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?

Response to Breaking the Spell

(See: Just Above Sunset: Breaking the Spell)

Slate’s Elias Isquith, on Marco Rubio's age:

As they once said of that cherubic whippersnapper Al Gore, Rubio is an older person’s idea of a young person.

Yes, but that can work both ways.

Being someone who has gone through his whole life looking younger than he is (I'm 71, but a few weeks ago, someone guessed I was in my 50s), I tell people it's a good-news/bad-news story; the good news is that I don't look my age, but the bad news is that I am.

With Marco, this works against him. He's 44, but I know plenty of people, especially those "of a certain age", who think he looks too young to be president. And lack of longevity may help explain his debate screwup: The older you get, the better chance that you will have learned tricks to strategize around your mental shortcomings.

Of course, having learned the lesson from Trump -- never apologize, and for godsakes never backtrack -- Rubio's response to his robotic repetition the next day was predictable:

“It’s what I believe and it’s what I’m going to continue to say, because it happens to be one of the main reasons why I am running.”

That's sort of the same lesson I learned being an amateur jazz-guitar jammer; if you hit a wrong note, the trick is to repeat the mistake one or two more times, in hopes the audience will think you did it on purpose. After all, this is jazz! People come to expect weird sounds now and then! It might even earn you praise as an innovative improviser.

But here's one big problem with Rubio trying that same trick:

The short version of what Rubio says -- that we need to stop thinking Obama doesn't know what he's doing because he does -- is something that most of us Democrats, including Obama, can sign on to, which makes it, in effect, Rubio's endorsement of Obama. That would be nice for Democrats if Obama were running for president, but he's not. You'd think Rubio would want to concentrate his admonitions on the people he's actually competing with for the office, especially if he's planning on making some repeated phrase the centerpiece of his campaign.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is old enough (69) to have learned a few workarounds to his not knowing the first thing about doing the job he's aspiring to, many of which are being wrong about so many of his claims ("His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth, okay?", "If you look at the statistics, of ... the illegal immigrants — if you look at the statistics on rape, on crime, on everything, coming in illegally to the country, they're mind-boggling", et al) that nobody bothers fact-checking his statements anymore.

If anyone has been looking into Trump's latest whopper regarding the Iowa caucuses, I've missed it. Here he was in Arkansas on Wednesday of last week, two days after Iowa:

“Actually, I think I came in first,” he told a cheering crowd of more than 11,500 people who packed into Barton Coliseum to hear him. 

Mr. Trump, who placed second in Iowa, was continuing a theme he had been unspooling over the previous 24 hours — that in his view, Senator Ted Cruz, who won Monday’s caucuses, had in fact stolen the election. 

Mr. Cruz was declared the winner, with 27.6 percent of the vote; Mr. Trump came in second, with 24.3 percent.

I haven't heard estimates of exactly how many Carson voters were tricked into going over to Cruz, but I'm willing to bet Trump doesn't know either. But I do think it's significant that, in quitting Carson, very few if any of them thought to switch to Trump. He may not think that's worth noting, but I do.

But here's Trump complaining about the attention Rubio got after Iowa:

"In fact, you would have thought he had won. I came in second, he came in third, and his is a tremendous victory and mine’s not. 

“It’s interesting that Marco came in third place and it’s one of the great victories in the history of politics. They said, ‘No, no, his is, but yours isn’t.' And I said, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful.' I didn’t understand that.”

Do you seriously not understand?

Okay, it's all about expectations, Don. You were expected to win it, but you got beat. Rubio, who many had hoped would be a possible alternative to you and Cruz, and had been hanging down among the also-rans, somewhat surprisingly ended up in a virtual tie with you for second place!

Get it yet? You need to figure out this politics stuff soon if you have any hopes of competing in the general election, much less being a successful president. (Shutter.)

But also:

Trump then argued that the gap between his results and Rubio is much wider than widely acknowledged. 

“People said Rubio was right next to me,” he said. "Well, he was more than 2,000 votes away. That’s a lot of votes. 

“Don’t forget, in the history of Iowa, I got the most votes, other than one person, Ted. ...  I got a tremendous amount of votes, nobody came close.”

Yeah, you got the most votes -- "other than one person", Ted Cruz -- who got more. "Nobody came close" to your votes? How about Marco Rubio?

