We're On The Road To Nowhere

The public phase of impeachment begins today.  The case is pretty clear.  However, the incidentals are just confusing enough to confound the normal person who does not spend the day crawling through news for the latest update. 

Perhaps there is a "smoking gun" witness.  Lev Parnas springs to mind.  More likely we will simply get a public record of the president abusing the powers of his office for personal gain.  Sure, Ukraine is the issue at hand, but there are so many other instances it's boggles the mind that Democrats are focusing on only one instance.  Of course, that's Trump's instinctual strategy: flood the zone with so much egregious conduct that your opponents get distracted.  There are actual white supremacists working in the White House, and that barely registers in the swirling shitstorm of Trumpistan.

Most people made up their minds weeks ago, based on what they already believe about politics.  Unless there is a surprise appearance by Parnas or John Bolton, the needle is likely stuck.  Trump will be impeached by the House and not removed by the Senate, because America is broken and GOP loyalty to their party over their country broke it.

Deeply Messed Up

The Democratic primary has officially gone on too long, and we haven't even had the Iowa Caucus yet.

The last minute quasi-entries of Michael Bloomberg and Duval Patrick are profoundly weird. There seems to be no constituency for Bloomberg, and Patrick's work for Bain Capital would likely be largely disqualifying.  Because the Democratic primaries begin in lily-white Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates like Kamala Harris are struggling to find their footing. They moved California earlier, but she isn't really running strong there, either, nor has she connected with South Carolina's overwhelmingly African American constituency.

Basically, we've come down to the following categories:

White Left of Center: Biden and Buttigieg.  They are presenting themselves as moderating influence on a party moving to the left in ways that are genuinely concerning for a general election (much less governing with a closely divided Senate). Biden and Buttigieg are promising a boring presidency where you don't have worry about whether the president has gone off the rails and called nurses sexual degenerates or allied the country with Uzbekistan in an ethnic cleansing campaign.

White Change Agents: Warren and Sanders. They are presenting themselves as fundamental change agents.  You think the system is broken? They have a plan/revolution for that.  Their primary appeal is the angrier part of the party, who is convinced that everything is messed up and we need to a proper cleansing.  Both rely on a left wing populist pitch.  Warren is seeing both good and bad by being the current lead female candidate.

Surprising Flops: Harris, Booker and Klobuchar.  All three of these candidates bring something really compelling to the table.  Yet none of them have been able to break out. I was a Harris supporter, and I would be happy to vote for her in the primary, but there doesn't seem to be much chance she'll still be around in April.  Booker has amazing charisma in a party that love young charismatic candidates. Klobuchar could have easily been what Buttigieg has become: the center-left alternative to Biden.  Maybe one of these guys gets a surprisingly strong showing early on, but they feel like they could be winnowed sooner rather than later.

Why do Bloomberg and Patrick feel the need to jump in?  Their lanes are already full and that's not counting other candidates like Castro or Yang who have at least some support,

What's worse is the very nature of Democratic politics. The policy differences between a change agent like Warren and center-left candidates like Buttigieg are real but even Buttigieg is proposing policies that are further left than what Obama was able to do.  But the echo chamber nature of social media and the overwhelming need to defend "your candidate" is tearing the party apart.

Yesterday, someone posted a video of Pete Buttigieg offering a fairly blase statement about the need for a "new politics," one that wasn't rooted in non-stop partisan warfare, but also didn't return to the "Obama and Clinton era" politics of Grand Bargains and Triangulation.  OK, sure.  What will that look like and how do you accomplish it are kind of huge questions. Biden has presented himself as a continuation of Obama's politics (if not his policies) and so Buttigieg needs to differentiate himself from Biden by presenting himself as the bold new voice.  But because he seemed to make a slight criticism of Obama, people lost their shit.  I didn't see much criticism of Obama, and Buttigieg clarified that he wasn't referring to Obama's presidency, but it was enough to royally piss of some people.

