The Carpentariat

As the world of Trump turns

The announcement appeared to catch Pentagon officials off guard, reports the Washington Post.

Replace Pentagon with the name of any other executive-branch department or agency and you have, these days, the most familiar typewritten sentence in the reporting of American politics. Virtually every Trumpian announcement is haphazard, impetuous and vastly ill-advised, and so it was with yesterday's presidential pronunciamento that Defense Secretary James Mattis will be leaving two months before he leaves; that is, on Jan. 1, not Feb. 28, the latter being the original resignation date submitted by Mattis.

Haphazard, impetuous, ill-advised, ignorant, vindictive, hotheaded, peevish, tempestuous, imperious, arrogant, subliterate or just plain stupid — take your pick, or take 'em all, for they all describe Trump, the most A-Z vulgarian ever to darken the Oval Office. Mattis was getting good press, so Mattis had to go — now. That, in part, was the perfectly vacuous thinking of Donald J. Trump, which, by way of contrast, only underscored Mattis' intelligence.

"I am pleased to announce," Trump tapped out on Twitter between bites of a with-everything Big Mac, "that our very talented Deputy Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, will assume the title of Acting Secretary of Defense starting January 1, 2019. Patrick has a long list of accomplishments while serving as Deputy, & previously Boeing." And what kind of acting defense secretary will Patrick Shanahan be? Why of course. "He will be great!" added Trump.

The president's flustery emotionalism has become even more fragile than that of a middle-school lass. Trump has "told aides," reports the Post, "that he especially resented the narrative of Mattis as a manager of Trump who served as a human guardrail against the president’s impulses," and "In recent days, Trump went so far as to tell White house aides that he does not need Mattis and that his defense secretary was not as important a figure as others believed."

A really gaudy Manhattan penthouse hath no fury like a Donald scorned. Mattis failed more times than not in his role as a human guardrail, still it is fair to say that the four-star general gave at least a patina of respectability to Trump's underworld administration. I suspect Mattis' Establishment credentials enraged Trump even more than the general's tutelage. This president seeks the reductively disreputable so as to burnish his mobster image; experts and intellectuals have an air of wussiness about them.

So, what's the next, expected caught-off-guard announcement from Trump? Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Right? There's a headline good for another couple days' distraction.

 

A Christmas Story

Nicely captured by the brilliant Ann Telnaes is the characterological essence of the Trump administration's chief goons, led, of course, by the gooniest of them all, the Don.

The father once said to the son, "I don't apologize — that's my life, petty corruption and corrupt pettiness — but I thought that when it was your time, you would be the one to hold the strings: Senator Trump, Governor Trump …" Added the father, "Well, it wasn't enough time, Donald. It wasn't enough time." To which little Donald replied, "We'll get there, Pop. We'll get there."

And Donald Trump did. Through assorted malefactions and as yet untraceable collusion with fellow gangsters — those activities being the family way — he did even better, becoming president of the United States.

Since then, allegations have mounted, indictments have heaped, and others' criminality has pointed directly to Trump. The vile stench of gangland governance has wafted over the nation and, some of it, under the radar. The orange creature who would be king has latibulized and retreated into solitary executive time and screaming paranoia; he sees enemies and prosecutors — both federal and state — everywhere, and he is right to do so.

They are coming for him, and the beleaguered Don has no Brother Pantangeli against whom to extort, no adjacent Cicero in which to relocate, no old country to which he can permanently flee. In becoming the highest lowlife, Trump made himself the flashiest target of career-ending investigations — and he has nowhere to hide.

The really peculiar facet of this allegoric tale is that it's really no allegory at all. Trump is a criminal kingpin, he is on the lam, as it were, and he is about to be nailed, in one way or t'other. He's the ghoulish Icarus of American politics, and his flameout will be spectacular.

Finis.

