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.

Response to To Be Perfectly Honest

(See: Just Above Sunset: To Be Perfectly Honest)

Here's Stephanie Cegielski, writing in xojane.com about being hired for Donald Trump's SuperPAC, "Make America Great Again":

Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count.

Her article, an interesting appeal from a disillusioned former employee, asks fellow Trump supporters to stop supporting him, and tells of the original intention of the PAC to just help raise his awareness, apparently mostly to give him bragging rights -- "Hey! I ran for president," he could tell the world, "and I did really well!" -- that ended up exceeding everyone's expectations, including probably those of Trump himself.

But hidden within that story is another, that of Trump and his campaign giving the appearance of illegally coordinating with a SuperPAC he has denied knowing anything about, even though it appears Stephanie, the Trump defector who worked for the PAC, reports having that PAC meeting in Trump Tower.

The Washington Post broke the original story last October:

This summer [2015], Trump appeared at at least two events for the Make America Great Again PAC, which took his campaign slogan as its name and received financing from his daughter’s mother-in-law.

That mother-in-law's name is Seryl Kushner, and one of those two events was at her house! Maybe she forgot to tell him who was throwing the party?

In fact, her contribution to the PAC was $100,000. After a number of embarrassing news stories last year, Trump asked the PAC to close itself down, and totally coincidentally, it did! -- with much of the money having been sent back to donors by the end of the year, including $1-million from Las Vegas investor Phillip Ruffin. Still, the forms the PAC filed with the Federal Election Commission at that time don't show whether she ever got her 100-k back.

Mind you, up to the time candidate Trump somehow persuaded this PAC he didn't know about to shut itself down, he had been bragging that he was the only candidate without such a PAC, and according to the Post article, so had his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who's memory was dodgy about knowing anyone over there:

Mike Ciletti, a Colorado-based operative who told Politico in August that he is a consultant for the super PAC, was at the Trump campaign offices repeatedly in May and June, according to two people familiar with the visits. ... 

In one of several interviews with The Post, Lewandowski first denied knowing Ciletti or anyone connected to the super PAC. “I don’t know him,” Lewandowski said. 

Two days later, when confronted with the campaign’s payments to Ciletti’s firm, Lewandowski acknowledged he was familiar with Ciletti. 

“I know a lot of people,” he said. “I know of Mike Ciletti.” 

After being pressed for more details, he hung up.

The Post article mentions that, before he announced his candidacy, Trump was deeply involved in setting up the PAC, and according to NPR:

Donald Trump filed in 2012 to trademark the phrase Make America Great Again for use with a political action committee. He first used it this past May – an essential step in the application process – and the Patent and Trademark Office registered it in July.

So Donald Trump holds the trademark for the name under which the PAC operates? It's amazing that the PAC has been able to use that name without coordinating with the guy that owns the trademark.

(By the way, the PAC may have stopped operating -- although Ballotpedia.com has been reporting that "no official termination reports have been filed with the FEC", and its website is still up at https://www.makeamericagreatagainpac.com/, with a phone number (908-583-4379) and email address (info@makeamericagreatagainpac.com) and a street address (208 E 51st Street, Suite 157 New York, NY 10022) -- which, I think, is probably a private mailbox in a UPS store, located just off 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Yes, I know, this is no big scandal. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found suspicious coordination between other presidential campaigns and "their" PACS (except, I think, Bernie's, since I don't think he has one).

But nor is there much consequence for breaking this law, even if a whistleblower were able to make the case, since the FEC -- which the American Constitution Society has called "An Agency Flawed by Design", has pretty much been non-functional lately. In short, the FEC is deadlocked with 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, and in these partisan times, that pretty much says it all.

Still, while Donald Trump keeps wondering out loud -- as he is wont to do over lots of things -- about whether Hillary will get indicted for probably imaginary email shenanigans, it might not take too much work to dig up some actual campaign violations against him.

And when that day comes, of course, his favorable poll numbers will undoubtedly hit the roof.

Response to Escalating Testosterone

(See: Just Above Sunset: Escalating Testosterone)

God, this Trump guy is the Antichrist -- something which, until maybe just now, I didn't even believe in.

And this whole election is a battle for the soul of the nation, since the only thing keeping us in peril is all these Republicans who are voting for him, something they will need to stop doing.

Our only hope is that the general election will give this brat the comeuppance that someone forgot to give him when he was a kid, back when it would have done the most good:

“You are a king,” his father would tell Donald, according to his biographer Michael D’Antonio. His son took that to mean he could set his own rules. In elementary school, he gave one teacher he didn’t like a black eye; others were pelted with erasers. At birthday parties, he would fling cake. ... 

At the age of 13, he was shipped off to the New York Military Academy, which employed brutal tactics for the remaking of delinquent character, even resorting to violence to assert control over the boys. “In those days they’d smack the hell out of you. It was not like today where you smack somebody and you go to jail,” Trump has recalled. The struggle for domination permeated the culture of the place, especially the manner in which boys treated one another ... he would laugh while his classmates spoke, putting them in their place. 

But Trump’s primary method for asserting dominance was sex. ... It’s an entirely Darwinian view, where the alpha male has his pick of females, both as a perk and a means of flexing his power over lesser men. It’s the mindset that made his assertion of his penis size in a national debate almost an imperative – if he let the attack on his manhood slide, his entire edifice might crumble.

So, yeah, I guess when you're someone who's made his whole life building huge edifices, you really don't want any of your erections to collapse.

And I suppose Hillary, and all those millions of American women who can't stand the sight of the guy, could just possibly end up being Donald Trump's ultimate deflator. Now that would be an example of cosmic justice!

But also, if he loses, it's also just possible Americans will finally come to realize that, whatever problems they think they have with their country, the Republican party is nowhere near to having the solutions.

Response to Another Winnowing

(See: Just Above Sunset: Another Winnowing)

There's political metaphor and there's political metaphor:

Yes, the Republican Party may blow away in the breeze. It was only straw anyway, and everyone knows the only thing that straw is good for – soaking up hot steaming bullshit.

