PMC Commentary

Whither skepticism about Hillary?

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, this paragraph is admittedly a trifle premature — its thrust being that the paradox of skepticism has always played out especially well in American politics, where doubt beats fanatical devotion. Tomorrow, doubt will be populated by the Clinton camp, while inhabiting absolute devotion are Sanders's followers. To cite a paradox within a paradox, in his brilliant memoir the late Trotskyite and fanatically anti-Clinton Christopher Hitchens summarized my sentiments with perfection: "After various past allegiances, I have come to believe that Karl Marx was rightest of all when he recommended continual doubt and self-criticism. Membership in the skeptical faction or tendency is not at all a soft option." Continual doubt about Hillary within Hillary's camp is likely to prove superior. "God knows she has her problems but" will beat berning, unquestioning loyalty. The former is grounded in what is customarily called the real world, while the latter dwells in the hovering superstructure of hopeful ideology.

Assuming (shifting to Voltaire) one of the lower of all possible turnouts, that is. That of course will be the key for Clinton. Yesterday, via the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics, Ann Selzer, perhaps the most capable pollster around, reported that Clinton is leading Sanders 45 to 42 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers. The internal key to Selzer's finding is who the newcomers are, or rather, how many there might be. It is here, historically speaking, that the Sanders camp futuristically falls short: "Only one in three likely Democratic voters in the survey are first-time caucus-goers, who break decidedly toward Sanders. That compares with 60 percent in the final pre-caucus survey of 2008, when a wave of young voters and new participants helped Barack Obama overpower Clinton in Iowa."

Just to delve into yet another paradox, against Sanders's fanatical loyalty Selzer finds that "Clinton’s support is deeper and sturdier" (and that an imposing "83 percent of her voters say their minds are made up"). Concludes Selzer: "Most of the ways you look at it, she’s stronger than the three-point race would suggest." All this, notwithstanding the pervasive, internal-party skepticism about Hillary Clinton. It suggests that one can take all the "untrustworthiness" stats — within Democratic partisanship, anyway — and trash them; that, in the end, the old coalition will hold.

A couple days ago, the ordinarily staid Nate Silver removed (however briefly) his analytical cap and debuted some directorial imagination:

If you’re dreaming of Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton, you know how the movie begins (he wins Iowa on Monday), how it ends (he accepts the nomination to a Simon & Garfunkel tune), and one of the major plot lines (black, Hispanic and moderate Democrats, who for now prefer Clinton to Sanders, begin to #feelthebern). You also know who the hapless villain is: Democratic party elites (aka "the establishment"), who will be fighting Sanders every step of the way.

Otherwise, the details are fuzzy. We’re not quite sure how Sanders pulls off this Wes Anderson caper.

Nate Silver is as skeptical as I am about those who are somehow fanatically unskeptical about an ultimate Sanders triumph. As for the Iowa kickoff, he gives "a little better than … 2-to-1" odds for a Clinton victory. From there — after New Hampshire — the odds become even bleaker for Sanders. Which leaves us with a final paradox: Skepticism about Hillary may reign even among Hillary's supporters, yet, looking down the road to her nomination, that selfsame skepticism is rare -- there is, simply, very little doubt.

 

Why this democratic socialist opposes Bernie Sanders

I have been asked why I as a democratic socialist oppose Bernie Sanders's democratic socialist candidacy. I have, over the years, pre-answered this question, but of course it is acutely relevant now and I cannot expect that all readers will recall my reasoning. So I'll take a moment to review.

Yes, ideologically I am a democratic socialist. Virtually all of us are to some extent, in that virtually all of us support some measure of redistributionism so that sociopolitically lethal, capitalistic concentrations of wealth are contained (we have done quite the piss-poor job of this) and so that the lesser advantaged have greater opportunities and an enhanced quality of life (at this we have done a better job, even if income inequality haunts as perniciously as it did in the Jazz and Gilded Ages). Indeed I find democratic socialism ideologically irrefutable in its human decency, its sublime aspirations, and its general historical success.

