Response to The Closer

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Closer)

In the Huffington Post, Howard Fineman tells what he learned from talking with Donald Trump's new brain, Paul Manafort:

Trump doesn’t read briefing papers, but he is a magnet for information, Manafort said. “He reads the newspapers, and he talks on the phone and to office visitors in a never-ending stream. You’re sitting there in his office and you realize that he is constantly picking up stuff as he goes.”

A "never-ending stream" is what you get from a fortune teller, who is able to use constant blithering to fool their mark into thinking they know more than they do.

I've heard this he-just-picks-up-stuff thing about Trump before, and every time I do, I'm reminded of that episode of "The Bullwinkle Show" in which Bullwinkle Moose, speaking to a confused shipping magnate named Pericles Parnassus, says ...

"Boy, for a powerful magnate, you sure don't pick things up very fast!"

We see Trump, the confidence-man, in action at his rallies where, rather than details of how he plans to do something -- like create jobs, which can be picked apart by people who actually know about this stuff -- he substitutes exclamational phrases ("Boy, I'm going to create so many jobs, so fast! Tremendous jobs, incredible jobs! It'll make your head spin!") that make you want to just trust that he knows how to do it; otherwise, why would he seem so sure of himself?

But another thing is, how can anybody pick apart something you say if you haven't actually said anything?

And this aversion to giving away too many specific details is why I'm thinking Trump may not announce his VP pick until the very last minute of the convention. It has to do with this "pandering" thing. Think about it: who is he worried about thinking that picking a woman or minority as his running-mate would be "pandering"?

His base!

The people who are attracted to him because he doesn't play the "politically correct" game! By not picking a "politically correct" VP, he is pandering to those people who, while so loyal they might even vote for him if he shoots down some stranger on Fifth Avenue, might start falling away if they actually see him give concrete details of how he would run the country -- for example, showing him picking an "insider" who actually knows how to do the job, despite making his appeal to the rubes on the grounds that he himself doesn't know Jack Shit.

So far, his campaign has been successful because it's been running on hot air, but just as soon as he actually does something, like announce his VP pick, the campaign starts getting real substance, which means it gets harder and harder for people to see in his campaign what they have wanted to see. His crusade just might lose its beguiling "incredibility".

Come to think of it, from the beginning, it's all been a question of incredibility. From the New York TImes: 

“We have had tremendous support of almost everybody, and even if you look at Congress, the support has been incredible,” Mr. Trump said.

It is! Literally! In fact, if he wins, he will make an incredible president! 

So it's coming down to a contest between those Americans who want an "incredible" president, and those of us who want a "credible" one.

Response to Using the Nineties

(See: Just Above Sunset: Using the Nineties)

I know a lot of people would love to see someone shoot Donald Trump to death, but I'm not even going to bring that up, because I just have too much integrity.

Now I realize that, while some people (who shall remain nameless) may be just smarmy enough to introduce certain subjects into the conversation that they themselves won't even discuss, such as the idea of somebody shooting somebody else, I'm not going to do that, simply because it would just be wrong!

And seriously, except for the not-gonna-go-there part, I actually mean that!

If Trump were to be assassinated, it would suggest that the only way democracy (or what passes for it in this country) can survive the misuse of it by a demagogue such as him is to step outside of itself and just shoot the bastard dead. Whatever damage Trump promises to do to our country if elected, not to even mention the damage he's done already, would be multiplied by his meeting such a violent end. Just think of what happened to the Roman Republic after a bunch of otherwise well-intentioned senators took it upon themselves to use extra-legal measures to do away with their suspected tyrannical leader, Julius Caesar.

Still, there's no doubt the man is a thug. In fact, if there's one thing both sides can agree on is that Donald Trump is a thug; where the two sides differ is on whether or not his being a thug is a good thing. I, for one, am of the opinion that the last thing this country needs is a thug for a chief executive, while others, who imagine the country is in much worse shape than it actually is, think a thuggish president is exactly what we need to get us going in another direction.

Something I've always wondered about ISIS is, what do people see in them? Basically, wouldn't you think most people would be turned off by the stuff ISIS does? Don't people see that this group chops off heads and burns people alive, and that this sort of behavior makes them not look like the good guys?

The explanation, of course, is the all-purpose explanation for our times: Beheading your enemy is a feature, not a bug!

I guess when some people watch a video of a guy wearing a black hood, cutting the throat of some innocent, what they see is someone who has definite ideas on how to deal with problems, and also has the guts to put his theories into practice. Hey, if someone's going to get into a disagreement with these head-chopping guys, you probably want to be on the side of the doers, not the talkers!

Maybe it's just part of the unspoken zeitgeist of our age, but it's hard not to see the similarities here. Nobody thought much of Donald Trump until he humiliated everyone around him, and then, even people who had denounced him and called him every name in the book and said choosing between him and his major opponent was like choosing between dying by gun or by poison, have now joined up with him, in theory because, as bad as he is for the country, the woman running against him -- someone who may or may not have made an arguably bad choice in her use of her email system in some way that nobody can fully explain -- could be even worse?

But no, we all know that's not the real reason to join up with Trump. The real reason is the same reason people join ISIS, and that is, when civilization seems to be losing ground to the bullies, the safest place to be is probably going to be standing behind the toughest-looking thug on the battlefield.

Response to The Politics of Humiliation

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Politics of Humiliation)

According to the New York Times’ Patrick Healy, Donald Trump says he's ready with his strategy:

In a telephone interview, he noted that women did not like seeing Mrs. Clinton insulted or bullied by men. He said he wanted to be more strategic, by calling into question Mrs. Clinton’s judgment in her reaction to Mr. Clinton’s affairs ...

Trump, or maybe one of his ubiquitous droids, needs to explain how this is supposed to work:

When confronted by boasts from his own book on his extramarital exploits with women (“If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller"), how much success can Trump expect to get from painting Hillary with that same brush, when nobody is accusing Hillary herself of being a slimy lounge lizard?

The worst they can argue is that she married someone like Donald Trump!

He [Trump] acknowledged that Republicans tried to discredit her judgment in the marathon Benghazi hearing in the fall, to little avail. 

But he said that he would be more pointed and memorable in linking her to the failings and deaths in Libya, and that the debate would have a vastly larger television audience than the hearing.

First of all, is Trump really saying that, for once, he's going to stop speaking in generalities, and start digging into the details?

Okay, well, good luck with that!

Trump needs to understand that Hillary was able to shut down the Benghazi Committee members because their insinuating questions actually only have an effect when kept in that mysterious area of "unanswered questions". But once you get beyond the generalities and into the specifics in these Benghazi accusations -- and the same thing with the email accusations -- the wrongdoing turns out to not be there, the "scandal" falls apart, and the critics start looking like they're on a witch-hunt.

