SINCE YOU'RE THE DELEGATE FROM KANSAS, WILL YOU KINDLY TAKE THE FLOOR

The dispiriting argument over the existence of a “real America” drags on.  Trump fans, as well as media types who should know better by now, will do their best until November 3, 2020, to convince voters that there is, in fact, a “real America,” and that it belongs to white, heterosexual, Christians.  White heterosexual Jews are welcome to stick around, but only as long as they support the white, heterosexual Christian agenda.

Trump apologist Kevin D. Williamson, writing in the New York Times, is trying to revive the Republican talking point about coastal elites and their ilk.  “Why not,” he asks, “let Kansas be Kansas?”

The problem with letting Kansas be Kansas is that there is no “Kansas.”  Kansas is what Kurt Vonnegut called a granfalloon – a collective noun that implies connections that don’t exist. 

I know Kansas.  I was born in Kansas.  I spent the first 25 years of my life there.  My father grew up in Pratt.  My mother grew up in Lindsborg and McPherson.  They met in Wichita after the war, got married, and had me.  I spent 19 years in Wichita, and then move to Lawrence to go to college. I was an education major, and did my student teaching in Overland Park.  Over the years I’ve spent time with friends and family in Dodge City, Columbus, Topeka, and Newton. 

And guess what?  Despite both towns being in Kansas, Lawrence and Newton are very different places.  Douglas County (Lawrence) voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Harvey County (Newton) supported Donald Trump.  I’m pretty sure that Kevin Williamson would argue that Newton is the real Kansas.  But what about the 34% of Harvey County voters who pulled the lever for Clinton?  Are they unreal?  Do they not count?  Are Republicans free to ignore their issues?  Apparently so.

Our Founding Fathers got a lot right, but they weren’t omniscient.  They were progressive for their time, but fundamental concepts like racial equality and women’s rights just weren’t on their radar screens.  Radar screens weren’t even on their radar screens.  Not only that, but back in the 18th century, there were cultural differences between the colonies.  Virginia didn’t trust Massachusetts, and vice versa. 

That led to a weird fetish about the prerogatives of individual states, which replaced colonies as the new nation’s most important governmental unit.  To keep big states from ignoring the will of smaller states, our Founding Fathers agreed to give smaller states a disproportionate degree of influence in the Senate, and in the Electoral College.  It was probably a necessary compromise back in the day.  But 250 years later, small states, most of which are Republican, are using their constitutional leverage to ignore the will of the most populous states. 

Allow me to offer a couple of illustrations.  California has 65 times the population of Wyoming – 39 million vs. less than 600,000.  Does California have 65 times Wyoming’s electoral votes?  Don’t be silly.  The population ratio may be 65:1, but the electoral vote ratio is only 18:1.  In the Senate, the ratio drops to 1:1, as both states are allotted two senators. 

Luckily for Wyoming, most of its 600,000 residents are white, so no one disputes their need for representation in Congress.  The District of Columbia, with 700,000 residents, is mostly Black, so they obviously don’t deserve any senators.  Puerto Rico has over 3 million residents, but they’re all Puerto Rican, so they’re out of luck. 

In 2019, there are 21 states with fewer residents than Puerto Rico.  Eighteen of those small states are solidly Republican, and you can bet they’re not interested in any electoral reforms that would dilute their influence. 

It is a fact universally acknowledged that, for most of our history, “real Americans” were white males.  Women and minorities (which, back in the day included not only the usual suspects, but also immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe) had to wait a few decades, or centuries, to be full-fledged citizens.  Women couldn’t vote for president until 1920.  A large segment of the African American population weren’t allowed to vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  I was 18 at the time.  I was 68 and drawing social security 50 years later, when gay marriage finally became legal everywhere in the country.  Progress towards full-fledged citizenship for everyone was maddeningly slow.  On the other hand, there was progress.

Republicans hate progress.  Republicans want you to believe that only the most conservative parts of the country are the real America, and that everyone else is somehow unreal, or less real, than they are. 

To further their agenda, Republicans are trying to resuscitate the tired old “states’ rights” argument.  You youngsters may not remember the phrase “states’ rights,” but it was a battleground concept in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.  Historically, “states’ rights” was a code phrase for “OK, maybe we don’t actually get to own Negroes anymore, but at least let us keep them from voting.” 

“State’s rights” is a racist dog whistle.  It was the pretext for Confederate secession prior to the Civil War, and a hundred years later, it was the pretext that segregationists used to argue against civil rights for African Americans in the 50s and 60s.  Their argument went like this.  If you damn Yankees want to let your children go to school with Negroes, or even marry them, go right ahead.  But don’t force us real Americans to violate our sincerely held belief that Negroes (and Gays, and Muslims, and immigrants) are inferior to us heterosexual Christian Caucasians.  Mississippi is different from Massachusetts.  Why not let Mississippi be Mississippi? 

And that’s a fair summary of our contemporary problem.  There are profound regional differences in the USA, and profound local differences even within those regions. 

Another New York Times opinion piece, this one by Wil Wilkinson (link below), notes that “The molten core of right-wing nationalism is the furious denial of America’s unalterably multiracial, multicultural national character.”  The people who are in denial are known as “Republicans.” 

The question before us in 2020 is whether our local and regional differences can co-exist peacefully in a single nation.  I’d say the jury is still out.  But make no mistake.  Anyone who frames the argument in terms of a hypothetical “real America” is answering that question with a loud “NO.”  They are saying, whether they admit it or not, that they cannot peacefully co-exist with people who are different than them.    

We fought a civil war to settle that issue in the 19th century.  The good guys won, but the bad guys never gave up.  150 years later, they finally figured out that white hoods and robes made them look silly, and they traded in the KKK for the NRA.  Now they dress up like soldiers, and carry military weaponry.

I am more and more convinced that we are in the early days of what may be a second civil war.  Our current epidemic of mass murders is starting to look like a form of loosely coordinated guerilla warfare, waged against targets of convenience who aren’t “real Americans.”  Most of the current crop of shooters, whether they’re teenagers or adults, post manifestos which make it clear that they’re taking their cues from Donald Trump (and Fox News, from whom Trump takes his cues, and from deeper, darker right-wing conspiracy theorists).  Trump inspired them.  They hope to inspire others.  And their strategy is working. 

But at least our politicians are offering thoughts and prayers, so things will get better soon.  Right?

I expect that all this will come to a head on November 3, 2020.  We have a president who is clearly in cognitive decline (I’ll post more about that soon), who “jokes” about being president for life, and who laughs when his supporters call for shooting his enemies. 

If, as I hope and expect, a Democrat wins the next presidential election, we can absolutely expect Trump to claim fraud, and – at least initially – refuse to accept the fact that he lost.  That’s when the loonies will really come out of the woodwork.   And if, with the help of Vladimir Putin and Republican vote suppression, Trump ekes out a victory in the Electoral College?  The loonies will also come out of the woodwork.

Donald Trump has let the genie out of the bottle.  It hardly matters whether one of his Deplorables feels validated or victimized.  When he decides to pull the trigger, he doesn’t worry about whether he kills a few people on his own side.  God will know his own.

The only way to break the fever is to repudiate Donald Trump and everything he stands for.  That’s what’s at stake in 2020.  Eyes on the prize, please. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opinion/national-conservatives-republicans-trump.html

GET BACK TO WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED

Jesus said (John 8:31-32), “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

But that was 2000 years ago.  Many a weary century has passed since then, and believers continued to assume that truth was the only path to freedom.  And then, in 2016, God anointed Donald Trump as Jesus’ spiritual heir.  His divinely ordained mission was to bring Biblical morality into the 21st century.  In the forthcoming addendum to the New Testament, “St. Donald’s Epistle to the MAGAs,” believers are given a new dispensation:  Trump trumps truth. 

Out of all Trump has done for his Deplorable base, the thing they appreciate most is that he showed them better living through hypocrisy.  The whole “go back where you came from” controversy is just the latest case in point. 

There is a long history of white folks trying to intimidate Black folks who fret too publicly about the discrimination they face.  A letter to the editor of the NEW ENGLAND BULLETIN in 1949 illustrates a typical two-pronged argument (see below).  Mrs. Ada Hills deploys a classic carrot and stick combination.  (But the carrot can also be used as a stick against ingrates who refuse to heed sensible advice.) 

In the Hillis letter, the carrot comes first – in the form of a reminder about all those “splendid opportunities” that slaves and their descendants were afforded by their benevolent white overlords.  Didn’t they receive on the job training about how to pick not only cotton, but tobacco, peanuts, and other crops as well?  If, after 400 years, Black people haven’t figured out how to monetize these skills, it’s not Mrs. Hillis’ fault, is it? 

Having dispensed with the obligatory nod to the blessings of involuntary servitude, Mrs. Hillis pivoted to her main point.  But she said the quiet part out loud – not just “go back where you came from,” but explicitly “go right back to Africa.” 