Yet whatever democratic socialism (as it's traditionally defined) we have achieved in the United States has come pragmatically and, above all, incrementally. The other night I heard a young Sanders supporter defending her candidate's notional "political revolution": Social Security, black civil rights and female suffrage, she argued, had all come about in a kind of lightning-strike way, as could Bernie's revolution in single-payer and the like. Hers was a profoundly counterfactual history. Social Security was, originally, a limited, racially discriminatory safety net; the civil rights movement was far, far more than a 1960s affair (and it's still in progress); and women's struggle for the vote spanned decades. Bad history may make for splendid propaganda; as a foundation for realistic advancements, however, it stinks.

Thus politically — not ideologically, just politically — I throw in with the pragmatic side. Idealists dream and pragmatists accomplish. Idealists are indispensable, yet in America's non-revolutionary and rather conservative political system, it's the pragmatists who take those dreams and make something from them — bit by incremental bit. This reality is, I know, a disagreeable one to eager idealists. I sympathize, but I also live in the real world. We cannot "have it all" through sheer force of will and idealistic mobilization, as the young Sanders supporter maintained the other night. The electoral numbers just don't add up.

Neither would a blitzkrieged democratic socialism at the top of the Democratic ticket be idealistically advisable, for with it would come massive blowback. Propelling a much fuller socialism before its time would only retard socialism's natural growth. That, more than anything, it what disturbs me about Sanders's national "revolution." It is not only hopelessly idealistic; it is vastly premature. In 10, 20 years or 30, as the younger, somewhat socialistically friendly American generation ages into a more formidable electoral force, then some of what Sanders is selling could be politically possible. For now, the socialist "movement" is too weak, and there's nothing more politically self-destructive than launching an offense before sufficient force is assembled. Leaden failures breed monumental disillusionment.

To retain one's idealism is a noble thing; to practice pragmatism in the grinding pursuit of achievable idealism is a public service — less noble, perhaps, but of real and practical benefit. And all the above, simply put, is why I as a democratic socialist oppose the democratic socialist's presidential candidacy.

 

What was my weeklong funk (intensified dysthymia; it happens with brutal regularity), just now converted to pure joy. For I just now learned that my daughter, E.J., will be spending her Rotary Exchange senior year in …

FRANCE.

My daughter has two-and-a-half rather shaky years of high school French under her dozens of Forever 21 belts, but they won't be shaky after 10 months in France. The odds of her landing that destination were, as they say, slim to none, yet somehow it worked out. I am overjoyed. I'm already missing her, even though she won't depart for six months. Still, the educational, cultural and many other benefits that she'll derive from her senior year in France will more than compensate for what I know will be a very lonely year without her. And for now, anyway, I am absolutely overjoyed -- and I wanted to share my joy with you.

 

The problem with "The Problem"

"The Problem" will, no doubt, not be a problem for Bernie Sanders's positively uplifted supporters. It's not an attack ad, they'll say. It's merely a "contrast ad," which is how Sen. Sanders described it yesterday morning, not yet knowing, of course — of course not — if it would be running in less than 24 hours. "Do I plan on running more contrast ads?" he asked before a breakfast assemblage of reporters. "I don’t think we do, but that’s something we are still talking about."

What makes the now-running 30-second "Problem" a "contrast" rather than an attack ad? Nothing. That's the difference.

 

Would it be too cute, too coy for the Sanders camp to argue that omitting mention of any particular "bought-and-paid-for" Democratic opponent frees the Sanders camp from the charge of hypocrisy? Has the virtuous, never-negative Sanders campaign stayed its course of political chastity? Respectively, yes, and no. It will be entertaining, however, to listen to the Sanders camp argue no, and yes.

Yet what's more remarkable (oddly enough) is that Sanders is only doing what Sanders must do. He has slipped or he's slipping or at least he believes he is slipping in Iowa, hence this attack ad. Sanders's politics is merely regressing to the "mean": If one is slipping, one gets nasty. This is perhaps the oldest law of politics, and here, Sanders is nothing if not law abiding. Accordingly, I don't blame him one bit. He had no choice in going on the attack. Iowa is tight, a loss there could weaken New Hampshire, and South Carolina could be both devastating and dispositive.