For a better perspective on actually how far ahead of Marco and behind Ted you ended up, here are the actual numbers:

• Cruz 
• votes:  51,666    percent: 28%     delegates: 8   
• Trump  
• votes: 45,427     percent: 24%     delegates: 7   
• Rubio 
• votes: 43,165     percent: 23%     delegates: 7

So by my figuring, you were 2,262 votes ahead of Rubio -- big whoop! -- but you were 6,239 behind Cruz! Almost three times as many! If 2,000 is "a lot of votes", then 6,000 is "a lot of votes", times three! You and Rubio tied on delegates; Cruz got more.

But here's the thing: With fingers crossed, I still think I want Trump to beat Rubio to the GOP nomination.

Yes, I realize the risk of this venomous lounge-lizard becoming our president, it's just that Rubio gives the appearance of being more normal than Trump, and maybe even Ted Cruz, which means he probably has a better chance to beat either Hillary or Bernie, whereas I'm betting that most of America is more aware of the threat from Trump.

Man, choosing a president in this country is getting to be like tap dancing on the edge of a cliff.

Response to After Iowa

(See: Just Above Sunset: After Iowa)

If it's not one thing, it's another. First, you got your Republicans, and then your Democrats.

First, the Republicans:

As we started watching the goings-on in Iowa last night, my wife and I found ourselves rooting for Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee, figuring he's probably more beatable than the rest.

Still, we were glad to see somebody stop the unstoppable Trump, yet sorry to see that the somebody was Ted Cruz.

Then again, we're confident that Cruz will eventually lose steam, too -- but sorry to see it will probably be to Marco Rubio.

Yipes! Damn, this gets confusing. I thought I'd be glad to see the voting finally start -- and believe me, I am! -- but It's starting to occur to me that it's not going to be fun anymore.

Then, the Democrats:

I think the best observation I heard from a pundit last night came from someone I can't even remember, although I'm pretty sure it came from Jake Tapper on CNN, who said he heard from someone earlier in the evening who expected to eventually be voting for Hillary, but in the meantime was voting for Bernie, "just to annoy her."

That little tidbit not only summed up the whole absurdity of the day, it totally jibed with my own feelings.

Even though I know intellectually that she, of all the candidates of both parties, is the best qualified to be president, she just doesn't impress me. Yes, she's the best of the bunch, but let's face it, look who she's up against!

It has nothing to do with whether I can "trust" her or whatever we're supposed to feel from her behavior in those GOP-driven "issues" concerning "Benghazi" and her emails, it's really more about her always seeming to be trying too hard not to be seen as trying too hard.

For one thing, she smiles too much! Nobody walks around every day smiling that much, always seeming to be pleasantly surprised about something. And when she's not smiling, she always seems to be shouting something! I hope, if she's elected president, she learns how to tone all that down, and just goes ahead and does the goddam job.

Not that Bernie is perfect, of course. I got this email from him, sent out moments after midnight last night:

Rick -- Tonight we accomplished what the corporate media and political establishment once believed was impossible...

Never mind what we all accomplished, since you know what that was, but at the end, he signed off...

On to New Hampshire. 

In solidarity, 

Bernie Sanders 

CONTRIBUTE $50 

Paid for by Bernie 2016  (not the billionaires)

Not to get nit-picky, by the way, but I half expected there to be an exclamation mark after "On to New Hampshire!", but the fact that there actually wasn't one pleased me, since it actually captures his spirit of understatement, unique among politicians, which is a large part of his charm.

And yes, the reason he's sending me emails is because, a while back, I actually sent some money to him -- partly just to "annoy" Hillary, who I think has been insufficiently attentive to the main issues that concern Bernie, which include what we have been calling "inequality" (although it's what I prefer to call "economy out of balance" -- which is bad for everybody, rich and poor) and campaign financing reform, and maybe even having another try at "Medicare For All" -- on that last one, figuring, the worst that can happen if it fails is we just keep Obamacare the way it is.

I guess my problem with Bernie is that he keeps sounding like an old-time out-of-touch I.F. Stone-type lefty from the 1950s, with workers standing "in solidarity" in a "revolution" against "the billionaires". That "In solidarity" conjures up images of posters showing heroic workers, all with their fists in the air. Sorry, I just don't relate.

But also, while much of his schtick is his ability to talk frankly, off the cuff and with refreshing candor, we also very quickly notice him then lapsing into that one-note-johnny humdrum of political stump-speech talk, reminding us once again that...

...in our country today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent and when the 20 richest people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans ... the system is rigged when the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, while 58 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent.

And I'm thinking, "Wait. He says the top what percent own the bottom how much?" Not that I disagree or think it's unimportant, it's just that whenever my ears hear that, they tend to involuntarily glaze over. Still, at least he's not talking about carpet bombing illegal immigrants or whatever it is Carly Fiorina is always trying to say about the Sixth Fleet.

