Category: Uncategorized

The arguments against impeaching Trump are: (a) that impeachment cannot succeed; (b) it will damage the Democrats’ chances of winning in 2020; (c) it will unnecessarily divide the nation; and (d) it will normalize impeachment as a political weapon, even against presidents with an impeccable record. The arguments for are: (a) it is a good way to raise public awareness and to generate evidence; (b) Mueller has provided plenty of reasons to pursue an obstruction of justice claim, which has in the past been the basis for articles of impeachment; and (c) failing to impeach under the current circumstances will lower the bar for future presidential conduct.

All of these positions have at least some merit. Which is the stronger side? Here is my line of reasoning:

1. The applicable legal standard here is “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which has been understood to mean, not indictable crimes, but actions that endangered the integrity or the security of the state. In that sense, whether Mueller believed Trump’s behavior met the statutory standard for obstruction of justice is irrelevant; the real question is whether Trump’s behavior was a danger to the state.
2. Given that it was determined that there was no underlying conspiracy, and that Mueller was permitted to finish his work, I find it difficult to conclude that Trump’s actions, however deplorable, were “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
3. As a result, I do not think that the current record justifies a quixotic effort to impeach.
4. That isn’t the end of the story. There is plenty of reason to investigate the man on multiple fronts. His determination to stonewall legitimate efforts to hold him accountable could amount to a precedent that would effectively change the Constitution in a manner that would eliminate critical checks and balances. That could amount to a “high crime and misdemeanor.”
5. And so, my judgment is that if Trump ultimately defies a court order requiring him or his administration to provide documents that are necessary for an appropriate level of oversight of the executive, that could well be grounds for impeachment, regardless of the short-term political consequences, because he would be endangering the integrity of the system as we know it.

You can make a pretty good argument that Elizabeth Warren’s innumerable plans, financed by her wealth tax, actually put her to the left of Bernie Sanders. Unlike the “democratic socialist” Sanders, however, she is portraying herself as a capitalist who wants to save the system from itself. In historical terms, she’s trying to play FDR to Bernie’s Huey Long.

It’s a sensible move, and one that will make her more acceptable than Sanders to the electorate if she wins the nomination. But, given her schoolteacher personality, can she persuade the public that she truly is FDR’s heir, and that we need a Second New Deal at a time when the unemployment rate is 3 percent? Don’t hold your breath on either count.

The pattern is becoming clear, at least in dealing with strongmen: Bolton plays the bad cop, while Trump plays the capricious good cop who really prefers negotiations to war. Pompeo just runs around the globe spouting what he thinks his boss believes and pretending they are on the same page when Trump undercuts him, which is most of the time.

This only works, of course, with strongmen; there are no good cops in dealing with liberal democratic regimes. They were part of the “axis of adults” that departed long ago.

The multiplicity of voices is a feature, not a bug, of this administration. Trump thinks it makes him more unpredictable, and increases his freedom of action; that is why he continues to tolerate Bolton’s warmongering. Is the dissonance a good thing? Not if you are relying on the word of the United States in any way, shape, or form, which is most of the world most of the time.

A: This foreign leader sucked up furiously to Trump, but gained nothing for his pains.

Q: Who is Shinzo Abe?

MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER

We can see very well.

There’s a clown overseas with an unhinged mind

And we can see him very well.

He’s a joke and we know it very well.

Just one of those that I warned of long ago.

Take my word, he’s a madman, don’t you know.

______________

Once a fool, but we voted him the boss.

It’s his gain, but surely, it’s our loss.

He’s quite peculiar in a funny sort of way.

Some think it’s funny, everything he’ll say.

Get a load of him, he’s so insane.

The world just hopes he won’t bring a hard rain.

___________________

He’ll be on TV every afternoon.

The Saudis hope to see him very soon.

But is it in your conscience that you’re after

Another laugh about the madman across the water?

Parody of “Madman Across the Water” by Elton John and Bernie Taupin

In about six weeks, BoJo is likely to be the PM. Remainers within his party will, of course, be horrified. He will call for unity in spite of his, to put it mildly, divisive views on Brexit in order to keep Corbyn out. Will he succeed?

This will be a difficult call for each individual Remainer. If you’re young and aspire to higher office, you have to realize that crossing the aisle is a dead end. If you have few or no ambitions and strong principles, it will be a different story.

It will be close. I make no predictions on who wins.

My wife and I spent the long Memorial Day weekend visiting museums in Philadelphia. The American history museums are just outstanding. I particularly recommend the National Constitution Center, which has excellent permanent displays and featured special shows on Reconstruction (we saw an actual carpetbag!) and Hamilton.

The permanent display tried to be fair to everyone, but the overall message was clear; following Lincoln, MLK, and Obama, the implicit argument was that the purpose of the Declaration is being fulfilled through the continuing battles to guarantee equality for disfavored groups. The arc of American history, as it were, operates in favor of the inclusion of the powerless.

The show ends, logically enough, with Obama. My reactions were:

1. What is this place going to say about Trump? When will that decision be made, and how?
2. The difference between originalists and adherents of the living Constitution are essentially the two sides of the arc of history battle. If you don’t believe that American history is a long process favoring inclusion, it makes sense to stop your legal analysis with the Founding Fathers, with just a brief and unfortunate detour to address the Reconstruction amendments. If you do believe in the arc of history, you can’t ignore the 200+ years of experience between 1787 and today. It just wouldn’t make sense.

Bret Stephens has a lengthy list of grievances with Iran. He thinks Trump should offer completely normal relations with the Iranians in exchange for the normalization of the regime. This would, of course, amount to regime change, and it won’t happen.