I went on Twitter and said I didn't see a slam of Obama, but rather a recognition that the old Grand Bargain/Triangulation politics are gone.  Biden says he can get Mitch McConnell to work with him because some Republicans voted for the Violence Against Women Act.  WTF?  So Buttigieg says that those politics are the past and we need a new politics that recognizes that the GOP has gone insane without continually exacerbating partisan tensions.  Whatever, it's pablum.  But when I tried to make this argument, that Buttigieg was going after Biden and not Obama, I get attacked as a Buttigieg supporter.  When I note that the only presidential candidate I've contributed to is Warren, I basically got called a racist, and by a writer I generally admire.

Winning elections in our electoral system requires making broad coalitions.  Trump has abandoned this and gone with a base strategy, which I think should be disastrous.  But if the Democratic party degenerates into a massive internecine bloodbath, we could be in real trouble.

I started out supporting Booker and Gillibrand.  She's already out and Booker never caught fire. I moved to Harris, but Warren won me over rather than me losing Harris.  Still, I would happily pull the lever for any of them.  And if it's Biden or Buttigieg, I'll vote for them next November.  My only question is whether the party will survive that long.

A Tiresome Reflex

Bolivian President Evo Morales was an important symbol of the ascendency of indigenous political groups in Latin America, and he did some genuinely good things for his country.

Inevitably, he slid into more autocratic and undemocratic practices.  He defied the constitutional ban on a third term and then rigged an election to grab a fourth.  People rioted, the police and military refused to crackdown on the protests and Morales was forced to abdicate.  Was it a coup? Possibly. 

Immediately in the hellscape of social media, self-appointed experts decided that the CIA must've overthrown Morales, because Bolivia is rich in lithium. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.  The problem with assigning responsibility to the CIA is that basically strips the Bolivian people of any agency in the affairs of their country. There's a strain of foreign policy thinking that unites elements of the Right and Left that basically holds that anything that happens in the world is because America made it happen.  The Berlin Wall? Reagan did that, say conservative. Opposition to Maduro and Morales? Must be the CIA say leftists.

Morales was trampling on democratic norms.  Ultimately that was the problem. Now, could it be a right-wing coup? If the subsequent elections have the appearance of fraud, yet a right wing president is installed by the military, then I think we can call it a coup. But if there are free and fair elections, and Bolivians are able to select a new president, then maybe this was an important moment in Bolivia's democratic history.  IT, COULD. GO. EITHER. WAY. But to anoint this as another bad action by the CIA because you hate the CIA seems to be rushing to judgment.

I'm Exhausted

And wrestling starts this week.

Egads.

A Chilling But Necessary Read

Those GOP politicians supporting Trump aren't doing it out of cowardice in the face of the Trumpenproletariat.  They are doing it because they really believe their bullshit.

And this isn't much more reassuring.

The Way This Probably Unfolds

The House GOP tries to subpoena the whistleblower for no reason beyond spite.

Schiff points out that this is both spiteful and dangerous and a violation of whistleblower laws.

Schmuck Todd wonders what the whistleblower is hiding, beyond their identity to preserve their safety.

Debate becomes about the whistleblower among the Right Wing and Sensible Centrist news medi.

The whistleblower demands to come forward.

The whistleblower testifies in public and it's absolutely brutal for Trump.

Everything the GOP has tried to do to help Trump has inevitably, in the end, made things worse.

Morons

I think the GOP strategy on impeachment has been pretty predictable.  Attack the process. When the Democrats address those concerns, decide that quid pro quo isn't a quid pro quo or a crime at all.

But eventually the sheer tonnage of evidence will break the dam.  They will need a new stratagem to protect Dear Leader.  Especially if Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman testify to save their skins, they could provide damning details about what Giuliani was doing.  That means sacrificing Giuliani to save Trump.  Pin it all on him and say he was acting as a rogue agent.