Sanders, then, is merely behaving as any other politician would. Will his supporters concede the obvious? Will they concede that he's guided by the same old political playbook, which rather taints the fresh, "revolutionary" aspect of his campaign? I doubt it. It'll be refreshing if I'm wrong.

 

Debate ratings and ravings

Some straight news from CNN's media correspondent, Brian Stelter:

Fox News likely had 11 million to 13 million viewers for the debate … [and] an 8.4 household rating….

The most recent GOP debate, televised two weeks ago on the harder-to-find Fox Business Network, had a household rating of 7.4. So Thursday's debate was bigger — but not by much. The other five GOP debates of the cycle have had household ratings ranging from 8.9 to 15.9. That's why Trump can claim victory.

Even though, that is, Trump's campaign manager had forecast a paltry viewing audience of "1 or 2 million people." But who's counting? Who cares? This is Trumpworld, where straight news tends to get a trifle bent.

Stelters adds, parenthetically, that Trump's "campaign had no immediate comment about the ratings on Friday."

Yet Trump, with characteristic bluster, won the second round, too, telling CNN that "an unnamed Fox executive" had "apologized" for the network's bad manners. And bad they were, I must say — not in Trump's defense, but in appalled reaction to the network's childish, almost unbelievably unprofessional assault on a presidential candidate, however much of a clown he might be. That's just not done — not even in the professional sewer of Fox News.

Which, of course, didn't quite see its "apology" to Trump as an apology. "The network suggested that it didn't apologize outright -- instead it, 'acknowledged his concerns about a satirical observation we made in order to quell the attacks on Megyn Kelly, and prevent her from being smeared any further.'"

Let's see, how many rings does this circus now have? Like Trump's campaign manager's, my count may be a bit under.

 

The GOP debate: an untrumpeted evening

The commentariat's consensus is that Ted Cruz had a bad night. This shocks and displeases me. Cruz is the principal back-up guy in the gaudy hit squad that is stalking the GOP, so naturally I would hate to see him fade; thus my displeasure at any such negative consensus. My shock is the more powerful emotion, though. Said one of Politico's "Insider" Iowa Republicans: "He seemed plastic and insincere" last night. The belatedness of the insider's epiphany is breathtaking; absent Ted Cruz's plasticity and insincerity, the man himself is absent. It is shocking that Cruz's chief characteristics are only now trickling down noticeably to the state, county and precinct levels, but there you go.

This half of the two "Cuban guys" in the race (as Chris Matthews hilariously, and then last night apologetically, framed him) is taking the heaviest heat for his prickly attack on Chris Wallace & Co.: "I would note that the last four questions have been, Rand, please attack Ted. Marco, please attack Ted. Chris, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted." Cruz was attempting a Trumpian assault on Fox News, believing, it seems, that The Donald had sufficiently landed even Roger Ailes' Obama-bugabooing network in "lamestream media" territory. This did not play well with either insiders or audience, and Cruz's prickly attack only boomeranged on the prick.

I don't mean to add to Ted's woes. We need him, and we need him strong. One never knows, Trump might fizzle. The latter's strategic absence last night was meant to let others target Ted, and of course those others obliged — ripping him on his immigration squishiness. So while Trump may have (to some extent) won the debate by skipping it, Cruz's loss could be an incalculable longer-term loss to the grim forces that are gutting the GOP.

I also note with no little shock that Jeb Bush performed almost as a competent politician would. Indeed, though Jeb's performance contained no "particularly electrifying moments," says, needlessly, the NY Times, it was nearly as noteworthy as Ted's. He managed to speak in whole sentences, some of which were intelligible, and one or two even intelligent.

Rand Paul also performed well, and would have performed even better had the GOP's ghastly views of world affairs been a subject of focus. Ben Carson was, well, Ben Carson. John Kasich, too, made an unremarkable appearance. With Chris Christie we merely got more of Chris Christie, which is to say, virtually every probe resulted in a his bellowing that Hillary Clinton is a felonious, unprecedented peril to the republic which only Chris Christie can stop.