Greg Sargent zeros in on another one of Trump's bizarre ploys:

Unlike Romney, Trump cheerfully cops to having been in on the elite scam that has ripped off American workers for decades and now promises to put his inside knowledge to work on their behalf.

Hey, it's that old "Fox in the Henhouse" scam! Remember that one?

So it all comes down to that old snoozer, "Yes, he is an S.O.B., but at least he's our S.O.B." I understand a lot of Americans think things are bad in this country, but it's hard to believe that things are so bad that they want to put a know-nothing bullying shit-head in the White House.

Charles Blow says you can just forget about all the strategies:

Trump is smart enough to know what he lacks – substance – and to know what he possesses in abundance – insolence. So long as he steers clear of his own weakness and draws others in to the briar patch that is his comfort zone, he wins. 

As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said in December, this is asymmetric warfare. Conventional forms of political fighting won’t work on this man. Truth holds little power, and the media is still enthralled by the monster it made.

The media didn't really create this monster, unless you're talking about the media being so predictably easy for the monster himself to manipulate. It's not that hard. All it takes is a recognition that the media insists on giving the public more of what it obviously wants, because if the public doesn't get what it wants, it goes away -- and what it wants is provocative bluster, and preferably, on a daily basis. 

And that's exactly what Trump offers up: Today's story is that he says we need to keep all Muslims from entering the country; next Sunday, it will be that this Muslim thing was only a suggestion. Do the Trump-heads think he's a flip-flopper? No, since they're not really listening. He had them a long time ago, at "We don't win anymore."

Yes, there are a large number of voters who have totally given up on rationality, given up hope, and think they need an S.O.B. as their president, but we can only hope that we outnumber them on election day. If we don't, then America will find itself involved in the same experiment that John Boehner kept trying with the Tea Party -- just this once, let them get their way, and let them find out first hand, that -- surprise! -- shutting down the government doesn't force Obama to repeal Obamacare after all!

Of course, that wishful thinking never worked for Boehner, and it surely won't work for us either.

Maybe electing Donald Trump president of the U.S. will be sort of a yin-yang moment for the planet, in which everything seems to be chugging along nicely, but the next thing you know, bang! Everything is swallowed up by its dichotomous opposite! Maybe it's that the gods are just playing dodge-ball with us!

Response to The Deadly Background Noise

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Deadly Background Noise)

I'm not convinced this Colonel Andrew Bacevich, author of "America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History", who comes very highly recommended as an expert in military affairs, knows what he's talking about in the area of international relations -- although maybe the real problem was not with Bacevich but instead with Steve Donoghue, who reviewed his book.

For one thing, about that description given of what the Carter Doctrine did:

"... in which the leader of one country peremptorily laid claim to the natural resources of a sprawling region on the other side of the world, was a breathtaking act of imperial belligerence."

Whoever it was who said this seems to have totally misstated what it was that Carter actually said, which was this:

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

To me, this sounds like Carter was just extending the Monroe Doctrine to the Persian Gulf, rather than avariciously "laying claim to natural resources" that didn't belong to us, a harsh criticism of Jimmy Carter that is rarely, if ever, heard anywhere. But what do I know?

Also, that statement, that "the military is in a position, not entirely but to a very considerable extent, to call the shots regardless of what the president wants", seems to overlook the fact that Obama, for different reasons, later found himself firing both generals McChrystal and Petreus.

I still think Obama did fairly well these last eight years, especially under the circumstances of having to keep the country open for business and out of default, and with very little assistance from the opposition party, but just try telling that to anybody who doesn't like the guy.

Although it's odd enough to see history itself drastically changing direction right before our eyes -- as has been happening with Donald Trump and the Republican Party -- but what we're seeing here is not so much history in transition, but instead, something much more disconcerting: historiography in revision.

To put that another way, in this age of ubiquitous shenanigans, history is no longer what actually happened, it tends to be what Republicans say actually happened.

Response to The Day of Simulated Reckoning

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Day of Simulated Reckoning)

First, a reiteration:

Eugene Robinson apparently thinks the big meeting between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan was nothing but a dog-and-pony show:

Save us all the faux drama. We already know how this star-crossed courtship is going to end: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will decide that Donald Trump isn’t such an ogre after all, and they’ll live unhappily ever after. 

Ryan will be unhappy, at least. Trump has stolen his party, and there’s nothing Ryan can do in the short term to get it back. ... 

Trump came to Washington for meetings with Ryan and other GOP establishment figures as a conqueror, not a supplicant. ... Anyone choosing self-interest over principle – a habit I have observed among politicians – would think twice about opposing a man who has received more primary votes than any previous GOP nominee.

Apparently Robinson did not read my comment from yesterday (he being just one of billions, I might add) in which I tried to point out what everyone but Donald Trump seems to be missing about these meetings with Republicans, Ryan in particular, and that is that, being someone "who has received more primary votes than any previous GOP nominee" is not nearly as important as being someone who, most polls show, is probably going to lose the general election -- unless he can mend fences with a whole lot of regular Republicans, many of whom have publicly sworn an oath to never vote for him. 

The least Trump can do is try to lure as many of the 78% of primary season voters of both parties who have had a chance to vote for him so far, but didn't.

For his part, Ryan has nothing to lose in pissing off Trump in his attempt to unite the insurgents with the establishment, as a way of keeping his party from disappearing from the face of the earth, since Ryan famously didn't want his job in the first place and could just as easily give it up. Not that I agree with any of his policies -- I really don't -- but I do think he deserves kudos for the way he's handling this.

And much as I dislike him, I'm starting to see that Trump himself may just be smarter than all those pundits after all.

But secondly, Josh Marshall accidentally uncovers one promising possibility that can be found in Trump's plan to deport 11 million hyphenated Americans, which might just as easily include those here legally along with those who are not:

It is probably also true that you could not pull off this kind of operation in anything like that kind of time frame without committing numerous civil rights and civil liberties violations, not only of people with no legal status but also of lots of Americans or people here with legal status. Trump has already said he’ll simply ignore the immigration courts that govern the deportation process.

Might it be possible that we somehow use this deliberately sloppy process as an opportunity to deport Donald Drumpf himself back to Germany?

Response to The Impossible Reconciliation

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Impossible Reconciliation)

I think some people are surprised to see how amiable Donald Trump turned out to be, in reaction to Paul Ryan's insistence that the two get together to talk things over before he announces any endorsement. The truth is, Trump's media surrogates can talk all they want about how he doesn't need them as much as they need him, but Donald may be remembering something that they've forgotten:

As of today, more people did not vote for Trump in the Republican primaries than did. According to The Green Papers, accessed moments ago as I write this, Donald Trump has a total of 10,994,897 votes cast for him, which is just 40.64% of the 27,052,068 votes in all the Republican state primaries, caucuses and conventions.

