We're not in 2009 anymore. President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP)—which passed with only Democratic support—makes that clear. In 2009, also in the midst of a terrible crisis, we enacted a very different economic package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The differences in content between the two are stark.

The current one is more than twice as large, delivers money directly to people who need it (rather than fruitlessly seeking bipartisan support, in part by including tax cuts which are far less effective in terms of impact), and is strikingly more progressive, more so than anything proposed by a president since LBJ, according to Ezra Klein—in particular in its approach to poverty. But equally stark is the difference between the Republican response this time versus 12 years ago.

Despite newly elected President Barack Obama's inclusion of various elements Republicans should have supported, his 2009 stimulus package faced sustained and ruthless attacks from conservative politicians and, just as importantly, the right-wing media. At the time, the "de facto leader" of the Republican Party was Rush Limbaugh, whose audience size beat that of all his radio rivals. His assaults on the Obama stimulus package are representative of those put forth by the rest of the right-wing media ecosystem.

Day after day, the host attacked Obama's plan—at a time when the president was immensely popular, more so than Joe Biden at a comparable point in his presidency. The Obama stimulus itself was broadly popular when it was enacted on Feb. 17, 2009, although it did not garner quite as much support as Biden's plan does right now. Conservatives like Limbaugh made it their business to turn the American people against the bill, and not just by criticizing it on the grounds of small-government ideology. They had a good deal of success, in part because of flaws in the ARRA, but also because they were laser-focused on poisoning the discourse around it.

In addition to lying about the specifics, Limbaugh race-baited his listeners by slamming the ARRA as a "welfare payment"—a racially loaded term that conservatives going back to Ronald Reagan used as a dog whistle, to evoke stereotypical images of Black people supposedly not working while being supported by the government. The host linked the Obama plan to welfare in different ways, on numerous different broadcasts, and mentioned how "civil rights coalitions" supported the push to "redistribute" money by "taking it from you" (given that his audience was overwhelmingly white, we know who "you" referred to). He went after the bill for sending money to ACORN—which advocated for low-income folks and people of color, and worked to increase voter registration—despite the fact that the group got no money from the ARRA. Limbaugh also speculated baselessly that Al Sharpton and his group got stimulus funds.

The host also lied about the ARRA giving tax credits to "illegal aliens"—which did not happen. Additionally, he characterized the Obama stimulus as an "effort to buy votes," and then immediately played an exchange of the president talking with a Latino student. In this and other similar segments, the host's goal was to paint the plan as seeking to help those Black and brown people whom he depicted as wanting to avoid work. As Limbaugh told it, the ARRA was another plank in a race war fueled by Obama's "rage"—and inspired by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Bringing it all together on June 22, 2009, the host spewed the following racist claptrap: "Everything in the stimulus plan, every plan he's got is reparations. … Redistribution of wealth, reparations … whatever you want to call it, it's reparations."

Although today's Republicans are employing different tactics in opposing Biden's plan, some habits are hard to break. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham went after a provision aimed at helping Black farmers who suffered a century of systemic discrimination after the Civil War, using the same language as Limbaugh: "In this bill, if you're a farmer, your loan will be forgiven up to 120% of your loan if you're socially disadvantaged, if you're African American … some other minority. But if you're (a) white person, if you're a white woman, no forgiveness! That's reparations!" House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, who hails from the same state, called Graham out: "He ought to be ashamed of himself. He knows the history in this country and he knows what has happened to Black farmers," and added that his fellow South Carolinian ought to "go to church … Get in touch with his Christianity."

Graham didn't attack the overall bill in race-baiting terms, however. I'm not suggesting that's because the 2021 version of the Republican Party has grown more enlightened on race since it fell under the sway of Donald Trump. It's because the circumstances around the American Rescue Plan are different from those in play in 2009. Republicans haven't stopped using racially or culturally divisive attacks as a way to distract from the unpopularity of their policy positions. It's just that, with over half a million deaths that have affected all communities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even they don't think it's a winning move to attack Biden's relief bill on the same sort of race-baiting grounds, or with the same level of intensity, as they did Obama's ARRA package.

Republicans can't even successfully go after the ARP as "big government" overreach or for increasing the national debt, because they supported multiple COVID-19 bills last year that in total spent even more, not to mention their having busted the budget on Trump's Rich Man's Tax Cut in 2017. The last thing Republicans want to do is remind voters that they blew a trillion-plus dollar hole in the national debt and sent just about half of that money to the richest 5%, while Biden's bill will put 70% of its money into the pockets of the bottom 60% of Americans by income.

Democrats must make sure voters don't forget that. New York. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney's messaging nailed it: "We should shout it from the rooftops that we are passing historic legislation that will reboot the economy and end the pandemic. They're always ready to help a big corporation or a rich person, but when a working family needs help, the Republicans tell them to drop dead."

