So the Great Democratic Reboot was rolled out today. Let me express why I am underwhelmed.

First Mistake. The Reboot was announced with an op ed by Nancy Pelosi in the Washington Post and an op ed by Chuck Schumer in the New York Times.  The CNN story has a photo of Schumer and Pelosi together. I’m not seeing it in many other places.

This would have been a nice time to put some other faces forward, especially faces from Rust Belt or other states that aren’t already solid blue. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio might have been a good choice.  Or how about Al Franken of Minnesota? He’s great on the teevee. I was looking at a list of Democratic senators and realized there are several I’ve never heard speak, ever. Same thing with the House Dems. Isn’t in time for the old guard to let some of the younger people be The Face of the Party?

Instead, we get the same old faces who have spoken for the party since Reconstruction — a senator from New York and a congresswoman from San Francisco. And the Dems need to realize that in red country, people especially hate Pelosi. I acknowledge that isn’t fair to Pelosi, but it is what it is. If you want to reach voters who are not loyal Democrats already, don’t put Pelosi’s face on the message.

Second Mistake. The messengers probably won’t matter, however, because the news is focused on Jared Kushner’s testimony to the Senate investigators today. The Reboot will come and go with most of the nation not noticing.

Third Mistake. The Rollout features three main ideas: One, the Dems commit to creating 10 million full-time, good-paying jobs in the next five years, or I assume in whatever five-year period follows implementation of the Democratic plan to do this. Two, Dems will fight monopolies and big corporate mergers. Three, they pledge to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Excuse me while I yawn. If you have trouble falling asleep, skip the Ambien and just read the Great Democratic Reboot to yourself. It’s non habit forming, I promise.

Now, I’m not saying these are not worthy goals; of course, they are. But to working-class folks this is going to come across as more blah blah blah.

Jeff Stein wrote at Vox:

Not everyone will be thrilled with this strategy. Centrists in the party may worry that this tactic risks making Democrats look like far-left ideologues, and argue that the party lost last fall because its leader was already seen as too far to the left for most voters.

That anyone would consider those three points to be “far left” tells you how out to lunch too many Democrats are.

And those closer to the Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wing of the party will charge that Democrats have still done little to shake their ties to elite donors and should much more firmly embrace universal programs, like a single-payer health care model and free college tuition for all.

I wrote last week why I thought Democrats ought to be making all the noise they can about health care right now. Another shovel-ready issue Dems ought to be talking about is infrastructure.  The Reboot plan does mention infrastructure, but IMO it should be more prominent.

The U.S. is sitting on a $4 trillion infrastructure time bomb, the BBC says, as our roads and bridges and dams and tunnels and the power grid and airports and public transportation systems rot from underfunding and neglect. Why aren’t we putting the nation to work fixing this stuff? This is something tangible and understandable; vague bleats about jobs in a generic sense comes across as empty promises.

Democrats may think they already tried to sell that idea back in 2009, but most people here in red state land heard little about it except that it would cost a lot of money. The big block to the plan, of course, is that it would be a big outlay of tax dollars (although once the bridges have collapsed and the roads are no longer drivable, we’ll end up spending more to rebuild them).  Donald Trump promised an infrastructure plan, but what little he ever trotted out amounted to tax incentives to private companies to fix infrastructure, which frankly makes no sense to me.

Other criticisms I’ve heard about an infrastructure plan is that the nation is short of skilled workers to carry it out. Okay, so train them. Also, all this rebuilding would take many years. Sounds like a feature, not a bug.

Back to health care — it’s criminal that the Dems don’t mention health care in their plans except for prescription drug prices.  And I had read they were going to endorse a $15 / hour minimum wage, but neither Schumer nor Pelosi mentioned that. Cold feet?

There are a lot of other policies I’d like to have seen, like maybe a pledge that next time the financial sector crashes the economy, people will be prosecuted for it. But IMO it’s more effective to pick one or two tangible programs to sell to people than a laundry list of vague intentions.

If Democrats think that just injecting some buzz about a rigged economy into their rhetoric is going win people over — especially with the same old faces delivering the message — I don’t think so.  And they’re going to have to get bolder, and more specific, and be willing to point out Republican failures in starker terms.

As badly as Republicans are screwing up, expect them to maintain control of Congress next year. Because the Democrats can’t lead an opposition out of a wet paper bag.