Because it’s Africa that’s the problem, after all.  No one worries much about Slovenian models entering the country illegally.  I’m sure Mrs. Hillis then, like Evangelicals today, simply didn’t have time to reflect on why so many Black folks left their African homes for a life of ease as plantation slaves. 

Maybe those illegal African immigrants were simply bored with life back in the jungle.  Perhaps they’d heard rumors about the generous welfare checks that British and Spanish colonial governments were giving out back in the 17th century.  Why did they come here in the first place if they were going to be so ungrateful?  Well, there’s no use crying over spilt milk.  As long as it’s somebody else’s spilt milk.

In 1949, Mrs. Ada Hillis would have been just another grumpy old white lady.  Seventy years later, it’s clear that she was a prophet.  She articulated one of the key platform planks of the 2020 Republican Party, which is that Black people should go back to Africa, or maybe to our hated geopolitical rival du jour.  In 1949, it was Russia.  Now that President-for-Life Trump and Czar Vladimir Putin are BFFs, Mrs. Hillis and her spiritual heirs would probably say if you don’t like it here, try living in Iran. 

Maybe I missed it, but I’m not aware of a single Deplorable, including Birther-in-Chief Donald Trump, who opted to leave the country during Barack Obama’s eight-year reign of terror.  No, they stuck around and complained.  Incessantly.  And they’re still complaining, even though the throne is now occupied by their avatar, whose European ancestry is indisputable. 

Somehow, despite their general “fuck your feelings” attitude towards those who offended by Donald Trump, the Deplorables get all sensitive when Democrats point out that anyone who supports Trump’s racist remarks is supporting racism. 

Unless you live in a world where logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead, it’s really pretty simple.  If you agree with, approve of, and/or amplify racist statements, you’re a racist.  There’s no way out.  Well, except for denial. 

The truth is, it doesn’t matter who else is racist too, or whether they’re Republican, Democrat, or whatever.  Nor does it matter why you decided to become a racist in the first place.  The conversation has to start with your racism.  Own that, and we can talk about why.  But first, take responsibility for your beliefs. 

Unless you’re a white Evangelical Christian.  Luckily for Evangelical Deplorables, the rise of the new Cyrus (also known as Donald J. Trump, professional con man) helped them understand that they could stop worrying about morality.  Instead, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.  Trump fans can do whatever they want as long as they proclaim their love for Jesus and the American flag.  (Or the Confederate flag, because there are good people on both sides.) 

Trump has also modernized the philosophy of Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British Prime Minister who coined the phrase, “Never complain, never explain.”  Trump loves to complain, and does so compulsively.  But he has a consistent, one-size-fits-all response.  If something bad happens, it’s always someone else’s fault.  Call it fake news, and do something new to piss off the liberals. The key is to stop making sense.

Harry Truman and George Orwell both left their mark on post-war culture, and they both knew the value of facts – plain old accurate information.  Truman put it this way: “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” 

On the other hand, Orwell observed that, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”  Donald Trump is trying, and at least partially succeeding, in controlling the past by calling it fake news and ignoring it. 

After all, studying history is hard work, and mostly boring.Instead of learning from your mistakes, it’s easier just to deny that you made them.If an inconvenient truth surfaces, just repeat Trump’s update of the Golden Rule – “If you’re famous, they let you do it.”

YOU COULD HAVE DONE BETTER, BUT I DON'T MIND

Now that Robert Mueller’s public testimony is a matter of record, I suppose I ought to weigh in on what I make of the Mueller years.  Long story short, it wasn’t what I expected, much less what I hoped for, but I’ll give him a B+. 

Hamstrung by a Department of Justice opinion that sitting presidents can’t be indicted, Mueller obtained guilty pleas and/or convictions for Trump’s campaign chair, his national security advisor, and (via SDNY) his personal lawyer.  Trump refused to testify in person, lied in his written testimony, and spent the entire two years of Mueller’s tenure as Special Counsel trying to fire him.  Congressional Republicans either looked the other way, or actively tried to discredit Mueller and his work.

Nevertheless, Mueller persisted.  He issued a report that made it clear that Trump’s campaign tried their best to collaborate with Russia to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that Trump himself obstructed justice on multiple occasions as he tried to shut down the probe. 

I wish Mueller had leaned harder on Manafort and Flynn, who – if their current plea bargains stand – got off pretty easy.  I interpret Mueller’s remarks on Wednesday to indicate that the investigation into Donald Trump Jr’s “If that’s what you say I love it” meeting with Russian spies is still ongoing, so I’ll withhold judgment on that issue. 

Most of all, I wish Mueller had shown a little more concern with the spirit of the law than the letter.  It would have been great if he’d showed some frustration after William Barr lied about the conclusions Mueller’s team reached; and when Donald Trump refused to testify under oath; and at the DOJ memo that prevented him from indicting Trump in the first place.  But that’s not who Robert Mueller III is.  He’s a calm, competent professional, who plays by the rules, even if the rules suck. 

It seems pretty clear that Mueller and his team understood that the way around the obstacles in the Special Counsel’s path was through Congress, and the impeachment process.  Mueller made it clear that his report did NOT exonerate Trump. 

That should be all that the House leadership needs to start impeachment hearings.

I know that Nancy Pelosi has been slow-walking the idea of impeachment.  I assume that’s because she’s seen internal Democratic polling that suggests that impeachment is an issue that is more likely to hurt than help Democrats in 2020.  I have some sympathy for that argument, although ultimately, I think it’s wrong. 

Congress has a constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable if he’s committed high crimes and misdemeanors.  They’ve been given ample evidence that Donald Trump has done both.  Refusing to act on that information makes them look weak. 

Donald Trump is betting that he can win in 2020 by energizing his base.  Nancy Pelosi’s strategy seems to be to frustrate the Democratic base.  I’ve been willing to cut her some slack, because she did a good job holding the Democratic caucus together in 2017-18, but time’s a-wasting. 

Ultimately, what I wanted from Robert Mueller, and what I want from House Democrats, is at least an attempt to bring the Trump crime family to justice.  Mueller got part of the job done.  I hope Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues understand that it’s important to try to finish it.  Hold hearings, get the facts out there. 

The outcome of the Nixon/Watergate impeachment process seems foreordained in retrospect, but when impeachment hearings began in 1973, only 19% of the country supported impeachment.  Public opinion shifted when the truth was revealed.  Today, according to a CNN poll conducted in June, 41% of the country supports impeaching Donald Trump. 

Public opinion may not matter as much today, since the Republican Party has been thoroughly Trumpified.  But if, when the case goes to the Senate, Republicans want to support Trump’s corruption, Democrats can at least force them to take that position publicly, one by one, in a roll call vote on the Senate floor.  That way, future generations will know who sold American democracy to the Russians (and the Saudis, and who knows who else?).

MY TRAVELING COMPANION WAS A CHILD

Trigger warning, if you need one – this post is about the Epstein case, which necessarily involves the mention of pedophilia.  I’ve been following the sordid saga of Jeffrey Epstein for a while now.  Two years ago (August 8, 2017), I speculated that a possible reason for Trump’s devotion to Vladimir Putin might be that Putin had kompromat on Trump, in the form of videos of Trump having sex with underage girls on one of his trips to Russia. 

I cited Trump’s now infamous praise of Epstein in 2002 (“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.  He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”) as evidence of his attraction to underage girls.

I went on to note that Trump’s Epstein connection is not the only evidence of Trump being at least pedophile-curious.  His comments about dating his then-teenage daughter Ivanka and his habit of barging into the dressing room of Miss Teen USA contestants suggest that Trump, at a minimum, fantasizes about sex with teenagers. 

Epstein’s recent arrest has opened a window onto the world of rich pedophiles, many of whom were in Trump’s orbit.  Or he was in theirs.  Epstein was, among other things, a pimp, and we know that Trump has happily paid for sex (e.g., Stormy Daniels). 

Speaking of pimping, I invite you to take a look at the archived website for “Trump International Elite Travel Companions” (link below).  The website, which was taken down in 2016, advertised American models for $800 per hour, $6,000 for overnight, and $45,000 for an entire month.  Foreign models were less expensive, but why cheap out? 

There appear to be three possible explanations for this company, which the second link below covers in detail.  First, the enterprise might be pure Trump, lock, stock, and barrel.  After all, the Trump family fortune was built on prostitution.  Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump ran a brothel in British Columbia at the turn of the 20th century, in a town that was the jumping off point for prospectors heading to the Klondike to look for gold.  Pimping is a Trump family tradition.  (Justin Trudeau trolled Trump by giving him a photograph of the establishment, called the Arctic Restaurant, at a meeting in June, 2018.)

A second possibility is that Trump might have licensed the use of his name for a fee.  Selling his name to various shady enterprises is how the Donald finally started making money after blowing through his father’s fortune and filing for bankruptcy at least three times. 

The least likely explanation, in my view, is that someone used Trump’s name without his knowledge.  Trump loves to sue people, and he hasn’t so much as threatened anyone with legal action over this website.  Instead, the site was quietly taken down in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign, but it seems to be open for business under a new name.  Again, the second link has details.