Even Republican mayors—32 of them in fact, from states ranging from Oklahoma to North Carolina to Indiana to Arizona to Michigan—signed on to support the Biden plan. Directly countering lies from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about "blue state bailouts," Republican Mayor Bryan Barnett of Rochester Hills, Michigan, stated: "This isn't because of some gross mismanagement or some bad contracts that were signed or historic deficits. This is about addressing the needs of a global pandemic that are really (for) the same constituents they serve in D.C. that we're serving here at the local level."

For multiple reasons, including the fact that their current leader, aka Mr. Former Guy, supported the main element—a check going out to most Americans—the Republican response to the American Rescue Plan has been "more muted" than 12 years ago, and that includes the response from Trump.

The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote (Twice) actually slammed his once and possible future ally McConnell over his opposition to those very checks. Republicans can't seem to get on the same page when it comes to the specifics of the ARP, so it's hard for them to condemn it in a coherent way. Sen. McTurtle has issued a few statements rebuking the relief package, but it's nothing compared to 2009.

Rather than go hard after the ARP in the way Limbaugh had done with the ARRA a dozen years ago, Trump all but ignored it at his biggest and best opportunity: CPAC. He devoted only two sentences to the bill during a speech lasting an hour and a half, instead spending much more time talking about the election, impeachment, and those who truly demonstrated, in the words of Luca Brasi, their "ever-ending loyalty." As for those who didn't, they could sleep with the fishes as far as Trump—who has himself been accused of acting like a mafia boss—was concerned.

Instead, Trump and his party made a decision to attack Biden in a very incoherent way. This is not to suggest that they don't know what they are doing, but rather that what they are doing is not going to work. They are banking on people, when they vote in 2022, somehow not remembering how bad the situation was when Biden took office, so that Republicans can then say that the ARP didn't really do all that much, or wasn't necessary in the first place—as Moscow Mitch just claimed on Thursday—or was just a bunch of progressive ideas (yeah, and people like those ideas). Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi is actually trying to take credit for the bill, even though he (and every other Republican) voted against it. Talk about incoherence. You know their attacks are pretty weak when they sound like this one, from Texas Sen. John Cornyn: "Unfortunately, there's going to be a sugar high because free money is very popular … So this may be temporarily popular, but it's going to wear thin over time."

If you have to say twice that the bill is going to be popular, then maybe you've got a political problem here, senator. Republicans are already trying to "pre-deny" credit for the coming boom to Biden's policies—even as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's analysis found that the American Rescue Plan would increase economic growth in our country by an impressive 3% over previous estimates, and would add over 1% to worldwide economic growth. That's a Big Fucking … oh, forget it, everyone else has already used that line. It is a BFD, though.

There were a couple of other echoes of 2009 coming from conservatives. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Utah Sen. Mike Lee issued a statement in early February criticizing the increased child tax credit that ended up in the final bill as "welfare assistance." Chris Hartline, National Republican Senatorial Committee spox, went off about Democrats not caring if stimulus checks went to undocumented immigrants. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has made similar complaints, and also carped about ARP money going to incarcerated prisoners.

However, there are two problems for The Man Who Threw His Own Daughters Under The Bus: first, his proposed amendment would have blocked 2 million American citizen children from receiving stimulus checks just because their parents are undocumented. As Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the majority whip, noted: "These American kids should receive this relief just as other American kids do." Second, the previous COVID-19 stimulus checks—the ones with the Orange Julius Caesar's name on them—also went out to prisoners, something Cruz absolutely knew before the December COVID-19 bill was passed. Did he utter a peep about it when that bill was under discussion? I think you know the answer.

So, although conservatives have made their pro forma condemnations of the ARP, what they are actually spending the bulk of their time and energy screaming about these days reveals their fundamental strategy. Their goal is not to rile up their voters about what the president is doing—which will help just about every American—but instead distract them with totally unrelated culture war issues.

Do Fox News viewers even know about the American Rescue Act, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that passed the Senate? They might not. The network, like most right-wing media, has largely ignored the Covid-19 relief legislation, instead fixating on silly culture-war controversies involving Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss. In the days leading up to the Senate vote, the network was far more concerned with the availability of Dr. Seuss's Scrambled Eggs Super than it was with any aspect of the bill itself.

Want to guess how many times Fox mentioned Dr. Seuss just through March 3? Not one fish, and not two fish. Try 60 times, as counted by The Washington Post. Beyond the cancel culture crap, the Party of Trump has one arena of actual policy that it seems to think is worthy of more time, attention, and vitriol than COVID-19 relief: the great danger they insist is posed by transgender athletes. To his eternal credit, Florida (Man) Rep. Matt Gaetz combined two manufactured controversies in a single bank shot when, at CPAC, he quipped: "Mr. Potato Head was America's first transgender doll and even he got canceled." I haven't seen anyone get this worked up about Mr. Potato Head since this guy yelled at his little nerdy buddy.

