The Carpentariat

Trump has his base, but no one else

"The University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll shows 43 percent say they’d never back Trump, and another 7 percent say they’re inclined to vote against him. That’s half the state intending not to vote for a Republican president … in Texas," reports the Washington Post's Aaron Blake, with my giddy emphasis.

And then the even more joyful kicker: "It will apparently be up to him to convince people who have written him off early to take a second look."

Has Trump ever made any attempt to persuade non-Trumpers to his side? If anything, he has gone out of his way to alienate everyone but his base.

That's a head-scratcher, until one recalls that persuading his non-base would require some semblance of reasonableness, which would then alienate large segments of his believers. So, at best, any Trump stab at reasonableness would be a wash, thus he clings to the ones who brung him to the dance.

And that, almost certainly, is a foolproof way in which to lose the 2020 election. Democrats and assorted independents are fired up to oppose this clown — as every poll, including Trump's internal ones that "don't exist," have shown.

Trump & Iran, part two

In our Trump-induced crisis with Iran, this "least bad outcome" is the resolution I anticipate. Writes (former?) neoconservative Max Boot, "Trump is commander in chief as the United States is locked on a collision course with the Islamic Republic of Iran…. The least bad outcome is for Trump to veer, as he has with North Korea, from irresponsible saber-rattling to oleaginous appeasement."

This leads me to clarify what I wrote earlier this morning:

"The one upside to all this is that Trump's base is still opposed to a foreign war. Under the idiot president's ['erratic'] guidance, that is precisely where these perilous circumstances could lead us. But as long as his base is opposed, Trump will retain his noncombatant status. He'll only turn bellicose when the matter appears politically advantageous to him. And that is unlikely."

That passage was, as they say, somewhat inartful.

Writing that Trump's bellicosity is unlikely does not negate the real possibility that he'll gradually bamboozle his base into believing that war is a nifty idea. But at this time, I don't believe that Trump believes that that option is politically advantageous. He might be just smart enough to know that a war with Iran would swiftly produce unending diplomatic headaches, the loss of thousands of American lives, and enormous blowback.

Iran doesn't want a major war, and neither does Trump (at this time). He is, perhaps, also just smart enough to know that as a wartime commander in chief, he would be, in fact, a helpless idiot. That is not to say, however, that as the 2020 election gets nearer, and his odds of winning continue to diminish, Trump won't decide that a war would indeed be politically advantageous. Even war is nothing but politics to Trump, and what benefits him.

Then, but only then, would he begin bamboozling his base.

Trump, his base, and cultural purity

Paul Krugman notes that a "new Fox News poll finds that only 5 percent of whites without a college degree believe that Trump’s economic policies benefit 'people like me.'" What's more,

"despite Trump’s insistence that foreigners will pay the tariffs, an overwhelming majority of noncollege whites believe that they will end up paying more for the things they buy."

"[And Trump] keeps trying to destroy key provisions of Obamacare — protection for pre-existing conditions, premium subsidies and the expansion of Medicaid — even though these provisions are highly popular and have been of enormous benefit to states like Kentucky and West Virginia that favored him by huge margins."

Trump has assiduously catered to the wealthy and neglected the needs of non-college-educated whites. So why do they persist in their support of him? Except for writing that "Trump’s whole career shows him to be the kind of man who, if anything, takes pleasure in taking advantage of people who trusted him," Krugman doesn't answer the question, perhaps because the dominant answer is too obvious.

Culture, and the culture wars.

From Trump's embrace of the sectarian scourge of abortion to the thrill of articulating "Merry Christmas" — which secularists, in roaming, barbarian bands, have reportedly censored with the threat of severe bodily injury — he is, to this segment of whites, the beatified salvation of a culture returned.