And that, of course, does not include those either who voted for Democrats, which is 22,596,354, of which Hillary Clinton received 12,647,631 (55.97%) and Bernie Sanders 9,570,525 (42.35%), or, for one reason or another, didn't vote for either party, a number I don't have. Independents who couldn't vote? Those who would have voted but couldn't find a candidate they could see themselves voting for? Who knows.

The point here is that, while Trump has obviously shown himself to be enormously popular, there are more people who voted for someone else than voted for him so far -- that is, 78% of the total 49,648,422 who have voted for either party so far did not vote for Donald Trump. My guess is, while many of those might vote for him in the general election, many more of them will not.

And I'm also guessing that Trump suspects the GOP does not need him more than he needs them -- that, in fact, there are probably plenty of Republicans who would rather just sit this election out than turn the party over to a maniac.

So what choice will people -- even Republican people -- have? At this point, probably Hillary. Yet, there's a problem with that: Hillary is hated almost as much a Donald. (No, really! I'm serious!)

The question is, why? Here's Adam Gopnik, in the New Yorker:

NeverTrump is a meaningless slogan unless one is prepared to say ThisOnceHillary. 

Some may be waiting for a third choice to emerge, an honorable if improbable idea, but too many seem hobbled by a disdain rooted less in rationality than in pure habit to see the reality of the circumstance. ... 

What would Hillary Clinton be like in the White House? Well, she was in the White House, once, and helped preside over a period of peace and mostly widespread prosperity. One can oppose her ideology (to the degree she has any), be unimpressed by her record (as contradictory as it may be), or mistrustful of her character. 

God knows, it is bitterly hard to defer to a long-standing political enemy, but it is insane to equate a moderate, tested professional politician with a crypto-fascist. Doing so is possible only through a habit of hatred so distended that it no longer has any reference to reality at all.

Exactly!

Hating Hillary has become, over the years of our hearing her alluded to with negative speculations, a habit that has lost any reference to reality. Didn't we read somewhere that she and Bill were involved in some shady land deal in Arkansas? That she had the entire White House Travel Department fired so she could replace them with friends from back home? That she had been romantically linked to Vince Foster, whom, along with her husband, she later had murdered?

Didn't we hear that she encouraged her husband to go out and get nooky in their open marriage, and then she blamed the women? And that she refused to supply expanded security for State Department staff in Benghazi, then slept through the 3:00 AM call from them when they needed help, and then lied to the families of those who died, and also the American people, saying it wasn't terrorism but just an innocent demonstration against an anti-Muhammed video that got out of hand?

Also, didn't she do something wrong with some emails or something?

Wow! You hear all these things that, even when found either unsubstantiated or plain lies,  must have at least a grain of truth to them; otherwise, there wouldn't have been so many of them! After all, where there's smoke, there's fire -- while, in fact, in the case of anti-Clinton propaganda (and also, anti-Obama), if we look for the fire behind the smoke, we instead always find some Republican, blowing it. As a class of people, while they may not be very good at governance, they've really shown themselves to be skilled at dirty tricks.

But it's not just Republicans who would rather not vote at all than vote for Hillary, there's also Democrats, and even liberals, as shown in this Daily Kos piece by MotoCat, entitled Why Do People Hate Hillary Clinton So Much?:

As a liberal with lots of liberal friends I am used to seeing all sorts of negative stories about Hillary Clinton in my social media universe with regularity. The question that irks me is why? I can clump the negativity toward Hillary into three main arguments.   

1. She is untrustworthy (liar, disingenuous, doesn’t mean what she says, etc...) 

2. She isn’t really liberal 

3. She is “bought” by Wall Street (or owes them some sort of favors)       

I’m a data nerd (worked in analytics in the past), and I have been paying close attention this election cycle so I thought I would unpack these three statements and see what sort of evidence there is for them. 

He (she? whichever) examines these three one by one, starting with "untrustworthy", and without my going into all the detail, he chooses to "disregard all unreliable statements based on personal observation such as 'she just looks phony', or 'you can tell she is lying'", instead decides to take a look at the comparative findings of Politifact on Hillary vs Bernie:

As you can see, It’s not exactly obvious from this data which of the candidates is the “honest” one. Clinton has a much higher “true” rating at 26% vs. 16% for Sanders. Sanders however, has more “mostly true” claims. Regardless, I’m not seeing any backup here for a narrative that Clinton is a dishonest politician on the stump.

He also includes a New York Times "infographic", comparing the truthfulness of almost all (I don't see John Kasich) the 2016 candidates, along with a few other random politicos (Cheney, Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton), with Donald Trump taking second-highest "Percent of Mostly False and Worse", at 76% (just behind Ben Carson's first-place 84%), and with Hillary taking fourth-from-last-place, at 28%, just above third-from-last Bernie, at 26%, followed by Martin O'Malley's 25% and Bill Clinton, the least untrustworthy on the list (despite his famous "I did not have sexual relations...") at 24%.

Hillary's not really a liberal? Actually, the article cites a "ontheissues.org" graphic that shows Bernie to be as "left-liberal" as one can get, with Hillary way over there with him, and only slightly to his right.

MotoCat also references another Daily Kos article, by someone else ("Phenry"), that found Hillary Clinton to be the 11th most liberal Senator while she was there, with Bernie Sanders being the first-most. (Incidentally, MotoCat adds this: "According to the data presented in Phenry’s diary, conservatives are MUCH more conservative than Clinton. It’s not even close.")

And as for Hillary owing Wall Street big-time, MotoCat does cite "OpenSecrets.org" with the information that 3.9 percent of her contributions come from people who work on Wall Street, but also notes that 25% of her income comes from speaking fees, which is a lot. Still, he argues:

I think making the logical jump from campaign donations and speaking fees to favors owed requires overlooking some big inconsistencies. 

1. If Hillary Clinton has indeed been trading favor to Wall Street for donations, then why is her record so consistently liberal despite receiving donations from those same Wall Street companies for her entire career as a Senator? That would require one of two things to be true. Wall Street executives may actually be asking her to promote liberal policies, or she has been playing an incredibly long con where she has been collecting money for decades while advancing a liberal agenda as a cover with the sole purpose of eventually becoming President of the United States and returning those favors. I’m not sure I can imagine either of those scenarios being true. 

2. If dollars donated and paid for speaking fees is equivalent to favors owed, what happens when different donors interests collide? Do the Boys and Girls club and Goldman Sachs have the same agenda? 