Which leaves Marco Rubio, who would do the republic an enormous favor by doing just that. I simply don't "get" the boy's appeal to even a small sliver of the right-wing masses. His "debate" deliveries are mostly heaved snippets from his stump speech — Christie-like hysterics about the unthinkable menace of Hillary, which, I suppose, are the boy's supposed appeal — with any gaps shoveled in by adolescent sensitivities, religious pandering, blind bellicosity and other overrehearsed predictabilities.

But now, with the debate out of the way, it's back to the Donald Trump show. Which is how it should be.

 

It begins in Iowa, ends in South Carolina

Even with Monmouth University polling's modifier, this is an understatement: "Turnout in the Iowa Democratic caucuses is extremely unpredictable."

It's been enjoyable watching Steve Kornacki, Chris Hayes, Chuck Todd and other analysts cast wide-ranging CYA predictions based entirely on turnout — the higher the better for the "insurgent" Sanders, of course. Sanders' problem is that his winning-turnout numbers are grounded in the youth vote, an infinitely unreliable bloc. Clinton, on the other hand, dominates in the female vote and the over-50 vote, while tying Sanders among men.

The overall predictive result, according to Monmouth (graded "A-" by FiveThirtyEight), is that Hillary is still ahead of Bernie among likely Iowa caucus-goers by at least 5 points. What's more, "Among voters who have a history of voting in state Democratic primaries, Clinton currently leads Sanders by 47% to 39%."

Like Trump's, a Sanders victory in Iowa is predicated on historically less likely voters turning out. I'd give Trump better odds, for his less likely voters are both older and angier, both of which partially offset the unlikelihood of their ever turning out.

Turning to Marist's polling (graded "B+" by 538), the story is essentially the same: "Hillary Clinton, 48%, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, 45% … among likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa." Marist tells a vastly "different story in New Hampshire," however, "where Sanders, 57%, has opened up a 19 point lead over Clinton, 38%, among likely Democratic primary voters."

Unremarked by Marist is that a Sanders loss in Iowa could well subtract from his present 19-point lead in N.H.

Were I to predict? Pretty much what's above. I'd say: a narrow Clinton victory in Iowa, a narrowed loss in N.H., and then on to Nevada, where Clinton presently leads by about 20 points, and South Carolina, where she leads by about 30.

And there, in South Carolina, is just about where this will all end.

 

Pelosi and D.O.A. single-payer

I have a question for Bernie Sanders' troops.

Your candidate says he will — or can — accomplish what most political observers have deemed impossible: enactment of single-payer health insurance. He says he will accomplish this admittedly worthy goal by mobilizing millions of the disadvantaged, the oppressed, the inspired and the heretofore politically disaffected. They will march on their local polling booths and execute a "political revolution" by elevating Sen. Sanders to the White House, whereupon President Sanders will set to work on enacting single-payer.

Let's say that happens, the whole Sanders presidency thing. Let's even say — and this is probably more unrealistic than the preceding assumption — that Democrats retake not only the Senate but also the House, where Speaker Pelosi would reign. Now let's ponder what that imagined future speaker had to say to reporters yesterday: "[Sanders is] talking about a single-payer, and that's not going to happen. I mean, does anybody in this room think that we're going to be discussing a single-payer? I've been for single-payer for 30 years, and it is a very popular idea in our country. But we have made a decision about where we're going on healthcare."

The direction to which Nancy Pelosi pointed was that of Obamacare. "Can it be improved upon?" she asked. "Everything can," she answered. Only on the realistically improvable would the House focus, she said. Pelosi then repeated the other healthcare-policy decision that she — as a progressive but nonetheless majority-protecting speaker — had already made: "It's no use having a conversation about something that's not going to happen" — by which she meant, of course, single-payer.

I'd venture that Nancy Pelosi could stare down Lyndon Johnson in one of his more determined moments. She is, as they say, one tough old broad. I doubt they come any tougher, and they certainly don't come any less resolute. Hence even the vaguest notion that a Speaker Pelosi — guarding her fresh, hard-won House majority; a majority won only by picking off a few wounded red districts — would in any way endanger that majority by advancing a lefty single-payer bill is nothing short of laughable.