Trump aims for the visceral, not the cerebral or any particular self-interest. In turn, politics is not about the economy for his marks. If that were the case, they would have voted for Hillary in 2016, the natural successor to he who actually revived the economy from the blight of 2008. Hence on the stump the president rails, for instance, against immigration and the swarthy bogeymen (MS-13) who come with it. Facts, reason and sensible policies are nowhere to be heard.

Thus the electorate's deep polarization and negative partisanship. There's no way to penetrate reason into the echo chambers of the white right, especially those of a fundamentalist religious bent. For them, politics is about what it was never intended to be about — cultural purity.

As even right-wing radio host Michael Savage (who turned against Trump of late) has lamented of his listeners: "I don’t think they care very much about issues. They’ll vote for him no matter what because he’s not 'them.'" 

Trump has blundered again, and Iran is outsmarting him

The additional 1,000 troops Trump is sending overseas "will be used mainly for surveillance of Iranian activities and protecting American forces already in the Middle East," reports the Times.

Won't more forces be needed to protect the additional forces? Isn't that the escalation game played in every global hotspot in which the United States intervenes militarily? But the really unnerving thought is that Lyndon Johnson and even George W. Bush were veritable geniuses compared to Donald J. Trump — who has aggressively thrust Iran in an impossible situation.

Ali Vaez, a conflict-resolution expert at the International Crisis Group, concisely assessed Iran's predicament and Trump's blundering: "This was an entirely predictable consequence of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and maximum pressure strategy. In practice, maximum pressure has produced maximum peril and minimum strategic results."

Trump was ill content to stop at withdrawing from the nuclear deal. He slapped egregious sanctions on trading with Iran as well, and they're strangling its economy. Of what Iranian benefit, then, is that nation's adherence to the nuclear deal? Very little.

Hence Iran is smartly (and further) dividing the nuclear-accord-signing European powers from the U.S. If the former can figure a way to bypass Trump's sanctions on Iran — which is difficult, since international trade is conducted with the U.S. dollar — then, says Iran, it will stay within the accord's confines. (Violating Trump's sanctions is just fine with the European powers, given the way in which Trump has treated them.) Otherwise, Iran will continue to enrich uranium and be well on its way to developing a nuclear weapon — a rather spooky scenario that President Obama forestalled for years with his Iran deal, which Trump ignorantly, arrogantly violated.

Yes, even George Bush was smarter.

The one upside to all this is that Trump's base is still opposed to a foreign war. Under the idiot president's guidance, that is precisely where these perilous circumstances could lead us. But as long as his base is opposed, Trump will retain his noncombatant status. He'll only turn bellicose when the matter appears politically advantageous to him. And that is unlikely.

Sen. Gillibrand meets karma

Kirsten Gillibrand is swimming in cash. In addition to what she's raised in her presidential run, she has shifted $10 million from her Senate reelection fund. But her campaign is drowning. She's at 0.8 popularity in Democratic primary polling — a half point behind Andrew Yang. Could it be any worse than that?

And I'm delighted to learn, from The Atlantic, that her inexcusable ill treatment of Sen. Franken in late 2017 accounts for a large part of her flailing:

"People working with her campaign acknowledge that she clearly underestimated how much her being out front in calling for Al Franken to resign from the Senate was going to haunt her — even though that was a year and a half ago, and despite the fact that all the other senators in the race called for him to go too."

Those "other senators," whether in the presidential race or not, joined Gillibrand in branding Franken with a scarlet S.A.-for-"sexual-assault" letter because politicians are, by and large, little more than intimidated children who will mimic whatever the purity of the day is. But it was Kirsten Gillibrand who lit the bonfire of her vanity and led the Washington villagers' charge against the heretic Franken — one the more effective senators in that increasingly useless institution. This is on Gillibrand, no one else.

Karma is a bitch.

Take two: "We’ll have phenomenal health care"

Last night, in his aired, ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump publicly committed himself — although a Trump commitment is akin to disappearing ink — to reviving the health care debate. "Obamacare has been a disaster," he said, without acknowledging his administration's many stakes in its heart. Hence the president intends to propose his own health care plan "in a month when we introduce it. We’re going to have a plan … we’ll have phenomenal health care."