Two problems.  First, it would admit that the Ukraine ploy was illegal.  It clearly was, but they've been trying to hem and haw and count on the protection of Fox News to keep from having to admit that what Trump did to Zelenskyy was illegal and corrupt.

The second problem is that there is ample evidence from Trump's own mouth of his working with Giuliani.  Trump and Giuliani's rank idiocy has endlessly complicated any consistent defense of Trump.  It's like the scene in A Few Good Men where Caffey gets Jessup to admit to the Code Red.

Except it's happening over and over and over again.

The Sessions Session

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions will apparently be running for his old seat in Alabama.  What makes this a fascinating story is the raging anger Trump still feels for Sessions, because Sessions - for all his odious racism - was insufficiently loyal to Hair Furor. The odds of Trump attacking Sessions is remarkably high. 

Alabama - unexpectedly - represents a crucial battleground state for control of the Senate.  Republicans look likely to lose a seat in Colorado, and could lose seats in Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, Arizona, and perhaps even Georgia and Kentucky.  Regaining the seat in Alabama is critical to any plans to retain control of the upper chamber.

So Trump's malignant narcissism could produce a conundrum for his hate-huffing acolytes in Alabama. The racist we've know for decades or the racist we've come to adore?

Ideally, Sessions narrowly edges accused pedophile Roy Moore, who launches a third party bid out of spite.  Moore draws off 10% of the creepier fundies and Doug Jones gets another six years.

Boom Goes The Dynamite

Remember, remember
The Fifth of November!

So, yesterday was quite a week.

First, and most importantly, my wife won a seat on our town council.  Pray for me a sinner in the hour of my need.

Second, Gordon Sondland - perhaps the only person so far to testify that gave Trump any wiggle room - reversed his previous testimony.  He admitted that Trump was trying to coordinate an "off the books" intervention through Giuliani. Most importantly, he admitted that he found Trump and Giuliani's attempt to pressure Ukraine to probably be illegal.  In other words? Quid pro quo.  Sondland decided that Trump and Giuliani weren't worth jail time.  He won't be the last to make that calculation.

Third, there were elections last night (see point #1), and Democrats did remarkably well. They now control the trifecta in Virginia, and amazingly, they won the governorship in Kentucky. What you see when you look at the map in Virginia and the map in Kentucky is where the battleground has shifted nationally.  Yes, Matt Bevin was an extremely unpopular governor and Andy Beshear is the son of a very popular former governor.  Yes, Virginia has been trending "blue" for several elections. When you look at the maps, however, what you see is that any district with any sizeable population tended to vote for the Democrat. Urban areas have been Democratic for decades now, but it's the suburbs that are starting to flip to parties, and that is likely a direct result of Donald J. Trump.  Trump won Kentucky by 30 points in 2016.

There will be policy implications, of course. Kentucky will likely bring back some form of Obamacare and 150,000 former felons will get their voting rights back.  Virginia might ratify the ERA, which would be the 38th state to do so.  However, the date for ratifying the ERA has passed, so the Supreme Court will need to decide if that counts.  In a state like Virginia, the Democrats will now control redistricting which at the very least will create fair districts, if not ones that lean Democratic.

In Kentucky, Trump tried to make Bevin's reelection about himself and about impeachment.  Bevin was the only Republican to lose his statewide race.  Don't think that hasn't left a mark on Mitch McConnell and other Republicans.

Watch This Story

The NYTimes poll that had Trump winning the swing states really does seem like an outlier.  Meanwhile, the WaPo released a poll that has Trump getting absolutely thumped by every major Democratic candidate.

In the background, there is another story brewing.  It's about "the best economy ever" that Trump touts as perhaps his only net positive.  Unemployment is ticking up in those critical Rust Belt states, including Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina.  (And if someone can explain to me the numbers in Alabama and Mississippi, I'd be obliged.)

