Month: December 2023

Many commentators–some of whom even have some legal expertise–have asserted with total confidence that the disqualification language in the Fourteenth Amendment either clearly does, or clearly doesn’t, apply to Trump and January 6. The truth is otherwise; the issue is highly ambiguous. What is an insurrection within the meaning of the Constitution? Does it have to be as bloody and widespread as the Civil War, or does a single riot at the Capitol meet the standard? There are no definitive answers in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, in the legislative history, or in case law.

The Supreme Court can’t avoid ruling on this issue. For a variety of reasons, it will be inclined to keep Trump on the ballot, but it will do what it can to avoid looking partisan. It has several different rationales that can be used to justify its decision. What one will it choose?

Here they are, with my analysis:

1. THE AMENDMENT DOESN’T APPLY TO PRESIDENTS, SINCE THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT IS NOT LISTED IN THE TEXT: This approach makes no logical sense, and it gives the most dangerous man in America–the commander of the armed forces–the legal right to engage in insurrection.
2. THE ISSUE IS PREMATURE AT THIS STAGE IN THE PROCESS: There is a good legal argument to that effect, but it only prolongs the agony unless Trump is somehow defeated in the primaries. We need an answer as soon as possible.
3. THE RECORD DEFINITIVELY SHOWS THAT TRUMP BEARS NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR JANUARY 6: A ruling of this nature would fly in the face of the evidence and compromise the ongoing criminal cases. The Court won’t want to do that.
4. JANUARY 6 WAS NOT AN “INSURRECTION” WITHIN THE MEANING OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT BECAUSE THE EVENT IN QUESTION HAS TO INVOLVE A HIGHER LEVEL OF VIOLENCE IN MORE PLACES: Commentators since January 6 have struggled to decide whether the event was an “insurrection” or just a “riot.” While a decision of this nature would seem to give Trump and his successors a get out of jail free card for small scale events, this case can always be distinguished from future cases on its facts.

In short, I would vote for Option #4 as the best avenue of damage control. Will the Court? We’ll see.

Nikki Haley isn’t stupid. She knows as well as you and I do that the Civil War was about slavery. So why did she stumble on this issue?

While the mainstream GOP position on racial issues is that the sordid events of the past were just an unfortunate blip with no relevance to today, she knows that a significant part of the base believes that the Civil War was an imperialist conflict forced on the Confederacy by abolitionists with no regard for the rights of states and property owners. She was afraid to offend this group. Unfortunately for her, by refusing to do so, she offended a much larger group and made herself look ridiculous.

If someone put Trump or DeSantis on the spot and asked the same question, you would probably get the same kind of equivocal response, and for the same reason. Fortunately for them, it was Haley who got the question, not them.

Everything in America obviously revolves around the election. I don’t have the requisite level of confidence in the outcome, so I’m not going to predict the winner of the presidential race. I will, however, predict the following:

1. There will be no Trump trials until after the primaries are effectively over. There may be none at all.
2. Trump will be on the ballot in all fifty states.
3. The polls will look better for Biden on Election Day than they do today, as the voters will start comparing him to Trump instead of some ideal Republican.
4. As always, the election will be determined by about 100,000 swing voters in purple states. Those of us in deep red or blue states will have no real influence on the outcome.
5. The state of the economy will dictate the votes of most of those swing voters. Third party candidates will also have a significant influence on the outcome.
6. If Biden wins, Trump will say the election was rigged and once again call for an insurrection.
7. If that occurs, the action will be mostly in red states. State and local officials and law enforcement will take leadership roles. The situation will be far more dangerous than it was in 2021.
8. The GOP will win a tiny majority in the Senate. That won’t amount to much, as Collins and Murkowski are to the GOP as Sinema and Manchin are to the Democrats. The party that wins the House will have a tiny majority; I don’t know which party it will be.