 

In shutdown mode, Democrats must hang tough

The crisis of illegal activity at our Southern Border is real and will not stop until we build a great Steel Barrier or Wall. Let work begin!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2018

The Democrats now own the shutdown!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018

That, in brief, is Trump's strategy to win the shutdown battle — a combative "caravan redo," as one administration official put it to the Daily Beast. The strategy is a kind of Republican atavism, reminiscent of the party's 1952 K1C2 Formula for winning the presidential election; it threw at Democrats the rather catchy charge of Korea, Communism and Corruption.  

Republicans rule by folly and campaign by slogans, but this time they're doing both. Trump and friends intend to slam the Dems for "wanting illicit drugs, terror, and 'trafficking' pouring over the southern border" as they pursue the imbecility of a bootless wall, so that the United States government may reopen. They never use a popgun when a cannon will do.

The White House informed the Beast that it will dispatch spokespeople to spread the word, rile the base and, it hopes, humiliate Democrats. Fact is, they're already spreading. Said "prominent Trump surrogate" Matt Schlapp: "I think the key for the president is to make it abundantly clear to the incoming [Democratic] majority in the House that he is going to blame them for each and every [migrant] caravan, for each and every rushing of the border, for the violence that occurs as a result of illegal immigration. The game is on. He is going to go after them… It is going to be their fault and they will own all of it."

It seems not to have occurred to Schlapp, Trump & Assoc. that Democrats can just as shamelessly blame the White House for each and every border violation, since it's the White House that has shut down so many of government's operations. This is not to mention that the Dems have Trump on tape: "I am proud to shut down the government for border security…. I will be the one to shut it down." Only a GOP Janus — meaning all of them — could afterwards claim that a shutdown is Democrats' fault and "they will own all of it."

Not to be outdone in cynical marketing was the White House's execrable Stephen Miller, spawn of 20th-century immigration, who told CNN: "Right now as we speak there is a surge of illegal immigration heading toward our country that presents a national crisis now. Not a month from now, not a year from now, right now. And this president took an oath, like every lawmaker in Congress, to defend the citizens of this country. How many more innocent people have to die in pursuit of an open-borders agenda?"

Sound familiar? It should. Miller's message was Trump's message just prior to the midterm elections, which, by "historic" numbers, cost his party the House. Thus if Democrats keep their nerve — and if Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it, they will — Trump's "caravan redo" is likely to be a midterm redo, with Republican blood everywhere.

For Democrats already hold the public-opinion edge in this, the most mindless shutdown yet. Reports the Washington Post: "By a 14-point margin [in a Quinnipiac poll], more voters overall said they would blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats, 51 percent to 37 percent"; "independents … sided more with Democrats, with 48 percent of the swing-voting block saying Trump and Republicans would be to blame compared with 39 percent who blamed Democrats"; and "54 percent of voters still oppose the wall." According to a CNN poll, "57 percent of Americans opposed the wall." An October CBS poll "found a similar 60 percent in opposition." Surprising is that among wall supporters — i.e., nearly all of them Republicans — 43 percent opposed shuttering the government for a wall, said a Fox News poll last year.

This shutdown-as-showdown will be more a test of Democratic resolve than Republican. Trump was correct when he said in the instantly infamous Oval Office meeting with Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that the last time (the only time) you guys shut down the government, it didn't go so well. In January the Dems caved (over the Dreamers) in one of Schumer's NY minutes; they looked foolish and disoriented. Trump, however, is always foolish and disoriented. Hence if Democrats just allow him enough time, he'll collapse as if he's on the phone with Erdoğan. So hang tough, Mr. & Mrs. Congressional Democrat — and stick it to Trump with unwavering purpose.

 

A rudderless White House and craven Congress

As with Franco still being dead, Republicans are still proving that they can't govern. Theirs is the third government shutdown in a mere two years, stresses the Times. This time the chaos and incompetence are because of a wall that virtually nobody wants, save for a lunatic fringe, because said wall is useless, expensive, and stupid. Thus, under unified Republican governance, so to speak, the United States proves to the world — again — that it's a bumbling muttonhead.

