This Would Be Big

Apparently, there's a way for the Queen to dismiss Boris Johnson.  Technically, it would be Members of Parliament who write the petition, but the idea would be to create a unity government from moderates on all sides.

Is there any way we can get the Queen to dismiss our straw-haired arsehole?

Public Opinion

We are starting to see our first polls on impeachment. Remember that most Americans don't follow politics that closely and even fewer have much idea how either impeachment works or how what Trump did was illegal.  Generally speaking, we can expect that support for impeachment will grow in proportion to how well Democrats explain those two processes. Campaign finance law is fairly arcane, which is why the "treason" line is working better, even if it's not exactly accurate.

We also know that opposition to impeachment is unlikely to drop much below 35%.  That's roughly been Trump's floor, and it's unlikely to drop below that.  Even Nixon never dropped below about 25%.

Impeachment may appeal politically to members of the Democratic Party's base, but the real audience has to be that mushy 20% in the middle of the electorate.  Combined with a message about Trump's corruption, it has to be about those broader trends leading up to the election.  Unfortunately, we are already seeing the GOP playbook, which is to equate Hunter Biden's actions with the myriad crimes of this administration.  It's unlikely the media will perform any better on this "Both Side" issue than they did in 2016.  I hope they do.  The legitimacy of our Republic rests on them doing so.

One Stop Summary

Jon Chait has a nice summary of how the Ukraine scandal represents all of Trump's many sins. It shows how Trump's predilection for small-time mobsterism has bled into his presidency. It also notes how he sees lawyers.  Giuliani and Barr are perfect lawyers for him.  It reminds me of this scene in Breaking Bad:

Trump found his criminal lawyers.  And they have infected the Judicial Department.

The Next Inquiry

Currently the House Intelligence Committee will be investigating the Ukrainian scandal, as it purports to show how Trump abused his power by soliciting help from a foreign power against his political enemies.  Some of the Twitter-sterics are apoplectic that the inquiry "will be limited to the Ukrainian scandal."

But that scandal opens up a lot of other doors to investigate.  For instance, during the phone call, Zelensky pointedly says that he stayed at Trump properties.  This could open an investigation into Trump for bribery and other emoluments.  The actual felonies Trump may have committed are kinda murky.  Sure seems like campaign finance laws were broken.  Sure seems like extortion.  Sure seems like obstruction of justice.  But those can be trickier to prove than "abuse of power." 

If Democrats use Zelensky's boast about staying at a Trump property to open a broader investigation into how Trump has funnelled business and foreign actors to his property...that's a target rich environment.  It would also reinforce the accusations that Trump has been personally profiting off his presidency, which should be the focus of the 2020 election, presuming - as we all do - that the Senate won't remove him.

"Only investigating Ukraine" is still a potentially very wide ranging investigation.

It's The Corruption

The whistleblower's account of Trump's behavior is, not surprisingly, incredibly damning. It lays out the context of the withholding of aid to Ukraine with Trump's requests for help in the 2020 election. It also talks about how the Trump White House tried to bury this from Congressional oversight.  My guess is that the release of the damaging transcript yesterday was thought to inoculate Trump, because it ended the efforts by his team to actively obstruct the lawful requirements of the whistleblower law.  They ended the "cover up" but exposed the crime.

What's significant is that this wasn't just Trump making an off the cuff strong-arm request of Zelensky.  This involved not only Trump and Giuliani, but also - at the very least - Attorney General Bill Barr. With the usual "if true" caveat, this calls into question just how much work Barr has been doing to prevent other illegal acts from seeing the light of day.  Because this leak came from the national security apparatus, it came with momentum that Barr and Trump couldn't contain.  The other corrupt acts - and we can be certain there are many more - may have been quashed. 

We already know there is a whistleblower surrounding Trump's taxes.  Depending on what happens over the next couple of weeks, we might see more and more of these allegations from whistleblowers throughout the bureaucracy.

In some ways, if this does happen, it strengthens Elizabeth Warren's case to be the Democratic nominee.  Biden is basically running as the antithesis of Trump.  But Warren (and Sanders) has been running against the "culture of corruption" at the heart of the government. 

