Cromwell

So the Georgia indictment makes four

Just in case you’re compelled to keep score.

Will the base really care?

Is it even aware?

Likely not, based on what came before.

Saturday’s NYT included a Ross Douthat column entitled “Does God Control History?” I couldn’t wait to read it. How the hell does he know? Is he now a prophet instead of a pundit?

The column was a response to social media posts by a prominent pagan right-winger who calls himself Bronze Age Pervert which ironically attacked Douthat’s providential views by asking why God willed the outcome of the Thirty Years War. Douthat acknowledges that the Thirty Years War put an end to the concept of a unified Christian Europe, but argues that the history of Christianity after that is one of success, not failure, due to the spread of the religion all over the world. In his eyes, therefore, God may not necessarily be on the side of the current individual Christian institutions, but He is definitely still a Christian himself, and He works to further the cause in our material world every day.

Douthat would have been wise to go old school and rely on St. Augustine’s “The City of God,” which was written at the time of the fall of the Christian Roman Empire to pagan barbarians and which argued that the state of the world at any given time is not particularly important to God’s purposes. Alternatively, he could have gone full Book of Job on Bronze Age Pervert and asked him where he was when the world was created. Instead, he came up with a Christian providential rationalization that was pretty lame.

The debate between prominent Christian and pagan reactionaries is of considerable interest to those of us who follow the extreme right, albeit from as great a distance as possible. I will have two more posts on this subject in the coming days.

Trump’s third defense is that he relied on the advice of counsel and thus lacked the requisite intent to violate the law. That advice might have been incorrect–even outrageously bad at times–but he followed it in good faith. There is no doubt that some of his attorneys did, in fact, suggest some of the tactics that he used to try to overturn the election results. Does that mean he will prevail with this defense?

Smith has anticipated this argument and headed it off by listing these attorneys as unindicted co-conspirators. Trump will need their testimony at trial to make his case, but if they will be putting themselves in legal peril if they appear. Their counsel will undoubtedly advise them not to appear voluntarily, and to take the Fifth Amendment if they are subpoenaed. That would damage, not help, Trump’s case.

Will Eastman, Giuliani, and the rest be willing to take the risk? We’ll see.

On the Florida Governor Ron.

His chances of winning are gone.

His war on the woke

Has turned into a joke.

How long will the death march go on?

Trump’s second defense will revolve around the element of intent in the various statutes he has allegedly violated. He will argue that he genuinely believed that the election was rigged. He may even go so far as to assert on the stand that, notwithstanding all of the evidence to the contrary, the election was, in fact, rigged. Does that defense have any chance of success?

Smith will be able to put on witnesses who will testify, not just that any number of important people told Trump that he lost, but that Trump himself conceded several times that he lost. Trump can, of course, insist that all of these people are liars. But he is the most notorious liar in the country. He lies as often as he breathes. Smith and his team will have no problem putting that on display if Trump takes the stand, as he must under this scenario.

In short, the answer to the question is no. This is a defense with plenty of danger for Trump, and few prospects of success.

If Trump somehow manages to lose the nomination, he will be a broken old man completely absorbed in his criminal law problems. But what about DeSantis? What happens to him if he loses?

From his perspective, nothing good. First of all, every Republican who directly takes on Trump ends up as a much diminished figure–just ask Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. There is a reason why the class of 2016 took a pass this time. Second, DeSantis is a lame duck governor with nowhere to go in Florida politics. Third, his ignominious defeat will prove that fighting wokeness–his brand– is not a winning message. Finally, the Florida Legislature is already getting tired of him. After he loses, his clout will be gone.

What would he do in his waning years as governor? Would he actually try to accomplish something positive for the citizens of Florida, or will he double down on wokeness in an effort to prove that he was right all along?

I don’t know the answer to that one.

We all know that Trump’s ultimate defense is to win the election and use his control of the DOJ to put an end to the federal charges against him. But what if that doesn’t work? What if he actually goes to trial, and his freedom is on the line?

Trump’s first defense is that his activity was political speech that is entitled to the strongest possible protection under the First Amendment. The weakness in this argument is that several kinds of socially damaging speech are not entitled to any First Amendment protection at all, and the crimes he is alleged to have committed incorporate some of these exceptions. Fraud, for example, inevitably involves speech. So does conspiracy. By definition, you can’t have a conspiracy without communication.

My guess is that the judge will dispose of these defenses even before trial. Smith and his team will have to be careful to draw a clear line between legitimate political speech and criminal activity when they put on their case, however. Filing lawsuits–even patently frivolous ones–is not a crime; directing the creation of false sets of electors and demanding that election officials find additional votes is, provided that the intent set out in the relevant statutes can be proved. More on that in subsequent posts.

For once, Rich Lowry has it right; Donald Trump is, in fact, a right-wing version of Huey Long. The analogy is totally appropriate.

Many years ago, when Trump was running for president for the first time, I argued that his ceiling was Long, and that his floor was George Wallace. Maybe it should have been the other way around.

The principal difference between the two is that Long cared about the plight of poor citizens of Louisiana, and actually made efforts to help them. Trump couldn’t care less about anyone except himself.