Just look at a snapshot of Fox News' website after the ARP passed compared to that of CNN. The latter has the vitally important piece of legislation at the top, over the entire three-column page. The former leads with the Meghan Markle/Piers Morgan clash, and its largest mention of the president is in an article about how his "handlers" are, wait for it, "hidin' Biden." Yep, they're still going with that campaign calumny about the guy who trounced Trump being somehow infirm.

Anything to avoid reality.

Why are Republicans following this strategy? After being fed political junk food for so long—especially by the demagogue who has led their party going on five years now—it's the only thing their voters want to imbibe. These kinds of culture war attacks "unif[y] the party but expands it into the area we need to—the suburban moms, the college educated men that we struggled with in 2020, there's common ground with these constituencies," according to Mercedes Schlapp, who worked for the twice-impeached president. Republican strategist Matt Gorman added that such tactics represent "a cultural touchstone for folks that shows where a party's priorities are." Famed Republican pollster Frank Luntz thinks they are "definitely" a good way to excite the right-wing base.

Daniel Cox, a researcher at the American Enterprise institute who has done extensive research about the topic, found that "concerns about cultural influence, political power and status are really overwhelming other ideological concerns on the right. Traditional conservative principles, whether it's commitment to a strong national defense or support for limited government, do not animate Republican voters." Other Republicans offered similar opinions.

Even the recently deceased Limbaugh typically used to tie his race-baiting attacks to larger ideological questions or at least policies under discussion in the moment—not that that's praise, mind you. Now, however, the Party of Trump can't even bother to do that, as per POLITICO: "Today, much of the fracas doesn't even involve Biden, or his administration, or his policy agenda. Instead, it involves things like corporate decisions around kids' toys."

In the end, as Ron Brownstein pointed out, Republicans were unable to "ignite a grassroots backlash" against Biden's COVID-19 relief package. One Democratic pollster, Nick Gourevitch, saw a lack of passion behind the Republican attacks on the bill: "It doesn't seem like they are even really trying." Brownstein reported that, off the record at least, a number of Republicans agreed.

For their part, the Biden White House is more than happy to put its actual policy accomplishments up against the trash the other side is throwing out there.

One of the criticisms leveled at Obama—including by Barack himself—was that he didn't always do a great job advertising his own achievements to voters. The 44th president acknowledged: "We did not always think about making sure we were advertising properly what was going on," and added that his White House should have taken more "victory laps." His veep, now the 46th president, appears to have learned the lesson well, as evidenced by the primetime address he delivered Thursday night.

Democrats think they have a winner with the American Rescue Plan, and it looks like they know how to tell the story of what they've accomplished.

The most recent polling shows not only that the American people favor the bill, but also that there's a significant class divide that portends even more danger for the Party of Trump. Overall, 41% of Republicans like the ARP, which is bad enough for them. However, among the quarter of Republicans who are lower income, that percentage is 63%.

Here's the analysis from Daily Kos' Kerry Eleveld: "This GOP divide along class lines gives Democrats a real opening to both win back some blue-collar voters as well as remind some Trump voters why they were never sold on the Republican Party to begin with (thereby discouraging them from turning out next year)."

It's easy to say that, come the next election, the bullshit will win out over substance. We are Democrats, after all, which means we often see the glass as half-empty when it comes to electoral politics. But that's not always how it plays out. Republicans may hope that if they just yell and scream about other, unrelated topics, voters in 2022 will forget that Biden's relief plan significantly helped just about every American finally get past this devastating pandemic.

It's up to all of us to help Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the rest of the Democratic Party make sure voters remember who did that for them.

Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution reads: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." The person who holds that office thus takes the brunt of responsibility for defending our country. While it's not his only responsibility as president, Joe Biden knows full well that no other part of his job is more important. Fulfilling it, however, does not require spending money unwisely, in particular if doing so means shortchanging other national priorities in areas ranging from infrastructure to health care to education. That is the message progressives in Congress want to make sure the 46th president hears.

When he took office a month ago, Biden inherited the military spending policies of The Man Who Lost An Election And Incited An Insurrection To Overturn It. As per The Hill, in 2017, U.S. military spending was $610 billion, whereas in the current fiscal year it stands at $748 billion—representing a jump of 22.6%. Nondefense spending, by comparison, stands 15% below that of defense spending.