Quid Pro Quo

Josh Marshall's analysis of the "transcript" is very good. There's a key point that I hadn't noticed in other reports.  First, he notes that Bill Barr was hip deep in this.  Second, Trump presses a bunch of conspiracy theories. Third, there's the issue of firing the ambassador to Ukraine.

Fourth and most importantly, Marshall points to about as close an example of quid pro quo as you can get without the Latin:

Zelensky: "We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javellin (missiles) from the United States for defense purposes."
Trump: "I would like you to do us a favor though..." he then goes on to talk about helping with his campaign and the Mueller Report, which had been the focal point of the previous day in DC.

In other words, Trump pivoted immediately from Zelensky's request for the military funds that he knows he has been promised and that Trump has withheld to a request for help with the server and some other issues.

Paired with Trump's refusal to release the funds appropriated by Congress...it's pretty damned clear that he is making those funds contingent on Zelensky helping his re-election campaign.

As Jon Chait shows, it's the context.

The Muddled Middle

This is a great analysis of what constitutes "moderate," "independent," and "undecided" voters.  They aren't a unified bloc, but they SHOULD lean Democratic.  While the author's point is that you can't really predict this group, because they are ideologically all over the map, the greatest number rest in the socially and economically "liberal" quadrant.  It's also interesting that the "pro-immigration"/"pro-markets" quadrant is basically empty.  That's the traditional Wall Street Republican position.  Trump ran as "anti-immigrant"/"pro-equality" candidate, saying he would expand health care and drain the swamp.  He's governed as an "anti-immigrant"/"pro-market" populist, but it's unclear that there are enough votes there.

Rudes

Rudy Giuliani being the one to rid us of Trump through his sheer incompetence would be so very, very sweet.

This Is Bonkers

Britain has no written constitution in the sense the US and other countries do, so judicial review has been pretty spotty. How do you declare an act of Parliament unconstitutional when there's no real constitution to compare it to?

So, today's ruling is an unbelievable step. Johnson has now been rejected by the courts, members of his own party and still has no plan for Brexit.  (Labour is scarcely more coherent, so it's not like he's under an immediate threat.)

Really the only solution is to have another referendum with a "No-Deal Brexit" vs No Brexit, because it certainly seems like those are the only two things that can result from all this.  The Leave campaign made a bunch of promises that turned out to be lies, and now all of that is coming home to roost.

Our Failed Media Experiment

If the Ukraine Scandal succeeds in destroying Trump, Ken Vogel will be the anti-Woodward and Bernstein. While some outlets like the Post have done a decent job of covering Trump, cable news and the NY Times have basically been hacked into becoming even hackier than they were before.

As many have noted, Trump's malfeasance in Ukraine is more or less out in the open.  He's admitted to much of what he's accused of.  But the media's inability to explain and focus on any one thing means that it gets lost in the blizzard of bullshit that emanates from the White House.  That's why I think there has to be a tape for this to really destroy him.  There has to be something that even the NY Times can't screw up.

How To Proceed...

Nancy Pelosi is not going to get out ahead of her caucus on impeachment. My guess is that she doesn't have a critical mass of Democrats in the House on board with impeachment. So, if you want Trump impeached, call you House member. 

Once that happens, Martin Longman has a nice roadmap of how to proceed.

Not Supremely Confident

Will the Ukraine Scandal be the thing that sinks Trump?  I'm not seeing it yet.  First of all, we don't know precisely what Trump said to the Ukrainian government.  Best guess is that he threatened to hold up aid payments until they dug up dirt on Hunter Biden.  If the whistleblower has some sort of tape, and on the tape is the President threatening aid payments and perhaps telling them to manufacture evidence...OK, now we are talking rank criminality.

The reality is more likely that we don't have a tape and that Trump violated campaign laws by asking a foreign government for help with his campaign. As we have seen, his cultists will excuse anything, so the GOP - which is terrified of his mouth breathing supporters - will not break with him over the arcana of campaign finance law.  (It is worth remembering that campaign law violations were at the heart of Watergate, and much of our current laws were in response to this.)

And of course, sadly, we will be dependent on the news media to report on what's really happening and so far, so bad. If there is one thing the NY Times has shown since 2015 is an absolute complete lack of perspective when it comes to violations by Trump as opposed to Democrats.  Most mainstream politicians push against the various rules that govern their behavior.  Trump shreds them with a chainsaw, burns the tattered remnants and then pees on the ashes. 