Okay, that explains fairly well how the party got this way, but the question remains what they -- and, for that matter, we Democrats -- are prepared to do about it. 

I'm betting that, by election day, Hillary's "indictment" problem will have been clarified, and am assuming we find out all of those "classified" items were classified after they were sent, and were so minor that they shouldn't have been classified in the first place. But I am wondering if that will even make any difference to those who say they can't trust her because of her so-called "email problem".

Unless something radically new pops up by then in the Vince Foster case, it's just possible that most voters will find they have essentially nothing more to keep them from voting for Hillary than the rest of us have -- that is, that she's a somewhat boring and predictable centrist drudge who will just keep things going pretty much they way they've been going -- as long as she's able to get past the fact that she's a woman, that is. (It's easy to overlook that, while there are probably millions of Americans who refuse to admit they don't like the idea of black American presidents, we may discover there are just as many secret bigots who don't like female ones.)

So the calculations will have come down to whether we can trust that all those Republicans who have been saying that if Trump is the candidate, they'll vote for Hillary -- or even the 30% of Ohio Republicans last night who said they will not vote for Trump under any circumstance -- will actually do what they say. Would they be more likely to vote for Cruz instead of Hillary? Would they vote for Ryan as a last-minute convention compromise?

I'm wondering if Donald will even bother doing the third-party route if the convention goes for someone else, despite him have a plurality of delegates. And I keep wondering when the cut-off point is for third-parties to get on ballots in all those states. Can it even be done?

But as hilarious as it all is, I once again hesitate to take too much enjoyment in the chaos amongst the Republicans since, in the long run, it never seems to do any of us any good. Assuming the country even survives the implosion of one of its two major political parties, will the election of 2020 be threatened by some new Trump-like "disruptor", or will we, by then, find some way back to normal government?

In fact, all this recent business of Trump shouting "little Marco" and "Go home to your mommy!" -- and that so many Americans treat that stuff as acceptable -- may be signs that the two-hundred-plus-year "Great American Experiment" may be coming to an end.

Response to A Red-Hot Friday

(See: Just Above Sunset: A Red-Hot Friday)

During this "violence" phase of Trumpmania that we seem to be experiencing, I've come to realize another metaphor for him that's been hanging around in the back of my brain.

Not just in his manner of speaking, but also in what it is he's been saying about violence reminds me of Robert Di Niro's portrayal of Al Capone in that mostly-fictional 1987 "Untouchables" movie. This is from the very first scene, with a chummy Capone, surrounded by sycophantic reporters, taking a shave in a barbershop:

Reporter: [to Al Capone] An article, which I believe appeared in a newspaper, asked why, since you are, or it would seem that you are, in effect, the mayor of Chicago, you've not simply been appointed to that position. [other reporters laugh] 

Capone: Well, I'll tell ya, you know, it's touching. Like a lot of things in life, we laugh because it's funny and we laugh because it's true. Now, some people will say - reformers, they'll say, 'Put that man in jail! What does he think he is doing?' Well, what I hope I'm doing, and here's where your English paper's got a point, is - I'm responding to the will of the people.

That same scene is the one in which Capone says:

Capone: [to reporters] Yes! There is violence in Chicago. But not by me, and not by anybody who works for me, and I'll tell you why -- because it's bad for business.

Here's a quote, said to be from the real Al Capone, but one that I can't authenticate, which means chances are, it's a fake. Still, it's supposed to be Capone warning people he'll be nice to you only if you're nice to him, and I can even imagine Trump saying it:

Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.

Sometimes, it's Benito Mussolini, but lately, the more I see and hear Donald Trump speaking on television, the more I find myself thinking of Al Capone. In fact, all three of those guys remind me of each other.

Response to The Other Two

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Other Two)

I watched the Clinton/Sanders debate last night, at least half of it. I agree with Josh Marshall that the two seemed to be looking for something to argue about.

They shouldn't have, since it's probably what forced Hillary into ridiculously accusing Bernie of siding with right-wing Minutemen, or to keep pushing her point about Bernie having voted against the auto bailout, another ridiculous argument that apparently most Democrats can see through, given all the criticism she's taken for it after she launched that balloon a week or so ago -- and which, it could be argued, helped her lose Michigan on Tuesday. That kind of foolishness may help her during the general election, but probably hurts her in the primary season, when you're mostly just talking to 
people who know better.

(An aside: This is not to say I agree with Bernie's stated reason for voting against the funding bill that included the auto industry bailout -- that it included the bailouts of the banks, which he opposed. I did not oppose the bank bailouts, which I saw as probably necessary for keeping the economy from going over the edge -- although I do find unlikely the notion that no individuals committed any fraud that contributed to the whole collapse, and that nobody deserved to go to jail. And yes, all this stuff is complicated! We need to just accept that, deal with it, and get on with the elections.)

While this debate may not have had much new to offer, it did serve to remind us that the younger of the two candidates still comes closest to representing the "old" way of doing politics, which may still hold sway among Republicans, who famously never did "nuance", and still don't. It's left to the older candidate to appeal to the cut-the-crap young voters who, having not grown up with it, are less accepting of the idea of overlooking the obvious bullshit claims of politicians, simply because everybody knows all politicians lie.

Which may be why I -- respectfully, me being a truly boring liberal -- disagree with this reaction to Hillary's saying about the claim of the Benghazi relative that Hillary misled her, “She’s wrong. She’s absolutely wrong", and “This was fog. This was complicated":

That was a mistake. Americans don’t believe anything is complicated, really. There’s always a simple answer, even if there isn’t...

Correction: Conservatives don't believe anything is complicated. Democrats tend to me more accepting of complication.

That's why polls show that, despite what Republicans would have you believe, Barack Obama is still a very popular president among the many of us who don't see him as a wimp because he refuses to carpet-bomb Syria or "torture" people, just to show how tough he is.

In fact, it's hard to imagine what Hillary's "simple" answer should have, or even could have been. In fact, her deciding to go with what she sees as the truth (and it's too difficult, at this point, to determine whether she's right) is really the best argument against the Republicans' attempts to over-simplify her role in the so-called Benghazi "scandal".