Would it surprise you to know that the Orange Julius Caesar, unable to feel satisfied with the increased dollars spent under his watch, couldn't resist lying about it? "We've totally rebuilt the military." (To quote Shermer High School's John Bender: "Totally?") Spending on defense, according to Donald Trump, "used to be 'million.' And then, about 10 years ago, you started hearing 'billion.' And now you're starting to hear 'trillion,' right?" To correct the pathological prevaricator, we still aren't spending a trillion each year, and we've been hearing "billion" as far back as the Defense Department has tabulated total annual spending figures, i.e., starting in 1948. But what's a decade or seven for someone with no interest in facts?

Given Trump's much bigger lies—including The Big Lie about having lost the election—one can say that exaggerating about military spending is more on the order of a white lie by comparison. On the other hand, all of his lies are white lies, in that each one is told in the service of whiteness.

But now Biden is president, so let's talk about military spending going forward rather than the past—imagined or otherwise. Before we get into the specifics of that spending, please take a look at how our country's defense budget compares to that of other countries—I'm loath to call them competitors because, when it comes to spending, there's really no comparison.

During the presidential campaign, Biden promised to "end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have cost us untold blood and treasure … (and) bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan and narrowly focus our mission on Al-Qaeda and ISIS." From 9/11 through October 2019, our country has spent $778 billion on the war in Afghanistan, along with another $44 billion in reconstruction costs in that country. The true final tally—even in dollars, let alone the human cost—is much harder to calculate.

In the current fiscal year, spending in Afghanistan appears to be around $15 billion, down from previous years thanks to an already planned drawdown in troops that was supposed to culminate in the removal of all U.S. military personnel by May 1. This withdrawal is linked to a U.S.-Taliban agreement signed last year. However, recent violence has led the Biden administration to indicate that it will likely not abide by that timeline. Additionally, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, came out specifically against removing all U.S. troops by the May deadline.

John Kirby, Pentagon spokesperson, stated: "The Taliban have not met their commitments. As you know, there is a looming deadline of early May ... but without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks on the Afghan National Security Forces and, by dint of that, the Afghan people, it's very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement." One hopes that these words represent an attempt to bring pressure to bear rather than anything more definitive, and that the Taliban does live up to its side of the bargain in the end so that Biden can bring home as close to 100% of our troops as possible.

Either way, it does not appear that truly large savings on our military spending in Afghanistan are in the offing, given the already relatively low current amount. Nevertheless, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it begins to add up to real money, as the saying goes.

On Iran, the previous administration's brainless unilateralism was on full display, as the U.S. in 2018 pulled out of the nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama. Unsurprisingly, President Biden is going to try and revive it. Additionally, he reversed his predecessor's pronouncement from November—also unilateral—that the totality of United Nations sanctions against Tehran were back in force. Certainly, improved relations with Iran as part of a deal that puts them further away from being able to develop nuclear weapons is a good thing in and of itself—although Thursday's U.S. airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in eastern Syria, which Biden authorized in retaliation for previous violence the groups committed, show that achieving such improvements will not be simple. Additionally, although it's hard to quantify, one would think having better relations with Iran would produce some savings on military spending as well.

Within the broad category of defense spending, there are some areas that might well require increases, given the changing nature of the threats we face. While we may not need as many tanks, nuclear missiles, and planes as we once did, cybersecurity is clearly an area where the U.S. has not done enough in the last few years. The recent devastating SolarWinds hack emanating from Russia—not China, as Putin's Puppet President falsely claimed, contradicting his own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—that breached multiple government agencies along with over 100 businesses made that failing clear.

President Biden is responding on the cybersecurity front. First of all, he spoke directly to his counterpart in Moscow: "I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens, are over." He added: "We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people." Doing more than just talking, Biden's COVID-19 relief plan contained more than $10 billion to address the cyber threat. Additionally, the new administration announced it will be enacting other measures through "executive action." The need to spend more money on cybersecurity only further increases the importance of finding savings elsewhere in spending on defense.

Then there's the Space Force. No, I'm not kidding. After Trump created it in late 2019, Daily Kos' SemDem offered a brilliant takedown: "There are more than enough reasons why Space Force is a bad idea, starting with the fact that its mission was an afterthought to the primary reason, which, much like his vanity border wall, only exists to serve Trump's ego."

It appears that Biden will resist calls to simply return the functions of Space Force back to the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army—out of which it was carved in the first place. There still may be savings to be found, given that the current budget allocated over $15 billion to what is now the sixth branch of the Armed Forces. In addition, hopefully he'll undo Trump's last-second move of Space Force's command center from Colorado—which he lost and where a Democrat beat an incumbent Republican in a Senate race—to Alabama, where Trump won and where a Senate seat flipped in the opposite direction. Whether the move was motivated by politics and a desire by Trump to enact revenge on a blue state is something I'll leave to you to decide. The Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board noted that the move to Alabama "will cost billions over time."