If there are any Trump fans reading this, they’re already doing the tu-quoque shuffle.  What about Bill Clinton, they ask?  Well, what about him? 

I don’t know of a single Left/Progressive/Democrat who has argued that Clinton should be immune from prosecution – if, and only if, there is enough evidence to bring him to trial, and then to convict him of having sex with a minor.  If he’s guilty, throw the book at him.  And every other child molester in Epstein’s little black book.  And whether or not he’s guilty of this particular crime, Bill Clinton has displayed bad judgment with women often enough that Democratic leadership ought to tell him to shut up and sit down.  At this point, he’s more of a liability than an asset.

But among all current and former occupants of the White House, Donald Trump is the guy with the most suspicious track record.  He, too, deserves a fair trial, and I hope he gets one.  If he’s convicted, I hope some enterprising judge gets creative and sends Trump down to McAllen, TX, and puts him in one of those migrant cages.  Let him drink out of a toilet and see how he likes it. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150816235245/http://www.trumpescorts.com/travel-companions/

https://www.opdeepstate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/TRUMP-ESCORTS.pdf

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-trump-family-fortune/

THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE - EVERYBODY'S SOMEBODY'S FOOL

My wife and I are heading to Montana for a family wedding and a bit of sightseeing afterwards.  Posting may be intermittent, although lately, how could you tell? 

In the meantime, I’ll point you to an article by science fiction writer Corey Doctorow (link below), in which he compares Fox News to a Ouija Board (or something like that).  My personal takeaways include this sentence:  “The truth is that none of us are qualified to understand the evidentiary basis for almost everything we believe, so we evaluate the process by which the evidence is weighed by people who are qualified.”  I think that’s true, and that it’s kind of important.

Doctorow went on to write:  “I think it’s the trauma of living in a world where there is ample evidence that our truth-seeking exer­cises can’t be trusted. That’s a genuinely scary idea, because if the truth is open to the highest bidder, then we are facing a future of chaos and terror, where you can’t trust the food on your plate, the roof over your head, or the school your child attends.”

“Fake news is an instrument for measuring trauma, and the epistemological incoherence that trauma creates – the justifiable mistrust of the establishment that has nearly murdered our planet and that insists that making the richest among us much, much richer will benefit everyone, eventually.

The contagion model for fighting fake news – replacing untrue statements with true ones – is like firefighting. It’s necessary, but it is responsive, even reactionary.  The trauma model of fake news says that the fires will continue until we clear away the brush that makes them so easy to spark: until we address the underlying corruption that is rotting our society, fires will continue to rage.”

“Simply put: if you want to make conspiracy theo­ries less plausible, you should start by stamping out conspiracies.”

Read the whole thing at https://locusmag.com/2019/07/cory-doctorow-fake-news-is-an-oracle/

SHUT THE DOOR, THEY'RE COMING THROUGH THE WINDOW

Remember when the execrable Mitch McConnell censured Elizabeth Warren when she read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate opposing Jeff Sessions’ nomination for Attorney General?  When she refused to shut up, McConnell uttered the famous line, “Nevertheless, she persisted.” That was in February, 2017. 

Guess what?  She’s still persisting.  And now she’s making Bernie Sanders nervous. 

Joe Biden makes a natural foil for Bernie, just as Hillary Clinton did in 2016.  Sanders knows how to run against a conventional 20th century Democrat.  That doesn’t mean he’d win.  My guess is that, in a two-person race between Sanders and Biden, the result would be pretty similar to the Sanders-Clinton race four years ago – Bernie would put up a respectable fight, but he’d ultimately lose.

But he’s not in a two-person race, and while Team Sanders was focused on taking Joe Biden down a peg, Elizabeth Warren kept persisting.  She’s moved into third place in the polls, and she’s gaining on Bernie. 

Bernie’s problem is that he wants the Democratic nomination, but he doesn’t want it badly enough to actually be a Democrat.  Instead, his strategy is to run against the Democratic establishment, and attack the “corporate wing of the Democratic Party.”  Recent polls suggest that while his true believers appreciate this approach, it doesn’t seem to be winning him support from actual Democrats.  I’m no political consultant, but since he’ll need Democratic votes to win Democratic primaries, it strikes me that Bernie’s strategy puts him at a competitive disadvantage.   

Bernie recently argued that the reason Elizabeth Warren was gaining on him is because people want to vote for a woman.  That may be true, but it doesn’t account for the fact that it’s Warren who’s moving up in the polls, not Tulsi Gabbard or Amy Klobuchar.  In MoveOn’s most recent poll of its membership, Elizabeth Warren ranked first, with 37.8%.  Bernie was in second place, with 16.5%, trending in the wrong direction. 

Maybe it’s just as simple as this.  When given a choice between a progressive independent and a progressive Democrat, progressive Democrats are likely to prefer the progressive Democrat.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mainstream, Joe Biden (14.9% in the MoveOn poll, good enough for third place) keeps insisting that things were better in the good old days, when you could have civil conversations with unreconstructed racists.  At first, I thought Biden’s talk about reaching out to Republicans was just campaign boilerplate, the kind of thing you say to impress Beltway pundits.  It’s worrisome that Biden has doubled down on his “let’s don’t be beastly to the racists” theme.  It’s not impossible that a nation worn down by four years of Trump fatigue would embrace Mainstream Joe, but it’s hard to see how a someone like that could govern effectively. 

Biden’s a well-meaning guy who won’t do anything crazy.  He’ll do his best to undo the damage that Trump has done, as Jimmy Carter tried to do in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.  But I fear that some of the roadblocks President Carter faced would likely surface for President Biden.  Carter was hamstrung by members of his own party, many of whom had presidential aspirations themselves.  Biden (like Bernie) would be the oldest person ever to be elected president – 79 when he took the oath of office in 2021, and 84 when re-election comes around in 2024.  If Good Old Joe is elected in 2020, many of his ostensible allies in Congress will start their campaigns for the 2024 nomination immediately, and they may decide that being seen as a Biden disciple isn’t a winning strategy.  And that’s to say nothing of Mitch McConnell and a united Republican opposition that desperately wants the new Democratic president to fail.

Speaking of the Republican Party, Cornell history professor Lawrence Glickman points to a 1956 newspaper article (link below) which describes an attempt by prominent southern politicians of the day to create a new political organization.  They called it the Federation for Constitutional Government, and its goal was to resist social welfare programs and racial integration.  They calculated that racism would win votes in the South, and that opposing government support for health, education, and welfare would appeal to voters in the North and West. 

They weren’t exactly wrong, were they?  They – including Joe Biden’s future Senate civility-buddies Herman Talmadge, James Eastland, and Strom Thurmond – basically wrote the blueprint for the modern Republican Party, sixty years before the rise of Donald Trump. 

All that civil discourse they had back then didn’t keep Dixiecrat senators from opposing civil rights legislation to the bitter end.  Will civil discourse turn Mitch McConnell into a good faith compromiser?  I say no.  Not with President Biden, and certainly not with President Sanders.  Were Bernie to win the presidency, the most likely scenario I can imagine would be a funhouse mirror version of the Trump administration, in which President Sanders tries to use executive powers to implement policy, and is challenged in court every time by his opponents.  But since Sanders is well to the left of most congressional Democrats, some of the challenges are likely to be bipartisan.

The Overton Window is a harsh mistress.  In the summer of 2015, Bernie felt like a breath of fresh air, and I supported his candidacy.  Bernie pushed the Democratic Party to the left, and good for him.  But in 2019, the Overton Window belongs to newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  Bernie Sanders is no longer the only progressive game in town.  Many of his policy positions are now solidly in the Democratic mainstream, or moving rapidly in that direction. 

I wish Bernie could accept that as validation of his life’s work, and try to sustain that work by throwing his support to someone like Elizabeth Warren, or any actual Democrat with policy preferences compatible with his.  But, as John McCain famously said, once you decide you want to be president, the only cure for that ambition is embalming fluid.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  I will vote for either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden if one of them is the Democratic nominee in 2020.  Either would be vastly preferable to a second Trump term.  But there are better candidates in the race.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33166656/corvallis_gazettetimes/

SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  That’s one of the Ten Commandments from the Book of Exodus.  Donald Trump considers them “suggestions” rather than “commandments,” and usually honors the Sabbath by playing golf.  But on May 31, there was a mass shooting in Virginia, and the White House Ministry of Propaganda thought it would be good publicity to send Trump to a church near the scene of the crime for a photo op and a few brief remarks. 

Trump apparently insisted on getting in a few holes of golf first, and showed up late to a church service in McLean, VA, making his entrance in golf shoes and a baseball cap.  He stood grumpily next to the pastor, who held up a Bible and asked God to give Trump the wisdom necessary to lead this country.  Trump left the church without saying a word.  The congregation was lucky they didn’t have to listen to one of his rants, but it was a very strange spectacle.  And respect to the pastor for his expert level trolling of the Very Stable Genius who doesn’t need advice from man nor deity. 