The post-2008 economy has produced a bunch of jobs, but many of them are pretty crappy. Under-employment, poor wage growth, lingering debt...all of these are critical issues facing working class voters.

Looming on the horizon are two other trends: Trump's trade war is not only hurting American farmers, but it's beginning to take a toll on manufacturers.  The Conservative Party looks poised to win the December election, at which point, Brexit will happen and Europe will slip into a recession.

The only things keeping Trump afloat are rigid partisanship and a reasonably sound economy.  That last bit might not last until election day.

The Gist Of It

Josh Marshall lays down the basic plot from Ambassador Yovanovitch's testimony: She was fired because she was standing in the way of corrupt officials in Ukraine who wanted to give Giuliani and by extension Trump what they were asking for on the Biden family. The State Department didn't want to do or say anything that might be upended by Trump's Twitter feed.

The broader point is that Trump's infantile response mechanisms - attack, leap before your look, attack again - was easily manipulated by those goombahs arrested a few weeks back: Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They knew what they wanted and it was exceedingly easy to get Trump to bite.  As Marshall notes, we should assume that if those two idiots and Giuliani figured it out, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and Turkey should have zero trouble manipulating the toddler-in-chief.

Thanks, Republicans!

My Nightmare

I worry Jon Chait might be right about this.  Part of my worry is that Martin Longman has said the same things, and he's not a concern troll, the way Chait can be.

The "Biden is more electable" pitch is fundamentally flawed by the accumulated history of his previous presidential runs.  He's not a great standard bearer.  But... he might fit the wishes of the vast mushy, unengaged middle of the electorate.

We've hit a lull in the impeachment process, with fewer new revelations dropping every day. That will allow Trump to regain a bit of his floundering support.  Don't forget that polls are tricky to read, and you shouldn't base too much off one poll.

Still, the sickness I feel when I ponder the slimmest possibility of re-electing Donald Trump is overwhelming.

Out On A Sunday

This is a good read.

It's All One Scandal

Newly released documents show that the Ukraine scandal is not a separate scandal from the Russia/Mueller scandal.  Needless to say, Paul Manafort was at the center of it, and he appears to be the source of Trump's bonkers theory that Ukraine secretly "framed" Trump by stealing the DNC emails and releasing them to....Yeah, it gets fuzzy there.

Pelosi has said that they won't necessarily narrowly focus the impeachment on Ukraine.  My guess is that they know much of this already and are going to slowly expand the inquiry.

Not a week goes by when it doesn't get worse.  Not a week goes by where that seems to matter to the GOP.

Katie Hill

Representative Katie Hill resigned after photos were released that showed her having sexual relations with a campaign staffer.  There are allegations that she might have had relations with a congressional staffer.  The latter is against House rules put in place after #MeToo exposed predatory and untoward sexual relations between members and staff on Capitol Hill.

There has been a lot of talk about double standards based on gender, and no doubt that it true.  Hill is the first openly bisexual member of the House, and that no doubt feeds into the prurient interest in her sex life and the associated fact that the subordinate was a woman.  The accusations of double standard usually note that Duncan Hunter - also from California, but a Republican - continues to serve, despite far worse accusations against him.

But perhaps a better analogy is Duncan Hunter, but Al Franken.  Franken's behavior was bad and unworthy of a US Senator.  He might have weathered the storm, and perhaps some sort of political comeback exists in his future.  But he resigned, because he felt his status was damaged.  He could no longer do his job.  Hill made much the same point.

Hunter, however, is a Republican.  His primary loyalty is to Republican voters and the Republican party.  He is completely uninterested in the opinions of those who think sexual harassment is wrong, which ipso facto does include Republican voters and the Republican party.

We have entered a universe where one political party has shame and the other doesn't.  One party holds itself to its ideals and an idea of justice and fairness and one doesn't.

Yes, gender played a role in Hill's treatment and her decision to resign.  But don't pretend the moral bankruptcy of the GOP wasn't also an important part of this double standard.