Here’s what you can expect in 2024:

1. THE MIDDLE EAST SEETHES, BUT DOES NOT EXPLODE: Netanyahu decides the best way to cling to power is to defy the world by completely pulverizing and indefinitely occupying Gaza. In spite of his current unpopularity at home, it works. The radical right starts talking more seriously about ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and even in Israel itself. The war, however, does not expand. Iran is too vulnerable, and too concerned with the succession, to do more than encourage its proxies to lob a few missiles at Israel. In the meantime, the momentum towards an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia disappears, and America stops providing diplomatic cover for the occupation. Israel is alone, which suits Bibi just fine.
2. NO WAR OVER TAIWAN: Xi is busy with his domestic problems, and he doesn’t want to antagonize America during an election year.
3. LABOUR WINS THE UK ELECTION: It takes place in the fall. Sunak resigns as head of the Conservative Party. The battle for the succession is going to be bloody.
4. PLENTY OF PAIN IN UKRAINE: If, according to the World War I analogy, 2022 was 1914, and 2023 was 1915, does that mean we will have Verdun and the Somme in 2024? No. Both sides will retrench and wait on events–meaning, primarily, the outcome of the American election. The Ukrainians won’t have the resources to launch another major offensive, and the Russians will focus on relatively small-bore efforts to destroy the morale of the Ukrainians and their NATO supporters.

Hardly a day went by during 2023 without blaring headlines about House GOP dysfunction. From the chaotic speaker election in January to the gut-wrenching battle over the debt ceiling to the defenestration of McCarthy to the second chaotic speaker election to the battles over the budget to the George Santos odyssey to the Ukraine aid blockade to a potential suicidal Biden impeachment, the House was always in the news, and never in a good way.

And yet, the GOP hasn’t paid a price for it yet. For their success in creating constant, pointless turbulence without throwing America completely over the guardrails, the Four Horsemen of the House GOP–McCarthy, Santos, Matt Gaetz, and Mike Johnson–are my men of the year.

According to our local newspaper, the net worth of the average American rose 37 percent between 2019 and 2022. Unemployment is around a 50-year low. Inflation has fallen to the point that it is around the average of the last 50 years. Interest rates are higher than they were in the recent past, but about average for my lifetime. The picture looks very bright on its face, but most Americans are complaining. Why?

I think housing prices, which represent a large part of the increased average net worth, are a big part of the puzzle. The average renter experiences the high prices on a daily basis and has reason to complain about them. The average owner, who benefits from the housing price inflation, doesn’t think about his increased net worth very much; he is more focused on higher gas and food prices, which he pays every day.

Hence, the apparently irrational grumbling about the state of the economy.

After the successful Trump impeachment in January 2021, he was permanently disqualified from office. The GOP candidate in 2024 would have to be someone different.

Trump wasn’t going away, however. As he, and the base, viewed it, he was the only meaningful voter in the upcoming primaries. He was the decider. The candidate who did the best job of sucking up to him and offering him the greatest amount of influence would be the winner.

It was a tight contest. All of the candidates were amazingly obsequious. But in the end, DeSantis stood out, just as he did during the Florida primaries in 2018. Trump gave him the nod, and the process was over, just like that.

I was clearly right on three of my five predictions. Unlike many commentators, I was skeptical of Ukraine’s ability to break through the Russian defenses, so I opined that the war would turn into a stalemate. I also predicted correctly that there would be no US-Iran war, and that, without fanfare, the US would turn to a policy of deterrence in lieu of negotiations or regime change with North Korea.

The other two predictions involved China and Turkey; I suggested there would be some saber-rattling with Taiwan and Greece, respectively, but no war. I was right on the no war issue. Whether there was enough saber-rattling to warrant a mention in my list, I will leave to you.

I made five predictions for 2023. How did they turn out? Would I have made money in Vegas?

Four of the five were correct. The debt ceiling issue was resolved by a coalition of Democrats and GOP moderates; the Supreme Court counterrevolution picked up steam; inflation eased, in accordance with my two-year rule; and Biden chose to run again. The fifth one was a fail, however; the DeSantis campaign is on life support.