It’s hard to tell whether Trump even noticed.  Everyday human interactions are challenging for him, and his official state visits show him in a particularly bad light.  Heads of state as different as Kim Jong-un and Queen Elizabeth make him look like a rube.  The North Korean dictator trolled Trump by testing missiles during last month’s Singapore disarmament summit.  Queen Elizabeth trolled him by giving him a book.  Trump wore an ill-fitting formal suit, and was caught dozing off during the Queen’s welcoming speech.

Between the two of them, the North Korean dictatorship and the British monarchy embody the power and the pomp and circumstance that Trump clearly believes are rightfully his.  But the ruler he most resembles is the Red Queen from Alice In Wonderland.  And lately, he’s been approaching “off with his head” territory. 

He hasn’t yet uttered that literal phrase, but he has begun to accuse his critics of treason, which is a crime punishable by death.  His Deplorables used to chant “lock her up.”  At a rally last month in the Florida panhandle, someone yelled “shoot them,” and the crowd roared its approval.  Trump responded with a big smirk.

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump put his right hand on a Bible (which may have been the only time he ever touched a Bible) and took his oath of office.  He swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  As it happens, that very Constitution (Article III, section 3) includes a definition of treason:  "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." 

There’s nothing in the Constitution that makes it illegal to criticize, or even disrespect, the president.  “Lese majesty” is only a crime in dictatorships.  Nevertheless, if Trump wants to see an example of someone who really fits the definition of treason, all he has to do is look in the mirror.  That’s the guy who’s adhering to America’s enemies, giving them aid and comfort – a big part of which consists of Trump’s reckless attempts to turn American foreign policy upside down.  He gratuitously insults friendly nations and their leaders.  He is chipping away at the post-war security alliances that kept the peace in Europe for seven decades.  Who benefits?  Nobody but Russia. 

Since America has now gone through the looking glass, it is perhaps fitting that the national politician making the most sense about impeachment is a Tea Party Republican, Justin Amash.  Meanwhile, Democrats with the clout to start impeachment proceedings appear to be shrinking from the task.  I say “appear,” because part of me believes that Nancy Pelosi is steering her caucus towards impeachment while downplaying it publicly.  That could be true.  On the other hand, she could be as clueless as some of her public statements suggest.

There’s nothing for it but to wait and see.  The Watergate scandal had plenty of “damn, he’s going to get away with it” moments.  And Watergate, which seemed so complicated at the time, now looks astonishingly straightforward compared to the tangled web that Trump, Putin, and their minions have woven.   

Every day brings news of events that are at once perfectly predictable and totally astonishing.  The President of the United States has clearly broken the law, but a Justice Department policy forbids anyone from charging him with a crime.  His new Attorney General asserts that if there are no criminal charges, there’s nothing to cover up.  And if there’s nothing to cover up, then actions that might be considered obstruction of justice under other circumstances are perfectly benign.  It’s good to be king. 

But as serious as it is, Russian election interference is only part of the problem.  Donald Trump is obviously suffering from a variety of health issues that the mainstream press has been reluctant to talk about.  It’s all well and good to bemoan “armchair psychoanalysis.”  Obviously, the results of an independent medical exam would be ideal.  But Trump writes his own annual medical evaluations, and that’s not likely to change unless he suffers a serious health crisis.  In the meantime, we have a president who staggers, babbles, slurs his words, and talks nonsense. 

When I say that Trump talks nonsense, I don’t mean simply that he says things that are wrong, although of course he does that.  But there are plenty of politicians on both ends of the political spectrum who can mount an articulate defense of bad ideas.  Trump simply spouts word salad, riffing on his favorite themes, threatening his enemies, and generally making stuff up as he goes along.  If he contradicts himself, who cares?  He’s a performer, and as long as his fans cheer, he’s happy. 

Interrupt his routine, though, and things can go off the rails pretty quickly.  When he’s asked to be a statesman, he fails every time.  It’s quite remarkable, really, because those sorts of ceremonies shouldn’t be difficult.  Trump, like presidents before him, has staff whose business is staging events large and small, from impromptu church drop-ins to elaborate summit meetings with world leaders.  I have to assume Trump just won’t listen to their advice.  Or maybe he listens but simply can’t retain most of what he’s heard.  For whatever reason, Trump reaches a point on most of these trips where he seems confused, as if no one had briefed him what he was supposed to do next.  His mental deterioration appears to be getting worse by the day.  And most of the national press is either in denial or simply too scared to acknowledge the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

Eventually the dam will break, and some mainstream journalist will summon up the nerve to say the emperor has no clothes.  They’d better hurry, though, because Justin Amash is liable to beat them to it.

ONLY IN AMERICA, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

I used to love the Dilbert comic strip.  At his best, Scott Adams perfectly captured the absurdities of late 20th century office culture, the bafflegab and the eternal quest for new planning techniques that were abandoned one after the other.  I stopped paying attention to Dilbert around the turn of the century, and didn’t think much about Adams at all until 2016, when the presidential election surfaced his political views.  At some point, while I wasn’t looking, Adams had turned into a men’s rights cheerleader and a Trump supporter. 

When my disappointment subsided, I went back to ignoring him.  Until last week, when someone reposted an Adams tweet.  It was boilerplate Republican agitprop, framed with Adams’ characteristic tone of smug certainty.  But the thing is, the talking points are really dumb – nothing more than Fox & Friends level bluster.  And since I haven’t seen anyone on the Left respond to this particular piece of propaganda, I thought I’d give it a go. 

Here is the full text of the tweet.  Adams wrote, “Three things to know: 1. If you can't control your borders, you don't have a country. 2. If there is no transparency on social media algorithms, you don't have a democracy. 3. If half of congress is focused on impeachment for political reasons, you don't have a government.”

What you have to understand about Scott Adams is that he’s always the smartest guy in the room.  He knows things.  He presents his opinions as simple facts.  We’re supposed to believe him because he’s smarter than we are.  Our job is to listen and learn. 

The first thing he wants us to take on faith is that “If you can’t control your borders, you don’t have a country.”  This has become the go-to mantra for Donald Trump’s Wall fetishists.  But it’s absurd on its face. 

The United States has been a country for over 200 years, and for most of the first half of our existence, our borders were constantly in flux.  After all, we had a manifest destiny to fulfill, and it required us to expand our borders at the expense of everyone else’s – Mexico’s border as well as indigenous territorial boundaries. 

In the process, we made some choices that continue to reverberate through contemporary politics.  For instance, in 1854, we did the Gadsden Purchase thing.  We said, in effect, “Oh, hi there, former citizens of northern Mexico.  Your new benevolent overlords welcome you to America.  We bought you, or at least the land you live on, for $10 million.  Keep calm and carry on.”  And so they did.  But in the mid-19th century, our western and southern borders were mostly lines on a map.  Anyone could go back and forth as they pleased, and no one cared, or even noticed. 

In the east, the Atlantic Ocean might have been a genuine impediment to immigration, but our Founding Fathers decided that cheap labor was more important than secure borders.  Our first wave of non-European immigration came from Africa – as many as the slave ships could hold. 

Later, in the 19th century, when the railroad barons needed cheap labor to build out their infrastructure in the West, we crossed the Pacific Ocean to import workers from China.  And when famine and political strife in Europe sparked successive waves of migration from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe, the good old USA was where many of them wanted to be.  Land of opportunity, and all that.  In the 20th century, when refrigeration technology made it possible for California and other western states to become agricultural dynamos, we recruited workers from Mexico to pick the crops.

We made efforts at keeping track of some of these immigrants – especially those from Europe, passing through Ellis Island – but anyone who thinks we were in control of the flow is kidding themselves.    

For most of our history, our borders weren’t “controlled” in any meaningful sense of that word.  And that used to be a source of pride.  As a kid, I was taught that our Canadian and Mexican borders were the longest stretches of unguarded border in the world.  Americans prided themselves on getting along with our neighbors.  If the wretched refuse of some teeming shore came here looking for a better life, we welcomed them.  When I was in school, the metaphor of choice was “melting pot.”  It was a boast, an assertion that America could assimilate all comers, and be better for having done so. 

Of course, the melting pot theory also assumed that new immigrants would voluntarily assimilate.  And overwhelmingly, that’s exactly what they did.  It took a couple of generations, and while the process was underway, some people grumbled about the slow pace.  The Irish, the Italians, and the Jews were the new kids on the block at one time or another, and the WASP establishment that was quite willing to hire them for menial work was much less enthusiastic about accepting them as peers.  But the children and grandchildren of those immigrants learned English, entered the workforce, and became thoroughly Americanized. 

Scott Adams ignores this complex demographic history.  If you accept his first point, you’d be forced to argue that the USA didn’t become a country until sometime in the 20th century, and then ceased to be a country at the dawn of the new millennium, when – from a Republican point of view – we suddenly found ourselves swimming in terrorists and welfare fraudsters from south of the border.  The truth is, as a nation, immigration issues were a very low priority for most Americans until the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

But – it says here – we were a country the whole time.  So much for Adams’ first point.