Ed O’Keefe and Dave Weigel write in WaPo:

Completely sapped of power in Washington, top leaders of the Democratic Party now believe that the best way to fight a president who penned “The Art of the Deal” is with an economic agenda that they plan to call “A Better Deal.” …

…Democratic leaders shared few details to preserve suspense around the plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled Monday at an event in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, where the party hopes to defeat incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock (R). But some lawmakers, aides and outside advocates consulted on the new agenda said that it is expected to focus on new proposals to fund job-training programs, renegotiate trade deals and address soaring prescription-drug costs, as well as other issues. It is also expected to endorse long-held Democratic principles, including “a living wage” of $15 per hour and already unveiled spending plans for infrastructure that would expand broadband Internet access into rural counties.

In other words, instead of a vision for the future, Dems are once against trotting out a laundry list of programs that most voters will never hear about anyway. It’s not bad, but it’s not enough; more blah blah blah. And note no mention of health care.

How did they come up with this tepid gruel? Dana Milbank provides a clue:

As important as what’s in it is what’s not. Democrats jettisoned social and foreign policy issues for this exercise, eschewing the identity politics and box-checking that has plagued Democratic campaigns in the past, most recently Hillary Clinton’s. This will be purely an economic message.

They also resisted invitations to steer the party toward the center (as pollster Mark Penn advised) or in a more progressive agenda. This is meant to be a populist manifesto that doesn’t conform to the left/right debate but instead aims to align Democrats with ordinary, middle-class Americans fighting powerful special interests.

I think they forgot the “manifesto” part. The Democratic Party is like your unhip parents trying to be cool, and failing.

And then there’s this:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also told the newspaper that Democrats are not looking for a “course correction,” but rather a “presentation correction.”

Sweetums, you need the course correction. Trust me.

Benjamin Hart writes at New York Magazine:

To quote Jeb Bush: please clap.

If this rather anodyne phrasing sounds familiar, it’s because it recalls two successful slogans of presidents past: Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” back in 1910, and, of course, FDR’s “New Deal,” which he rolled out to great effect in 1932. (You’d think there might have been advances in political branding technology in the intervening 85 years. You’d be wrong.) It also may work as a foil to the supposed “dealmaker in chief” who currently occupies the White House.

Both of the Roosevelts focused with laser-like precision on economic security for Americans, and today’s Democrats are attempting to follow suit.

I wrote yesterday in despair of Democrats’ seizing the opportunity on health care that the GOP has handed them. Yep; they’re going to blow it.

Behold, health care in the allegedly richest country in the world:

The sick and the disabled pour out of these mountains every summer for their one shot at free health care, but this year was supposed to hold hope for a better solution.

Donald Trump won the White House in part on a promise to fix the nation’s costly and inefficient health-care system. Instead, Republicans in Congress are paralyzed and threatening to dismantle the imperfect framework of Obamacare.

No relief is in sight for someone like Larry McKnight, who sat in a horse stall at the Wise County Fairgrounds having his shoulder examined. He was among more than a thousand people attending the area’s 18th annual Remote Area Medical clinic, where physicians and dentists dispense free care to those who otherwise have none.

A horse stall? Yes, the poor folks come from many miles away for medical treatment in facilities meant to house livestock at the county fair. Chain link fences and barbed wire add to the ambience.

Remote Area Medical, Wise, VA, 2014. Virginia Public Radio WVTF.

This is the sort of thing that’s supposed to only happen in third world countries, not that it should happen anywhere.

A third of the patients who registered Friday were unemployed. [Note: Even my feeble math skills tell me that means two thirds ARE employed.] Those who couldn’t afford a room slept in their cars or camped in the fields around the fairgrounds. They lined up in the dead of night to get a spot inside the event.

It is the place of last resort for people who can’t afford insurance even under Obamacare or who don’t qualify for Medicaid in a state where the legislature has resisted expansion.

Paul Ryan would call this “people exercising choices.” More about Remote Area Medical here.

A lot of people were there for dental and vision services, which usually aren’t covered on Medicaid (although you can get Medicaid with vision and dental in some states). This lady had four rotten teeth pulled:

“My teeth were hurting,” she said. McConnell, 63 and disabled, said she had health insurance through Medicaid but no dental coverage.

So this was her dental plan: She’d save for six months to afford a motel room and gas, then wait in line in the morning heat to see a volunteer dentist.