The war clearly wasn’t going well, even though the opponent was much smaller, and appeared to be overmatched. Young men were fleeing the country in droves in order to avoid the draft. The world looked on scornfully.

The president needed to maintain domestic support for the war, so he beefed up the welfare state in addition to ramping up defense spending. The predictable result? A large deficit and inflation, of course.

Is it Putin or LBJ? You decide.

Brooks argues once again that it is the professional class, not the angry MAGA voters, who are really responsible for the threat to liberal democracy. As he sees it, the professional class–blue people–created the knowledge economy, which devalues the skills of red people. They profited immensely from this change, but refused to share the benefits of the economic change with the less educated red people. They further stacked the deck in the favor by marrying each other and refusing to take drugs and get divorced. The red people–the hapless victims in this scenario–have responded quite appropriately by voting for Trump and trying to burn it down. What else could they do?

Let’s deconstruct this argument:

1. Blue people did not set out to create today’s economy; it just evolved as the result of billions of individual decisions that were made by capitalists all over the world. The notion of some sort of a conspiracy in favor of the professional class makes about as much sense as the “Long March.”
2. In any event, the numbers show that the professional class has only benefited slightly from the evolution of the economy. The big winners were the one percent, not teachers, journalists, and bureaucrats. They are, of course, predominantly Republicans.
3. The undoubted failure of our political system to provide compensation for the victims of technological change and globalization is not due to any actions of the professional class, which generally sympathizes with their plight. It is the result of stonewalling by the Republican Party, which rejects both federal programs that would benefit reactionary workers and tax increases on its donor class, the principal winners of neoliberalism.
4. Brooks, as a member of the professional class, should do penance for the “sins” of his peers by moving out of the big city, wrecking his personal life, and becoming addicted to opiates. Does he really think we should be blamed for not destroying ourselves?
5. Voting for a man who supports tax cuts and deregulation for rich businessmen, and who has no interest in reactionary workers except as cannon fodder for his campaign, is not a rational strategy for the victims of globalization and technological change.

In short, Brooks has misidentified the villains here. The fault lies with the Republican Party, not ourselves.

Attacking a judge in your criminal case sounds like legal suicide. That hasn’t stopped Trump from doing it, presumably against the advice of his attorneys. That’s the bargain you make when you represent Trump; you will generate plenty of publicity, but if you are to win, it will be in spite of your client, not because of him.

And this is just the beginning. You can be sure that Trump’s attorneys will do everything possible to keep him off the stand, because they can imagine what will happen when a man who told tens of thousands of lies during his presidency faces cross-examination. He will ignore them and insist on making his stump speech to the jury. What happens afterwards will have great entertainment value for blue America.

The Band somehow managed to merge the best of both blue and red America. Would that we had someone like that now.

Jason Aldean need not apply.

A recent poll shows that the GOP electorate is far more concerned about crime, immigration, and inflation than wokeness. That’s terrible news for DeSantis, who has made fighting wokeness his brand. Without it, he’s just another guy–Tim Scott with a chronically grumpy personality. Why is wokeness failing for him?

Part of it, of course, is DeSantis’ obvious shortcomings as a salesman, but the problem runs deeper than that. The real issue with wokeness, as I’ve said before, is that the average GOP voter only encounters it on a daily basis on Fox News. In real life, he never sees it: his friends aren’t woke; he doesn’t spend any time reading left-leaning opinions in periodicals or on social media; he’s never met any sneering Harvard graduates; and he doesn’t even know any trans people. Why would he cast his vote for president to get rid of it?

David French denies that the current Supreme Court is a MAGA court, by which he means one that permits Trump arbitrarily to reward his friends and punish his enemies. He’s right. A majority of the Court has consistently resisted Trump’s most extreme claims, although Alito and Thomas are open to them.

But French is wrong to say that the Court is “conservative.” A truly conservative Court would respect precedent, keep its decisions as narrow as possible, and refuse to hear cases in which the plaintiffs have only speculative injuries. This Court frequently rejects precedent, hears cases it shouldn’t hear, and invents constitutional rules that have no basis in text, history, or sound public policy, all to the benefit of the right. It is reactionary, not conservative.

I finished reading Jon Meacham’s biography of Jackson, “American Lion,” a few weeks ago. It was written in 2008–before Trump–and it shows; the author appears to approve of some of Jackson’s ideas about the presidency that would also apply to Trump. You have to believe the book would have been different if it had been written in 2021.

For all of the similarities between the two presidents, it is still the differences that really matter. These are:

1. Jackson tried to keep the country united; Trump divides it further every day in his own interest.
2. Jackson was not an amoral narcissist.
3. The memorable event involving a mob in Jackson’s time was at the White House during his inauguration. With Trump, it was a bit different.
4. Jackson, of course, was a war hero; Trump is Cadet Bone Spurs.
5. Jackson genuinely came from nothing; Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but is angry that it wasn’t platinum.
6. Jackson, for better or worse, was an actual economic populist; Trump just plays one on TV while he’s cutting taxes for the wealthy.