As for his second assertion, there may be good reasons to advocate for social media transparency, and even for arguing that the current lack of transparency is a threat to democracy.  But claiming it’s necessary for democracy is an overreach.  Democracies – including ours – existed long before social media came along.  But the cream of the jest is that the lack of transparency in social media is what helped elect Donald Trump, and what helps keep his followers deluded.  Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Adams.

And then there’s the cherry on top, in the form of Adams’ final assertion: “If half of congress is focused on impeachment for political reasons, you don't have a government.”  That’s really stupid. 

First off, I’d say that 100% of Congress is focused on impeachment for political reasons.  Some are for it and some are against it.  But the point is that impeachment is inevitably political.  That’s why we elect the people whose job description includes carrying out the impeachment process, if appropriate.

Beyond that, in the United States, the “government” consists of three branches – the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.  They all depend on each other to some extent, but the “government” keeps on functioning even when Congress is divided, on impeachment or any other issue.

What Scott Adams chooses to ignore is that government divided over impeachment, if not exactly the norm in American politics, is at least not all that uncommon.  Leaving the 19th century case of Andrew Johnson aside, there have been two impeachment cases in my lifetime.  One was real – a bipartisan Congress concluded that Richard Nixon committed high crimes and misdemeanors in the Watergate scandal.  The other was bogus – a Republican congressional majority decided to bring down Bill Clinton by hook or by crook, and when their Whitewater investigation turned up nothing illegal, they decided to make it about blowjobs.  It turns out that adultery is not an impeachable offense. 

As time has passed, it turns out that Republicans like extra-marital sex as much as Democrats do.  It’s Donald Trump’s favorite hobby.  Not that I care about Trump’s sex life.  I figure Melania knew what she was getting into.  But I do care about honest elections, and constitutional government. 

Scott Adams was blowing smoke.  This morning, Robert Mueller held a press conference which blew that smoke away.  My preliminary takeaways from Mueller’s statements today are these.  Mueller didn’t charge Donald Trump with a crime because he was forbidden to by Department of Justice policy against indicting a sitting president.  But, as Mueller said, if he thought Trump was innocent, he’d have said so, and he didn’t say so.  The best he could do, given the constraints he was under – a hostile boss, and the ever-present threat of getting fired – was to find the facts and turn those facts over to Congress, which does have the authority to bring charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against a sitting president. 

That process is called impeachment.  If House Democrats were waiting for some sort of signal, I’d say Mueller gave them one.  Come on, Democrats.  The ball is now in your court.  Do your duty.

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

And it’s not even over yet.  Spoiler alert:  so far, everything has turned out OK.  But as the old Jim Reeves song goes, “I’ve enjoyed as much of this as I can stand.”

On Tuesday, we woke up to find our dog Charlie, a 14-year-old Lhasa Apso, could barely walk.  The vet couldn’t see us until late afternoon, so I hung out with him all day, carrying him outside a few times to give him an opportunity to poop and pee.  He had a couple of old pain pills left, so we gave him some of that, and it helped a lot.  By the time we got to the vet, he’d pretty much returned to normal.  The vet concluded that it was just an arthritis flare-up, and 48 hours later, all is well.

Charlie’s Tuesday travails, however, were just a prelude to Wednesday evening.  We went on our evening dog walk with two friends and their dog.  It was about 9:00 p.m., a bit later than usual, and we were remarking on how peaceful it was.  Famous last words. 

Then, all of a sudden, a couple of dogs came charging out of the open door of a nearby house, barking and growling.  Of course, the three dogs in our party replied in kind.  It was dark, we were trying to pull our dogs away from the loose dogs, and in the confusion, one of our friends backed into Vicki.  She was also backing up, but not as fast, and there was a collision.  Vicki fell over backwards and hit her head on the pavement.  Hard.

She never lost consciousness, and it soon became clear that she had no broken bones and could wiggle her fingers and toes, but she was bleeding and in quite a bit of pain.  She decided to stay down, and we called an ambulance to have her checked out.  While we were waiting, a couple of neighbors who were medical professionals saw us and came out to help.  I don’t know their names, but their calm professionalism was so helpful, and they also brought a blanket to help ward off the chill.  (For former Tucsonans out there, it was chilly in Tucson last night, despite it being late May.) 

Long story short, Vicki spent the next three hours in the emergency room.  Her vital signs were stable, the CT scan was negative, and we got to go home around midnight.  She’s already resumed her normal activities.  We got lucky.

But it’s only Thursday.  Fingers crossed that Marigold and I make it through the week without incident.

I'M JUST BORN TO BE YOUR BABY

Nearly a year ago, Methodist minister from Alabama named Dave Barnhart tweeted a succinct summary of the hypocrisy of religious fanatics who claim to be pro-life, but who refuse to help babies, children, and other actual living humans who need loving-kindness, compassion, and plain old Christian charity (if there’s any of that left in the United States in 2019).  I’m posting it in its entirety here.

“’The unborn’ are a convenient group of people to advocate for.  They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and  religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn.  It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you.  You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone  They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.” 

“Prisoners?  Immigrants?  The sick?  The poor?  Widows? Orphans?  All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible?  They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”

MAYBE I'M AMAZED

Fourth century BCE Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic used to walk around with a lantern in broad daylight.  When people asked him why, he said he was looking for an honest man.  I don’t carry a lantern, but when I find evidence of an honest Republican (man or woman), I feel obliged to share it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Tea Party Republican Justin Amash (R-Michigan).

Amash weighed in on the Mueller Report and impeachment on Saturday.  He didn’t issue a wishy-washy statement of “concern,” or mumble about how he was “troubled” as the Susan Collinses and Marco Rubios of the world do.  No, Amash tweeted a straight-out condemnation of William Barr and Donald Trump, calling for Trump’s impeachment.  Here is the full text of his statement, without a quibble from me.

“Here are my principal conclusions: 1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report. 2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct. 3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances. 4. Few members of Congress have read the report.”

“I offer these conclusions only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.  In comparing Barr’s principal conclusions, congressional testimony, and other statements to Mueller’s report, it is clear that Barr intended to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings.  Barr’s misrepresentations are significant but often subtle, frequently taking the form of sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies, which he hopes people will not notice.”

“Under our Constitution, the president ‘shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.’ While ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ is not defined, the context implies conduct that violates the public trust.  Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”

“In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.  Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct.

While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct.”

“Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law—the foundation of liberty—crumbles.  We’ve witnessed members of Congress from both parties shift their views 180 degrees—on the importance of character, on the principles of obstruction of justice—depending on whether they’re discussing Bill Clinton or Donald Trump.”

“Few members of Congress even read Mueller’s report; their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation—and it showed, with representatives and senators from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page report’s conclusions within just hours of its release.  America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.”

TALKIN' 'BOUT MY G-G-GENERATION

In his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Jr coined a very useful term for groups whose shared bond is largely imaginary.  He called it a granfalloon, a collective noun that sounds reasonable on the surface, but which upon closer examination, turns out to be a meaningless distinction.  

I think named generations are like that.  I’m on the books as a Baby Boomer, born in 1947.  The official Baby Boom generation is the cohort born between 1946 and 1964.  But there’s no way I have more in common with someone born in 1964 than with someone born in 1945.  I went to school with kids born in 1945.  I was in college by the time kids born in 1964 celebrated their first birthday. 

But granfalloon or no granfalloon, I sympathize with young whippersnappers in their 40s and 50s who are tired of hearing about Woodstock and the glorious Sixties.  I also sympathize with those who’d like to give younger candidates an opportunity to see what they can do.  It strikes me as weird that three of our past four presidents were born in the same year (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, all born in 1946). 

And that brings me to the two current leaders of the Democratic pack.  The good news is that neither Bernie Sanders nor Joe Biden were born in 1946.  The bad news is that they’re even older.  Bernie Sanders was born in 1941, and Joe Biden was born in 1942, which means that their particular granfalloon is known as the “Silent Generation,” the name for people born between 1928-1945.  Interestingly, no member of the Silent Generation has ever been elected president. 

Just between you and me, I’d like to keep it that way.

It is a political truism that Democratic voters want to fall in love with a candidate, while Republicans just want to win.  Our two oldest candidates for the Democratic nomination split the difference.  Bernie Sanders inspires starry eyed infatuation among his most idealistic followers.  Joe Biden, to be sure, inspires a certain amount of affection, but he’s positioning himself as the pragmatic alternative to the Vermont socialist.   

I value pragmatism, although not as an end in itself.  And as a practical matter, I wonder how deep Biden’s support really is.  His notorious boundary issues could hurt him among women voters.  He’s been a politician forever, and he didn’t distinguish himself for most of his career in the Senate.  He has a remarkable personal history, and has proved that he can take a licking and keep on ticking.  But politically, his primary asset seems to be the fact that Barack Obama is fond of him.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, of course.  He’s running as the adult in the room, a calm, stabilizing figure who can help the country step back from Trump craziness.  That’s a message that could resonate with the electorate.   The good news for Biden is that, whatever his #MeToo issues, Trump has done something similar but worse, repeatedly, and without remorse. 

If Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him.  Full stop, no quibbles or caveats.  And I’ll say the same thing about the other old geezer in the race.  If Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him.  Full stop, no quibbles or caveats.

Vox Media’s Matt Yglesias offered this observation about Bernie’s relationship with the Democratic Party: “Professionalism has become the most underrated virtue in US politics and the Bernie people are mostly wrong because they particularly underrate it. But also many Dem insiders are failing to display professionalism in their stance toward Bernie.”

I understand why some Democratic Party functionaries resent Bernie Sanders.  Their job is to advance the interests of the Democratic Party, and Sanders famously isn’t a Democrat.  For party professionals, it must be annoying to watch someone like Bernie freelance for three years and then, every fourth year, decide to seek the nomination of a political party he refuses to join and doesn’t seem to respect.  But part of the job of a party professional is to behave professionally.  Whatever they may think of Bernie, his policy proposals resonate with many Democrats, and it’s stupid to alienate those voters.  The DNC and the rest of the Democratic establishment should relax, give Sanders a chance to debate and compete for votes in the primaries and the caucuses, and see what happens.

So Bernie is a millionaire now?  I say, good for him.  His recipe for becoming a millionaire – just write a bestselling book – strikes me as tone deaf, but as far as I know, he earned his money fair and square.  If he didn’t, we’ll find out soon enough, because reporters will go over his tax returns with a fine-tooth comb.  But at this point, my main takeaway is that he released his tax returns, and did it early in the nomination process.  He deserves credit for that.

But I will also say that, unlike 2016, when Bernie was my first choice during the Democratic primaries, he’s not my favorite for 2020.  For one thing, there are a lot more candidates to choose from this time around, and some of them share many of Bernie’s values.  It seems fair to ask whether one of those other candidates would be more likely to beat Donald Trump in the next general election.  Trump thrives when he has a foil, an enemy he can caricature and demonize.  Among the current Democratic field, Bernie looks like he’d be one of Trump’s natural foils. 

That doesn’t mean Bernie can’t win, or that he shouldn’t be nominated.  Sanders will, of course, fight back against Republican attacks, as he will against criticism from his opponents in the Democratic primaries.  What remains to be seen is how effective his counter-attacks will be.  Bernie sometimes takes criticism personally, and he can come off as prickly and defensive, as witness his comments about his net worth. 

I also worry about the demographics of Bernie’s base.  His most enthusiastic supporters tend to be white and male.  That’s not a great look for a party whose success is now largely determined by voter turnout among women and African-Americans.  Sanders will have to prove that he can appeal to those important constituencies, and it may be harder this time around, since he’s competing against women and African-Americans who are viable candidates.

Still, “harder” isn’t the same as impossible.  Bernie will have a chance to make his case in the primaries, and his message will resonate with a lot of Democratic voters.  Indeed, it resonates so well that there will be plenty of candidates campaigning on policies pretty similar to Bernie’s.  The contrast between, for instance, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, won’t be as stark as the Sanders-Clinton differences in 2016.  Most of 2020’s top tier Democrats could run comfortably on a platform featuring some version of Bernie’s issues, and the Democratic platform in 2020 will skew progressive, no matter who wins the nomination.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders was an exciting novelty, and he gave a voice to frustrated progressives.  Today, he’s a known quantity, and some of his rivals sound pretty Bernie-esque.  Sanders has a fair claim on having been the first to articulate these positions, but ultimately it won’t matter who said it first.  It will matter who says it best.

In political campaigns, the messenger is as important as the message.  It’s important that Democrats find a nominee who not only supports progressive policies, but also has the ability to sell those policies to a wide spectrum of voters.  Bernie’s good at preaching to the choir, and he’s got a very loud choir.  We’ll see if he can get the entire congregation to sing along.

Ironically, one of Bernie’s important assets – his cadre of fiercely loyal followers – is also a potential liability.  A subset of his followers – the ones they call Bernie Bros – have more in common with Trump cultists than they might like to admit.  “Bernie or bust” isn’t a recruiting slogan or a negotiating position.  It’s a tacit admission that “bust” is the outcome you’re expecting. 

I’ll have more to say about both Sanders and Biden, but for the moment, I’ll leave it at this.  I will vote for Bernie Sanders if he’s the Democratic nominee.  Ditto for Joe Biden.  But frankly, I’d rather not have to.  I would personally prefer to vote for a candidate who’s younger than I am.  Fortunately, that takes in a lot of territory, including everyone from Pete Buttigieg to – just barely – Elizabeth Warren. 

Now that the field of candidates is more or less set, meaningful campaigning will soon kick into gear.  Let’s see who does the best job of appealing to voters.  And while the campaign for the nomination is playing out, let’s try not to burn any bridges along the way.  We’ll need every vote we can get. 

CARRIED WATER FOR THE ELEPHANT

To impeach or not to impeach, that is the question.  Reasonable people have reached different conclusions.  Political statistician Nate Silver tweeted "’There's an election coming up soon so let the voters decide on the president's conduct rather than impeaching him’ is actually a really good argument.”  But I think that’s a false choice.

For one thing, impeachment hearings would be an excellent way to make sure voters have the information they need to judge the president’s conduct on election day.  The steady drip of negative information certainly eroded Nixon’s popularity during the Watergate hearings.  Until someone comes up with a better way to keep the spotlight on Trump’s unsavory behavior, I’ll advocate for impeachment.    

But there is more at stake than presidential election strategy, and at this point, obsessing about the unknowable impact of impeachment hearings on public opinion doesn’t strike me as a compelling argument for avoiding the “I” word.  Here’s my assessment of the arguments I’ve seen against impeachment.

The least persuasive argument against impeachment hearings is the fear that they’d rile up Trump’s base.  Trump’s base is always riled up.  Let’s face it, Deplorables are going to turn out en masse for their god-emperor on November 3, 2020, impeachment or no impeachment. 

Let’s not forget that there’s another base out there – the Democratic base – that is crying out for a meaningful response.  Now they’ve seen Mueller’s evidence, and feel a heightened sense of urgency.  Trump knows how to feed his base.  To be sure, he feeds them garbage, but he shows them he cares.  It’s time for Democrats in the House to step up.

Trump has two big advantages in the base mobilization game.  First, he’s obviously not constrained by actual facts, so he can say anything he wants, and the Deplorables will lap it up.  But almost as importantly, he’s the undisputed boss of his party.  What he says, goes.

But at least until there’s an official Democratic presidential nominee, Democrats have to move collectively, which means negotiation, compromise, and a slow pace.  I understand the obstacles, and I’m willing to be patient.  But I really want to see forward movement.

I am unpersuaded by the argument that there’s no point in impeaching Trump in the House because the Senate will never vote to convict.  It’s a mistake to fight only the battles you know you can win.  Fortune favors the bold, as the Roman proverb has it, and this looks like low-hanging fruit to me. 

One recurring theme in the Mueller Report is how weak Trump is.  His subordinates routinely ignored his orders, and often spoke contemptuously about him behind his back.  Why not rub his nose in it for the next year?  Impeachment proceedings would keep various aspects of the scandal in the news, which would, in turn, keep Trump off balance and tweeting hysterically. 

In March, at the Tucson Festival of the Book, I attended a panel discussion that included John Nichols, a writer for The Nation.  He argued that impeachment was an affirmative obligation for Congress, when circumstances warrant it.  And even with substantial redactions, the Mueller Report provides ample evidence that Donald Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.  If not for the Department of Justice policy against indicting sitting presidents, Trump would likely have been the subject of a multi-count indictment for obstruction of justice.

As Senator Lindsay Graham said, “if we don’t punish this president for these crimes by impeaching him, when will we use these powers against any sitting president?”  Of course, Graham said that back in 1999, about Bill Clinton.  But it strikes me as a fair question today.  If Democrats in Congress believe that Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, their obligation is to confront that uncomfortable truth.

I believe that the House should hold impeachment hearings, listen to the testimony, weigh the evidence, and vote accordingly.  I hope they force Republican senators – especially those up for re-election in 2020, like Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, and Martha McSally – to listen to the evidence and then tell their constituents what they think about it.  Yes or no, senator?  Do you find Trump’s behavior acceptable?  Of course, most Republicans will just shrug.  Their loyalty is to their billionaire paymasters.  But why not force them to declare their loyalty in public?

None of this means that I want Democrats to be all impeachment, all the time.  That’s a false choice too. I believe that health care, climate change, and all the other issues near and dear to progressives should be prominent elements of the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign.  But the Trump-Russia scandal will be a massive elephant in the room unless Democrats deal with it somehow.  You know damn well that Republicans are going to do their best to take the whole investigation through the looking glass and find a pretext to investigate Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  Why cede the field to the crazy people?

Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time.  It’s time to open a multi-front assault on Putin’s puppet. 

A MAN HEARS WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR AND DISREGARDS THE REST

Predictably, the Barr press conference and the heavily redacted version of the Mueller report that was released this morning have turned into a Rorschach test for pundits and politicians.  Republicans are insisting that anything short of an indictment of the president (which Department of Justice policy does not permit) equals total exoneration.  Just ignore the sleazy picture it paints of Trump, his family and his minions. 