At least in this go-around of superpower-cum-superdunce, there's some comedy. Having been unequivocal, just days ago, that "I will shut down the government, I am proud to shut down the government," Trump now says the shutdown is all because of Machiavellian partisanship. "[Democrats] want to try and do anything possible to hurt us, because of the fact it’s politics," he said Thursday. "I understand that. I don’t even hold it against them, except you should always put your country first, and they’re not doing that. They’re putting politics first."

What is Trump's solution to the political impasse that he imposed? The Times reports that he possesses "[no] strategy for averting a shutdown…. During a meeting with Republican senators on Friday morning, Mr. Trump would not provide specifics about what kind of plan he could support, including how much money he would accept for fortifying the border, despite their repeated efforts to ascertain his conditions for a deal."

Instead — and this reminds me of Adolf waxing philosophical about Teutonic Will as the Russians were blowing up Berlin, block by bloody block — "The president talked at length about the wall and repeatedly pressed the senators about eliminating the filibuster so they could fund it with 51 votes."

The truly black comedy, however, came from none other than that keen steward of prudent conservatism, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, who said, he actually said about hundreds of thousands of federal workers who will lose their incomes over Christmas: "It's actually part of what you do when you sign up for any public service position."

Well, it is when Republicans are in charge, anyway.

 

And I thought you were supposed to know something before you run for president

Politico:

Trump jabbed at Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Friday, wondering aloud during an exchange with reporters why the Texas Democrat has been suggested as a potential 2020 presidential candidate even though he fell short in his Senate bid earlier this year.

"I thought you were supposed to win before you run for president," said the president.

Because he knows his own country's history as well as I know the Orang Ulu dialect of Borneo, Trump wouldn't know this, but Abraham Lincoln also lost his Senate bid before going on to the White House.

 

President Scrooge

Yesterday, Trump told a group of senior GOP lawmakers, "I’m OK with a shutdown."

Those not OK with a government shutdown are 800,000 federal employees who will either work without pay or not work at all — also without pay, of course — at the departments of Treasury, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Commerce, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development.

In lost productivity, the cost of a shutdown will run in the billions, most likely, and millions of Americans will be inconvenienced.

All because Trump "was agitated over suggestions in the conservative media that he was caving on his border wall campaign promise."

Said Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, on the House floor: "Mr. President, we’re going to back you up if you veto this bill…. But more importantly the American people will be there, they’ll be there to support you."

True enough, except it's not. Fifty-one percent of respondents to a Morning Consult poll said they'd blame Trump or the Republican Congress for a shutdown; 55 percent said Trump's cherished wall "is not important enough to shut down the government — far greater than the 31 percent who say it is important enough."

But what's a shutdown to Trump? Why should he care? He has his, so those 800,000 federal employees and their hobbled Tiny Tims can just spend Christmas wondering when their next paycheck will come.

 

The revival of irony

A few passages from merely the first three paragraphs of a WaPo story on Donald "I-alone-can-fix-it" Trump:

"Trump began Thursday under siege" … "howls of indignation from conservatives" … "thrusting the government toward a shutdown" … "the president’s erratic behavior" … "resignation letter was a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview" … "the most fragile moment of his presidency" … "vulnerable to convulsions on the political right" …

"Trump single-handedly propelled the U.S. government into crisis" … "[he] sent markets tumbling" … "a fracturing of Trump’s coalition" … "Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria" … "Conservatives called him a 'gutless president' … "friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in."

We often read of The Death of Irony. Well, since he knows, deep down, precisely how incompetent he is, Trump has resurrected irony — "Big time," as the also ironic Dick Cheney would say.