In terms of our federal budget, military spending as a share of all discretionary spending—that refers to spending not set by law, such as Social Security—dwarfs that of any other individual area. In fact, military spending equals all those other areas put together.

Furthermore, it's important to make clear that military spending is far from the only kind of spending that protects the security of our country. Spending money on diplomacy protects our country. Spending money to combat climate change—at home and abroad—protects our country. Foreign aid protects our country. Democrats have long understood this, while Republicans—as on so many other issues—typically fail to see the big picture. As Daily Kos' Squire for You cogently argued, "Democrats are the party of national security," and we need to "reframe" the entire debate around the topic.

Progressives have been speaking out about the necessity of adjusting our spending priorities away from the military and toward other priorities—separate from the emergency needs created by COVID-19—that have been neglected for too long. Given that $7.4 billion of excess military supplies have been transferred to police departments since 1997 through the 1033 program, one can certainly argue that some of that spending may have been unjustified in terms of military necessity. Just maybe.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, presented the basic progressive perspective: "The disconnect between our defense spending and the threats Americans actually face has never been wider. It's long past time to rethink and refocus how we spend our money to protect this country because military and nuclear weapons alone, as we've seen, are not enough to protect us."

Progressives in the House are singing the same tune: "It is a top issue for the [Congressional Progressive Caucus]," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Chair of the CPC, a week ago. "This is a really important moment for us to move forward on cutting out waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon." Here's the CPC's broad policy stance on military spending:

The Progressive Caucus is fighting to rein in bloated Pentagon spending, end America's unauthorized forever wars, and rebalance our priorities abroad through robust investments in diplomacy, sustainable development, and humanitarian assistance. The United States spends more today on the military than at any time in our history—while at the same time, the Trump Administration has hollowed out essential diplomatic and humanitarian infrastructure. At the Progressive Caucus, we believe Congress should reduce conflict and foster peace—not issue blank checks for endless wars. By adopting a new global security posture that balances defense, diplomacy, and development aid, we can advance the goal of peace, rein bloated spending, and create greater economic prosperity for families here at home.

In terms of numbers, Reps. Barbara Lee of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, along with Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, have led the push to cut military spending by 10% across-the-board—with military pay exempt from that cut. Their effort last year garnered support from about half of Democrats in each house of Congress—although notably two of the senators who got on board were now-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois, the current majority whip. Who heads the Senate's Budget Committee in the new Congress, you might ask? That would be Sanders.

Rep. Lee condemned the bloat in military costs born during the Trump years, in particular compared to the levels of spending on nonmilitary needs. "Wasteful defense spending does not make our communities safer—it only weakens our ability to respond to crises, and in recent years, that wastefulness has only increased." Regarding the specific amount she'd like to see cut, Lee commented: "Ten percent is low. That's the floor."

Obviously, our country faces military threats that must be addressed. It's also important to note that blowback from our actions around the world sometimes creates new threats, or exacerbates existing ones. Beyond the moral implications of U.S. military policy, it is clear that we need to shift our spending to some degree from our current approach. We cannot keep throwing billions of dollars at the same old military programs, and we absolutely cannot continue to shortchange other priorities both within the area of defense and in the rest of the budget. We need to invest in the American people, and work toward making our society a place with more justice and greater opportunity for each of us. The progressives are right on this issue. President Biden needs to listen to them.

Donald Trump broke new ground as the first president—the first American, period—to be impeached twice. However, thinking of him solely in those terms fails by a long shot to capture how truly historic his crimes were. Forget the number of impeachments—and certainly don't be distracted by pathetic, partisan scoundrels voting to acquit—The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote (Twice) is the only president to incite a violent insurrection aimed at overthrowing our democracy—and get away with it.

But reading those words doesn't fully and accurately describe the vile nature of what Trump wrought on Jan. 6. In this case, to paraphrase the woman who should've been the 45th president, it takes a video.

Although it's difficult, I encourage anyone who hasn't yet done so to watch the compilation of footage the House managers presented on the first day of the impeachment trial. It left me shaking with rage. Those thugs wanted not just to defile a building, but to defile our Constitution. They sought to overturn an election in which many hadn't even bothered themselves to vote.

What was their purpose? In their own words, as they screamed while storming the Capitol: "Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!" Those were the exact same words they had chanted shortly beforehand during the speech their leader gave at the Ellipse. He told them to fight for him, and they told him they would. And then they did.

Many of those fighting for Trump were motivated by a white Christian nationalist ideology of hate—hatred of liberals, Jews, African Americans, and other people of color. Most of that Trumpist mob stands diametrically opposed to the ideals that really do make America great—particularly the simple notion laid down in the Declaration of Independence that, after nearly 250 years, we've still yet to fully realize: All of us are created equal. The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was but another battle in our country's long-running race war.