Truth is good. Whenever possible, it's best to go with truth, if for no other reason than it helps bolster our brand.

So then we are left with this question:

Between the old-style politics of Hillary Clinton, or the straight-talking politics of Bernie Sanders, which would make the better president, given the age we live in?

On the one hand, maybe her boring pragmatic experience of working within the system would be more effective that his head-in-the-clouds idealism, to get done what needs to be done.

On the other hand, if he defeats Donald Trump, it's just possible that The Donald's ex-followers, oddly enough, might become part of Bernie's coalition, especially in regards to trying to undo the damage done to the blue-collar working class by the so-called elites.

While I'm sure I'll be okay with either one of them winning the election -- they both have their plusses -- I also realize that they both have their minuses, and also that, except for my anxiety over the possibility of some Republican winning, I'm not all that enthusiastic this year.

What could possibly make me feel better? Maybe this scenario: One of the candidates chooses Barack Obama as his or her running mate! Then, at some point part way through the first term, the president resigns!

Or maybe, how about both candidates selecting Obama for vice president? Hey, why should the Republicans have all the fun this election year?

Response to In Medias Res Again

(See: Just Above Sunset: In Medias Res Again)

This Thomas Frank guy, with his Trumpsplaining in the Guardian, sort of hits the nail on the head -- especially in knocking all those overused racism charges down to manageable size -- although, still, he leaves off too early, before answering the main question:

If Donald Trump were to win the presidency, what sort of country would he try to transform us into that would satisfy all his followers?

I myself have been, without success, looking for more accurate descriptions of the real people who back Trump, other than that they all believe, deep down in their dark souls, that America just shouldn't have a black president.

Yes, there is the occasional white supremacist who says nice things about Trump, and there are those that surround protestors at his rallies, shouting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" or "USA! USA! USA!", but when the cable networks find someone unafraid of having the words "Trump supporter" beneath their face as they sit on a panel, they are always reasonable and articulate and not at all wild-eyed spigots of unintelligible trash-talk, and when field reporters put Trump supporters on camera, they, too, seem gentle and rational and no more gun-totingly dangerous than your kindly and shy brother-in-law -- who, while he may not be packing heat, he still intends to vote for Donald Trump.

(Why? He says he just feels we need to "break things up.")

In Thomas Frank's view -- we may remember him as the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (which, tellingly, was apparently published in Britain and Australia as "What's the Matter with America?") -- the answer has much to do with the fact that the message Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is is delivering his following is not being heard by the rest of us, that message having to do with trade -- specifically that America's elite Controllers of the Universe have sold the country out with a program of "free trade" that helps big business but hurts the American working family.

Frank is probably right, but while the fact that Trump might be talking actual substance, not trash, may surprisingly elevate him somewhat, this still shouldn't lead us to conclude that he's actually "telling it like it is", or that the Wharton School graduate, with his BS in Economics, even really knows what he's talking about. There's reason to believe he isn't, and doesn't.

For example, there is Trump's common spiel about China's currency manipulation, as found on his website:

President Obama’s Treasury Department has repeatedly refused to brand China a currency manipulator – a move that would force China to stop these unfair practices or face tough countervailing duties that level the playing field.

Maybe our surprise at Trump actually talking specifics about the economy creates a diversion that keeps us from asking whether the Wharton BS in Economics is keeping up with the latest in his chosen field, which we get in the New York Times from Paul Krugman, someone who makes a living as an actual economist:

Five years ago the Trump complaint that Chinese currency manipulation was costing U.S. jobs had some validity — in fact, serious economists were making the same point. But these days China is in big trouble, and is trying to keep the value of its currency up, not down: foreign exchange reserves are plunging in the face of huge capital flight, to the tune of a trillion dollars over the past year. 

Nor is China alone. All around the world, capital is fleeing troubled economies — including, by the way, the euro area, which these days tends to run bigger trade surpluses than China. 

And much of that flight capital is heading for the United States, pushing up the dollar and making our industries less competitive. 

It’s a real problem; U.S. economic fundamentals are fairly strong, but we risk, in effect, importing economic weakness from the rest of the world. But it’s not a problem we can address by lashing out at foreigners we falsely imagine are winning at our expense.

And it's not just about currency. There's also that question of "trade deficits", which an economic naif might think would be bad for a country, but which, as Scott Lincicome explains in late January in The Federalist, a conservative publication, might not be necessarily so:

There really is no sugarcoating it: almost everything that Donald Trump has proposed on U.S.-China trade—for example, during last Thursday night’s GOP debate, in a recent the New York Times interview, and on his website — is wrong. 

Very, very wrong. 

First, the entire premise of Trump’s plan to retaliate against China is erroneous. Trump cites the U.S.-China trade deficit as proof that the dominant Chinese, via pernicious currency manipulation, are taking weak America’s manufacturing jobs, thereby justifying his tariff plans. 

However, as I explained in The Federalist last fall, the U.S. manufacturing sector has been (until the last month or so) setting production (and export!) records, and almost 90 percent of the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010 was caused by productivity gains (robots and computers), rather than import competition. 

In fact, a recent Ball State study found that, “Had we kept 2000-levels of productivity and applied them to 2010-levels of production, we would have required 20.9 million manufacturing workers. Instead, we employed only 12.1 million.” So unless Trump wants to destroy all the robots, those jobs just aren’t coming back, tariff or not.

He then cites Dan Griswold of Cato, the libertarian group:

An examination of the past 30 years of U.S. economic performance offers no evidence that a rising level of imports or growing trade deficits have negatively affected the U.S. economy. 

In fact, since 1980, the U.S. economy has grown more than three times faster during periods when the trade deficit was expanding as a share of GDP compared to periods when it was contracting. Stock market appreciation, manufacturing output, and job growth were all significantly more robust during periods of expanding imports and trade deficits.

Trump has sworn he would add a 35% tariff to Ford products imported from its new plant in Mexico:

Trump said he would call Ford CEO Mark Fields — whom he identified only as “the head of Ford” — to explain the “bad news.” 