So my question to Bernie's troops is this: How in God's name could President Sanders ever accomplish -- for that matter, even begin to accomplish -- what his own party (so to speak) has declared out of bounds?

 

The failed O'Reilly-Trump Summit

The only interesting passage in The Hill's communiqué on last night's rather awkward O'Reilly-Trump summit reads thus:

"[The former] sought to appeal to Trump’s capacity to forgive, reminding the billionaire businessman that he’s a Christian … and that the Bible says to 'turn the other cheek.' Trump shot back, saying he’s a regular church-goer, and that the Bible also says 'an eye for an eye. You could look at it that way too.'"

Item #1: "Trump's capacity to forgive." I assume this is one of those Bill O'Reilly worldly facts so casually and so often invented on Fox News; that is to say, it reminded me of Mark Bowden's recent Vanity Fair remembrance of his 1996 profile of Donald Trump (published in Playboy, 1997). What one feature of the Trumpian personality struck Bowden perhaps more than others? "What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor," wrote Bowden. "The trip from 'genius' to 'idiot' was a flash. The former pilots," for instance, "who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became 'fucking idiots.'"

Item #2: O'Reilly "remind[ed] the billionaire businessman that he's a Christian." I should think that Mr. Trump would have to be reminded that he's a Christian.

Item #3: Yes, "the Bible says to 'turn the other cheek.'" But, as every "good Christian" knows — even those who have forgotten they're Christians — divine injunctions are, happily, always subject to other divine injunctions, which compelled the pious Mr. Trump to note …

Item #4: … "the Bible also says 'an eye for an eye.'" O'Reilly responded (this section is omitted from The Hill's communiqué) by plumbing the depths of his theological knowledge: "That's Old Testament. If you're the Christian, the eye-for-the-eye rule goes out." Goes out. One savors the sanctity with which O'Reilly treats what are, according to Christianity, nonetheless divinely inspired Words.

At any rate, to really make his point the exegetical Bill O'Reilly might have otherwise countered with the rabbinical interpretation of "an eye for an eye," which means just that: "an eye for eye" — not, that is, an eye for a empirical slap on the cheek, which is all that Megyn Kelly had theretofore delivered upon Mr. Trump's unforgiving face.

As amusing as all this is, for sheer entertainment value it still can't beat the preceding, noble yet utterly self-unaware statement of Mr. O'Reilly's employer: "Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards."

 

2016: Scrat's political acorn

A longtime reader sent me an email this morning in observance of my noticeable enjoyment of this election cycle. I responded that it — this political season — just couldn't get any better, so, thus and therefore, I've been unable to contain my joy. And the season is getting even better; indeed at this rate, I may have to start popping depressants.

First the Republicans grabbed a big bucket of goofy named Trump & Co. and splashed it all over themselves, thereby splitting their party 2:1 in favor of an unelectable ideological something-or-other that only an ill-schooled rustic could truly understand and genuinely love. This was enough to make my year — in fact two of them, back to back. The GOP alone, adrift as it was in an electoral sea of delusions, was, or so I thought merely days ago, the absolute ultimate in political entertainment.

I was wrong. For Democrats have now set sail in their own frothy waters of ideological pixilation, most enjoyably viewed in today's roseate scribblings of Comrade Katrina vanden Heuvel. I give you, from the Washington Post, a taste of her "Bernie Sanders is the realist we should elect":

In the face of the Sanders surge, Clinton supporters have resorted to the "electability argument": that Sanders can’t be elected because he’s too far left…. [T]he positions Sanders champions — Medicare for All, cleaning up politics, curbing Wall Street, a less-interventionist foreign policy, rebuilding the United States, tuition-free college, fair taxes for the rich and corporations — are all extremely popular…. A voter using his head rather than his heart might well be conflicted on the question of electability.