Virginians are especially screwed because they don’t have Medicaid.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who flew out to the clinic Friday morning, had invited Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to join him but said that the Republican leader “politely” declined. McAuliffe, who visits the clinic every year, spent nearly two hours touring it — twice as long as scheduled — and took every opportunity to proclaim that he’s been trying for three years to get the state legislature to agree to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly has resisted, unlike the legislatures in nearby states, which McAuliffe kept reminding the patients and doctors who crowded around him on the hot fairgrounds. …

…“We need it,” called out Tonya Hall, operations director for a hospice-care facility. “Let them come and visit some in southwest Virginia. Let them see the poverty. Let them see how we live. Let them come.”

Let’s go back to our guy in the horse stall.

At 37, with a long graying ponytail, McKnight had never been sick until about eight months ago. So he hadn’t worried too much about not being able to afford insurance on his roughly $18,000 a year in pay as an auto mechanic. But now he was getting a referral to the University of Virginia hospital to check for the source of his pain, which he had vowed to withstand without resorting to opioid medication.

“The normal person doesn’t care about a lot of the things that they care about [in Washington]. Most people want to work, they want insurance and they want to be able to take care of their family without assistance,” he said.

The only way to do that, he said, is to have everybody — the healthy and the sick — paying into a centralized health insurance plan. “I really think the only thing that would truly help this country is if it were single-payer,” McKnight said.

Now, conventional wisdom in our liberal urban enclaves where Democrats talk only to themselves is that these poor rednecks are too stupid to know what’s good for them, so there’s no point going to them with better ideas. But if the wizards in charge of the Democratic Party had even half a clue, they’d be hiring teams of people to spread out through Appalachia and the rural South and Midwest and rust belt and everywhere else there are pockets of people who desperately need the federal government to step in and help them.

And those teams of people would be saying, look, the Republicans have betrayed you. Donald Trump betrayed you. All the plans they’ve been trying to pass in Washington wouldn’t give you anything and would take away what you gained under Obamacare, just so rich people can get more tax cuts.

This argument would have the power of being the plain truth.

The teams could be reinforced with television and radio ads. It should be a major blitz. And they should boldly talk about single payer, or Medicare for All, or whatever they want to call it. They should borrow from Ross Perot’s old playbook and go about with colorful graphs showing how much more the U.S. spends on health care than anybody else, because our system is a profit-taking mess. “See, people, it’s just this simple …” And don’t let Republicans scare anyone with lurid tales of “socialized medicine.”

People are already standing in line to get medical treatment in horse stalls. How much worse could it get?

But Democrats aren’t doing that. Because they’re losers. It’s to his credit that Gov. McAuliffe was there, but he doesn’t seem to want to go beyond preserving Obamacare.

Spicey resigned! Oh noes! We won’t have him to kick around any more. I swear, stuff happens so fast in DC these days it’s like a three-ring circus. In more ways than one.

Spicer’s resignation came about because some guy named Anthony Scaramucci was given the job of communications director. Scaramucci is a Wall Street financier and big-time Republican donor with no experience in journalism or corporate communications, so this should be fun. We’ll see how long he lasts.

Related: Trump 101: How to Speak His Language.

There’s also been a shakeup in Trump’s so-called “legal team” – Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal attorney, is out.  “Legal team” spokesman Mark Corallo has resigned. I look forward to the tell-all books that ought to be published next year, if not by Christmas.

Meanwhile, there are stories that Trump and Putin had other meetings at G20 beside the ones we know about.

But the big news is about the coming Mueller-Trump Smackdown. As I wrote yesterday, Trump indicated in his word salady-way that he expected Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller to limit his investigation to things directly related to the 2016 investigation. Then Bloomberg published a report that Mueller clearly was looking into Trump’s business interests, especially as they pertain to Russia. This includes  Trump’s as yet undisclosed tax returns, btw.

By all accounts, Trump has gone ballistic. White House staff have been put to work trying to dig up dirt on Mueller and his team. Lawyers have been put to work trying to determine if Trump could pardon himself. (The consensus: no.) Trump’s beef with the investigation is being called a war on the Justice Department.  See especially Josh Marshall, The President at War.  In short, he’s thrashing around in ways one would expect a very guilty man to do.

It’s a good bet Trump is going to try to fire Mueller, giving us Saturday Night Massacre II. And it could be very, very messy.

This places Trump and Mueller on a collision path. Either the president will have to fire the special counsel for doing exactly the same things that got Bharara and Comey axed, or he’ll have to sit and seethe as Mueller pokes into his taxes, his business, and who knows what else. …

… Legal experts think Trump could fire Mueller in several ways. He could direct Rosenstein to do so, but Rosenstein would probably refuse unless there was a strong legal justification. Trump could also try to change the rules for firing, but that would also have to go through Rosenstein. Either path is fraught with likely firings or resignations at the Justice Department.