I was perfectly aware of some of DeSantis’ shortcomings as a candidate, but I never imagined he would pick unpopular positions and limit his appeal to the voters who weren’t available to him. I also didn’t see that Trump would benefit from, as he and the base see it, being crucified by the deep state on a daily basis. I don’t think the dynamic of the campaign would be substantially different if the indictments had not occurred, but it is possible that it would have been. We will never know.

The Biden impeachment process is a wedge issue for the GOP. On the one hand, the base is demanding it as revenge for the two Trump impeachments, and Trump wants it to strengthen his spurious claim for false equivalence. On the other hand, impeachment is likely to galvanize a largely demoralized left, and it is nothing but poison for GOP House members in swing districts. Thus far, the leadership has bridged the gap by keeping the process going, but very slowly. What happens if the base will no longer take no for an answer? What would the process look like?

My guess is that Johnson and McConnell will treat it as the embarrassment it is and avoid public hearings to the maximum extent possible. Hunter Biden will not be given an opportunity to speak to the American people. The decision will be made on the existing written record, and as quickly as possible. The “trial” will be a pro forma event, Biden will be acquitted, and we will go on from there.

Next Christmas will be like none other in my lifetime. Why? Because we will be living with one of two realities: if Trump wins, we will be looking forward to at least four years of fascism; and if he doesn’t, he will claim the election was rigged, and he will call for another insurrection to keep himself out of jail. This time, the battle will be at the local level, and will be far more serious, as the extreme elements of the red team will be locked and loaded and will have the support of some state and local officials and law enforcement agencies.

So enjoy Christmas 2023. Savor the moment. Eat, drink, and be merry. There isn’t anything we can do about next year until it’s here.

So we’re hurtling towards the new year.

I can’t say that I’m brimming with cheer.

Trump fills me with dread.

Is democracy dead?

We won’t know till November is here.

The Supreme Court has refused to conduct an expedited review of Trump’s ludicrous immunity defense. That means his March trial is likely to be postponed until the bulk of the primary season is over. Here are my observations on the issue:

1. Obviously, this will help Trump win the nomination. What it means for the general election is unclear.
2. DeSantis may decide to stay in the race even after a Florida humiliation in the hope that things will change after a trial. That probably helps Trump, too, by keeping his opposition divided.
3. If Trump really believed in his innocence, he would be demanding a quick trial. The fact that he is playing stall ball speaks for itself.
4. Trump’s defenses can be evaluated without a record, so the usual reason for rejecting an expedited process does not apply here. Is the Supreme Court simply trying to avoid dealing with a hot potato until it has no choice, or is it actively attempting to assist Trump? We don’t know the answer to that yet.
5. Trump will be demanding an expedited review of the Colorado Supreme Court decision on the Fourteenth Amendment issue while he is stalling on the criminal defenses. Will the Court find that the public interest attached to keeping him on the ballot is so strong that it will grant his request? If it does, and I think it will, how will it justify bending the rules for Trump, but not the DOJ and the electorate as a whole?

Trump insists he has never read “Mein Kampf.” For once, I believe him. “Mein Kampf” is a book, after all. Trump doesn’t do books. If you distilled it into a few bullet points–maybe.

The question then is, how did he come up with the “poisoning the blood” and “vermin” phrases? Did he make them up himself? Did he find them on his social media platform, Lying Psycho? Or was he just pick them up when he was hanging with some of his Nazi friends?

I don’t know the answer to that, although I would be leaning towards one of the final two possibilities. Either way, I don’t take any comfort from Trump’s failure to explore the actual source; the phrases speak for themselves.

Trump has big, big plans for the military in his second term. Homeland Security doesn’t have anything like the resources he needs for his immigrant scheme, so he will be using the military to build the wall, construct and staff the new migrant camps, and, in all likelihood, conduct raids. In addition, he will be relying on the military to crush dissent, particularly in blue states. Finally, he will be waging war against Mexico. It’s an ambitious agenda.

Most of this, of course, will be totally illegal, but there is no reason to believe the political or the legal system will do much to stop him. Only the military can, by refusing to obey unlawful orders. Will they?

Let’s hope we never find out.