The composition of "we" is a trifle in doubt, since Mitch McConnell likely suffered at least a minor cardiac "event" when he first heard of the president's politically unhinged intention. Trump hasn't the vaguest idea of what an alternative, Republican health care plan would look like — and neither do congressional Republicans. Sometime back they rolled out a few "phenomenal" health care chicken-scratchings, aside from Obamacare's full repeal, and they got their hands handed to them. So you can imagine how eager they are to reengage this thermonuclear hazard.

"Many Republicans say they should not focus their energy on health care but instead emphasize immigration and other issues where they are stronger," reports the Times. Translation: They wish to emphasize instead any cultural-wedge issues that might frighten the bejesus out of swing voters and thrill their animalistic base. Besides, Democrats hold a substantial, immovable advantage in the health care arena — so why bother?

Thus it was with tremendous trepidation, I should think, that Mr. McConnell greeted the news that flimflam Donald, on the health care front (among others), was making impossible promises again.

Says Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, "When it comes to health care, the challenge has been that the president has not only avoided proposing a specific plan, but has made promises that no plan could ever fulfill." And says Len Nichols of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics, "He can’t deliver the impossible, so he avoids specifics and postpones actually reckoning with a serious legislative proposal of his own."

But what does Trump care? When his phenomenal travesty of a plan goes up in flames — assuming one even materializes — he'll do what he always does in the immediate aftermath of his screwups: He'll just change the subject.

I could do Trump's polling with Zero Respondents

Uplifting news from the Intelligencer:

"Trump’s re-election campaign is cutting ties with some of its own pollsters after leaked internal polling showed the president trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in critical 2020 battleground states."

Is Trump cutting ties from these pollsters because their data leaked, or because Trump disliked their findings?

A rational politician might fire his pollsters for the first reason. But since Trump is irrational, I'll assume he fired his pollsters for the second reason. And this is good news. The president would rather have smoke blown up his skirt than hear (he doesn't read) about the brutal reality of where he stands electorally.

Having disinterested, objective information at one's disposal is, of course, the entire point of polling. Without such, one would be shadow boxing blindly from coast to coast. Objective polling is especially critical for presidential candidates who are trailing in a few or more important states, for then — duh — they know where to concentrate their resources and energy.

This — what I have imparted thus far — falls short of even Politics 101. Even a rational imbecile would comprehend that objective polling — no matter how distressing to the candidate — is a sine qua non to a sensible campaign. Knowing how you stand, and where, is absolutely essential to an adult, political enterprise.

But Trump isn't an adult. He's a toddler in ill-fitting suits who prefers lies to bad news, since that is how he always conducts himself, too — as a purblind hellion who thinks the world of himself and thus won't tolerate hearing that he is, in fact, a loser.

So you go, Donald. You go, boy. Fire those nasty old pollsters who tell you the truth. Hire instead a bunch of sycophantic pollsters, just as you've surrounded yourself with in every other facet of your narcissistic, self-congratulatory reign.

"The odious influence of Trump"

Given the warp velocity of politics these days, it's already time for our esteemed representatives in Congress, of the "conservative" persuasion, and our Great Patriotic Leader to thoroughly botch budget negotiations to avert a government shutdown Oct. 1, and to lift the debt limit before the spectre of federal default materializes, sending our economy and the world's into a devastating tailspin.

There's also the little matter of another lift — that of sequester's automatic spending caps, which, if not hoisted by year's end, would do severe injury to domestic programs.