If Trump is half as guilty as I suspect he is, he’ll burn the White House down before he’d allow his business dealings to be probed.

Elsewhere:

Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Junior, has connections to Russian intelligence.

Exxon Mobile has been fined for violating Russian sanctions while Tillerson was CEO.

Trump wants to hire foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago. He decided this during Made in America week.

These are direct quotes from Trump.

So pre-existing conditions are a tough deal. Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan. Here’s something where you walk up and say, “I want my insurance.” It’s a very tough deal, but it is something that we’re doing a good job of.

What the hell does that mean?

So I told them today, I don’t want to do that. I want to either get it done or not get it done. If we don’t get it done, we are going to watch Obamacare go down the tubes, and we’ll blame the Democrats. And at some point, they are going to come and say, “You’ve got to help us.”

They’re more likely to say, “You own this, dude.”

This health care is a tough deal. I said it from the beginning. No. 1, you know, a lot of the papers were saying — actually, these guys couldn’t believe it, how much I know about it. I know a lot about health care. [garbled] This is a very tough time for him, in a sense, because of the importance. And I believe we get there.

Again, what the hell does that even mean?

I have had the best reviews on foreign land. So I go to Poland and make a speech. Enemies of mine in the media, enemies of mine are saying it was the greatest speech ever made on foreign soil by a president.

I don’t recall anybody saying that.

She was sitting next to Putin and somebody else, and that’s the way it is. So the meal was going, and toward dessert I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about — things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.

They talked about adoption? Why do I find that unlikely?

Here’s a longer bit:

SCHMIDT: Last thing, if Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia — is that a red line?

HABERMAN: Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?

TRUMP: I would say yeah. I would say yes. By the way, I would say, I don’t — I don’t — I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? I don’t make money from Russia. In fact, I put out a letter saying that I don’t make — from one of the most highly respected law firms, accounting firms. I don’t have buildings in Russia. They said I own buildings in Russia. I don’t. They said I made money from Russia. I don’t. It’s not my thing. I don’t, I don’t do that. Over the years, I’ve looked at maybe doing a deal in Russia, but I never did one. Other than I held the Miss Universe pageant there eight, nine years [crosstalk].

SCHMIDT: But if he was outside that lane, would that mean he’d have to go?

[crosstalk]

HABERMAN: Would you consider——

TRUMP: No, I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia. So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. And actually, when I do my filings, peoples say, “Man.” People have no idea how successful this is. It’s a great company. But I don’t even think about the company anymore. I think about this. ’Cause one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial. O.K.? I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don’t do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son, two nice people. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow. It wasn’t Moscow, it was outside of Moscow.

HABERMAN: Would you fire Mueller if he went outside of certain parameters of what his charge is? [crosstalk]

SCHMIDT: What would you do?

[crosstalk]

TRUMP: I can’t, I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Headline from today’s Bloomberg News: Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe. …

…FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said. …

…Agents are also interested in dealings with the Bank of Cyprus, where Wilbur Ross served as vice chairman before he became commerce secretary. They are also examining the efforts of Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and White House aide, to secure financing for some of his family’s real estate properties. The information was provided by someone familiar with the developing inquiry but not authorized to speak publicly.

The roots of Mueller’s follow-the-money investigation lie in a wide-ranging money laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.

Not enough popcorn in the world …

Irakly (Ike) Kaveladze, now identified as the “eighth man” in the infamous June 2016 meeting with Junior, Mr. Ivanka and Paul Manafort, is suspected of being involved in Russian money laundering.  Imagine that!

Scott Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, confirmed to The Washington Post and other news outlets that he had been contacted by a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and complied with a request to identify Kaveladze as among the attendees at the meeting. …

… Kaveladze, whose online resume says he “oversees a global business portfolio that includes large retail ventures as well as commercial and residential real estate projects” figured prominently in a Nov. 2000 story in The New York Times about money laundering.

The Times reported that investigators found that Kaveladze had opened accounts at American banks that were then used to launder more than $1.4 billion from “unknown Russians and other Eastern Europeans.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., speaking with NPR’s Geoff Bennett, said he understood that Kaveladze has “a colorful history.”

According to Reuters, Balber also has ties to the president. The news agency says he “represented Trump himself in the New York businessman’s 2013 lawsuit against comedian television host Bill Maher, demanding the $5 million Maher offered to give to charity if Trump could prove his father is not an orangutan.”