“Let me give you the bad news: every car, every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35 percent tax — OK?,” Trump said. “They are going to take away thousands of jobs.” 

In April, Ford said it would add 3,800 jobs in Mexico as part of a $2.5 billion investment — on top of the 11,300 Ford already employs in Mexico.

He may not bring jobs back from Mexico, but for every job he destroys in Mexico, you think there just might be created a Mexican family thinking of heading north, toward us? I suppose that shouldn't be a problem if we build a high enough wall around us.

I don't know that much about free trade, but I do know the idea behind it is to help spread enough income around the world so that everybody, not just sellers but also buyers, will benefit.

And I also sense that it takes time and patience for that sort of thing to take hold. For example, Japan used to have such low labor costs that it helped attract manufacturing there, but after their wages rose enough to lift them out of poverty, the jobs went to Korea, and when Koreans started making enough to be consumers instead of just producers, there was Taiwan and Thailand and China.

Yes, we could stop that in its tracks, if we chose. All we'd have to do is refuse to buy anything from them, which theoretically would keep them having the money to buy anything from us. We could just keep ourselves safe, insulated in our "gated community" nation, behind our huge wall -- which should be okay, since who wants to do business with a bunch of Muslim rapists anyway?

All we need is a strong man to lead us, not some woosie Democrat, like Obama or Hillary or Bernie, who never went to Wharton to get their BS, so they don't know how to make great deals.

Response to Political Disintegration

(See: Just Above Sunset: Political Disintegration)

I disagree with Josh Marshall and anybody else who thinks Mitt Romney's spiel yesterday was feckless, and only helped Donald Trump.

Like Marco Rubio's, Romney's attack was really good, and sometimes in history, when all hope seems lost, we don't find out how effective some Hail Mary move was until afterwards. I personally think Romney, plus Team Fox, plus Team Cruzio, all struggling together, did do some damage -- which I think is fine, as long as it all didn't work too well.

The worst scenario, of course, probably involves Trump winning both the primary and the general election, but almost as bad would be if any Republican beats either of our candidates. But yes, I still hope Trump gets the nomination, since I see him as having the best chance of losing the election, with John Kasich having the best chance of winning. Let's hope the Republicans never figure that out. Still, I'm not yet convinced that Trump isn't secretly involved in some Democratic dirty trick to undo the Republican Party. If so, more power to him, but meanwhile, we need to proceed on the assumption that he's not playing that game.

I'm thinking and hoping this is headed for a three-party standoff in November, assuming whichever Republican faction that becomes the third party can find a way to get itself onto the state ballots. Maybe Democrats in the various states, in a spirit of comity, could help pave the way. In any event, if the establishment is forced out of their party, I don't envision a pathway for them coming back later to reclaim it. (Do you?)

Yet, I do see this rooting for Donald as a highly dangerous game of Hearts, a card game in which a player's objective is to end up with either very few hearts, or no hearts at all -- unless, of course, the player opts to "shoot-the-moon":

"Shooting the moon" ... is a very common scoring variant. If one player takes all the penalty cards on one deal, that player's score remains unchanged, while 26 penalty points are added to the scores of each of the other players. ... 

Attempting to shoot the moon is often a risky strategy, as failure to capture every single penalty card will result in the remaining penalty points (as many as 25) being added to one's score.

Which is to say, if we take the chance and succeed in this venture, we win big. On the other hand, if we try for it and fail, the whole country loses the United States of America.

Response to Stopping the Orange-Haired Frankenstein

(See: Just Above Sunset: Stopping the Orange-Haired Frankenstein)

Every now and then, I feel I have to express what many of us liberal Democrats are feeling right now, which is an almost equal mixture of glee and chagrin -- glee over all this enfeebling combat amongst Republicans, but chagrin for our country, fully realizing for the first time that so many of us, just to spitefully shit-can America because it won't give them their way, would vote to make Mussolini its president.

A few observations to think about:

First of all, there's that question of the value of Mitt Romney injecting himself into this election:

Do you really think those Trump fans will listen to a bit of scolding from the most spectacular failure of the Republican establishment in recent memory?

Okay, but Trump fans need to ask themselves, was Romney's failure really all that spectacular? The popular vote margin was only about three-and-a-half million votes out of about 122-million cast -- 51% to 48% -- so Obama didn't really beat him in a huge landslide.

But also, just as Donald Trump will (probably) be this time, Mitt Romney was the strongest Republican and was the choice of most Republican voters last time around, so the Trumpeteers should try not to bring the guy down too much.

On CNN this morning, I heard another one of those ubiquitous attractive Trump-babes opining that Romney should just stay out of it and keep his preferences to himself, since this is a democracy and people can vote for whoever they want -- apparently not realizing that this advice would not only also apply to newly-confirmed Trump-acolyte Chris Christie, but also to herself.

As for other Republicans funding this whole anti-Trump project:

“If you did that I think there’d be deep-seated resentment at a group of wealthy donors telling people what to do,” [longtime Republican donor Fred] Malek said in a recent interview.

That may be true, but is it really true that Trump voters dislike the power of big wealthy donors in elections, as if Trump isn't one of those himself?

But a suggestion worth considering:

Maybe the Our Principles PAC should ask for donations from small donors as well? In that way, you might even get voters crossing the aisle to help out. After all, Trump is not just a Republican problem, he's an American problem.

And by the way, speaking of Trump "funding his own campaign"? According to Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post, that's just another of his fabrications:

Trump keeps saying that unlike his rivals, he’s paying for his own presidential campaign, but that’s largely false. 

At the start of his campaign, he loaned his political operation $1.8 million. As of Oct. 1, he had given his campaign an additional $104,829.27 — but he had also received $3.9 million from donors, which accounted for the vast majority of the $5.8 million his campaign had taken in by then. His campaign website features a prominent “donate” button on its homepage. Trump has spent $5.4 million, and interestingly, about one-quarter of his spending has gone to Trump-owned entities (mainly his private jet company). 

