and their judgment.

One has to ignore Doug Applegate's ex-wife and her children and the story of their lives. By every objective measure of truth, it's all just political bullshit. In the case of Priscilla Greco and her children, at a time where we finally understand as a society that the stories of women and their children deserve to be listened to, the Levin campaign encourages his surrogates to call each of them liars. 

I question what right do politicians have to bring into the mix, things that are harmful to a candidate's young children. Long after the primary next month, Loren and Renee Applegate are going to have to deal with the gossip surrounding their parent's divorce driven by Mike Levin and his surrogates. 

One has to also ignore the polls. If anybody sincerely cannot abide Doug Applegate over his decades-old divorce, they can coalesce behind Sara or take Mr. Porter's advice and consider Paul. It's time to either support the frontrunner or back Sara Jacobs because she is ahead of the other two. Not a single vote is going to be changed by rehashing the SOS anymore. 

Here's the Levin campaign's not so subtle reminder. A constant "trolling" remark we have tolerated this cycle, is the repeated raising of the other candidates' marital status. It's malodorous in concept. I have yet to understand why "we the people" care why a 29-year-old woman has not yet gotten married, or what Paul Kerr or Doug Applegate's private lives have to do with this race. A cursory look at the record indicates that Mr. and Mrs. Levin got married in their thirties. Mailing voters a wedding picture in conjunction with the appeal below casts a subtle negative light on those currently single. 

The Levin campaign has been voted "unacceptable" by seven different Democratic party organizations. The actions were linked directly to actual bullying on behalf of Mike Levin in six of these instances by his backers. 

The most recent of these was the   San Diego Democrats for Equality group. Attached is a link to the discussion about the matter by that club's leader on Facebook along with the link to their endorsement page above. The resolution of that Club passed unanimously. One of the attendees was strong Levin supporter Jess Durfee, who is a member of the DNC for CA and a past chair of the SD County Democratic party. 

When originally told of the narrative that the Levin campaign had some aggressive supporters, most downplayed it as "just politics." The more we have learned about the tactics, the more divergent from normal it becomes. The meeting at the San Diego Democrats for Equality involved several accounts of campaign functionaries threatening students with lifelong unemployment for non-support of Mr. Levin.  Then we have the situation detailed here. 

James Elia is a State Assembly candidate in California's 71st Assembly District. He had a direct experience in having to guard a young delegate from a confrontation with Levin's staff at the State Democratic Convention. Then there is a fifteen-year-old student named Hannah who was bullied at school by angry young "Levinites", then badgered at a meeting of Indivisible 49th. A question was raised about whether youth seeking their initial political experiences would be cared for. The leaders of a group that hosted a highly touted "anti-gun event", responded in this manner: 

""Hannah was approached by a volunteer named Bill, who asked why I asked about bullying. Before Hannah could get into great detail about the experiences she had in her High School with bullying by young "Levin Youth", Ellen and Misty appeared behind the young man. Their pinched-up faces full of hatred and rage, Montanari and O'Healy proceed to vocally and shrilly dress down a fifteen-year-old high school student, terming her an "obstructionist", accusing her of "not knowing what she was talking about" and a variety of other terms. Even more concerning both violated Hannah's personal space going so far as "getting into" her face. Having suitably achieved their objective of humiliating a young woman who thought she was answering a question from a staff member, Ellen and Misty achieved an obvious objective. That was simply to chase out perceived opponents of Mike Levin."

Mr. Levin's unaired anti-gun ad features some of the same people that spoke at the "anti-gun" event. Though we all should welcome both Mr. Levin and Flip- divisible's support of needed reform, the point seems to be lost that aggression and coercion in the name of any cause are still tantamount to violence and bullying. As can be seen in the documents appended below, these issues were brought to his campaign's attention and roundly dismissed.

We have the question of the Levin Eleven. Is not an effort to wrongfully unseat Eleven delegates to the State Convention over an arcane technicality another form of coercion? The San Diego County Democratic Central Committee certainly thought so in a unanimously passed resolution, detailing how Levin's campaign sought people to file false complaints about trivia, in a failed attempt to disqualify duly elected delegates who were not expected to vote for him at the State Convention.  In a very real way, that move is a form of bullying, of retaliation, and of seeking to destroy political opponents. 

Pierre Trudeau quoted Plato saying that people who want power too badly, should never receive it. In a resolution the Saddleback College Young Democrats  stated: 

"Levin's campaign has failed to meet Saddleback Young Democrats standard for the progressive values we wish to see as our representative. Additionally, Levin's campaign has failed to denounce what is tantamount to a slander campaign against other Democrats which is disappointing and discouraging and is another example of the failed leadership we have come to expect from the Levin campaign.

"Robert Kennedy said this when I was young, "The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." In their resolution the  Palomar College Democrats' stated: 

"Yet, the crux of our issue with the Levin campaign has not been his words, no matter how implicitly inflammatory they are. Our true problem has been with something more actively problematic. There hasn't been a single denunciation from Levin's campaign of a slander campaign taken part in by a number of so-called Democrats, and we see this action as tantamount to complicity."

Albert Camus said this when I was young, "A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. In a press release to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the San Diego Progressive Democratic Club and other allied groups stated the following:

"Since entering the race last year, Mike Levin has engaged in a persistent whisper campaign against Doug Applegate, the frontrunner who nearly defeated Darrell Issa in 2016. In an attempt to consolidate the support of CDP delegates to earn the party endorsement, he and his staff have continually stoked the same malicious slander and false rumors Issa employed against Applegate in the last cycle- even as these rumors have been debunked time and again by those involved."

However, local Democratic clubs have seen this conduct for what it is. The Democratic Woman’s Club of San Diego County, the Palomar College Democrats, Democrats of MiraCosta College, Saddleback Young Democrats, College Democrats at CSU San Marcos, and Mission Vista High School Democratic Club, additionally citing persistent bullying and intimidation on the part of staff and surrogates throughout the endorsement process, have all rated Mike Levin unacceptable: believing his conduct to be "unbecoming of a Democrat seeking federal office."

Finally, Hannah Arendt also said this when I was young, "The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil." In a resolution, the Mira Costa College Young Democrats stated the following: 

FINAL THOUGHTS

In 1954, Joesph Mc Carthy picked a fight with the U.S. Army, charging lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army claimed that the senator had sought preferential treatment for a recently drafted aide. McCarthy stepped down as chairman of his investigative subcommittee for the three-month nationally televised spectacle known as the Army-McCarthy hearings. They devolved into show trials, where the concept of "due process" went out the window, and nobody had a chance of an acquittal. 

The Army hired a Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch. On June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. An amazed television audience looked on. Welch responded with immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

Overnight, McCarthy's immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, a pariah to his party, ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death three years later. He was only 48 years old.

Joseph Welch's question remains indelible. "Have you no decency"? It was relevant in 1954, it was relevant in 1968 with Richard Nixon and George Wallace. It is relevant to Donald Trump. And Michael Ted Levin.

MANY BLESSINGS- NOEL