If you find that persuasive, then you are sure to sniff at Dana Milbank's accompanying counterpoint piece, "Democrats would be insane to nominate Bernie Sanders." Another taste:

Hillary Clinton … is a dreary candidate. She has, again, failed to connect with voters. Her policy positions are cautious and uninspiring. Her reflexive secrecy causes a whiff of scandal to follow her everywhere. She seems calculating and phony. And yet if Democrats hope to hold the presidency in November, they’ll need to hold their noses and nominate Clinton.

Why? For several million reasons any sane Democrat would understand. And that so many Democrats seem not to understand it is what is making this once-unimaginable presidential year so damn enjoyable. Do I pray for sudden, party-wide sanity? No way. That would only spoil half the fun.

 

Republicans: now a Woody Allen film

Put aside The Onion. The funniest writing is now straight reporting, such as Politico's hilarious coverage of GOP finger-pointing over you-know-who.

Some (that is, other you-know-whos) are blaming Marco Rubio for devoting so little firepower to taking down Donald Trump; some are blaming Ted Cruz for same; and "some" say it's the GOP's big-money guys who've been the real "saps during this entire process" of Dickhead Trump Enlargement. (Remember -- I have -- that giant, on-the-loose breast in Woody Allen's Sleeper? It has changed gender.) Still others blame the Republican National Committee for having been Dickhead's most effective prophylactic against cerebrally transmitted sanity.

But,

Receiving much of the blame is Right to Rise, the cash-flush super PAC that broke records when it announced last year that it had raised more than $100 million in support of Jeb Bush. The group has directed relatively little of that sum toward attacking Trump — instead focusing its efforts on taking down Bush’s establishment rivals….

In recent days, those once-quiet complaints have become a roar. Stephen Hayes, an influential Weekly Standard columnist, blasted Right to Rise for a strategy that effectively "cleared the way for Trump." Katie Packer [a former Romney aide] lamented that just 10 percent of the super PAC’s $100 million "could have had a significant impact."

"Right to Rise has done more to advance the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump than they ever did for Jeb Bush," said Joe Pounder, a senior Rubio adviser. "Donald Trump doesn’t need a super PAC. He's got Jeb’s."

How poetic.

Jeb, who is the brother of George, whose squalid political overreach and base-pot-stirring and rather magnificent executive incompetence propelled to the White House a black intellectual, whose mere presence caused the GOP base to become utterly unglued and yet stuck to The Donald, who gained his foothold in the GOP sewer because of grossly insufficient Right to Rise pushback — all this, courtesy of incompetent Jeb, brother of incompetent George.

And so the circle completes itself.

 

The GOP: Kaboom!

Will Donald Trump follow through on his promise to boycott Thursday's Fox News debate? Will he instead proceed with his own media event?

Will the number of Fox News' viewers really plummet from 24 million "to, you know, 2 million viewers," as predicted by Trump campaign "manager" Corey Lewandowski? By now does Roger Ailes regret having written You Are the Message, a grinding 200-page instruction manual on (relish the irony) how to "be yourself" — something which Trump took up straightaway, but to which Ailes himself has been a bit slow on the uptake?

I don't know and, except for the appropriate shareholders, few should care. For one's entertainment dollar is smartly invested in the much larger spectacle of a major political party having gone to absolute hell. Trump's boycott of, or eleventh-hour participation in, Thursday's debate is but a single line in the riveting historical tome of the GOP's self-immolation. This dog of a party has finally caught the car. The NY Times:

"Obviously we would love all of the candidates to participate," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, "but each campaign ultimately makes their own decision what’s in their best interest." The tepid response was the latest instance in which the party has tried not to antagonize Mr. Trump, even as he engages in behavior that many Republican donors and operatives and some committee members consider destructive.

For decades the Republican Party has danced this symmetrical ballet of top-down/bottom-up and bottom-up/top-down radicalization; it has tried not to antagonize the base even while persisting in antagonizing the base — all in the increasingly difficult struggle to turn out the withering demographics of white-ethnic prejudice and religious bigotry. The decaying establishment has fed and then refed the base the vilest yet most emotionally satisfying of know-nothingisms as a political platform, which has only made the base hungry for more. The cultivated base demands it, and so the party obliges — because it must.