In January, Trump launched an ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, saying he planned to spend $2 million. He also claimed that his campaign was $35 million to $40 million below budget. Ultimately, all of his spending — and where the money came from — will have to be disclosed in campaign finance reports. The odds are his personal share of the spending will be less than 50 percent.

So yes, it turns out he does loan his campaign lots of money, but that only accounts for less than half of its funding. Also, why would you say you self-fund, at the same time putting, not just one, but actually two "donate" buttons on your website?

(And also by the way, although he may not actually be funding his own campaign, because he spends so much of the donations on his own companies -- such as paying himself to fly around in his own jet -- he could actually, at least theoretically, make a profit on running for office! Talk about being a wheeler-dealer!)

But why would he even brag that he's self-funded? Not that it really matters, but I would think Bernie's fundraising position is best of all the candidates -- he doesn't have a PAC like Hillary, and he's not some billionaire on a self-indulgent vanity-trip like Trump, but like NPR, he's funded by the small donations that come from a public that believes in him.

And one more thing: Politico cites economists' worries about President Trump:

And slapping massive tariffs on goods from Mexico and China could dramatically increase prices for U.S. consumers and create destabilizing trade wars.

Not to mention that slapping massive tariffs on goods from Mexico, presumably to "pay for the wall", might cause even more massive unemployment in Mexico, driving many would-be workers down there back toward their northern border-- something, by the way, that they are not really doing under Obama.

Response to Getting Ugly Out There

(See: Just Above Sunset: Getting Ugly Out There)

First, there's this scuffle between a TIME photographer and the Secret Service agent at a Trump rally in Virginia:

Christopher Morris, a photographer for TIME magazine, was attempting to leave the press section to photograph the Black Lives Matter protesters when he was “thrown to the ground in a choke hold,” TIME said, by a Secret Service agent.

And secondly, there's that Trump rally in Valdosta last night:

About 30 black students who were standing silently at the top of the bleachers at Donald Trump’s rally here Monday night were escorted out by Secret Service agents who said the presidential candidate had requested their removal before he began speaking. ... 

“We didn’t plan to do anything,” said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was among the Valdosta State University students who was removed. “They said, ‘This is Trump’s property; it’s a private event.’ But I paid my tuition to be here.”

What I really find disturbing is that nobody seems to be questioning the role of Secret Service agents in Trump's campaign.

I remember back in 1968, shortly after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, when it was first decided to assign them to presidential candidates, but it was simply to protect the candidate himself, not to act as ushers or security at his campaign appearances -- something Donald Trump can afford to pay for himself without resorting to the "public teat".

But before going on, I must admit I looked further into these two incidents, and found that USA Today has since updated its story with the information that the "escorts" in Valdosta were not Secret Service, but apparently private security hired by the "host committee", which was presumably "hosting" Trump's visit, along with help of the Valdosta police.

But according to TIME Magazine, the photographer incident, apparently, did involve USSS agents:

Unlike other presidential campaigns, which generally allow reporters and photographers to move around at events, Trump has a strict policy requiring reporters and cameramen to stay inside a gated area, which the candidate often singles out for ridicule during his speeches. 

The entrance to the penned area is generally monitored by the Secret Service detail, which also screens attendees at his events and personally protects the candidate.

The TIME photographer, Chris Morris, ordinarily works at the White House:

“I’ve worked for nine years at the White House and have never had an altercation with the Secret Service,” Morris says in a statement. “What happened today was very unfortunate and unexpected. The rules at Trump events are significantly stricter than other campaigns and make it very difficult to work as a photographer, as many others have pointed out before me. I regret my role in the confrontation, but the agent’s response was disproportionate and unnecessarily violent. I hope this incident helps call attention to the challenges of press access.”

In fact, TIME admits that Morris...

...stepped out of the press pen to photograph a Black Lives Matter protest that interrupted the speech. A video shows that Morris swore at a Secret Service agent who tried to move Morris back into the pen. A separate video of the event shows that the agent then grabbed Morris’ neck with both hands and threw him into a table and onto the ground.

I may be wrong, but I bet the unnamed agent will be ruled out of line after his bosses look into the incident, but my question is, is anybody else looking into USSS agents "moonlighting" as security for political candidate campaigns?

Response to After Nevada

(See Just Above Sunset: After Nevada)

Once again, to all those Republicans who accuse Donald Trump of being a closet liberal, I have to answer, Hey, I'm a liberal! If Trump is such a liberal, how come I'm not thinking of voting for him?

The number-one main reason I'm not voting for him is because I don't like bullies. And, in fact, that Trump is a bully proves he's not a liberal. Liberals not only aren't bullies, they don't even like bullies; conservatives do, because conservatives worship "strength" (or the appearance of it) and despise "weakness" (or the appearance of it), which is why Donald Trump, bottom line, is a conservative who is selling himself to conservative voters.

And what is it about these Trump conservatives?

These aren’t gullible people. They are mutants – test an atomic bomb and you get those – the premise of all those Japanese Godzilla movies. You get monsters, and Donald Trump was the bomb, dropped in Nevada, just like old times.

Okay, there is something to them being mutant monsters, but monsters made in the image of their bomb, Donald Trump. The point being, just as in those Japanese movies about nuclear-created monsters, Trump and his monstrous followers not only can't be killed off by dropping another atomic bomb on them, as in Charles Cooke's "Anti-Trump Manhattan Project", they are all actually made stronger by doing that. 

One major reason Trump supporters like him is that so many other people don't. In fact, Trump supporters have very little use for the people that other people do like -- namby-pamby panty-waists who all talk the language of political correctness, afraid to offend, afraid to stand for anything, afraid to fight, afraid to show strength. Listen again to Sean Illing in Salon:

A majority of Americans appear wholly uninterested in the actual business of government; they don’t understand it and don’t want to. They have vague feelings about undefined issues and they surrender their votes on emotional grounds to whoever approximates their rage. ...

Trump’s wager was simple: Pretend to be stupid and angry because that’s what stupid and angry people like. He’s held up a mirror to the country, shown us how blind and apish we are. He knew how undiscerning the populace would be, how little they cared about details and facts.