The problem with the list of grievances is that most of them apply to Saudi Arabia, too, and many also apply to Russia and China. The first is our partner in crime, and we do business with the latter two, because we have to.

The bottom line is that you can’t have a foreign policy, in the Middle East or anywhere else, that revolves solely around moral judgments about the quality of regimes.

There are three models for a winning campaign in 2020. If you believe that the election will be decided by swing voters, you should nominate a realo. If you think there aren’t enough swing voters to matter, you should pick the candidate who will best motivate the base- probably, although not certainly, a fundi. If nothing less than the revolution will do, nominate someone who will downplay the culture war by making concessions to white reactionaries.

Sanders should be running the third kind of campaign. In reality, he is just a base mobilizing guy. That could conceivably win him the election, but it won’t bring about the revolution.

Other than being old white guys with plenty of experience in the Senate, the two would appear to have little in common. Bernie will be relying on LBJ as a role model of sorts, however, because the Great Society is the best example of a major expansion of federal power that did not occur during an economic crisis.

Unfortunately, the analogy is unlikely to hold. LBJ was a very resourceful politician; JFK’s death created a degree of public sympathy for his agenda; and he ran against Goldwater. Bernie will have none of those advantages.

William Barr and Julian Assange are two of my least favorite people in the whole world. If the two have to collide, you wish that some cosmic force would cause both of them to be completely annihilated.

The DOJ, at least in public, is being careful to maintain that they are not trying to create a precedent that can be used against real journalists. Under Barr’s leadership, those statements cannot be trusted. This situation bears very careful watching.

KEEP ON ROCKIN’ IN THE FREE WORLD (2019 VERSION)

The first stanza is unchanged. It was perfect as it was.

_______________

There’s colors on the street

Red, white, and blue.

People shufflin’ their feet.

People sleepin’ in their shoes.

But there’s a warning sign on the road ahead.

There’s a lot of people sayin’ we’d be better off dead.

Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them.

So I try to forget it any way I can.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

________________

I see a woman in the night

With a baby inside.

She stands far from the light

But there’s no place to hide.

She needs to terminate it

But abortion’s now a crime

She thinks of it and wonders

Another place, another time.

She really needs a doctor

Or she’ll have to use a wire.

Any way you look at it

Her circumstance is dire.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

_____________

We’ve got a big, bad concrete wall

For the immigrant man.

We’ve got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.

We’ve got budget cuts; skyscrapers, too.

Climate change is comin’ and the polar bears are through.

Got a president on Twitter.

Every word is a sensation.

Lots of Democrats are lining up

To try and save the nation.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

Parody of “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young.

The left-leaning NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie insists that it is too early to determine which of the Democratic candidates is the most “electable,” given that “electability” is not simply a function of identity and demographics. For once, I agree with him. We need to see these people on stage together, and on the stump, for several months before we make that decision.

Here is where I stand today:

1. I’m a realo. I’m not going to support any fundi candidates. As a result, I’m comfortable with Biden, but I’m willing to consider younger and more vibrant alternatives.
2. I’m completely put off by Bernie’s warmed-over seventies neo-Marxism. Even constrained by the system, he would make a terrible president, particularly in foreign affairs.
3. Warren would be a much better “revolutionary” choice, as she is more driven by data than ideology, but she has to elbow Bernie out of her lane first. Her only option, as I see it, is to outflank him on the left, which will be a tough task. More on that in the coming weeks.
4. Harris has a lot going for her, and her history suggests that she is a realo who knows how to wield a knife–a useful skill in politics. She can’t get the nomination unless she figures out exactly what she stands for and how she can appeal to white people who aren’t extremely liberal. Right now, I want to see it, but I don’t.
5. Booker could win as the last man standing–the one choice that is minimally tolerable to everyone, including me. That appears to be his only hope.
6. Beto hasn’t shown me that he’s qualified for the job.
7. Mayor Pete is minimally qualified. He has to prove that he is more than a gay novelty during the debates. Speaking Norwegian doesn’t win you any friends in Oklahoma.
8. Klobuchar is acceptable to me from an ideological perspective, but, without a charisma transplant, she looks like a left-wing version of Tim Pawlenty.
9. The other candidates don’t merit any discussion at this point.

Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War. The story isn’t nearly that simple; he made bipartisan efforts to slow the process down, and he saw his vote more as an effort to give George W. Bush the diplomatic leverage to deal with the presumed WMD issue than a green light to invade. In the end, however, he voted for the war, and it was a mistake. Should it disqualify him in 2020?

In 2008, when the GOP was still dominated by neoconservatives, it surely did. As VP, however, the record shows that Biden was at least as skeptical of interventions as Obama, and argued for smaller American footprints in Iraq and Afghanistan. Besides, the danger now is that the Democratic nominee may move too far in the non-interventionist direction; in a sort of perverse way, Biden’s vote for the war provides some comfort on that point.

And so, when you consider the entire record, as well as Trump’s, the answer is no.

The two words you hear most often to describe the Biden campaign are “normalcy” and “nostalgia.” Are they accurate?

As to “normalcy,” absolutely. Biden voters want to rid themselves of Trump’s divisiveness, corruption, and incompetence, but they aren’t demanding the “revolution.” They just want a quiet life with less drama and some incremental change. That’s what he brings to the table. If socialist millennials don’t like it, what are they going to do? Vote for Trump?

As to “nostalgia,” not so much. There is a judgment implicit in the word which suggests that Biden’s repeated statements about bipartisanship are unrealistic and out of date. In reality, if any significant legislation is going to get through the system, with the possible exception of a tax bill, a degree of bipartisanship is going to be required. And if that is a long shot, is the alternative of the “revolution” more plausible?

The upshot of it is that “nostalgia” is actually “realism.” And that’s just fine with me.