3. If she is in fact in the “pocket” of Wall Street, why would she be advancing a platform that could be argued to be more restrictive than any other candidate on Wall Street? This is a matter of debate of course, but if expert economists cannot agree on whose plan is more restrictive on Wall Street then they are probably both pretty restrictive in their own ways. 

And by the way, does she, as Trump charges, play the "women's card"?

According to a Gallup poll released in March of 2014, "Americans say the best or most positive thing about a possible Hillary Clinton presidency -- if she were to run and be elected in 2016 -- would be her serving as the first female president in the nation's history." The next top choices were, "Experience/Foreign policy experience, Best choice, Capable/Competent/Qualified, Intelligent/Smart/Educated", and "Bill Clinton would be back in White House/Help her".

And she probably knows that. In fact, after the first Democratic debate back in October, Huffington Post reported it this way:

Clinton largely avoided playing the gender card during the 2008 presidential campaign, but famously declared in her concession speech to Barack Obama that her candidacy had put “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling. If there was any question of how much she’d focus on gender this time around, it was answered repeatedly on Tuesday night. 

The former secretary of state delivered one of her strongest lines on the issue right out of the gate, saying during her introductory remarks that with her in the White House, “finally fathers will be able to say to their daughters, ‘You, too, can grow up to be president.’” 

Asked how her presidency would be different from President Barack Obama’s, she quickly responded, “Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. Being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had, including President Obama.”

So yeah, I guess I agree with Donald, that she plays that woman card. Still, who really cares? I know I don't.

Yep, she didn't play that card back then, and nor did Obama play the race card. Moreover, I didn't vote for him because he'd be the first black president, I voted for him because he was the the smartest guy in the room -- and like many others, I won't be voting for Hillary because it will make her the first female president, I'll be voting for her because she's the smartest guy in the room.

Trump says it's about the only thing going for her, and that she knows many will vote for her solely based on her gender, and that if she were a man, she'd probably be only about 5% in the polls.

Okay, so when you think about it, Trump similarly seems to be playing the asshole-card.

He must know that a whole lot of people are pulling for him simply because he acts like such a huge asshole, and that if he were to stop being an asshole, he'd probably be at about 5% in the polls.

Think about it! Being a giant asshole is the only thing Trump's got going for him! Take that away, and he'd be nothing.

Response to At Peak Trump

(See: Just Above Sunset: At Peak Trump)

Interesting! I think we're getting closer to figuring out who all these Donald Trump supporters are.

For one thing, there's that nagging question of just how conservative Trump is -- a question that will be highlighted by his upcoming meeting with Paul Ryan, who, as leader of the so-called "Republican Establishment", represents the kind of Republicans who think true conservatives have to believe in a free-market economy (e.g., trade deals), small government and low taxes, especially for rich people -- all things Donald Trump and his merry gang of Trumpheads either pay very little attention to or outright reject.

In fact, traditional conservative Republicans accuse Trump of being a closet liberal, an accusation that obviously puzzles many of us actual liberals: If this guy's so liberal, why am I not tempted to vote for him?

Yes, Trumpheads are conservatives, but no, they are not that kind of conservative. So what kind are they?

Trump continually brags that he has brought millions of voters into the Republican fold (although there is also evidence that the net migration has been the other way, that departures are greater than arrivals). So who's joining up? One good guess might be that many of them pretty much stayed politically detached up to now, simply because they couldn't find a home for their particular ideological leanings in either party.

To grossly oversimplify the subject, all political leanings pretty much boil down to one of two approaches to life, advocates of each holding the other in near complete disdain:

(a) There's "Be nice", and
(b) there's "Be nasty".

"Nice" people are optimists. Like Will Rogers, they never met a (person) they didn't like. They believe we're all in this together and need to look out for one another, and that there's no social problem that can't be addressed by both sides trying to understand and empathize with each other and sitting down to discuss it. Whether or not they are religious, they believe in the basic prediction of Matthew 5:5: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth", and that peace is preferable to war. They believe in the principle that it matters not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

"Nasty" people are pessimists. They think "meek" is another word for "weak", and definitely that those namby-pamby meek people are too naive to inherit much of anything, much less the whole fucking world -- because if they try, the "strong" will just walk in and kick their collective ass. They claim to believe that winning is not the most important thing, it's the only thing. (See what they did there? Clever, right?)

And need I tell you which is which? Let's face it, liberals are, traditionally speaking, "nice" people, while conservatives, who confuse it with "realism", lean toward the "nasty".

Yes, there are other beliefs that go along with the two ideologies, depending on what part of the world you live in, but these are usually marginally superfluous add-ons, especially in the case of "movement conservatives" -- which, nowadays, is another term for "Establishment Republicans".

For example, lower taxes for rich people and international trade agreements, while part of the Republican orthodoxy for years, are not conservative tenets that hold natural appeal to mostly middle- and working-class whites who object to all the gains being made by minorities in recent decades, which they see as adversely effecting white people. After all, lower tariffs just mean American jobs go overseas, and why should rich people on Wall Street get special tax breaks, after all they've been doing to our economy? For years, national Republicans have joined with Democrats in telling us what's acceptable to do and say, and the "nasty" wing of the conservative electorate is fed up with all that.

Black and Hispanic people, the argument goes, get special consideration in going to college and in getting jobs, whether they're qualified or not -- which implies millions of  "qualified" white people are obviously being discriminated against. (Remember back in 2012, Donald Trump offering $5 million to Barack Obama to show us his college transcripts? He never did mention why, but one has to assume Trump wanted to show Obama was an "affirmative action" beneficiary, and got into Harvard Law without being qualified -- which would presumably also help Donald explain to the world how he only got into Wharton as an undergrad.)

Are the Trumpists racists? Yeah, maybe, but whatever. That's definitely part of it, but almost beside the point.

More to the point is, all this politically-correct taking my tax dollars and using it to give special breaks to minorities is happening because we're letting the meek walk all over us. We used to be a meritocracy, where you earned your breaks! Now, okay, we also used to mistreat black people, but we passed laws against that, so it doesn't happen anymore!

Back in the day, America stood for something around the world, and nobody would give us lip, but ever since the elites took over, they're all laughing in our face, crossing the border and taking our jobs, and all those Muslims taunt us by chopping off Christian heads! It didn't used to be this way. Why are we allowing this?

And yes, liberal Democrats are to blame, but it's not just them, it's also the Republican politicians who cooperate with them! They're just as bad! As George Wallace once said, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

(And to top it off, queers can now marry each other? Hey, what's up with that?)

The point here being that, while Republicans like the pointy-headed intellectuals at National Review magazine may question Trump's conservative bonafides, they will not convince liberals, for example, that Donald Trump is a liberal, since we know he, being even nastier than they are, is actually more legitimately conservative than they are.