Whether or not Illing is right about Trump "pretending" to be stupid, or that a "majority of Americans ... don’t understand ... and don’t want to", that seems to have nailed the Trump gang, except maybe that "stupid" part. I know some Trump supporters and none of them are stupid, but they sense something wrong with the country and they don't know why, but seem to think it can be put right by just electing some tough guy who cuts through the smokescreen put up by government and all these jaded elected officials who run it.

People who like Trump think this country is in a mess. I could tell them in explicit detail, with facts and figures and charts and graphs and lots of testimonials from experts, that this country is not in a mess, but all they'd get from all of that is that I'm one of those people who doesn't understand what a mess this country is in.

Their logic is bullet-proof and bomb-proof because Donald Trump is the standard by which the legitimacy of all anti-Donald-Trump criticism will be judged. If God himself were to expose Donald Trump as a phony, these people would then look down their noses at God and declare Him a loser, since he's obviously one of the losers who got the country into this mess.

What should be done about Trump?

Probably everything, including that Manhattan Project, since the goal is not really to chip away at his supporters (which I would bet is largely hopeless at this point) but to try to talk folks who have not yet given up on America out of defecting to his side.

But to take the longer view, those Republicans and Democrats (and okay, Independents) who take the political health of the republic seriously have to be concerned about what this Trumpzilla phenomenon means to our future.

Maybe the fact that there are so many Americans who "don’t understand it and don’t want to" can no longer be ignored, and maybe these previously-disinterested non-participants now taking an active part in the electoral process could have the disastrous effect of torpedoing the ship of state. If these people now insist on joining us in governance, maybe we need to somehow do a better job of weeding out the willful ignoramuses. After all, do you really believe the Founders would intentionally create a self-governing "dunceocracy", populated by dunces who "don’t understand ... and don’t want to"?

Although, yes, I still hope Trump becomes the GOP nominee.

And yes, I hear all those "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" arguments about how he could somehow become our next president, but because I still believe in the basic intelligence and righteous integrity of the majority of Americans, I am willing to take the chance that either of the two Democrats could beat him.

Response to Dead Stop

(See: Just Above Sunset: Dead Stop)

Once again, Republicans are trying to shut down the government. They're always looking for ways of doing that, with it usually backfiring on them, although owing to possible "Republican Bullshit Fatigue" (RBF) among the public, maybe this time they'll get away with it.

The most on-point point made in the column today was in the last paragraph:

This had to get much worse ... because of the inherently unstable nature of our system, where vague “norms” held things together, not the structure of government itself. Norms change. It all falls apart. The Constitution is of no help at all.

Nobody talks much anymore about those extra-constitutional, bi-partisan "norms" that those with seniority -- the old guard that's been around long enough to know -- would pass on to the congressional newcomers, the norms that used to keep the government chugging along, such as, "We need to let the president nominate someone of his own school of thought, because later, when it's our turn, they'll afford our president the same courtesy." What went without saying was that, if we don't, then this rickety government that our school kids are taught is venerable and unassailable, loses all the glue that holds it together.

When all those norms are no longer passed on, the whole machine grinds to a halt. But isn't that what the Republicans have been threatening to do all along?

Scalia died. The whole thing comes to a dead stop. Now what?

"Now what?" Ask that late Spanish political scientist Juan Linz, who in his essay, The Perils of Presidentialism back in 1990, made the point that a nation's survival is not all about a constitution:

In the final analysis, all regimes, however wisely designed, must depend for their preservation upon the support of society at large -- its major forces, groups, and institutions. They rely, therefore, on a public consensus which recognizes as legitimate authority only that power which is acquired through lawful and democratic means. They depend also on the ability of their leaders to govern, to inspire trust, to respect the limits of their power, and to reach an adequate degree of consensus. 

Although these qualities are most needed in a presidential system, it is precisely there that they are most difficult to achieve. Heavy reliance on the personal qualities of a political leader -- on the virtue of a statesman, if you will -- is a risky course, for one never knows if such a man can be found to fill the presidential office.

With Mitch McConnell having persuaded every member of his Judiciary Committee to pledge in writing that the Constitution will be ignored if the president attempts to do what it instructs him to do, McConnell may be herding the nation's angry malcontents -- particularly those who have more faith in the dubiously vague promises of Donald Trump than in a two-hundred-twenty-seven year old working political system that they feel has given them nothing worth preserving -- into a governance crisis in which, as Alan notes, the Constitution will be of no help at all.

First, the Republicans refuse to confirm a Democratic presidential nominee, then the Democrats refuse to confirm a Republican's, and soon, we have no working Supreme Court, and because the Constitution says nothing about how to fix that, we are left with just two branches, neither of which will work with the other. 

So then what? Without a working government to prevent it, maybe we just fight each other?

Maybe it's time our side started seriously reconsidering learning how to shoot guns.

Response to While We Were Sleeping

(See: Just Above Sunset: While We Were Sleeping)

I really liked reading Seth Stevenson in Slate, about hanging around the Jeb Bush campaign last Monday, the day Jeb invited his brother, "W", to introduce him at his rally in Charleston:

I saw people leaving once Dubya was done, and after it became clear that Laura Bush, also sitting on stage, wouldn’t be speaking. They stepped on discarded “Jeb!” placards as they headed for the exits.

And so two days later, after "addressing a modest gathering inside a gazebo" at a country club -- inside a gazebo! -- someone approached him:

“I loved your brother. Can you be in that category?” inquired an older man, rather doubtfully. “Can you be a sumbitch?” 

“I will be tough. I will be resolute. I will be firm. I will be clear. I will be determined,” Jeb answered. ... It was the least sumbitchy thing you ever saw in your life.

Oh, that's great.

So it turns out, after all, that the real problem with Jeb Bush isn't that he would end up being his brother, it's that he wouldn't!

To further understand what I'm about to say, you may want to read David Axelrod's "The Obama Theory of Trump" in the New York Times in late January, about what he told Barack Obama back in 2006 about why Obama just might win if he ran for president:

Open-seat presidential elections are shaped by perceptions of the style and personality of the outgoing incumbent. Voters rarely seek the replica of what they have. They almost always seek the remedy, the candidate who has the personal qualities the public finds lacking in the departing executive. 