All three potential calamities are gearing up as real calamities, because congressional Republicans and the Trump administration are at loggerheads of a sort; and by that I mean congressional Republicans, unsurprisingly, have no idea of what the administration will agree to. "We’re negotiating with ourselves right now," said Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The disarray is so intense, Republicans have excluded Democrats — whose votes will be needed — from the negotiating table. But that's not because of some partisan, nefarious scheme to simply ignore the Dems. It's because "Senate Republicans and the administration thus far have not agreed on how to proceed on any of the issues," reports the Washington Post, "making it all but impossible for them to enter into substantive negotiations with Democrats."

As one would expect, Trump himself appears to be on the sidelines of internal negotiations, since he could never fathom the details of budget complexities. Budget hardliner and former Freedom Caucuser Mick Mulvaney, now acting WH chief of staff, is standing in. Still, one can smell the odious influence of Trump.

"Mulvaney and the administration favor … striking a one-year deal, over reaching the kind of two-year deal that has been agreed to in the past and that lawmakers in both parties favor now," says the Post. Get it? A one-year deal would throw the politics of spending smack into the height of the presidential contest, permitting Trump to rally his partisan minions.

As usual, with this White House, it's all about politics and what benefits Trump — never the good of the nation.

Trump's one route to victory

Pollster John McLaughlin, of the Trump campaign, sent Politico this text:

"Although our own early published polls and internal polls discounted Elizabeth Warren, her recent momentum in May and June in national and early caucus and primary states into a strong second place to a flat Joe Biden is a cause for our campaign’s attention.

"Sen. Warren’s attacks on President Trump’s policies need to be rebutted. We can’t just allow her to continue to attack the President in key states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and elsewhere."

Other than polling on the Democratic side, what got their attention? Reportedly, the Trump campaign was "startled" when Fox News' Tucker Carlson, about 10 days ago, "heap[ed] praise on the liberal senator," applauding Warren’s economic nationalism. She "sounds like Donald Trump at his best," said Carlson.

Yes, she does, in some ways; or even more frightening, Warren sounds like a Bernie Sanders — after extensive schooling.

Her fans detest the comparison. She sounds nothing at all like Sanders, they say. For starters, she's a believer in capitalism while he's a democratic socialist — an unbridgeable difference, they insist.

But their policy proposals are strikingly similar. "They both support Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage, and other ambitious national proposals to tilt a 'rigged' economy toward working-class Americans, funded through higher taxes on the wealthy," concedes the radical magazine Jacobin. "At the end of the day," however, "Sanders is a more consistently left candidate," contends the socialist magazine, which mostly adores the difference in the duo's differing, self-identifying labels — which are insignificant, it seems to me, when one ponders the similarity in their platforms.

And that similarity is precisely what has the Trump campaign licking its chops. "We have to make sure voters know about her proposals for government takeover of health care, free health care for illegal immigrants, radical environmental restrictions, and increased taxes — all proposals that will devastate this country," says a Trump campaign spokesman.

If the Dems run a hard leftie in the person of Elizabeth Warren, the 2020 presidential contest could be a bloodbath. Such a candidate for a Republican nominee is the ideal foil, in view of swing voters' fundamental centrism.

As it stands, the 2020 presidential race is Democrats' to lose. Trump is spectacularly unpopular, but he has a route to win: only, though, if Democrats cede the middle.

Those hip Republicans are down with deficits

"On Wednesday, data from the Treasury Department showed the deficit grew 42% from a year earlier," reports Business Insider. "The annual deficit is expected to come in at about $1 trillion by 2022 and remain above that level annually for at least seven years."

You may recall that candidate Trump repeatedly vowed to balance, within eight years, the federal budget, which brought roars of approval from his rallying groupies. Why was his pledge such a base-pleaser? Because for eight years Republicans had bashed President Obama for the deficits he ran (which were by huge margins the result of George W. Bush's wars and tax cuts). Trump would make it all better — somehow.

What he actually did was add to the national debt — through his own massive tax cuts — to the tune of nearly $2 trillion over the next decade.

So here is the new version of Republican outrage over debt and deficits:

"I don't think we're at a crisis point now," said White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow. "It doesn't bother me right now."