The lawyer says Kaveladze attended the meeting as a translator, but found out nobody needed him to translate, so he didn’t say anything.

Charles Pierce gets to the gist of the matter —

It was always about the money. The reason we never saw the tax returns was because of what they would show about the money. The reason we can’t get a straight answer about the family’s dealings with the Russians is the money. Preet Bharara got fired because of the money and how the money had been allegedly laundered. James Comey got fired because of the money. Without the money, specifically the money from Russia, the Trump empire likely would have collapsed under a hail of writs and the paterfamilias would have been rendered invisible, even in the mirrors of Mar-a-Lago.

It always was about the money. The meeting on June 6, 2016 ultimately was about the money, as we learned today from CNN. The network reported that it had identified the eighth participant in that now-famous Trump Tower confab. Contrary to the previous load of hooey dispensed by Junior and the first family, this dude was not a translator.

This is from the 2000 New York Times story:

In a a nine-month inquiry that subpoenaed bank records, the investigators found that an unknown number of Russians and other East Europeans moved more than $1.4 billion through accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco.

The accounts had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, according to Citibank and Mr. Kaveladze. He set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations, according to the report by the General Accounting Office, which has not been made public. …

… The G.A.O. report said nothing about the sources of the money. In view of past investigations into laundering, this wave was highly likely to have arisen from Russian executives who were seeking to avoid taxes, although some money could be from organized crime.

More than $800 million was wired from abroad to 136 accounts that Mr. Kaveladze opened at Citibank for Russian clients, and most of that was then sent to overseas accounts, said the report, which was provided to The New York Times by government officials who want to see its findings receive maximum exposure. … About $600 million moved through the Commercial Bank, the investigation found.

In spite of the strong appearance of shadiness, it seems Kaveladze was never indicted for anything, much less convicted. But the banks closed his accounts anyway.

On top of everything else, we learned yesterday that Trump had an undisclosed meeting with Vladimir Putin while he was in Germany. This happened after the much discussed public meeting.

Hours into a dinner with world leaders who had gathered for the Group of 20 summit meeting, President Trump left his chair at the sprawling banquet table and headed to where President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was seated. …

… The dinner discussion caught the attention of other leaders around the table, some of whom later remarked privately on the odd spectacle of an American president seeming to single out the Russian leader for special attention at a summit meeting that included some of the United States’ staunchest, oldest allies.

No one else from the U.S. government was in on this conversation, which was facilitated by a Kremlin translator. No one knows what they talked about for as long as an hour. This might have be en innocent, but Trump’s seeking out Putin, as if Trump were someone currying favor with a patron, looks bad, considering everything else going on.

Getting back to money laundering … I keep giving these lectures that the Trump-Russia collusion thing is about something bigger than just election meddling. Trump has changed positions on nearly everything he ran on, but he keeps coming back to being buddies with Putin. One does wonder why that’s so. What does Putin have on Trump? Earlier this year, John Oliver wondered this, also.

It’s all about the grift, folks. Follow the money.

Another tidbit in the news — the eighth man at the famous June meeting has been identified.

An American-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged as a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.

Here’s the juicy bit:

Balber said Tuesday that he received a phone call from a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend asking if Kaveladze would agree to be interviewed. Balber said his client would cooperate. The request is the first public indication that Mueller’s team is investigating the meeting.

The Senate Obamacare “repeal and replace” bill that I can’t remember the name of died last night; Republicans didn’t have the votes. What is likely to happen next?

Mitch McConnell already trotted out the old “repeal and delay” law, and that was shot down by lunchtime. Are there any other options?

It appears Mitch has just about used up his options. Trump has been ranting about letting the ACA collapse, but it probably won’t collapse unless Republicans find a way to make it collapse. Left to itself, it will probably trudge along about the way it’s been trudging along — not perfect, but not awful, either.

See also Trump’s erratic leadership is killing the GOP’s agenda. Not only has he never held a job; it’s become clear the whole concept of “teamwork” eludes him.

Good, in-depth article in Salon, “Chris Christie’s era of misrule in Jersey: The empty swamp mall and the canceled tunnel.” Christie will be leaving New Jersey in much worse shape than it was before he became governor. Unfortunately, the New Jersey Democratic Party is totally useless, also. I have no idea where New Jersey will go from here.

The Washington Post reports that when he’s not on a foreign trip, Trump sits around the White House watching television. At least he puts on a suit and isn’t in his bathrobe all day. He appears to have checked out of the job of being President, except for rallies and trips.