Modern Republicanism has been a decades-long and dangerous experiment in unsupervised populism. It's an electoral microcosm of everyman democracy coddled by elitist demagoguery, both of them fueled by richer and richer grades of outward-directed antagonisms. Now the establishment itself is captive to the greatest demagogue since Democracy's Huey Long. FDR could always outflank Long by moving to the left, which he did in 1935. The GOP establishment, however, possesses no room on its right to outflank Trump, for it gobbled that up in its decades-long propitiation of populist fanaticism.

So now it must issue no more than a "tepid response" to virtually any sordid act by Mr. Trump, so as "not to antagonize" him.

In this hellish spectacle of GOP's immolation, the dog has finally caught the car — although we on the sidewalks can no longer tell which is which.

 

The New New Left: More Tea Party than Obama

Jonathan Chait has an absolutely superb assessment of two Democratic worlds competing in both Iowa and altogether different universes:

As Sanders has risen in the polls, Clinton has placed less emphasis on the aspirational elements of her platform, which stand little chance of enactment. (If they did, Obama would probably have enacted them.) Instead she has stressed the importance of preventing the GOP from winning the presidency, which would give it full control of government and the ability to roll back many of Obama’s achievements. Her television ad in Iowa presents her as the candidate who will "stop the Republicans from ripping all our progress away"….

Sanders’s ad does not depict any Republicans at all. Indeed, they barely feature in his rhetoric. The salient question Sanders offers his audiences is not whether a Republican president will sign Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell’s bills or a Democratic one will veto them; it is whether the people prevail or corporate interests do.

Concludes Chait: "In place of any practical road map to enacting his ideas, Sanders substitutes the 'political revolution,' an event he invokes constantly that will sweep aside all impediments. His appeal borrows more from the tea party than from" Senator Obama's inspiring yet reality-grounded rhetoric of 2008.

Chair enjoys playing the iconoclastic, base-challenging curmudgeon, but here he seems genuinely panicked. Perhaps he has reason to be. 

We're now in the six- or seven-year wake of the right's intoxicated tea-party affair, which, at long last, is orgasmically exhausting itself in the extremes of Trumpism and Ted Cruz. Untether a party from the empirical realities of day-to-day governance and fix it instead on the gossamer fantasies of People Power and one hasn't an organized party for long. One has, rather, an anarchic assemblage of utterly useless wistfulness. Pluralism is a resistant, durable thing in which one's numerous enemies — that would be other People with plentiful Power — have a big say. Denying the durability of this singular "ism" of American politics is the oldest and surest route to political obscurity.

Well, so much for the tea partiers, or so we thought. What we didn't know was that People-Powered-tea-party envy would take hold on the left and begin imagining that the opposition simply doesn't — or won't in the near future — exist. The left will put its man in the White House, and that will be that. Oligarchs and greedy corporatists and Big Pharma and campaign financiers and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will all buckle under the oppressive weight of White-House-taking People Power (which in its spare moments from now till November — one presumes? — will also populate Congress with ultraprogressive supermajorities). It shall be as simple as that, hence triumphalism is already well under way.

As is some sizable anxiety on the realistic left. To what dimensions will its tea-partying wing grow? Will the party catch itself before heaving same over the cliff? Chait's panic (admittedly only a seeming panic) may be of sounder stuff than my guess, but I suspect the party will. Nonetheless, for the Clinton camp it's going to be a hair-raising few weeks until the situation, as they say, stabilizes.

 

CNN's town hall meeting: two amusing moments

CNN's Democratic town hall meeting last night was mostly a bore, as town hall meetings are inclined to be. Two instances of some interest — I should say, amusement — did however occur.

The first was CNN host Andrew Cuomo's first question to Bernie Sanders:

CUOMO: You have centered your campaign on this idea of income inequality. Interestingly President Obama talking about the job just this morning says, "You do not have the luxury of focusing on just one thing when you're President of the United States. You have to be able to handle many different priorities."

Do you think you are up to the whole job?