But not to worry, hypocrisy fans. "Real" Republican outrage over deficits is scheduled to return on 20 January 2021, when a Democratic president is sworn in.

This week, Trump confessed to (past) collusion

"[Democrats] just can't let it go. I said weeks ago, case closed. We got the Mueller report, the only objective evaluation that will be conducted. They are trying to keep the 2016 election alive and the investigation alive when the American people have heard enough."

Thus spoke Mitch McConnell on Fox News last night, casually dismissing our scatological president's admission that he would gladly embrace any foreign droppings on his 2020 opponent.

McConnell was of course correct when he said Democrats can't let it go — because they shouldn't — but farcically wrong when he added that the Mueller report closed the case.

Indeed, what Trump told George Stephanopoulos this week has resurrected the Mueller report in a big way — which seems to be getting little or no coverage in the media.

By that I mean I've neither read nor heard that Trump's admission was not only what he would do in 2020, but what he was doing in 2016. That is, he essentially corroborated what Mueller was unable to confirm: that three years ago, the next president of the United States, with 140 known instances of Russian engagement, was swimming in a cesspool of collusion.

When Trump said "there isn't anything wrong with listening; if somebody called from a country, [Russia, China, Ukraine], [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent' — oh, I think I'd want to hear it," he was advertising more than his intention to collude in 2020. He was, effectively, confessing his impeachable malfeasances of 2016. It is beyond belief that Trump's collusive sentiments are merely recent.

And yet the media is focusing exclusively on the present and future. I'm at a loss as to why Trump's remarks are not bundled by the political media as a whole — 2016-2019. Perhaps some outlets have and I've just missed them. But it seems to me that every report's chronology should be treated comprehensively.

Bad news for Kamala Harris

Wretched news for presidential candidate Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California.

In the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies' recent poll of California's likely Democratic primary voters, the state's senator placed — fourth.

Rather brutally, no favorite sons or daughters for Golden State folks, which, for now at least, upends Harris' grand strategy: to win big in the nation's most populous state — her own, for heaven's sake.

The Berkley Institute found support for Joe Biden at 22 percent, support for Warren at 18 percent, for Sanders at 17 percent, and for Harris at 13 percent. At 10 percent, Pete Buttigieg was the only remaining candidate to score in double digits. All other candidates fell below 3 percent.

But Harris' news is even worse than that for the 3 percenters. For a U.S. senator and major presidential contender to rank fourth in her home state is, to state the obvious, a dreadful sign.

Sarah Huckabyebye Sanders

"I’m going to continue to be one of the most outspoken and loyal defenders of the president," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday afternoon, while nearly on her adventurous way out the White House door. (Trump wants her to run for governor of Arkansas.) The whimsical lassie is leaving her post as WH press secretary, and I've no doubt she'll persist as an "outspoken and loyal defender" of the only American who lies more than she has.

To all those who cherish the truth over lies, and personal honor over official dishonor, Sanders' departing status has sparked an interesting debate: Was she the worst reigning queen of prevaricating toads among the historical legion of press secretaries, or, somewhat gentler, was she merely the "least-believed"? Lucky for us, this exact debate took place on Twitter yesterday between the Atlantic's James Fallows and the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin. Responding to Rubin, who had written "Thank God…. She leaves as a proven liar and the worst press secretary in history," Fallows proffered that "I do think that as an objective matter she is the least-believed press sec in history," to which Rubin retorted, "Least believed might be different than worst," to which, having realized the potential eternity of frivolous squabbling that lay before him, Fallows responded, "True. Could be both crowns; the one I’m sure of is least-believed."

A bit of a tie, I'd say: Sarah Sanders was the least-believed of all the lowest, lying WH apparatchiks.