People on my side, though, are having fun – despite their outrage – reconstructing all that sleaze.  The best single sentence from the Mueller Report that I’ve seen so far is a quote from a guy named Jody Hunt, who was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff.  Hunt was taking notes when Sessions broke the news to Trump that he’d appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel.  The conversation apparently did not go well.

Trump, Hunt wrote, “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God.  This is terrible.  This is the end of my presidency.  I’m fucked.’” 

Because that’s the kind of thing you say when you know you’re going to be totally exonerated.

This is good too:  "The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests." 

Trump tried his best – at least ten times, according to the Mueller Report – to interfere with the investigation, but he failed.  Suppose I tried to kill you – ten times – but failed because you kept ducking and dodging when I shot at you.  Would you conclude that the fact that you survived was enough to exonerate me?  Or might you say, “hey, what about attempted murder” when prosecutors told you they weren’t going to charge me with a crime?

I await deeper analysis from credible legal sources, but this is certainly NOT a “no collusion” or “exoneration” report.

YOU GOTTA BE SINCERE, YOU GOTTA FEEL IT HERE

I have no hot takes on the Mueller Report because as of this writing (8:00 a.m. MST) I still don’t know what’s in it.  But wow, the Barr press conference was really weird.  I’d be interested to know whether there’s legal precedent for using sincerity and/or frustration as a defense in the commission of a crime.

"THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD. IT ISN'T EVEN PAST."

William Faulkner said that.  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  George Santayana said that.  Remembering the past without understanding it also condemns you to repeat your mistakes.  I said that.

As it happens, the repeated mistake I’m most worried about for the 2020 election is hosophobia, a syndrome to which progressives are particularly susceptible.  (Hey, I just learned the word myself – it means a fear of being impure.)  In 2016, the symptoms of hosophobia ranged from mild (I’ll hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton) to severe (I’ll vote Green or Libertarian, or screw it, maybe I won’t vote at all).  I have made the argument, which I won’t repeat here but which I continue to believe, that progressive hosophobia put Donald Trump in the White House. 

I wonder how those third-party voters and abstainers feel now.  I hope some of them have the good grace to be embarrassed, but my guess is that most are still in denial.  People like that are basically Libertarian Deplorables and Green Deplorables, and they have more in common with Trump’s OG Deplorables than they might want to admit.  And what they have in common is hosophobia, in the form of utopian thinking.    

Republican Deplorables look to a mythical past, in which people like them were winners and everyone else – women and minorities especially – knew their place.  Progressive Deplorables look to a mythical future, in which the American two-party system has collapsed and been replaced by a parliamentary system where their ideas will get more traction.  Deplorables on the right are wrong about the past, and Deplorables on the left are wrong about the future.  There is no realistic path to either of those outcomes.

Once various Democrats began announcing their plans to run for president, there’s been a renewal of progressive attacks on the party.  Some – by no means all – of those attacks appear to be coming from Bernie Sanders supporters (and probably some Russian bots as well).  That makes sense.  Bernie’s not a Democrat, after all, even though he’d like to be the Party’s nominee in 2020.  That makes him, once again, a lightning rod for progressive discontent with the Democratic Party.

Vox Media’s Matt Yglesias recently described an important distinction among progressives related to their attitude towards the Democratic Party.   Some on the left, he said, believe that “The Democratic Party a basically good institution that serves the interests of its constituents and would be able to do more to advance worthy causes if everyone pitched in and worked harder to help Democrats win more elections.”  That’s more or less my view, although I’d say “better than any other viable alternative” rather than “basically good.”  People in this camp may admire Bernie Sanders and his policies, but they get exasperated when his followers trash the party their boy wants to lead.

Yglesias summarizes the less charitable view as: “The Democratic Party is a basically corrupt institution that serves the interests of wealthy donors and will only advance worthy causes if its current leadership is displaced by new leaders with pure hearts.”  The first half of the sentence is hyperbole, although it contains a kernel of truth that the party would do well to address.  But the conclusion in the second half is misguided and dangerous.

Gosh, you might say, who could be against insisting on new leaders with pure hearts?  What’s wrong with that?  Donald Trump is what’s wrong with that.  The road to utopia leads to dystopia. 

All that bullshit we heard in 2016 from Greens, Libertarians, and progressive non-voters about how there was no real difference between the two major parties?  I wonder how many of them still believe that, two years into the Trump administration.  All that bullshit we heard from Greens, Libertarians, and progressive non-voters about maybe the best thing would be to burn it all down and start over?  Guess what?  Donald Trump is burning it all down.  How’s the starting over going?

One of the things I find most aggravating about hosophobic progressives is that most of them are unserious.  Their outrage may be perfectly sincere, but they haven’t done anything useful with it.  Mostly they just pop their heads up every four years to complain about how the system is irretrievably broken, and how any candidate with a chance of winning is unworthy of their vote. 

Building a credible political party requires sustained effort – going to meetings, circulating petitions, recruiting members, raising money, and running for office. How many Green voters have done any of that since November 8, 2016?  My guess?  Virtually none of them.  Maybe you think that’s a little harsh.  If so, show me a list of Green Party accomplishments.  Which candidates have they elected?  Which of their policies have they implemented? 

An objective observer might conclude that the Greens don’t really want to win national elections. If the only thing you’re passionate about is pointing out the other guy’s faults, you don’t have to work nearly as hard.  There’s no reason to compromise because there’s nothing at stake.  Elections are just opportunities for virtue signaling.

I find that annoying, because anyone who’d paid attention would be aware that the Democratic Party has moved fairly dramatically to the Left over the past decade.  Maybe you wish it would move further, and faster.  Fair enough.  Nevertheless, Democrats elected a Black president, and nominated a woman.  They supported the legalization of gay marriage.  They continue to oppose the persecution of asylum seekers and other immigrants.  They elected a new cohort of Congressional Democrats that is demographically diverse, and whose views tend to be well to the Left of whoever they replaced. 

I’m happy about all of that, although I will close with a cautionary tale.  Some of you may be old enough to remember the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972.  In 1968, the Democratic Party establishment ignored its progressive wing and nominated middle-of-the-roader Hubert Humphrey.  He lost a close election to Richard Nixon, and bad shit happened.

The Democrats responded by tacking left in 1972.  They nominated Senator George McGovern (from South Dakota, of all places) who was as far Left as it was possible to be in national politics in 1972.  McGovern was at least the equivalent of Bernie Sanders today. He was a good guy, and I was happy to vote for him. Alas, Richard Nixon beat him like a drum, carrying 49 states and winning over 60% of the popular vote. Then even worse shit happened.

Now obviously 1968 is not 2020, and this is not an argument against nominating an unabashed progressive.  It’s an argument in favor of finding an unabashed progressive that can win.  Electability will be my tie-breaker if and when I have to choose between two or three progressives with reasonably similar policy positions.   I want shit to stop happening. I want the Left to start winning elections.

SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

I want to reiterate a point I made on Saturday.  We still have no idea what the Mueller report actually says. 

All we know is what Republican Attorney General William Barr says it says.  Barr did what Trump appointed him to do, which was to spin the Mueller report in the most Trump-positive way possible.

Spin, you ask?  Where’s the spin?

If you read Barr’s letter to Congress carefully, you’ll spot a couple of red flags.

First, Barr said that Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in [its] efforts … to gather and disseminate information to influence the election.” 

Listen closely and you’ll hear the sound of goalposts being moved.  Mueller’s report failed to find a smoking gun connecting Trump to the Russian government.  Golly, I was absolutely sure that Mueller would find video evidence of Trump and Putin signing an agreement to hijack the election.  Boy, is my face red.

On the other hand, the Trump campaign was in close and sustained contact with plenty of Russian citizens, including oligarchs known to be Putin’s pals.  These are folks who have Vladimir Putin on speed dial.  Then there’s the case of Paul Manafort (Trump’s campaign manager, as you’ll recall, not to mention convicted criminal) who was in close and sustained contact with members of the Ukraine government who were, in turn, allied with Putin and Russia. 

By insisting that only contacts with Russian government officials count, Barr effectively puts his thumb on the scale on Donald Trump’s behalf.  But he didn’t stop there.

On the matter of obstruction of justice, Barr says that Mueller laid out arguments both for and against the charge.  Barr cites the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, and apparently relies on the fact that Mueller offered evidence on both sides to conclude that the standard hadn’t been met. 

I don’t know the standard of proof for obstruction of justice cases, but smoking guns are hard to find.  Jonathan V. Last, writing in The Bulwark, said: “The entire idea of the ‘smoking gun’ is really about establishing, and then moving, goalposts.”  It’s about setting a standard of proof so high that it’s impossible to reach. 