But they also will not make even the tiniest dent in the movement that Trump is leading, because none of those people gives a shit, even about being so-called conservative, and don't even really care if Trump says one thing today and totally contradicts himself tomorrow.

Nor do any of the Trumpette women care that he disrespects women -- they're tough; they can take it; and they dislike America's political correctness much more than dislike any nasty insult Trump dishes out to anyone, who probably deserved it anyhow. Hell, Trump voters probably don't even give a shit if he ever builds that stupid wall, nor whether he really has Mexico pay for it. After all, it's the thought that counts.

None of that matters. All they know is that the kinds of things he says pretty much matches the way they think about the world, and figure if he gets in, there's just a chance they'll see the kind of stuff done that they want done.

And, they probably figure, what do they have to lose? No other candidate is talking about this stuff, so you might as well vote for the crazy guy.

Response to Pretty Much Settled

(See: Just Above Sunset: Pretty Much Settled)

Two observations -- one trivial, one not so trivial:

First, there's something I noticed the other day while watching video of Donald Trump giving a speech: It's like he's doing stand-up! He thinks he's a comic!

The next time you get a chance to see him behind a podium, insulting someone, look carefully and watch his technique! He's emulating a comedy club comic.

It's not that he's all that funny. In fact, the fact that he's not may be the reason that so many people haven't noticed this, but he thinks he's a stand-up comic, running for president. He's got the timing, the gestures, and a "Hey, what's up with that?" schtick going with the audience that's sort of a combination of Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles and Andrew Dice Clay, but without a trace of the humility of any of them. But it is strange, especially that it seems to be working, even though -- as I said -- he's not actually funny.

In fact, Trump's never going to be good enough to do this for a living, but from what I understand about his financials, he doesn't really need to keep his day job.

And second, here's Josh Marshall, apparently written sometime Tuesday night:

Each state tonight looks like it has Trump at or near 60%. How big does his margin need to be? Are we going to start talking about his 75% ceiling?

Good question! Why does Trump's so-called "ceiling" keep getting higher? I have a theory.

Remember back when there were seventeen dwarves on the stage, and Trump was garnering about 25% to 30% of the popularity, didn't we all assume they collectively were hogging all the anti-Trump votes, and that once the group got whittled down, all the anti-trump votes would concentrate in fewer and fewer candidates, and, if we were lucky, just one candidate would be left to face Trump, and that candidate would beat him?

Well, while that sounded logical, it turns out it didn't turn out that way.

I'm thinking that, even if so many non-Trump candidates are now out of the race, there's still nobody that most Republicans find worth voting for -- which means that, even as the pie keeps getting smaller, Trump keeps ending up with a larger percentage of the pie.

For example, let's say some random voter really liked Carly Fiorina. But then Fiorina dropped out, so after some deliberation, that person switched his allegiance to Chris Christie. And so when Christie dropped out, the voter finally just gave up and lost interest, since he didn't like anyone left in the game.

Even when Christie came out for Trump and Fiorina reemerged as Cruz's running mate, our voter stays put, since he doesn't like either of those guys.

If that voter ends up voting for Hillary in the general election, that would be great, but it doesn't really matter, just so long as he doesn't end up voting for Trump.

And this whittling-down of the voters, rather than just the candidates, may help explain something else that few, if any, of the pundits seem to be discussing, which is that, consistently, more Democrats than Republicans are voting in these primaries.

Not only that, but the winner of the Democratic races all are getting way more votes than the winner of the Republicans! In fact, according to these results from AP in the New York Times, there are some cases (e.g., Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island; see below) in which even the losing Democrat gets more votes than the winning Republican.

Compare the bolded numbers under each party to see what I'm saying:

Connecticut Primary Results

Republicans:

213,212 votes, 99% reporting (700 of 701 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 123,367 57.9% 28
John Kasich 60,481 28.4 —
Ted Cruz 24,969 11.7 —
Other 4,395 2.1 —

Democrats:

328,322 votes, 99% reporting (700 of 701 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Hillary Clinton 170,075 51.8% 27
Bernie Sanders 152,410 46.4 25 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)
Other 5,837 1.8 —

Delaware Primary Results

Republicans:

69,892 votes, 100% reporting (313 of 313 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 42,472 60.8% 16
John Kasich 14,225 20.4 —
Ted Cruz 11,110 15.9 —
Other 2,085 3.0 —

Democrats:

93,633 votes, 100% reporting (313 of 313 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 55,950 59.8% 12 (Hillary got more votes than Donald, above!)

Bernie Sanders 36,659 39.2 9

Other 1,024 1.1 —

Maryland Primary Results

Republicans:

434,572 votes, 99% reporting (1,973 of 1,989 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 236,623 54.4% 38

 John Kasich 100,089 23.0 —

 Ted Cruz 82,038 18.9 —

Other 15,822 3.6 —

Democrats:

846,039 votes, 99% reporting (1,973 of 1,989 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 533,247 63.0% 61

Bernie Sanders 281,275 33.2 33 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)

Other 31,517 3.7 —

Pennsylvania Primary Results

Republicans:

1,573,338 votes, 99% reporting (9,123 of 9,168 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 892,702 56.7% 17

Ted Cruz 340,201 21.6 —

John Kasich 304,793 19.4 —

Other 35,642 2.3 —

Democrats:

1,652,947 votes, 99% reporting (9,123 of 9,168 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 918,689 55.6% 104 (Hillary got more votes than Donald, above!)

Bernie Sanders 719,955 43.6 81

Other 14,303 0.9 —

Rhode Island Primary Results

Republicans:

61,179 votes, 100% reporting (146 of 146 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 39,059 63.8% 10

John Kasich 14,929 24.4 5

Ted Cruz 6,393 10.4 3

Other 798 1.3 —

Democrats:

121,253 votes, 100% reporting (146 of 146 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Bernie Sanders 66,720 55.0% 13 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)

Hillary Clinton 52,493 43.3 11

Other 2,040 1.7 —

It seems to me that this probably tells us Democrats something good about the upcoming general election, although I suppose I may be overstating the importance of this: Despite most the newsworthy craziness on the Republican side, it's the Democratic races that are attracting most the voters. 

What makes this a little scary is, after the Democrats finish their shake-out, it's just possible that voters might decide that there being "nobody worth voting for" might also mean Hillary, given that she has negatives that rival Donald's -- and that means Trump really could make some history by ending up America's first bad-standup-comic president.

Response to The Two Hollywoods

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Two Hollywoods)

Two items today.

First, there's this one:

The Friends of Abe has acted as a clandestine club for Hollywood conservatives for more than a decade, hosting secret events where they could vent rightwing views and hear speeches from visiting Tea Party luminaries. 

But on Thursday the organization – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.