But do you know who now knows this more vividly than anyone? Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who called Ms. Sanders before his investigators. And this is what they wrote, in the Mueller report (bold mine):

In the afternoon of May 10, 2017, deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders spoke to the President about his decision to fire [FBI Director] Comey and then spoke to reporters in a televised press conference. Sanders told reporters that the President, the Department of Justice, and bipartisan members of Congress had lost confidence in Comey, "[a]nd most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director"…. When a reporter indicated that the "vast majority" of FBI agents supported Comey, Sanders said, "Look, we've heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things." Following the press conference, Sanders spoke to the President, who told her she did a good job and did not point out any inaccuracies in her comments. Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from "countless members of the FBI" was a "slip of the tongue." She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made "in the heat of the moment" that was not founded on anything.

In other words, Ms. Sanders felt free to lie to all of America on virtually a daily basis, but when her lies faced possibly harsh consequences from a handful of law-enforcement authorities, Sanders loosened her tongue as willingly as a $1,000 hooker.

What manner of earthling is this? — someone who can stand before the national press each day and knowingly lie like a Baghdad Bob? As is true for nearly all us creatures, I probably have my price. I haven't the vaguest idea of what the precise amount would be, but it would have to be at least in the seven figures — with a Pacific island thrown in — before I'd do what Sanders did for two years plus. Because as Mark said, "For what shall it profit a man …"

The FEC talks to Trump as though he's a child (which he is)

Adds Ms. Weintraub: "I would not have thought that I needed to say this." (Sorry for the small print. A larger version just wouldn't fit; you may, however, click here to view one.)

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and his boundless political cowardice

Note: A reader has let me know that comments are not appearing in the comment section. I have alerted Typepad. The comment section is back up and working fine.

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In his morning press conference, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy was confronted by several reporters inquiring into his opinion of Trump's scandalous admission that he would gleefully accept whatever campaign assistance a foreign power might provide. In his responses, McCarthy, a towering monument to political cowardice — but that's understandable, he's a Republican — danced frenetically hither and yon.

His first reply was "[You're] talking about a hypothetical" — no we are not: Trump explicitly said he would welcome foreign shenanigans — "but we do not want foreign interference in our elections. Next Question." Well the president does, and you, Mr. McCarthy, were asked for your opinion on that. Then a diversion: "This president has been tougher on Russia then any other president." Then another: The Mueller report found no collusion. Then, a real puzzler: "I've watched this president; he does not want foreign interference in our elections." Then, a puzzler squared: "He will not allow any foreign interference." Then, an observation that from sea to shining sea most certainly provoked thundering laughter: "The president will always do the right thing."

And in a pitiable display of rank political amateurism, McCarthy repeatedly hammered this downright silly talking point: In the last election, it was the Democrats who engaged in foreign corruption — not Republican Trump.

You may lay a shroud on the Republican Party. This unwavering degree of political cowardice and its tolerance of presidential lawlessness, immorality and overt harm to national security cannot be sustained. The party has sold its soul to Donald J. Trump — who has always destroyed his partners.

Through his own words, the walls are closing in on Trump

The unforgettable Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) is reputed to have said, each time her doorbell rang, "What fresh hell can this be?" The doorbell is now the daily news.

As I'm sure you know by now, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos recently interviewed Trump, and asked him if he would still accept a foreign nation's interference in our elections by offering surreptitious information harmful to an opponent — even though the president has spent the last two years under investigation for having done precisely that.

Replied Trump, in his characteristically oblivious manner: "I think you might want to listen, there isn't anything wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent' — oh, I think I'd want to hear it." (I heard on MSNBC that even Laura Ingraham conceded on her show last night that she was "baffled" by Trump's remarks.) 

Norway is rather unlikely to start hacking into Democratic email accounts. But if it did, and it then shared the purloined information with Trump, that would be just as conspiratorially collusive as what Russia did with our criminal president. And of course "Norway" was but a benign substitute for the abysmal country that Trump actually had in mind.