William Barr, like Antonin Scalia before him, is one of those “unitary executive” theorists that Republicans love, as long as one of their own is in the White House.  The Dick Cheney biopic Vice, offers an overview of the philosophy, if you’re unfamiliar with it.  Basically, Barr is an advocate for unlimited, unchecked, executive power for Republican presidents.

in any event, at least one reputable legal scholar argues that Barr missed the point – probably on purpose.  Here’s how Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel (link below) describes Barr’s rhetorical sleight of hand.

“At least given what they lay out here, they only considered whether Trump was covering up his involvement in the hack-and-leak operation. It doesn’t consider whether Trump was covering up a quid pro quo, which is what there is abundant evidence of.  They didn’t consider whether Trump obstructed the crime that he appears to have obstructed. They considered whether he obstructed a different crime. And having considered whether Trump obstructed the crime he didn’t commit, rather than considering whether he obstructed the crime he did commit, they decided not to charge him with a crime.”

If Adam Schiff (chair of the House Intelligence Committee) confirms Barr’s version of the Mueller report, I’ll believe him.  Ditto for other prominent Democrats in Congress who will presumably be given the full report soon.  Ditto for competent investigative reporters, who will surely find a way to get their hands on the full report.

Until then, I’ll repeat what I said on Saturday.  Let’s wait and see.    

https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/03/24/how-william-barr-did-old-man-back-flips-to-avoid-arresting-donald-trump/

FIRST THING YOU LEARN IS THAT YOU ALWAYS GOTTA WAIT

The autumn of 1942 brought the first good news in months for the Allied war effort in Europe.  Russia had stopped the German army at Stalingrad, and General Bernard Montgomery had Rommel’s troops on the run in North Africa.   

One of Winston Churchill’s advisors suggested that it might be the time for a celebratory speech.  Churchill, who always seemed to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, disagreed.  Instead, he uttered these famous lines: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

That’s kind of where I am with the news that Robert Mueller has submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr.  Now we wait and see what’s in it.  That may take a while, and the devil will be in the details.

What can we expect in the meantime?  At least up until independent reviewers get a look at Mueller’s report, Trump and his enablers will do their best to convince you that the report proves Trump was as pure as the driven snow.  Pay no attention to the fact that his campaign was up to its ears in Russians.  Ignore the dozens of indictments already handed down, many of which have already resulted in convictions and guilty pleas from some of Trump’s closest advisors.  The fact that Trump’s National Security Advisor, his campaign manager, and his personal attorney are already behind bars as a result of their Trump-related crimes is purely coincidental.   

We’re also hearing various sources say that there’ll be no further indictments.  Color me skeptical.  I’m not surprised that Mueller didn’t indict Trump himself.  Right or wrong, Department of Justice policy says don’t indict a sitting president, and Mueller is a good soldier.  As for the loose ends (Jared, Don Jr., and the rest of the immediate family), while Mueller himself may be past the indictment stage of his work, don’t forget that the Special Counsel’s Office has handed off aspects of the case to prosecutors in other jurisdictions.  I expect new indictments to come out of those investigations, and it wouldn’t shock me if there were criminal charges waiting for Donald Trump when he leaves office.  Waiting is the hard part, but we don’t have much alternative.

The White House will now launch the “deny and distort” counterattack they’ve been preparing for months.  During the period when the contents of the report remain confidential, Trump and his minions are free to spin it anyway they want.  I expect them to claim that the report completely exonerates Donald Trump.  Once Congressional Democrats and the press get their hands on the report (as I assume they both will sooner or later), the Republicans’ fallback position will be that any part of the report that does NOT completely exonerate Donald Trump is fake news.

George Orwell anticipated the strategy in his novel 1984: “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.”

THEY SAID YOU WAS HIGH CLASS, WELL THAT WAS JUST A LIE

Christianity was a no-man’s land at the beginning of the 4th century.  Christian communities were largely isolated from one another, and radically different interpretations of Jesus’ teaching sprang up in different parts of the Roman Empire.  In 325, the Council of Nicaea was convened to sort things out.  One of the hottest debates was over the best word to describe the nature of the Trinity.  Were the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost “homoousios” or” homoiousios”?  Homoousios meant “same essence,” while homoiousios meant “similar essence.” 

Spoiler alert:  homoousios won.  Advocates for homoiousios were branded as heretics and persecuted.  For centuries.  All over the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, iota.  That’s where we get the phrase “not one iota of difference,” which we use to describe tiny or non-existent differences. 

My guess is that the differences between the policy positions of the top two or three Democratic presidential candidates won’t be much more than an iota or two.  No one’s going to win the Democratic nomination unless they campaign on a platform that addresses climate change, health care, immigration, voting rights, and (pick any of several other important issues). 

Nevertheless, we have been conditioned to obsess over relatively minor differences between Democrats.  The press will emphasize the differences, because they like to pit candidates against each other, the better to justify their perpetual “Democrats in disarray” stories.  The candidates themselves may play along, because they want to be seen as distinctive.  And of course, we can look forward to Republican propagandists and their Russian allies trying to sow dissension among Democrats.

As of this writing, most of the usual suspects, as well as some unusual suspects, have declared their intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.  The biggest undeclared name is Joe Biden, who, along with Bernie Sanders, leads the early Democratic popularity polls.  Since popularity, at this stage of the campaign, is largely a function of name recognition, you’d expect Biden and Bernie to lead those polls.

I have some early favorites among the declared candidates, and maybe you do too.  I’m going to try to avoid falling so deeply in love with any one candidate that I begin to resent the others in the field.  My third or fourth choice from the current field may win the nomination, and I will vote for that person happily if it means getting rid of Donald Trump. 

Getting rid of Donald Trump will require us to develop new ways of consuming information about politics.  In an age of social media and fake news, it’s difficult to separate the signal from the noise.  One way we can do that is by not adding to the noise ourselves.  I’ll try to avoid jumping in with a hot take every time a new rumor surfaces.

I’m writing this to remind myself (and perhaps you, dear reader) to look for similarities between the candidates, even as the press insists on accentuating their differences.  And when opposition research teams find embarrassing information about … well, pretty much all of the candidates, I’m going to try to remember St. Paul’s admonition (Romans 3:23) that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Our signal-to-noise problem is complicated by the fact that the noise will come from multiple directions.  First, there will be the outright lies, genuine fake news generated by the Russo-Republican disinformation machine.  A little patient fact checking will expose the fabrications.

Another form of noise in the system are irrelevant truths.  For instance, sooner or later, every candidate is going to misspeak on the campaign trail.  The press will call it a gaffe and get all excited, but everybody knows it was a slip of the tongue, or a simple brain fart at the end of a long day.  It happened, but so what?

The inevitable discovery of embarrassing information in some candidates’ past is another source of potentially irrelevant truth.  I won’t say that skeletons in the closet don’t matter, because I don’t know what they might turn out to be.  Individual cases will differ.  But I’d still argue that when negative information surfaces about a candidate, our first question should be, is it true?  And the second question should be, so what?  Does it really have any bearing on the fitness of the candidate to be president in 2021?

Maybe it does.  I’m not suggesting that we ignore embarrassing information, or claim fake news if the information turns out to be true.  If there are candidates whose past disqualifies them from the presidency, so be it.  Righteous indignation is always fun.  But how will obsessing about a Democrat’s decades-old lapse in judgment help get rid of Donald Trump?

We live in an era of too much information, and we’re about to learn more than we need to know about the lives of every serious Democratic presidential contender.  I daresay they’ve all done things they regret.  I can identify with that.  Some of them may be guilty of major screw-ups.  I can identify with that, too.  What I really care about, though, is what the candidates believe now, how they behave now, and – this is important – how they handle themselves when bad news surfaces.

If the eventual Democratic nominee turns out to be a lifelong liar, cheater, adulterer, bully, and narcissist who admires murderous dictators and takes orders from Vladimir Putin.  I promise I’ll reconsider my support.  Until then, I’ll continue to maintain that, whatever the faults of the eventual Democratic nominee, they’re trivial in comparison to the trail of sleaze that Trump has left in his wake.

Sarah Kendzior put it this way:  A president’s “obligation is to serve the public's interests and get the job done. Nice if they're also personally admirable, but I prefer competence and commitment to the public good.  I also look at the 2020 winner as someone who will be shoveling the US out from under a massive pile of shit for the entirety of their term. I don't care if they are fun or pleasant or charismatic. I care whether they remove the massive pile of shit.”

WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN?

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so naturally there was a Friends of Ireland gathering in Washington D.C. a few days ago.  Attendees included prominent politicians, including our German-American president and our Italian-American Speaker of the House.  There was nothing remarkable about any of that.  It was just retail politics in the good old USA.

But at this otherwise uneventful event, photographer Olivier Douliery snapped a picture that is fraught with symbolism.  An unsuspecting woman is menaced by a sinister figure, visible to the audience only by his shadow. 

I’ve seen both color and black & white versions of the photo.  The B&W version of the photo could be a production still from a classic black & white horror film, e.g. Val Lewton’s 1942 classic I Walked With A Zombie or F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent vampire film, Nosferatu. 

Or it could be an illustration for a new edition of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” – “Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.”

Which image is scarier? I report, you decide.