A young, energetic John F. Kennedy succeeded the grandfatherly, somnolent Dwight D. Eisenhower, promising “a new generation of leadership.” In a slight variation, a puritanical Jimmy Carter, offering “a government as good as its people,” defeated the unelected incumbent Gerald R. Ford, who bore the burden of the morally bankrupt Nixon era. 

Even George H.W. Bush, running to succeed the popular and larger-than-life Ronald Reagan, subtly made a virtue of his own lack of charisma and edge. 

The pattern followed in 2008, as Mr. Bush’s son completed his final term in office. 

“The most influential politician in 2008 won’t be on the ballot,” I wrote to Senator Obama in 2006. “His name is George W. Bush.”

So, in fact, Stevenson may have struck on that secret formula we've all been looking for, which is an understanding of what the Republican base voter is looking for.

He's not looking for an outsider or some way to shake up Washington, he's looking for the exact opposite of Barack Obama -- someone who's not too bright; someone without actual ideas, nor a wonky bone in his body; someone not at all gracious or nice or adept at diplomacy; and someone who doesn't give a shit what any person or group or organization or country thinks or says about him being totally incompetent at doing absolutely anything useful for the planet.

To sum it up -- for lack of a better term -- they're simply looking for a sumbitch! And the bigger the sumbitch, the better!

This antichrist will probably get the Republican nomination, and whoever the Democrats choose to run against him in the general election will look, in contrast, like the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Response to Replacement Theory

(See: Just Above Sunset: Replacement Theory)

One thing I haven't heard discussed anywhere in the recent shitstorm concerning the proposition that a "lame duck" president -- allegedly, one who comes within a year of leaving office -- should stop being president, is the evolving meaning of the term "lame duck". Here's how my computer's onboard dictionary defines it:

lame duck |ˈˌleɪm ˈdək|
noun  

an official (esp. the president), in the final period of office, after the election of a successor

That, at least, is what it used to mean back when Marco Rubio was in elementary school.

In fact, I myself am old enough to remember when pundits, back when they were called "commentators", started commenting ironically on the fact that, although the election was months and even years away, some president started acting as if he were a lame-duck earlier and earlier, partly because a lot of people stopped listening to him. And the next thing I knew, they were doing away with the "as-if".

But here's Wikipedia on the concept of lame-duckism in American politics:

In U.S. politics, the period between (presidential and congressional) elections in November and the inauguration of officials early in the following year is commonly called the lame duck period. In regard to the presidency, a president is a lame-duck after a successor has been elected, and during this time the outgoing president and president-elect usually embark on a transition of power. ... 

A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen as being a lame duck from early in the second term, because presidents are barred from contesting a term four years later, and is thus freer to take politically unpopular action. Nonetheless, as the de facto leader of his or her political party, the president's actions affect how the party performs in the midterm elections two years into the second term, and, to some extent, the success of that party's nominee in the next presidential election four years in the future. 

For this reason, it can be argued that a president in his second term is not a lame duck at all, because this increased freedom makes him more powerful than he was in his first term. 

The term "lame duck President" traditionally is reserved for a President who is serving out the remainder of his term after having been defeated for re-election. In this sense, the following Presidents in the twentieth century were lame ducks: William Howard Taft, who was defeated for re-election in 1912; Herbert Hoover, who was defeated for re-election in 1932; Gerald R. Ford, who was defeated in 1976; Jimmy Carter, who was defeated for re-election in 1980; and George H. W. Bush, who was defeated for re-election in 1992.

So technically speaking, since Obama won't be defeated, given that he's not even running, not only is he not really a lame duck right now, he won't really even become a lame duck president on the day after election day, about nine months from now.

And while I'm here, I should say something about the contributions of Miguel Estrada and Benjamin Wittes to the discussion:

Here’s a simple piece of advice for anyone confused by the partisan politics of replacing Justice Antonin Scalia: Assume that anyone who claims to be acting out of a pristine sense of civic principle is being dishonest. 

We have both argued for a world in which judicial nominees receive prompt hearings and up-and-down votes based solely on their objective qualifications — education, experience and temperament. But that has not been our world for at least two decades. The savvy citizen should recognize as much and heavily discount anyone who speaks in the language of principle about the rules or norms that do or should govern the treatment of either a judicial nominee or the president who sends that nominee to the Senate. 

As recent history demonstrates, the only rule that governs the confirmation process is the law of the jungle: There are no rules. There is no point in pretending otherwise, as much as many of us wish it were not so. ... 

Republicans and Democrats put the blame on the other for the complete abandonment of rules and norms in the judicial confirmation process. Both are being insincere — whitewashing their conduct over a long period of time while complaining bitterly about the very same conduct on the part of the other side. Both have chosen, in increments of one-upmanship, to replace a common law of judicial nominations that was based on certain norms with one based on power politics alone. 

Today, there is no principle and no norm in the judicial nominations process that either side would not violate itself and simultaneously demand the other side observe as a matter of decency and inter-branch comity.

Yeah. But also, no.

The "yeah" part is that, yes, shit does happen. Senator Obama once backed a filibuster, although he later said he regretted doing so. Even I have found myself arguing that, if Republicans pull this stuff on us, we should threaten to later do the same to them -- that is, vow to filibuster every nomination of a Republican president until a Democratic one comes along. After all, where in the Constitution does it say we can't create chaos?

But the "no" part is that the founders couldn't write such a comprehensive document that covered every single detail, from how long a senate dominated by one party can stall confirming a nominee of the other, to exactly how many times a day the senators should take bathroom breaks. In truth, the founders didn't even anticipate there being any political parties in America, much less two of them constantly co-conspiring on ways to torpedo getting anything done.