As Rev. William Barber explained just a few days ago: "White supremacy, though it may be targeted at Black people, is ultimately against democracy itself." He added: "This kind of mob violence, in reaction to Black, brown and white people coming together and voting to move the nation forward in progressive ways, has always been the backlash."

Barber is right on all counts. White supremacy's centuries-long opposition to true democracy in America is also the through-line that connects what Trump has done since Election Day and on Jan. 6 to his true historical forebears in our history. Not the other impeached presidents, whose crimes—some more serious than others—differed from those of Trump not merely by a matter of degree, but in their very nature. Even Richard Nixon, as dangerous to the rule of law as his actions were, didn't encourage a violent coup. That's how execrable Trump is; Tricky Dick comes out ahead by comparison.

Instead, Trump's true forebears are the violent white supremacists who rejected our democracy to preserve their perverted racial hierarchy: the Southern Confederates. It's no coincidence that on Jan. 6 we saw a good number of Confederate flags unfurled at the Capitol on behalf of the Insurrectionist-in-Chief. As many, including Penn State history professor emeritus William Blair, have noted: "The Confederate flag made it deeper into Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, than it did during the Civil War."

As for that blood-soaked, intra-American conflict—after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, 11 Southern states refused to accept the results because they feared it would lead to the end of slavery. They seceded from the Union and backed that action with violence. Led by their president, Jefferson Davis, they aimed to achieve through the shedding of blood what they could not at the ballot box: to protect their vision of a white-dominated society in which African Americans were nothing more than property.

Some, of course, will insist the Civil War began for other reasons, like "states' rights," choosing to skip right past the words uttered, just after President Lincoln's inauguration, by Alexander Stephens, who would soon be elected vice president of the Confederacy. Stephens described the government created by secessionists thusly: "Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

In the speech he gave at his 1861 inauguration, Lincoln accurately diagnosed secession as standing in direct opposition to democracy.

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

Davis, Stephens, and the rest of the Confederates spent four long years in rebellion against democracy and racial equality. In 1865, Lincoln was sworn in for a second term. On the ballot the previous year had been his vision, laid out at Gettysburg, of a war fought so that our country might become what it had long claimed to be, namely a nation built on the promise of liberty and equality for every American. Lincoln's vision won the election. He planned to lead the Union to final victory and, hopefully, bring that vision to life. Instead, John Wilkes Booth shot the 16th president to death.

Why did Booth commit that violent act, one that sought to remove a democratically elected president? Look at his own written words: "This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution. I for one, have ever considered (it) one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation."

As author and Washington College historian Adam Goodheart explains, Booth was "motivated by politics and he was especially motivated by racism, by Lincoln's actions to emancipate the slaves and, more immediately, by some of Lincoln's statements that he took as meaning African Americans would get full citizenship." When Booth opened fire, his gun was aimed at not just one man, but at the notion of a multiracial, egalitarian democracy itself.

Trump may not have pulled a trigger, bashed a window, or attacked any police officers while wearing a flag cape, but he shares the same ideology, motive, and mindset as his anti-democratic, white supremacist forebears. They didn't like the result of an election, and were ready and willing to use violence to undo it. Secession, assassination, insurrection. These are three sides of a single triangle.

I hope, for the sake of our country and the world, we never have another president like Donald Trump. I hope we as a people—or at least enough of us—have learned that we cannot elect an unprincipled demagogue as our leader.

A person without principle will never respect, let alone cherish, the Constitution or the democratic process. A person without principle can only see those things as a means to gain or maintain a hold on power. A person without principle believes the end always justifies the means.

That's who Trump is: a person without principle. That's why he lied for two months after Election Day, why he called for his MAGA minions to come to Washington on the day Joe Biden's victory was to be formally certified in Congress, and why he incited an insurrection on that day to prevent that certification from taking place. His forces sought nothing less than the destruction of American democracy.

For those crimes, Trump was impeached, yes. But those crimes are far worse than those committed by any other president. Regardless of the verdict, those crimes will appear in the first sentence of his obituary. They are what he will be remembered for, despite the cowardice of his GOP enablers. Forever.

The COVID-19 vaccination rollout in the U.S. is not going well in the majority of states. On Dec. 14 in New York City, Sandra Lindsay became the first American to receive the coronavirus vaccine, ostensibly just one of 20 million scheduled to do so by the end of 2020. Instead, only 3 million Americans had gotten the shot by then, and that number was only up to 4.6 million by Jan. 4. That's barely a one-quarter of the number of doses that had been shipped by then, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Now, in mid-January, almost 1 million doses are being administered per day.)

Dr. Fauci didn't mince words: "(N)o excuses. We should have gotten 20 distributed, and 20 into the arms of people, (and) by 20, I mean 20 million." There's no glib, "WTF" sort of phrase that properly captures how enraging this failure is. The New York Times editorial board called it "an astonishing failure—one that stands out in a year of astonishing failures."