Because so much of this Ukraine scandal actually played out in the public domain this summer (Which is why I predicted it. Did I tell you I predicted it?  I predicted it.), Trump and the World's Worst Lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, have basically taken the tack of "How can it be a crime if it was so obvious what we did?"  Calling on Ukraine to tackle corruption before aid payments were to be released is completely legitimate.  So, again, unless there's a transcript or tape of him specifically targeting Biden (and there might be), then there is enough wiggle room for the GOP to excuse his behavior.  Again.

Giuliani - again, the World's Worst Lawyer - is now on record saying that Trump did not talk about a quid pro quo between the military aid and targeting Hunter Biden.  Given his previous performance, it seems now almost inevitable that there was a quid pro quo.  However, even this transparent lawlessness is unlikely to make a difference to the GOP.  They will simply say it's politics as usual.  Who WOULDN'T want dirt on their opponent, laws be damned.

Of course, Twitteramus Impatientica is demanding that Trump be impeached yesterday, despite our not having a clear idea of what was said or whether there was a tape.  This thread is a succinct corrective to the IMPEACH YESTERDAY crowd.  The simple fact that one of our political parties has embraced lawlessness means that we will not be unable to remove him from office before January 2021.  The variation of Murc's Law that suggests that Democrats have some sort of superpowers that they aren't using is damaging to people's understanding of the reality of the situation. 

The House has enough information right now to proceed with some articles of impeachment.  They could refer them to the Senate by Thanksgiving.  By Valentine's Day, Trump will be acquitted in the Senate.  Then what?  Probably by then, there will be new evidence of more wrong doing.  Impeach him again? You can, but most neutral people will see this as political grandstanding. The best plan is to drag the investigations into the winter and collect all the various threads of his lawlessness and dump them on the Senate in the spring.  Make Trump's corruption the theme of the 2020 election.  To a certain degree, Biden and Warren are already making this their general election focus.  (Warren is saying this goes beyond Trump, which is a better message that Biden who focuses on Trump's unique terribleness.)

As the Twitter thread above shows, a bunch of people who usually think they have some control over things are discovering that they can't get exactly what they want, when they want it.  DoorDash or UberEats can deliver any food to your door, while you stream whatever show you want exactly when you want to see it. But the political world doesn't work that way.

I wish I could say that there was a way to hold Trump accountable for his lawlessness and rampant obstruction of justice, but I'm struggling to find it.

Called It!

About an hour before a leak established that the foreign leader that Trump made an inappropriate request of was Ukraine, I called it on Twitter.

This means I get my own cable show.

I don't make the rules....

Good Thread

This is a great Twitter thread about the strident, desperate cries to "do something."

Most people simply aren't caring about Trump's violation of political norms.  They don't live and die by the news feed. There's a horse loose in the hospital, and they simply don't want to deal with it. This is why impeachment polls badly: most people simply don't care.  But most people want the horse out of the hospital.

The wailing about the timeline for getting the horse out of the hospital is largely a by-product of the closeness you feel towards the hospital and the amount of time you spend following the story.

Is This A Big Deal?

Every week, Donald Trump does or says something that should end his ability to function as President of the United States.  He engages in naked corruption, he uses inflammatory rhetoric, he divides the country, instead of uniting it, he is an objectively awful human being.

So, everytime a new revelation crests our horizon, we should take it with a grain of salt, if we are waiting for the thing that finally "gets him."

However, this seems like a Big Deal. Trump made a promise to a foreign leader, the Inspector General deemed this worthy of Congressional oversight, the Trump Administration is obstructing that legal requirement.  If it's something routinely horrifying, like Trump telling the Saudis he won't do anything about the assassination of Khashoggi, then it's probably just another log on the bonfire. But what if it's Putin?  Or Kim Jong Un? About something touching on state security?  The fact that they are violating the requirements of the whistle-blower law suggests that this is not some intemperate promise to Teresa May, but rather something truly troubling.  The IG agrees with the whistleblower.

But in 2019, it's so damned hard to believe anything will cause the Republicans to rebel against Trump.