The founders left it up to us to work out the details on how to make happen the things that need to happen. Yes, there's nothing in our Constitution that dictates that certain procedures happen a certain way, or even that they happen at all, but throughout our history, when we, the people, noticed a flaw in the Constitution, we sent out a patch. When the presidential election of 1800 demonstrated that future elections could all too easily end up in unresolvable ties, we immediately fixed it by amending the constitution. When we finally realized that our definition of "people" shouldn't exclude non-whites and non-males, we fixed it.

And so, yes, both sides get away with using power politics when they can, but there's a difference between the way things do work and the way they should work; otherwise, we'd never even know that we need to fix the system when it's broke.

But whenever we find ourselves falling into the trap of claiming that, if one party does something wrong, the other side obviously must do it, too, we need to stop ourselves. After all, as has recently been pointed out, while most Republicans seemed to get on Chief Justice Roberts' case for twice refusing to kill Obamacare, you didn't see Democrats likewise go nuts and blame Justices Brewer and Ginsburg for voting with the majority on not forcing the states to expand Medicaid.

My point is, when someone argues on principle, you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that they are "being dishonest"; otherwise, you would not see the occasional conservative (such as David Brooks, on NPR on Friday) agreeing with the rest of us who believe that when a vacancy comes up on the Supreme Court, the president -- no matter how far we are away from his being out of office -- should nominate a replacement, and the senate should advise and consent.

Response to Hillary's Hero

(See: Just Above Sunset: Hillary's Hero)

I haven't always had a problem with Henry Kissinger.

I remember the first time I became aware of him as a foreign policy expert, some time in mid-1968, reading an article by him in one of those thick foreign affairs journals that had no pictures. I knew he was some Harvard professor that I had never heard of, but he seemed to make such good sense. He seemed like the kind of intelligent guy who could get us out of Vietnam.

And then I learned he had somehow attached himself to presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller, which disappointed me as a Democrat -- not wanting all them smarts to go to waste, I wondered if it was too late for him to hook up instead with some Democrat, like Gene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy -- but the next thing I knew, Rockefeller was out of the race and Kissinger had glommed onto Nixon.

Flash forward to many years later, I remember being annoyed that Nixon was promising voters he had a "secret plan" to end that stupid war that I had begun to think would be endless, and sure enough, even after he was elected, his secret remained a secret. And finally, after having successfully delayed the war's end with quarrels over the shape of the peace-talks table in Paris, war wagers Henry Kissinger of the United States and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam were prematurely awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I say "prematurely" because they won for negotiating a settlement that never took effect.

So what I primarily remember Kissinger for was being this brilliant man who was widely-respected for getting good things done, but who in fact, had allowed maybe a million or so Vietnamese and 50-thousand or so Americans to end up dead, by helping drag out the Vietnam War unnecessarily, seemingly to make it look like we didn't fight it in vain. The truth is, we did, and if he was so smart, he should have made sure that we hadn't.

But here's an even more damning picture of Kissinger's vaunted career, from an article by NYU history professor Greg Granin in The Nation, on February 5th:

Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. 

He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the US’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. ... 

A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. 

Pull but one string from the current tangle of today’s multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran?  “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf?  Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.

So wait! Shouldn't we all be noting the irony of a self-described "progressive Democrat who can get things done" who happens to be running for the Democratic nomination for president, so closely associating herself with the most prominent Republican diplomat in American history -- while, incidentally, Kissinger's name has probably not been mentioned once by all those innumerable Republican candidates in just so many of their debates?

Yes, but, you might ask, how did she get to this place?

One possible answer, although not the definitive one, is that Hillary Clinton started out in life as a Republican. Her parents were Conservative Republicans, and she herself, at one point, did volunteer for Barry Goldwater. This is not to say she still is a Conservative, but I'm willing to bet much of her that's-just-the-way-it-is pragmatism -- much more pragmatic than your average progressive Democrat, I would think -- can be traced back to her political beginnings.

Just as one could imagine Kissinger's "realpolitik" -- a political worldview he shared with Otto von Bismarck, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong -- was to the "idealist" views of those of us who opposed the Vietnam War, so was Hillary Clinton's own views to those of Barack Obama in 2008:

“Now, I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified,'” Clinton said to laughter of the crowd. 

“The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said dryly as the crowd erupted. 

“Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be,” Clinton continued. “You are not going to wave a magic wand to make special interests disappear.”

You've "just lived a little long", you say? You mean like Bernie Sanders?

Not that Hillary wasn't prescient about the Republican brick wall President Obama was headed for, but, first of all, she lost that election, and second of all, in winning it, Barack Obama revived hope among the hopeless in America, at least for just a little while.

And just for a few years under Obama, some good "idealistic" things happened -- near universal healthcare; a growing American economy that recovered without resorting to the crippling (Republican) austerity policies seen in the slump experienced in Europe; falling unemployment and a shrinking deficit; improved relations with Cuba; gays allowed to marry and serve in the military without being hounded out; talking with Iran, which led to a deal to shut down their nukes program; persuading Assad to surrender his chemical weapons, and getting Putin to help; and judicious participation in Syria, breaking us of the nasty habit of stumbling into every war that crops up -- all good things that wouldn't have taken place had a Republican without vision been in the White House during those years, and, one might presume, had Hillary beaten Obama to the Democratic nomination in 2008.

While I was pleased to see Obama include Hillary in his administration, I had hoped her time there might inform her of the power and significance of idealism and dreams, but I'm not seeing much, if any, of that today in her attacks on Bernie Sanders. Although maybe she learned nothing from Obama, it's also possible that her own predisposition toward realpolitik told her to just hang tough until come the day she gets a chance to do things her way, and at the same time, ironically, doing it under the pretense of adopting the Obama mantle.

So yeah, while there are days when I urge myself to forget about casting that protest vote for Bernie in a few weeks from now, I'm not quite ready to abandon my "idealism" yet and vote for Kissinger's pal, Hillary. While "reality" is cool, too much "realism" can put you on a slippery slope to outright evil, assuming you believe in that sort of thing. It's better to temper it with a healthy dash of unrealism:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? ~ Robert Browning.

That's a lesson I'm still hoping Hillary can learn.

Not likely? Okay, but a guy can dream, can't he?