I do find it interesting that this group is closing down, and I do wonder why -- although its executive director, Jeremy Boering, claims it's "because we have been successful in creating a community that extends far beyond our events, people just don’t feel as much of a need to show up for every speaker or bar night," although it might also be IRS trouble -- in 2014, Raw Story did a report "claiming that Friends of Abe 'had been gaming the system' by telling members it had 503(c)(3) status years before it did in order to solicit donations".

But I also find it curious that a group of famous conservatives would form an allegedly-conservative organization and name it after Abraham Lincoln, one of our most liberal presidents, at least by present-day definitions of the word.

Lincoln was a Republican, as Republicans keep reminding us -- obviously because, as everybody knows, Lincoln is universally recognized as one of our best presidents, if not the best president. In fact, take Lincoln away from the Republicans and we're hard-pressed to find too many other Republican presidents worthy of admiration. (Okay, well, maybe Teddy Roosevelt, but don't forget that he was an early adopter of progressivism, which today is just another word for liberalism.)

But how could any nowadays-conservative -- who supports suppressing the vote of minorities and doesn't support government spending on public improvements, and favors the sovereignty of states over the national government in all things -- possibly imagine himself going back in time to 1860 and voting for Abraham Lincoln? Could he ever see himself favoring the freeing of all those slaves, the building of all those railroads, much less engaging in a deadly war just to show the states who's boss?

Plainly put, the Republicans in Lincoln's time would be the Democrats of today, and vice versa.

Yeah, I know this "Friends of Abe" thing is small potatoes, but it's very existence should be taken note of as just another example of the conservative Intelligentsia not really thinking this stuff through.

Secondly, there's Kevin Drum, weighing in with this on how and why we all learned that Donald Trump has been putting on this big act all along:

First, I doubt that this recording was leaked. Rather, it was “leaked.” The Trump campaign wanted it to become public. Sure, it will inspire some mockery from liberals and campaign reporters, but that’s never done Trump any harm.

He may be right. After all, doesn't the "leak" actually do the campaign good, rather than harm?

More subtly, his current fans will also take it as a hint that his adult persona will be meant primarily not to con them, but to con centrist Republicans. With a wink and a nod, he’s telling them he’ll do what he has to do in order to appeal to the corrupt establishment folks, but not to take it too seriously.

The point being, he's telling them that he's fooling you, but you, of course, are in on the joke! Don't you understand, that it's really them who are being played for fools? It all depends, of course, on who is them, and also, of course, who is you!

Even though there's something to Drum's explanation, this once again reminds me of my favorite scene in the movie, "The Princess Bride", in which Westley, a.k.a. "The Man in Black", plays a deadly Russian-ruolette-type drinking game with Vizzini, the Sicilian bandit who has kidnapped the princess, Buttercup, in which Vizzini must guess which of two cups does not contain poison. "The Man in Black" offers a vial to Vizzini to smell the contents:

Vizzini: Sniffs vial.  "I smell nothing." Returns vial.  

Man In Black:  "What you do not smell is called Iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man." 

Vizzini:  "Hmm." 

Man In Black: Turns away from Vizzini with the goblets, to pour the poison in. Goblets replaced on the table, one in front of each.  "All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right ... and who is dead." 

Vizzini:  "But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you:  are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."  

Man In Black:  "You've made your decision then?"  

Vizzini:  "Not remotely. Because Iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."  

Man In Black:  "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."  

Vizzini:  "WAIT TILL I GET GOING! Where was I?"  

Man In Black:  "Australia."  

Vizzini:  "Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder's origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."  

Man In Black: "You're just stalling now."  

Vizzini:  "YOU'D LIKE TO THINK THAT, WOULDN'T YOU?  You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."  

Man In Black:  "You're trying to trick me into giving away something. It won't work."  

Vizzini:  "IT HAS WORKED! YOU'VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHERE THE POISON IS!"  

Man In Black:  "Then make your choice."  

Vizzini:  "I will, and I choose -- What in the world can that be?" Vizzini gestures up and away from the table. The Man In Black looks.  

Man In Black:  "What? Where?" Vizzini switches the goblets. Turning back. "I don't see anything."  

Vizzini:  "Well, I -- I could have sworn I saw something. No matter." Smirks.  

Man In Black:  "What's so funny?"  

Vizzini:  "I'll tell you in a minute. First, let's drink. Me from my glass," picks up glass, "and you from yours." They drink.

Man In Black: Pointing. "You guessed wrong."  

Vizzini:  "You only THINK I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this:  never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Ha ha ha" -- Stops suddenly, and falls dead, to his right. The Man in Black removes Buttercup's blindfold.  

Buttercup:  "Who are you?"  

Man In Black:  "I'm no one to be trifled with. That is all you ever need know." He unties her hands and feet.  

Buttercup:  "And to think, all that time it was your cup that was poisoned."  

Man In Black:  "They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane powder."

So yes, the Presidential Election of 2016 has come down to a guessing game, the object of which is to figure out who is fooling whom -- our final answer being not at all important, since, either way, we're dead.

My own version of the so-called "leak" goes something like this:

Donald Trump may have finally figured out that he can't keep "winging" his campaign, that it's starting to hit the rapids, so he needs to bring in a seasoned professional, Paul Manafort, to put everything right. Manafort, with very little to work with, goes to the Republican National Committee, hoping to mend some broken fences with a "Hail Mary" play -- telling them not to worry, that Trump, clever guy that he is, has been just pretending to agree with all the clueless masses that he's attracted to the party, but just wait, you'll see him pivot during the general election toward being someone far more acceptable to the general public.

It's all just a big act, don't ya understand? It's Trump, being bold and being crazy -- but crazy like a fox! Yeah, that's the ticket! He's been doing all this on purpose!

Will anybody buy it?

Who knows! After all, it's a Hail Mary! Either it works or it doesn't! When you're in a hole, what difference does it make? At least it should keep people guessing long enough to buy time to come up with a new secret plan.

It's as if we now know that, someday, we'll look back and see this "acting" business was a major turning point in the campaign -- until still later, of course, when we find out that, in fact, nothing changed at all, and that they were just pretending when they said it was all an act.

Sort of like Nixon's "secret plan" on how to win the war, we'll learn that Trump's secret plan was that there was no plan.

Response to Sweating the Smallest Stuff

(See: Just Above Sunset: Sweating the Smallest Stuff)

 Yeah, it's bound to happen here and there that I find myself agreeing with Donald Trump, and his saying this, in fact, was an easy one:

"You leave it the way it is. There have been very few complaints the way it is," he continued. "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble, and the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic punishment that they are taking."

First of all, I'm sure it will come as a shock to many to learn that transgendered persons have existed, with very little discussion, throughout American history, and it is not just this weird concept concocted by liberals in the last few decades as a way to piss off conservatives.