"It's not an interference, they have information — I think I'd take it," continued Trump. "If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong."

Yet what could be wrong, in Trump's mind, with ill-gained dirt on a Trump opponent?

"When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman," proceeded Trump, "they all do it, they always have, and that's the way it is. It's called oppo research."

I once worked in congressional campaign and I did oppo research, and not once did I hear trash-talk with a foreign accent about our opponent.

Stephanopoulos reminded Trump that the FBI director, Christopher Wray, testified to Congress last month that all foreign interference should be reported to the Bureau.

But Trump knows better. "The FBI director is wrong," he said.

This president is now utterly, insanely off the rails. Within merely the last two days he has openly invited foreign interventions into our democratic process — which is already, as I noted earlier this morning, a feral circus; and he has proclaimed before the Supreme Court that he's above the law and thus Congress has no constitutional right to investigate the executive branch.

That, after 10 obstructions of justice, 10,000 lies and countless abuses of power. If not overdue — I'm beginning to think — the allotted time for impeachment proceedings is at least narrowing. If the Democratic Party is to retain an adherence to the rule of law and proper constitutionalism and any respect from an increasingly outraged electorate, the option of indefinitely postponing the upright act of submitting formal charges against this wildly corrupt president is fading. Fast.

The Trump administration goes full authoritarian

Reading Heath's USA Today reporting on Twitter reveals just how utterly meshuga the Trump administration has become. Heath's complete, concise thread is here.

Trump's lawyers argue in a new D.C. Cir. brief that Congress does not have the power to investigate whether the president broke the law. They say only the executive branch - the people who work for the president - is allowed to determine whether the president broke the law. pic.twitter.com/gVazwHUt86

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) June 10, 2019

Naturally, congressional Republicans will defend Trump's argument, after having devoted eight years to investigating the last Democratic administration and another eight years, Bill Clinton's. Just as naturally, they'll devote yet more years to investigating the next Democratic president, beginning in 2021. And they won't break a sweat in their hypocrisy, for it seems the more-brazen-the-act-the-better is simply the Republican way of doing things these days.

But consider the ramifications of the Trump administration's court argument — namely, the roughshod overturning of the U.S. Constitution. As NY lawyer George Conway III and Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal counterargue, "to describe Trump’s brief is to refute it…. Trump gave us direct evidence of his contempt toward the most foundational precept of our democracy — that no person, not even the president, is above the law." (Conway and Katyal further argue, with no little indignation, that "Trump’s brief is nothing if not an invitation to commencing impeachment proceedings that, for reasons set out in the Mueller report, should have already commenced.")

This is also when Justice Brett Kavanaugh will, or might very well, earn his keep. SCOTUS-watchers have already noted that the (Republican) Court "seems ready to uphold [the] citizenship question on 2020 census," notwithstanding that the administration's case is riddled with demonstrable falsehoods and corruption. And if the Court can find for the administration in such a profane case, no longer is it inconceivable that the Court could find that the president of the United States is above the law — until a Democrat becomes the chief executive, at which point the Court would reverse itself.

We can only hope that Chief Justice John Roberts earns his keep by joining the minority justices, as he did in the ACA case.

A deficit of reason; an abundance of inanity

In 1979, English professor Richard Mitchell, in the foreword to his Less Than Words Can Say — a brilliant examination of the use and misuse of the English language, of Reason gone bad, of clarity replaced by gibberish — portentously saw the perilous rise of Trumpism:

"Who speaks reason to his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable dose of inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of thought."

Mitchell's studied analysis was also an unwitting comment on the modern deterioration of representative democracy. That an American electorate could elevate an inane, inarticulate, vacuous blockhead such as Donald Trump to the highest office in the land — even if through the antiquated loophole of the Electoral College — should give pause to any full-throated believer in our democratic process: the feral circus that has become the presidential election cycle.

