Cromwell

To the surprise of precisely no one, the Supremes were clearly determined to find an off ramp to permit Trump to remain on the ballot in all fifty states during yesterday’s oral argument. Which rationale will they choose?

The three apparent contenders, based on the questions, are as follows:

1. PRIMARIES ARE RUN BY THE PARTIES, NOT THE GOVERNMENT, SO THE DISQUALIFICATION ISSUE IS PREMATURE: This line of reasoning is both legally sound and wildly impractical. Pulling Trump off the ballot months after he becomes the GOP nominee would be a complete nightmare.
2. THE PRESIDENT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE LIST OF OFFICERS SUBJECT TO DISQUALIFICATION: This approach is inconsistent with logic and the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, has little support in the legislative history, and would give a green light to any future president who wants to use the armed forces to stay in office.
3. DISQUALIFICATION REQUIRES ADDITIONAL CONGRESSIONAL ACTION: The intent here is to provide a federal remedy for an essentially federal issue. No one state has the right to dictate a result to the others; no record in any state proceeding should be binding on the rest; and having a jumble of inconsistent state decisions would be a disaster. Of course, the Court could address most of these problems by providing one definitive ruling that is binding on all of the states, but it didn’t appear to want to do that, possibly for procedural reasons.

The bottom line here is that the last of the three lines of reasoning will do the least amount of harm to the system. There is reason to believe it will prevail. Let’s hope that it does, and that the quid pro quo for the three liberals is a decision not to hear Trump’s appeal on the immunity issue.

The last thing Mitch McConnell wants to see is Russian tanks rumbling into Kyiv. The penultimate thing Mitch doesn’t want to see is the American people blaming his party for it. And yet, he and his colleagues effectively voted for this outcome yesterday afternoon. They were sent home to try and figure out what they should demand in exchange for something they want to do anyway, which represents a level of dysfunction that would make the House proud.

Why is this happening? Because Donald Trump, who loves Putin and hates Ukraine, is going to be the GOP nominee for president. Why is that? Because McConnell made no effort to round up votes to convict him at his second impeachment trial. And why did that happen? Because McConnell thought Trump was finished, and he wanted to keep the base happy.

As a result of this atrocious miscalculation, the viability of the McConnell Project is highly questionable, and Mitch himself is a spent force. He can no longer keep his troops in line; Trump rules the GOP, even in the Senate. He’s definitely gone if Trump wins in November, and probably gone even if Biden prevails.

Here’s where the factions stand on the illegal immigration issue:

1. CDs: Asylum seekers are God’s children. They are seeking refuge from terrible conditions at home. They should be treated with compassion.
2. CLs: The last thing we need is some sort of massive government presence at the border.
3. PBPs: Immigrants fill jobs that Americans won’t take and generate economic growth. It would be insanity to stop them at a time of inflation and labor shortages.
4. Reactionaries: Immigrants poison the blood of America. They have to go! All of them.

What does this tell you? That the Reactionaries run the show within the GOP, and the rest of the party just has to shut up, even when their bottom line and their most cherished beliefs are at stake.

I’m torn about this. On the one hand, the failure of the leadership to deliver enough votes is a total embarrassment for House Republicans, which is always a good thing. On the other hand, having to put on a completely legally frivolous case in front of the Senate and the American people might have been even worse.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Apparently, the leadership plans to try the impeachment vote again tomorrow. Maybe we won’t have to choose.

The Supreme Court has already put a finger–perhaps not a thumb–on the scale in favor of Trump by refusing Jack Smith’s request for an expedited review of the immunity defense. Today, the D.C. Circuit decided, to nobody’s surprise, that the defense lacks merit. The opinion, which I have read, is comprehensive and well-written. What should the Supremes do now?

There is no need to give this issue further review. To do so will only provide further assistance to Trump’s stall ball defense. The entire world will understand that, and the Court’s credibility will be further undermined.

The Court, for its own sake and the sake of the country, should reject Trump’s forthcoming petition and let the trial move forward.

Driven by warmer weather and relatively low housing prices, there has been a perceptible shift of population from blue to red states. Should we expect that to continue?

Possibly not, for two reasons. First, housing prices in cities such as Austin and Charlotte have gone up significantly over the last several years. Rising prices and housing shortages are not limited to New York and San Francisco. Second, liberals tend to migrate to blue cities in red states, but red state governments are increasingly preempting the right of liberal municipal governments to regulate on social issues. As a result, red states may look less welcoming to blue people in the future.

Climate change may become a factor in the foreseeable future, too. It isn’t helping California, but it may help New York.

Nikki Haley wants the Reagan vision for America–the current condition, but with a larger military and a smaller welfare state. DeSantis supported the status quo, with wokeness ripped from our institutions. What is Trump’s vision?

Trump has the entire reactionary dream. In his America, industry and resource extraction drive the economy, not tech and services. Big burly men do jobs requiring lots of physical strength and make lots of money; women stay at home and take care of the children. White Christians have a monopoly on political power. Questions of sex, gender, and race go underground. Environmentalists and members of the woke left simply don’t exist.