And second of all, it's probably safe to assume that all those guys and gals down through our history occasionally have had to go to the bathroom! I wonder where they went? But however they've been sorting themselves out, they seem to have been doing it heretofore without raising too much fuss, since we haven't been hearing much about it in the news until very recently.

In fact, I am seriously interested in seeing the statistics about how big a problem, legal or otherwise, that this has been.

It's hard to imagine a man who feels more comfortable dressing like -- and identifies as -- a woman, going into the girls' room and molesting ... a little girl! Not that it's all that likely, but you'd think we would be more likely to see that same man, who identifies as a woman, be forced to use the men's room, go into one and molest a little boy!

No, wait! Scrap that! That's also pretty stupid. But when you're talking about some state that, only relatively recently, got out of the business of trying to enforce who gets to use which restroom, starts up doing it again, you're going to find yourself contemplating some pretty stupid shit.

But I do disagree with Trump on this one thing, as reported by Talking Points Memo:

The American Family Association suggested that Target provide single-use unisex bathrooms to accommodate transgender individuals.

Trump doesn't like it -- he says, "First of all, I think that would be discriminatory in a certain way," adding, "It would be unbelievably expensive for businesses and for the country."

But I think the suggestion has merit, as long as Target and other businesses are allowed to build the extra bathrooms voluntarily, assuming they can afford the expense.

But better yet, there's no reason for these single-use bathrooms to be designated for the exclusive use of trans persons, but in fact, they could be made available to anybody who doesn't feel comfortable sharing a bathroom with someone else -- including those who don't like Target's new transgender-bathroom-use policy.

In other words, if you have reason to believe that some guy will dress up like a girl just so he can molest your daughter in the girls' room, have her use the no-share rest room instead.

So it's a "Win-Win" situation! Transgendered folks can go back to the good old days when they would use a public restroom with little fear of getting arrested for it, and North Carolina conservatives can go back to the good old days of going to the bathroom with no fear of their daughter being molested by someone wearing clothes they shouldn't be wearing!

And all we have to do to get from here to there is to get rid of that ridiculous law.

Response to Entirely Expected Hopelessness

(See: Just Above sunset: Entirely Expected Hopelessness)

According to Politico's Darren Samuelsohn, it's probably not too early to be talking about this:

“Impeachment” is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress. From the right, Washington attorney Bruce Fein puts the odds at 50/50 that a President Trump commits impeachable offenses as president.

Maybe this means it's about the right time to unveil the bumper sticker I've been thinking of marketing:

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! 

Impeach President Trump!

The cool part is, I could post ads for it on both conservative and liberal websites!

But back to that assault on political law and order by plain old-fashioned down-home horse sense that's going on over on the Republican side -- here described by Brian Beutler in the New Republic:

No matter how short of 1,237 Trump falls, his argument at the convention will be simple, and completely intuitive: I might not have won in a way that requires the Republican Party to give me the nomination – but I won a moral victory. It’s in your power to deny me the nomination, but woe betide the GOP if you do. 

This will ring true both to his own supporters, and to GOP voters who perhaps supported a different candidate but are amenable to Trump and believe instinctually that in an election, the person with the most votes should win.

Yes but, in the same way a drunk might celebrate his staying sober for a month by spending the week on a binge, abandoning the principle of majority rule is just another symptom that the Republican Party has completely collapsed and has lost control over itself. Still, I suppose if you're a political  party on the verge of giving your nomination to Bozo the Clown, there's no additional harm in abandoning all pretense of decorum.

The truth is, the presidential nominating process of both political parties was intentionally designed to emulate the general election process itself, as we all know. But what most of us may not realize is, never in the 226-year history of the American Republic has any of its presidents been elected by a plurality of the vote. Not a one!

And before you give me that business of, for just one example, Abraham Lincoln winning with only 39.9% of the vote in 1860, we shouldn't forget that that was the popular vote, whereas in the Electoral College, which is where we find the votes that actually elect presidents, Lincoln scored 180 out of 303 -- or a 59.4% majority.

But yes, there were presidential elections in which no candidate received more than 50% of the Electoral College vote, a good example being 1824, an election very similar to what the Republicans are going through right now in their primary season.

Andrew Jackson had the most electoral votes -- 99 of them, a 37.9% plurality -- with John Quincy Adams coming in second with 84 electors (32.2%). William Crawford had 41 electors (15.7%) and Henry Clay had 37 (14.2%).

So had the Trump rule ("He with the most votes, even if not a majority, wins") prevailed, Andrew Jackson would have won the presidency that year. That may sound fair, except when you figure that maybe all those who voted for the other three really didn't like Jackson, in which case, a "minority candidate" would have won the day, and the principle of "majority rule" would have been negated.

In that case, the U.S. Constitution allowed for (and still does) a do-over by throwing the election into the House of Representatives, where John Quincy Adams won, probably by bribing Henry Clay for his votes in exchange for being named Secretary of State.

That outcome, by the way, pissed off somebody no end, that person being Andrew Jackson (a man who might remind us today of Donald Trump), who came back four years later to blow Adams away, 178 electors (68.2%) to 83 (31.8%).

Yeah, there's this complicated bureaucratic mechanism, found in both the Constitution and Republican rules, that strikes people who don't think about it as more than a little undemocratic, but to those who do think about it, they realize that, even with all that horse trading, it is designed to better approximate democracy's majority rule that can be found anywhere in your so-called "horse sense".

And so, if the people who don't give any of this much thought get their way, convincing the rest of the Republicans to just abandon the rules that were designed to govern this sort of thing, it may not really matter -- especially if the Republican nominee, after all the showy political folderol of the past several years, ends up getting shot down in flames -- since it's been pretty evident that that party is falling apart anyway.

But if you think this has been one of the most interesting presidential elections in American history, you're probably right, but just wait until after the Republicans are gone, in 2020!

Response to How Things Sort of Work

(See: Just Above Sunset: How Things Sort of Work)

Okay, I give up. Donald Trump is right.

No, not right about everything. In fact, hardly anything.

I'm just saying he's right when he claims that our presidential nomination process is stupid and makes no sense. The picking of presidents and vice presidents should be both simpler and more (small-"d") democratic, from the get-go.

The way it works now is, you're a candidate who enters his name in his party's caucus in such-and-such state, and you win most the delegates, all local muckymucks who, it turns out, don't happen to like you one bit. But no matter, since they're only delegates to the state convention anyway, and once there, can either join any coalition that their county leadership randomly assigns them, or else the one that picked up their tab for breakfast -- but it's that group that selects the real delegates, the ones that go to the national convention and are bound to a candidate only on the first ballot, but after which are free to cast a vote for their brother-in-law.