At least officially, but most certainly to other countries of the world, America has devolved into a nation of nincompoops whose reasoning power is, it follows, as deficient as their listening skills. As president, Trump has yet to utter a sentence — let alone entire, transcripted paragraphs — of high reasoning combined with anything resembling deep or even passable thought. Only wholesale nincompoopism could have got him where he is.

He's not only an embarrassment to the larger electorate who cannot stomach his reams of non sequiturs, contradictions and assorted rhetorical buffooneries; he's an anti-intellectual danger to traditional American values and our national institutions, and thus to the very population he's supposed to represent.

How did America transmogrify to such a low and miserable state? Only a large tome could approach a serious, competent answer to that. But most of us already know one thing: We had better change course damn quickly, or — to put it in reasoned words that even Trumpeteers can understand — we're fucked.

The DNC's asinine exclusion of Gov. Bullock in the upcoming debates

Once again, this is insane.

Politico: "Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is still on the outside looking in on the first Democratic presidential primary debate…. Bullock, who touts his success in a red state as a playbook for defeating President Donald Trump next year, failed to earn 1 percent in a poll of likely Nevada caucus-goers released Wednesday by Monmouth University." (The top achievers in that poll were Joe Biden, with 36 percent, Elizabeth Warren, 19 percent, and Bernie Sanders, 13 percent.)

Bullock would be the 21st contender in the July 26 and 27 debates in Miami, to be aired on MSNBC, Telemundo, and primetime-preempted NBC stations. But the Democratic National Committee has arbitrarily limited the number of contenders to 20. So no Bullock, who otherwise would have been an interesting inclusion as a Medicaid-securing, campaign-finance-reforming, rural-state governor with a net approval rating of +26 percent.

Replacing Bullock at the debates will be any one of these political phenomena of real national notoriety: Tulsi Gabbard — "When FiveThirtyEight asked 60 Democratic Party activists whom they didn’t want to win, [she] came in first out of 17 candidates" — Marianne Williamson — "spiritual counselor to Oprah Winfrey, guru to Cher" — and Andrew Yang, "who has said he hopes to campaign via hologram in some states."

Each of the above has his or her supporters, of course, and those supporters defend their candidate's inclusion as a "Why not let the voters decide?" proposition. That's fine. But in that case, Gov. Bullock would also be included.

Logical lapses and political conclusions

Write political science researchers at Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, from a poll: "About 19 percent of Republicans [hold] economic policy positions closer to the average Democrat than the average Republican, placing them on the 'economic left.'"

That finding is rather consistent and unsurprising; most if not all of the nearly one-fifth of those surveyed are solid Trump supporters; "lower income Republicans" who routinely vote against their own economic interests.

Of these voters, the Times' David Leonhardt observes: "[They] are socially conservative. They’re religious, and they are either conservative or moderate on abortion, immigration and other issues. When political campaigns focus on social issues, these voters are primed to vote Republican. Yet when campaigns focus on economics and on fairness, these same voters suddenly have reason to vote Democratic. And if even a small percentage of Republicans or independents defect, it can decide an election."

You can easily see the internal fallacy of Leonhardt's reasoning. In the modern era, Democrats have always focused on economics and fairness, yet the GOP unremittingly concentrates on culturally divisive, emotionally energizing social issues, such as abortion and immigration. Hence socially conservative, lower-income Republicans are always "primed to vote Republican." The GOP learned this scam decades ago, and it's been phenomenally successful.

Even Leonhardt lacks belief in his own observation, however, for at last he writes that "Winning these voters won’t be easy." But then he alters his demographic attention: "Barack Obama did better with swing voters than Hillary Clinton in part because he ran a more populist, economically focused campaign. It really is possible."

Whoa. Swing voters are not low-income Republicans. So with that, Leonhardt blew away his own thesis.

When writing a post, Mr. Leonhardt, I've often found it helpful to quickly review what I've already written, just to make sure that my conclusion is in harmony with the main body — which yours isn't.