We'll never know how many people in the U.S. will have died or suffered long-lasting harm because we are failing to hit vaccination benchmarks. Yet from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Great Lakes to the Gulf, we all want to know why we're in this position. Certainly, some of the blame goes to The President Who Tried To Overturn An Election He Lost: Donald Trump refused, for almost a week, to sign the COVID-19 relief bill with over $8 billion earmarked for vaccine distribution—essentially because he was angry about being ignored. Thus, that money couldn't be spent on ramping up the vaccination process for seven extra days—while we all watched the sociopathic Orange Manbaby throw a president-sized tantrum. Prior to Dec. 27, the federal government provided a piddling $340 million for the rollout. As Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti noted, "The federal government can't tell the local governments and state governments to do something and not give us aid."

It's yet another depraved action for which Trump has the blood of Americans on his hands—albeit not on his conscience, as that would require him to have one in the first place. Unsurprisingly, Trump is refusing to accept any responsibility. Again. Instead, he's blaming the states.

Beyond what the soon-to-be-former occupant of the White House did, the vaccine rollout's failures result from thousands of decisions made at the federal, state, and local level by people who, unlike the Insurrectionist-in-Chief, actually have good intentions. Broad reviews of those decisions, and their impact on the delay in vaccinating people, have been written elsewhere. Rather than write another one, I spoke at length with one New York City physician who takes care of patients directly, and who also has significant administrative responsibilities at an ambulatory (outpatient) facility that largely serves Americans of color, most of whom are lower-income.

This doctor, who spoke with me on condition of anonymity, is in charge of securing vaccine doses for their facility, to be administered to health care workers and other eligible staff members. Their facility is not a federally qualified health center (FQHC), which means it has to apply and be formally approved in order to receive the vaccine for its employees; most non-hospitals fall into this category. The physician's experience in seeking approval to receive and administer the vaccine has been, in short, a nightmare. "The whole process has been so stressful and is taking so long," the doctor says. "I want to protect my staff, and I have been working really hard to make that happen, but it is beginning to feel like I am banging my head against the wall."

Non-FQHC facilities seeking the vaccine in New York City must apply to the Citywide Immunization Registry (CIR), while those outside the city go through the New York State Immunization Information System (NYIIS). Non-FQHC facilities throughout the city and state have faced huge hurdles, according to the physician. Their NYC facility, after a month of waiting—while calling or emailing almost daily in pursuit of updates or an explanation for the delay—finally had its application accepted, but then was unable to order the vaccine for another week, due to a problem with the CIR computer system.

The doctor ordered the vaccine about a week into January. As of this writing, they have still not yet been informed when it will arrive. Who knows when they will actually be able to get shots in people's arms? The physician adds: "My staff is getting very antsy; everyone wants to know when we will be getting the vaccine, but I have nothing to tell them. Every day, we email the CIR and get uninformative and evasive responses."

The facility has locations across the state; outside of the city, things are even worse. Six weeks passed before those other locations learned that their applications had been accepted by NYIIS. Like the facility in the city, it remains unclear when those locations might actually receive doses of the vaccine. It's not just New York: Other cities and states are also dealing with delays and problems in getting the vaccine widely administered.

The CIR and NYIIS are significantly understaffed, and admittedly, the holiday season didn't help. Given the COVID-19 crisis, it is an open question as to whether staff should have been asked to continue working over those holidays and/or over weekends—with proper compensation, of course. New York City and state alike would've needed financial help to pay those workers—help that did not arrive in time, thanks to the whims of a certain Individual-1.

Independent doctors' offices and freestanding medical facilities face additional barriers to acquiring the vaccine for their employees. "The process has been extremely difficult, opaque and time-consuming," the clinic doctor relates. "I cannot imagine how an organization smaller than ours would ever be able to do it."

They can't, they won't, and they don't. As the physician I spoke to explained, many of these smaller facilities simply won't bother to apply for various reasons, including, but not limited to:

• Many facilities are already short-staffed because of COVID-19, so they don't have the staff to deal with the application process and/or to administer the vaccine, as well as comply with the incredibly stringent post-vaccination reporting requirements;
• Facilities don't have appropriate storage, particularly cold storage, for the vaccine;
• The minimum number of doses a single facility can receive—the 100 doses in a Moderna box—far exceeds the number of employees at most of these facilities, leading to concerns about wasting doses that are needed elsewhere.

On that last point, there's another concern. Initially, there was some confusion about whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo's threat—to slap a $100,000 fine on any hospital that doesn't use all doses issued within seven days—also applies to smaller health care facilities and practices. Numerous physicians and health care administrators told The New York Times that this lack of clarity and fear of financial penalties discouraged smaller facilities from applying if they didn't have enough eligible staff to receive vaccinations. Given that the minimum number of doses a facility can order is 100, what happens if a facility only has 50 eligible employees, or 20?