And if you're lucky enough to make it to the general election, you could actually have most the people vote for you, but still lose the election in the electoral college. Foreigners never seem to understand that, and, of course, neither do we.

Many years ago, I read a book about presidential elections in America (it was published by Congressional Quarterly Press; I wish I could remember the book's title) that differentiated throughout between the "selectorate" -- that is, those voters who select the nominee by voting in primaries and such -- and the "electorate" -- those who vote in the general election.

What I propose is that maybe we scrap the whole "selectoral" process and cut straight to the "electoral" process. No primaries, no caucuses, no delegates, no state conventions. No parties, no states involved. Cut out all the middlemen. Boom! All gone!

Just the general election. And that should be run by the federal government, not the states. And having everybody vote all on one day obviates the problem of having otherwise good candidates drop out too early because they failed to impress the ethanol industry or most the voters of some all-white New England state. Let's face it; we've always known that this sequential state-by-state primary business distorts the process of choosing our leaders, and America should never have allowed it to start.

And while we're at it, no electoral college. Just let American citizens vote directly for their presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

The most common argument against allowing the popular vote to choose our president and vice president is that it's somehow "unfair" to the smaller states, but why should states be choosing the leadership anyway, instead of the people? The famous phrase is not that a certain candidate is "the states' choice", it's that he's the "people's choice"! In fact, elections aren't supposed to be contests that pit large states against small states, it's people who believe a certain way against other people who don't.

The states already get to pick the members of Congress and the Senate, and for too long, through "electors" chosen by the states, they've been picking the president and vice president as well. When and if the electors and the people ever happen to pick the same candidate, it's only by happy accident. In other cases, it's considered a flaw in the system. Why not just skip all the silly stuff and let the people pick their own leaders?

And then there's the political parties. When you think about it, the role of all these "private" -- that is, non-governmental -- political organizations is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, so why do we allow them so large a role in our country's governance? 

As for that question of "Who can get on the ballot?", the short answer is, "Anyone!" Still, there would have to be some sort of qualifying barrier -- maybe a certain high number of signatures on a petition. Maybe candidates could, if they so choose, designate on the ballot which political party they would caucus with, just so voters can get a general idea of their ideology.

And one positive by-product of taking the election process out of the hands of parties might well be cutting down on all the partisan gridlock that has taken over Washington.

But also, to avoid the problem we had in the election of 1800 -- back when the Constitution said the candidate for president with the second-highest number of votes would be named vice president, forgetting to specify what should happen in case of a tie -- candidates should run as a "ticket" that includes the president and vice president.

So what happens if nobody gets a majority? Then we could do what states do to whittle down the field to the top two: Have a runoff election. Another possibility is an "instant runoff" system, in which voters not only pick their first choice but their second choice, and maybe third choice; then we compute the winner from these. (To see how that works, click on that link.)

Yeah, there are real problems trying to get the country to do things the way they should have been done from the beginning, but this runaway four-year presidential season business has finally gotten out of hand. It's about time it were stopped.

We keep calling ourselves a democracy; just for fun, why not actually become one?

Response to Republican Sex

(See: Just Above Sunset: Republican Sex)

I myself am still not sure which bathroom a transgendered person should use in North Carolina.

Is it really better for someone who obviously looks and acts just like a woman to go into the men's room? And someone who is the spitting image of a man, to use the women's room? And if there's someone there to "police" this, how do they do that -- demand that the suspect "drop trow", to show themselves to be what they were at birth? Maybe everyone needs to carry the long form of their birth certificate?

And as for that question of policing this, yes, I suppose you could call this a "jobs bill" in that it creates a whole new category of law enforcement, although at the same time, it also necessarily increases government spending, along with the taxes needed to pay for it.

it's probably not practical for jurisdictions to return to the old days of Jim Crow, when there were supposed to be (but too often were not) four public bathrooms available -- one for white men, one for white women, one for black men, one for black women. In this case, it could get pretty costly, since you would have one for men, one for women, one for transgender men who identify as women, one for transgender women who identify as men, but maybe also one for gay men and another for lesbians?

Or maybe they could test out the concept of having one each for straight men and straight women, and just one for all the non-binary, none-of-the-above, everyone else?

The gender binary, also referred to as gender binarism (sometimes shortened to just binarism), is the classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine. ... In this binary model, "sex", "gender" and "sexuality" are assumed by default to align; for example, a biological male would be assumed masculine in appearance, character traits and behavior, including a heterosexual attraction to the opposite sex. 

Classification within this gender binary does not encompass individuals who are born with non-binary reproductive organs and may exclude those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, genderqueer or third gender.

It's amazing to me that this is the first time we've heard of this sort of law pop up, in any state, but maybe that's because other states foresaw all the complications lurking in questions of sexual identity. Are they passing this law in North Carolina because there's been some sort of pressing problem in that state, not seen in other states?

If not, you'd think North Carolinians would figure out that the easiest way to deal with all this is to do what other states have done -- just leave it the hell alone.

Response to Our Walking Dead

(See: Just Above Sunset: Our Walking Dead)

I think my favorite phrase this week may be "Donald Trump truthers". It just gives that sense that someone may finally be getting close to solving the mystery of why he decided to wade in way the hell over his head in the first place.

In fact, here's Sean Illing, in his Salon piece, "Donald Trump truthers: Theories spread he’s trying to sabotage campaign after his disastrous week from hell":

It should surprise no one if he finds a way to undermine his own campaign. At this point, the best possible outcome for him is to lose without appearing to quit.

Although I disagree with that. Based on what I hear about Trump, I think he'd rather be seen as a quitter than a loser! He'd always rather he appear to be in control of his own destiny, and not at the whim of others, and be able to say, "No, no, the people loved me!! Gimme a break!! They loved me!! I wasn't pushed out, I left on my own!"

Okay, but here's yet another theory to explain Donald Trump:

Maybe Ted Cruz persuaded Trump to run interference for him in this election, figuring that with Trump in the race, nobody will stop to realize that he himself is such a jerk until it's too late -- at which point they'll say, "Okay, yes, Cruz is an asshole -- but at least he's not as bad as that even worse asshole, Donald Trump!"

This theory fits in perfectly with that story recently told by Stephanie Cegielski, the woman from the Trump PAC who said she was informed a year ago the plan was that the Donald was only supposed to take second place.

And it also fits with the behavior of both of these guys back when the season began. It was like this weird two-man cabal -- hands off, no public criticism of the other? In fact, way back then, Cruz even invited Trump to join him at his rallies, explaining it all away by saying that cameras seem to follow Trump around anyway, so why not!

You may think this hypothesis too incredible, but I say it's no less believable than anything else we've learned this year.