And for another thing, there's that swipe at "corporate media", which implies that mainstream-media journalists are phonies and hacks, toiling at serving their corporate masters, who are pushing the agenda of "the man".

Having spent much of my life working for "corporate media" -- at NBC and AP and CNN, among others -- I can tell you I saw it all up close, and I saw that the bosses would not get away with calling the shots on what news to cover or how to cover it in a way that would help the corporate owners, nor was there so-called "self-censorship" in the sense that editors and reporters "know what not to do" if they wanted to keep their jobs. In most cases, in fact, journalists being an overly-proud bunch, the bosses knew that if they had tried that, there would have been mass resignations.

But I guess I still plan on voting for Bernie in the March 1st Georgia primary -- although probably not if I suspect that a vote for Bernie will, in any way, damage the chances of Hillary, who really is, in the long run, I am loath to admit, the better man for the job.

Response to Missing Quite a Lot

(See: Just Above Sunset: Missing Quite a Lot)

If you, as I do, are tempted to ask how it is that all these newbie candidates keep bringing up that bit about our military forces having shrunk since 1916 -- the same thing that Romney kept bringing up back in 2012, and which Obama finally got a chance to answer, face-to-face ...

“You mention the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets,” Obama said during the final presidential debate. “We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

... it's probably because all these current Republicans have, so far, been discussing all this stuff among themselves, where there's been nobody in the discussion with the incentive to set the record straight. That should change, of course, once some Democrat gets on the stage.

It's worth remembering, by the way, that falsely claiming the current administration is not keeping us safe is an old trick in presidential elections, and not always used just by Republicans:

The missile gap was the Cold War term used in the US for the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with its own. This gap in the ballistic missile arsenals only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. ... Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional. 

John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign, in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. It was later learned that Kennedy was apprised of the actual situation during the campaign, which has led scholars to question what the (future) president knew and when he knew it. There has been some speculation that he was aware of the illusory nature of the missile gap from the start, and was using it solely as a political tool, an example of policy by press release.

But, of course, all this ill-informed Republican tough-talk on who we would be "bombing the shit out of", and how, if they were president -- a question that is being totally ignored on the Democratic side -- helps highlight the main difference in what the candidates on each side are looking to convey to voters. In general terms, the Republicans are trying to impress "toughness", while the Democrats are focussing on "smartness". It's "I-may-not-be-smart-but-I'm-tough" versus "I-may-not-be-tough-but-I'm-smart".

But it's actually more than that. While one's intelligence (assuming one has it) can be directly demonstrated in a campaign setting, toughness can only be hinted at.

Therefore, Republicans must constantly demonstrate their dominance over somebody -- especially their opponents, but not necessarily just opponents -- with symbolic gestures, such as humiliating their fellow candidates on Twitter, while Democrats ask voters to support them because, if elected, they will govern with the same intelligence they've been demonstrating throughout the campaign. It's all form versus function, in the sense that you can only promise you'll do something mean to our "enemies" if you win, or else you can come up with some good ideas on solving problems peacefully, and you can do that now.

But if they can't literally do more than promise someday to kick some foreign ass, they can still pretend to be beating up on Hillary back home, in the here and now.

As for her famous emails, I erupt every time I hear some candidate offhandedly mention that Hillary will probably be "indicted" any day now for something or other, without saying what or how or why.

First of all, to repeat what Fred Kaplan told us in Slate, since it's worth repeating:

Mishandling of classified information is a misdemeanor, which could turn out to be a problem for her; but even the sources of leaks about these incidents have acknowledged that she’s not the target of a criminal probe and that the lapse had no national-security impact.

A misdemeanor? All this scary FBI talk is about a possible misdemeanor?

It's also become known -- no small feat in itself, since nobody in the know is supposed to talk about this stuff, I guess even in private -- that what's being called "classified" was classified after the fact, and apparently might concern something so trivial as a casual mention of some newspaper article that mentions the drone program -- which nobody is supposed to know about, in spite of the fact that everybody, including you, does know about it.

And it should also be clear by now, including to all those disingenuous Republican candidates who pretend they don't know this, that all this talk about a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton is simply hogwash.

Just for fun, someone needs to ask Chris Christie, or any of the other surviving Republican candidates who have been pushing this email fantasy, if they are aware of the United States having a drone program.

And if they say yes, they should be immediately arrested for disclosing classified information, just like Hillary Clinton did.