The problem with the dream, of course, is that Trump has to uninvent the wheel. The social and economic changes of the last 50 years have to disappear. He can’t accomplish that even with huge tariffs and autocratic rule.

He’s King Lear for the 21st century.

Ross Douthat has argued for years that America is a decadent society; his Exhibit A is our, to him, unacceptably low birthrate. More recently, however, he has finally looked around the world and ascertained that other, more socially conservative countries have even lower birthrates than we do. His new conclusion is that only America can save the world from the declining population bomb. What is going on here?

The reasons for, and solutions to, a declining birth rate are perfectly obvious. If you have a society that gives women lots of opportunities for economic advancement–in all likelihood, requires them to work–but also puts virtually all of the demands of bearing and raising children on them, you’re not going to have many children. There aren’t enough hours in a day.

The reactionary “solution” to this is to envision a country in which men do all of the paying work and women can afford to stay at home and have children–America in the 1950s, in other words. Of course, the reactionaries have no idea how to get there from here except through tariffs. The more plausible approach is to encourage men to play a much bigger role in taking care of children. If you’ve seen the new Amazon commercial that uses the Chicago song “25 or 6 to 4” as a background, you have seen the ideal type for this more feminist society; the stay-at-home dad does a great job with the baby and is rewarded with sex by the mother for his hard work.

A representative of the Heritage Foundation made the claim in a recent NYT interview that the violence associated with the demonstrations following the George Floyd murder was worse than January 6. This is a claim frequently made by members of the right. What does it tell us about their priorities?

January 6 was about subverting the Constitution and the will of the voters; the BLM actions resulted in property damage. Heritage–and it is not alone–attaches more value to torched convenience stores than to liberal democracy.

Years ago, I did a post about how Taylor Swift had successfully transitioned from country to pop music without offending much of anyone. I concluded that the Democratic Party had much to learn from her. Today, reactionary activists view her as the enemy. Does that mean she has lost red America for good?

No, because in America, celebrity and narrative usually trump ideology. Swift is an attractive white pop princess with a jock boyfriend–how perfectly American is that? It sounds like something from a Disney movie. Do you really think teenage girls from red states are going to give up on that just because someone on Fox News says they should?

No, and they haven’t stopped going to Disney parks, either.

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift

Exposed a deep and ugly rift

Between the far right and the NFL.

They think pro football’s gone to hell.

_________

They could be right, for all I know.

But if they are, where will they go?

They have lots of alternatives, fortunately.

They can still watch NASCAR and the SEC.

To the American right, a “conservative” is someone who believes in traditional values: Christianity; the political, social, and economic supremacy of white men; gender rigidity; and sexual practices as regulated by scripture. Any American institution, including our political system, which no longer promotes this agenda should be taken over and either reformed or destroyed.

To the left and center, a “conservative” is someone who believes in slowing the pace of change to a crawl in order to avoid collateral damage and unexpected consequences. We can only absorb so much at a time. The political system and our institutions are based on the collective experience of millions of people over hundreds of years and should be protected to the maximum extent possible.

Which definition makes more sense? Which of the two party nominees is a genuine “conservative?” You decide.

An article in Politico tells us that Erdogan took a decade to establish illiberal rule in Turkey, so we shouldn’t be concerned that Trump can do it in four years. Should we feel reassured?

No, because it didn’t take Hitler and Mussolini that long. If you follow the processes of liberal democracy to rot it out from the inside, it might take a decade, but if you are determined to win absolute power from the minute you take office, all you need is control over the military and something you can call an emergency. Do we know for certain that Trump won’t try that? No, we don’t.

Hezbollah isn’t a terrorist organization; it’s a state within a state. It has obligations to its constituents in Lebanon. It has plenty of power in Beirut, too. In other words, it has a lot to lose in a war with Israel. As a result, it has been relatively responsible over the last few months; it has lobbed a few missiles at the Israelis, and made life at the border impossible, but it shows no interest in starting a full-scale war. I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

The Houthis are a different story, even though they are also a state within a state. Having beaten the Saudis, they are suffering from delusions of grandeur; they probably think if they suck us into a war on their terms, they can beat us, too. It won’t happen. American military action against them will be solely focused on maintaining freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.

The pro-Iranian militias in Iraq are even worse. What are they trying to accomplish by attacking American bases outside of the country? Do they think they have the power to drive us out of the Middle East? Do they think weakening the international effort against IS, which just killed hundreds of people in a despicable terrorist bombing in Iran, is a good idea?

What they are actually doing is creating a threat to Iran. The Iranian government needs to get a grip on these guys as soon as possible.

Reactionaries turn everything into cultural wars and conspiracies, so it is no surprise that they have concocted a ridiculous narrative about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. But the opposition in the Super Bowl represents San Francisco, one of the cities the right really loves to hate. And Colin Kaepernick played for the 49ers, for God’s sake! It doesn’t get any worse than that.

The right loves the violence of football, but it has a completely unpalatable choice here. Don’t you feel sorry for them?