Month: July 2018

In today’s NYT, David Brooks recommends that the Democrats run a nominee with a forward-looking, optimistic message in 2020.

Sure.

It is extremely important for tactical reasons, and for the sake of the country, that the Democrats pose as the defenders of traditional American values and institutions in both 2018 and 2020.  Left-wing Trumpism would be almost as bad as the original hard right version.  That said, the party isn’t going to endure four years of Trump and then pick someone who is going to bring a knife to a gun fight.  The nominee should be the candidate who best figures out how to express the anger of the base in a colorful, but constructive way.

 

I’ve been predicting a war with Iran practically from the day Trump was elected.  The only questions are:  (a) what will be the precipitant?  (b) when will it start?  (c) how broad will our objectives be?  and (d) will nuclear weapons be involved?

From a partisan political perspective, Trump would be wise to start and win the war before November.  It’s late July, so he doesn’t have much time.  Can he devise a plausible pretext between now and then?  We’ll see; for the most part, the Iranians have avoided obvious provocations.

If this week’s issue of The Economist is to be believed, Donald Trump, whether wittingly or not, may be playing the bad cop with the EU and the Chinese in an effort to strengthen, not destroy, the WTO.  As the story goes, he’s trying to create a crisis which will ultimately result in a WTO that is friendlier to the US and to other genuine market economies, because the alternative, an all-out trade war, will be even worse for the Chinese.

If true, it sounds eerily like Kaiser Wilhelm II trying to intimidate the British into an alliance by increasing the size of his fleet.  We all know how that turned out.

The reality, however, is that Trump has nothing but contempt for the EU, international organizations, and the rule of law.  He longs for a world in which the US is free to use its military and economic power to serve its own selfish interests without regard to the rest of the world.  He wants America to be the new Russia.

There may be people in his administration who secretly hope to save the WTO with hardball tactics, but Trump isn’t one of them, and in the final analysis, he is the only one that matters.

 

I’m increasingly seeing references to RFK being a role model for a new crop of left-wing Democrats.  Does this make sense, and could it work on a national level?

Yes.  RFK’s constituency was an alliance of young people, liberals, union members, and minorities.  His ideology was pro-worker without being explicitly grounded in socialism.  It transcended the race/class division that separates Bernie Sanders from the rest of his party.  If used properly, it could unite the Democrats and peel off enough white working class votes to win in 2020.

One can imagine someone like Kamala Harris picking up RFK’s mantle and having some success running with it in 2020.  She would have to broaden her horizons beyond being an advocate for illegal immigrants and find a way to appeal to white working class men to make it work, however.  Right now, I don’t see it, but it is early days.

There has been a fair amount of discussion recently as to whether the Democrats should emphasize electability during the 2020 primaries.  The clear answer to the question is . . . yes!  Does GM deliberately build cars that no one wants to buy?

In reality, the better question is, what constitutes electability in 2020?  Here is my view of it:

1.  Relevant experience is important.  You can’t make a compelling case on competence if you run a, say, real estate developer against Trump in 2020.

2.  Limit the number of skeletons in the closet.  As I noted yesterday, the GOP will be playing the false equivalence game for all it’s worth no matter who the candidate is, but there is no reason to make their lives easier.

3.  Don’t let Trump rerun the 2016 campaign.  Trump has limited skills and imagination, but there are two things he knows how to do:  feed his base; and beat Hillary Clinton.  Selecting a candidate that looks and sounds like Clintton would be a mistake.

4.  Charisma counts.  No further elaboration is necessary.

5.  Play the identity game more shrewdly.   Given the nature of its component parts, the Democratic Party cannot avoid identity politics altogether.  What the nominee can do is put identity in a broader context that doesn’t threaten the interests of white people in general, and white working men in particular.

And so, the perfect candidate would be a young, conspicuously intelligent and vibrant, senator or governor with a record of accomplishment, no skeletons in his closet, and the ability to appeal to both the base and the white working class.  Alas!  Barack Obama won’t be running in 2020.

False equivalence was Trump’s not-so-secret weapon during the 2016 campaign.   No matter how many times he proved himself to be manifestly unfit to be president, he could always rely on the MSM to make the case that Hillary was just as bad, because of her e-mail issue.  If the two choices are equally poor, and you want change, why not vote for Trump?  That, more than any Russian interference, won him the election.

The MSM woke up to this kind of manipulation after the election and started calling him out when he lies.  You can be sure, however, that the GOP will try it again in 2020.  Ignore the corrupt, incompetent man on golf cart in the White House, they will say, and focus on what really matters!  Biden’s plagiarism!  Warren’s fake Native American heritage!  Bernie’s old Sandinista bros!  Whoever’s whatever! It’s just as bad, so stick with the devil you know!

Will the MSM fall into the trap again?  One hopes not, but we’ll see.

In a lengthy article you can still read in New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, using facts that are already in the public record, sets out a case that Trump has been operating as a de facto asset of the Russian government since the late 1980s.  Chait readily concedes that this is not the only possible explanation for Trump’s enthusiasm for Putin and Russia, but he doesn’t think it can be completely dismissed as a bizarro conspiracy theory, either.

He has a point.  Like Ross Douthat, I think it is much more likely that Trump’s actions can be explained by his life experiences and his unusual personality than by any overt Russian effort to manipulate him.  Things have gotten to the point, however, where it is no longer appropriate to take even more sinister explanations off the table.

And so, in response to my question, I would say that Trump is still entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but that might not last much longer.

 

 

I was reading an article–either on Politico or Axios, I think–a few weeks ago in which the writer was polling Trump people to try to get a succinct description of our new foreign policy.  The most popular formula was “Bitch, we’re America!”