I paused, waiting for what we all expected Bernie's answer to be: "Why damn, Andrew, now that I think about it, you're on to something there. No, I do not think I am 'up to the whole job.' Next question."

I'd love to know how much Mr. Cuomo gets paid for asking such boneheaded questions. For the right but slightly less price, I, as a CNN host, could easily come up with plenty of my own.

That which also amused was CNN's selection of just the right, perfectly sensational, prescreened Sanders supporter to ask the first question of Hillary Clinton (contradiction-noting emphases mine):

CUOMO: We have Taylor Gipple, Iowa native. First time caucus goer, leaning Sanders, but has a question for Secretary Clinton.

[Gipple]: It feels like there is a lot of young people like myself who are very passionate supporters of Bernie Sanders. And, I just don't see the same enthusiasm from younger people for you. In fact, I've heard from quite a few people my age that they think you're dishonest, but I'd like to hear from you on why you feel the enthusiasm isn't there.

Perhaps I'm old school. But for a twenty-something Democratic partisan to passionately arise and essentially accuse — face to face — the current Democratic presidential frontrunner of being "dishonest"? — before a national Democratic television audience? Would it have been a sacrifice to antique convention for this young Sanders supporter to have used the softer, more clichéd "calculating"? Yes it would have been, and likewise not nearly as CNN sensational! (or amusing).

 

Trump's brilliant maneuver

Donald Trump has been outthinking the Republican establishment for months. Last spring and early summer, he may not have anticipated that his utterly undisguised nativism but otherwise indecipherable political program would be embraced by so many in the base, as well as the base's periphery. Yet when his peculiar brand gained an electoral foothold (which was immediate), Trump boldly exploited it for everything it was worth — and then some.

He's been brilliant at playing the populist game, recognizing, as he has, that boldness translated into vulgar recklessness is a principal element of effective demagoguery.

His most brilliant move, however, is only now upon the establishment. Once again he is several moves ahead of the party's thinning wise men, who are still trying to comprehend merely the rules of Trump's game — which, mirabile dictu, are undergoing a cutting permutation. As the establishment absorbs or at least attempts to absorb how Trump got to where he is, he is already moving on — more brilliantly than ever.

Yesterday, in a CNN interview, Trump mused that "the establishment actually is against me but really coming on line because they see me as opposed to Cruz, who is a nasty guy who can’t get along with anybody." Here, the ostensible target of Trump's wrath — the immeasurably nasty Ted Cruz — is, in large part, a throwaway line. Cruz is going down, and Trump is but mopping up. The latter's much deeper intent awaited: "Look, at a certain point, we got to make deals."

What's Trump doing? — that is, really doing? He is attempting to co-opt the very establishment that is belatedly plotting to confront and destroy Donald Trump as a unified force. He's playing both sides, both black and white; he's maneuvering the establishment's deal-making "pragmatists" off the board before they can coalesce against him. He is solving the establishment's "unity problem" by becoming the establishment itself, suitably repackaged in Trump's anti-establishment brand.

Look, or so The Donald is saying to the wider field of rank-and-file Republicans, you don't need a Chris or a Jeb or a Marco or John — the disfigured faces of the old, disordered establishment — since the broader establishment is already "coming on line" for me. I'm the anti-establishment establishment guy who can "make deals" once in the Oval Office; moderate, cooler-headed, pragmatic conservatives need not worry, for they need no alternative to Trump.

In short, Trump is using the establishment's disorder against it, and he's doing so preemptively. He's not waiting for Jeb and Enemies to hang themselves separately; he is eliminating (attempting, anyway) even the basis of their continued reason for being.

Had the establishment's bickering stumblebums come together as a unified force months or even weeks ago, they could have preempted Trump's present maneuver. Instead they scattered and opened wide and allowed for The Donald's co-opting adjustment — which is positively brilliant. He is modifying his vulgar recklessness at just the right time: days before Iowa and New Hampshire, then South Carolina, all of which could pretty much cinch this thing. And the disordered establishment will, true to form, never quite know what hit them, because, even truer to form, they never saw this coming.