Cuomo seems to have since "softened" the threat of a large fine, and clarified that facilities can send excess vaccine doses back to the state; given storage requirements—the Pfizer vaccine must be stored at -70° C—that still may present difficulties for many facilities.

If employees at smaller facilities can't get vaccinated at work, they will further burden any alternative delivery system—systems that currently are unable to handle the load they already have. Many local health departments have set up vaccination sites for health care workers, but these sites are few and far between, and appointments are difficult to get. And, how will already understaffed facilities cope with employees missing time to chase down their shots? The questions go on and on.

The New York City doctor's experience tracks with the broader failure of the city and state's vaccination rollout. Seventeen days in, barely 88,000 NYC residents had been vaccinated—1% of the population in a city as hard hit as any place in the world, where the current positive test rate stands at almost 1 out of 10. Scarily, vaccinating large numbers of people is only going to get harder, as The New York Times reports.

The pace is worrying some experts. "I do feel concern," said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University. Despite months to prepare, there still seemed to be a steep learning curve when it comes to "the nitty-gritty of how do you get it from the freezer to the arm as quickly as possible," she said. "I think there are growing pains as people are picking up how to do this."

The first phase should have been the simplest, she added. "We've started out with the easiest populations, an almost captive audience: nursing homes and hospital workers — you know who they are and where to find them."

The problems faced by non-hospitals, as reported by the NYC doctor, are echoed in the Times' analysis.

"We feel forgotten," said Dr. Kerry Fierstein, a pediatrician and chief executive of a company that runs pediatrician offices, mainly on Long Island and in New York City. "If you're owned by a hospital, you've probably been vaccinated, but if you're completely unaffiliated, you don't know when you'll get vaccinated."

More broadly, the barriers non-hospital employees face in getting access to the vaccine mirror and exacerbate larger health care and societal inequalities in the U.S. relating to race, education, and class—inequalities that are particularly acute for COVID-19. In many cases, physicians in medical practices are able to be vaccinated at the hospital where they admit patients, but only as individuals. Think of the medical assistants, phlebotomists, and front desk workers at these facilities—all of whom interact with patients directly—as well as the cleaning staff and others who are also at risk. None of them can get the vaccine at work until their facility goes through the onerous process described above, actually gets approved, and decides to follow through and order the vaccine (then receives it). These workers, along with home health aides and others working for agencies, are also more likely to be women, and more likely to be Black or brown.

Lower Black and brown vaccination rates are a particular concern due to the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on those communities. The lower rates result in part from long-standing (and well-founded) mistrust of the medical establishment and the government when it comes to vaccines and other health issues.

The doctor I spoke to suggested that, in order to get more Black and brown health care workers to take the vaccine, we need to offer it to them in their own workplaces, delivered by medical providers and staff with whom they feel comfortable discussing their vaccine hesitancy—people they know and trust: "I have had conversations with individual staff members who were hesitant about getting the vaccine. I was able to take the time and answer their questions—after which almost all of them decided to be vaccinated with us, because they know and trust me and our organization. They would not feel comfortable being vaccinated at a large, unfamiliar, and impersonal venue." Just one more reason to offer the vaccine in workplaces whenever possible.

Hopefully, New York and the other cities and states will share information and learn from one another about what went wrong—even as they're working feverishly to vaccinate people. "It's gone too slowly, I know, for many of us," acknowledged California Gov. Gavin Newsom shortly after New Year's. "All of us, I think, want to see 100% of what's received immediately administered in people's arms. That's a challenge."

On Jan. 5, Cuomo introduced a revised vaccination plan for New York, conceding that the existing approach wasn't working. The new plan has three components: First, vaccinate all staff and residents in nursing homes, over a two-week period. Next, a push to get hospitals to vaccinate their health care workers; and finally, "special efforts" created by the state to directly deliver shots to all eligible New Yorkers. These efforts include drive-through vaccination locations and pop-up locations in houses of worship and community centers. There's also a special focus on social equity, and making sure that Black and Latino New Yorkers get their shots.

The situation remains fluid as of this writing. Multiple rounds of changes have been issued in recent days. Taken together, they have broadened the eligibility criteria for receiving the vaccine to include all New Yorkers over the age of 65, those who are immunocompromised, and some essential workers—including K-12 teachers!

The clinic doctor remains frustrated by the continued delays in getting their facility's staff vaccinated, and it's not clear how much the revised distribution approach will help non-hospital health care workers access the vaccine more quickly ... if at all. As for whether Cuomo's new plans address these concerns and improve the overall vaccination situation in New York? Only time will tell.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)