That sounds about right.  It encapsulates the arrogance, the belligerence, and the preference for unilateral action and raw power over rules that are characteristic of what you could call the Trump Doctrine.

Leaving aside any concerns about morality, it is also deeply disturbing, because it is out of date.  At the risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, the fact is that technology has made national borders inherently more porous than ever before.  Terrorism, cybercrime, pandemics, and refugee crises can have their roots essentially anywhere in the world, and our only choices are to attack the problems on the ground or to wait until they do damage at home, and then try to build a physical or virtual wall around the country after the horse has left the barn.  Obama correctly decided that the better approach was the first one, with the assistance of rules and allies;  Trump, whose brain still operates in the 1950s, clearly believes in the latter, and we will ultimately pay the price for it.

So Trump clearly doesn’t get NATO.

For Putin, he’s opened the gate-oh.

If the Russians march in

Would a war soon begin?

Would he leave the small fry to their fate-oh?

David Brooks used this term in a column last week; we all know what it means.  It manifests itself in two ways:  in Trump’s deplorable behavior towards women, including other heads of state; and in some of his policy positions, ranging from increases in the defense budget to his eccentric preference for jobs traditionally held by brawny men (e.g., coal miners and steelworkers) over, say, retail jobs.

The sad fact is that Trump’s extreme version of swagger is one of the two pillars of his popularity with the base.  Its principal audience is unskilled male workers who feel that a world which increasingly places less value on physical strength than intellect is screwing them over.

All I can say is that men with more testosterone than brains are not at the top of the list of American “victims” for whom I feel intensely sorry.

We’ve all been living with Mueller and the Russia investigation so long that it seems like a natural part of the fabric of life.  The reality of it, however, is that Mueller’s report will seem like a bombshell when it finally arrives, and it is bound to dominate the discussion in the months prior to the election.

I see three possible scenarios:

1.  The report is a short document concluding that Trump did not commit any indictable offenses.  There is so much inflammatory information already in the public record that a report of this nature would not put an end to the discussion, but it would give an enormous boost to the GOP.

2.  The report concludes that Trump did, in fact, commit indictable offenses.  Trump’s base will blow this off as the product of a “rigged” investigation, and it will not lead to impeachment, but it will definitely help Democrats in November.

3.  The report is a lengthy narrative that provides plenty of support for the notion that Trump committed “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” but concludes that no indictable offense occurred.  Both sides furiously spin the report in their direction, there is no serious effort to impeach, and the report has little impact in November.

If I were a betting man, I would go with #3, but we just don’t know.

The key known unknown, of course, is whether Mueller will find that Trump committed an indictable offense.  The intermediate questions are as follows:

1.  How far back will Mueller go?  There is a credible argument that Trump has been operating as a Russian intelligence asset for nearly thirty years.  Will Mueller attempt to put Trump’s behavior as a candidate, and as president, in the context of his business dealings, or not?

2.  What did Mueller get from his plea agreements?  Did anyone tie Trump personally to the Russians?  We don’t know yet.

3.  What, if anything, happens with Cohen?  By telling the world that he values his family over Trump, Cohen sent a message that he expects to be compensated for his silence.  Trump undoubtedly understood that.  How will Mueller respond to that?

4.  Will the report discuss a lower burden of proof?  On obstruction of justice, for example, it is perfectly possible that Mueller could find that a preponderance of the evidence supported the allegation.  That would not lead to an indictment, but it would be relevant to impeachment.  Will he discuss that, or just reach the conclusion that he would not indict, and leave it at that?

5.  Will the report address more political questions?  Impeachment is primarily a political–not a legal–proceeding.  You can imagine a scenario in which Mueller finds credible evidence of “collusion” with the Russian government, but cannot tie it to any criminal statute.   Would he address that issue in the report?  I would argue that he must, but it remains to be seen.

Do you remember the uproar that resulted when a GOP House member shouted “You lie!” at Obama during the SOTU?  Part of it, of course, was the occasion, but part of it was the explosive nature of the allegation.  Back in the day, the truth was perceived to be both knowable and sacred, and calling someone a liar was a very serious charge.

Today, on the other hand, Trump tells six lies a day on average, the MSM call him out for it on a routine basis, and the base doesn’t care.  As long as he swaggers and says he is on their side, the truth is irrelevant to them, because Trump embodies a higher truth.

Changing times, indeed.

 

I’m shocked that the public is shocked that Trump would stand shoulder to shoulder with Putin and criticize his own country.  What did you expect him to do?  That’s what he does, metaphorically speaking, every day.

The whole point of the meeting was to make it clear that the US is now a thuggish revisionist state that is determined to extort a pound of flesh from the liberal democrat weenies in the EU.  In that sense, the meeting was a roaring success.

Will Fox News, the base, and the GOP leadership ultimately follow his lead on this?  Given what has happened to date, why would you doubt it?

Let’s face it:  I don’t know what Mueller has, and neither do you.  The known unknowns about his work product will be the subject of a post tomorrow.  That said, there are enough facts in the public record to make the following predictions:

1.  The work product will be a report, not an indictment of Trump.  There are too many questions about whether a sitting president can be indicted to go down that path, and in any event, it would probably be outside the scope of Mueller’s authority.

2.  The work product will ultimately take no position on whether Trump’s actions constitute impeachable offenses.  “High crimes and misdemeanors” is ultimately a political question for Congress, not a purely legal question.

3.  Mueller will opine as to whether Trump committed indictable offenses.  His report will contain a factual narrative and his opinions on this legal question.  Whether it goes beyond that to identify critical political issues involving “collusion” and discuss the credibility of witnesses is one of the key known unknowns that I will address tomorrow.