 

And then there was none - Jim Mattis and Gen. Trump

In what the NY Times called "the sharpest, and most public, protest" of the administration's foreign policy illiteracy — an epistolary protest that "condemned Mr. Trump’s approach to the world as destructive to American influence and power" — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' conscience had had quite enough:

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held. Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

In sum, Trump is disrespectful to allies and ignorant to the core, in the defense secretary's opinion, which puts 40 years of experience against two years of amateurism and its resulting chaos. Rather unconventional it is for a high-ranking cabinet member to publicly tell the president of the United States that he's an idiot. But Mr. Mattis did just that.

The Times adds that his "core complaint was that Mr. Trump had lost sight of the importance of the competition for global power with Russia and China, who want 'a world consistent with their authoritarian model.'" Here, Mattis may have been a bit off track, since Trump, too, wants a world — or at least an America — consistent with an authoritarian model. China and Russia have simply shown him the way.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said it was "a sad day for America because Secretary Mattis was giving advice the President needs to hear." The latter would be a given in any other administration, but wise counsel has always been a bridge too far with Trump in command. His clever bowels, you know: "I have a gut," said the president last month, "and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me."

With Trump we have rule by a kind of medieval obscurantism. His mind is like a steel trap: No enlightenment is allowed to get in.

There is, however, a possible bright side to Trump's infinite darkness. His benighted withdrawal of American troops from Syria angered more than Sen. Sasse in the Republican camp. And with each Trumpian alienation comes a more willing Senate to bounce the idiot right out of office.

 

A proctological exam, AFTER seeing the gastroenterologist

The last photo I posted, from Portland, Ore., leaned downward-right. Now this, in compensation — Chicago.

After being enlightened about all things bacterial by my new gastro guy, at Northwestern Hospital in Lake Forest, my daughter and I set out to acquire a same-day passport renewal for her. She had been offered a helluva travel deal through her university — only $250 for an all-expenses-paid, round trip to Israel (10 days). She promptly applied and was accepted. We were thrilled. Then we discovered that her passport would expire within six months of the trip, and neither the State Department nor U.S. airlines will permit overseas travel under that condition. Thus her need for a same-day passport renewal, which cost twice as much as the trip — and still there's no guarantee that her new passport will arrive before her departure date (Dec. 31st). A "same-day" passport doesn't actually mean you'll have a new passport the same day you shell out the money, while whimpering, in my case, in the most unmanly way.

 

After three weeks away from homebase I had several errands to run today, and Thursday I'm off to Chicago, where a gastroenterology "interventionist" will solve all my idiosyncratic problems. I'm sure. So I'll see you Friday.

 

The Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Co.), d.b.a. American Airlines

Me, to irritable, irritating American Airline attendant en route, Portland to Dallas: "Do you have anything to eat?"

Irritable, irritating American Airline attendant snaps back: "Look at the menu." (Which I didn't know was in the forward-seat netting.)

Me, to check-in lady at American Airline gate in Dallas (no departure time is posted): "When does the plane depart?"

Check-in lady at American Airline gate: "Soon." (Me again: "Is that a joke?")

Me, to another American Airline attendant, en route, Dallas to Bloomington, Ill.: "Do you know the duration of the flight?"

American Airline attendant: "Nope."

Light-hearted American Airline pilot to imprisoned assemblage: "We'll back out in about an hour, folks. It seems there's a rip in a cabin door. We're going to either repair the door or replace it with a new one. Sorry!" (Sorry hell — I really didn't want to fly with a ripped cabin door.)

Same light-hearted American Airline pilot to imprisoned assemblage, 30 minutes later: "Folks, we're going to ask you to deplane now [because of the cabin door situation, which was not resolved], and get on another plane that's waiting."

Same light-hearted American Airline pilot to imprisoned assemblage, on the new plane: "Well, folks, everything is ready to go on our new plane, but we forgot one thing — we forgot to get gas." (He added, "Bear with us for six minutes while we fuel up." Twenty minutes later, we taxied.)

***

In the early 1960s, Bob Newhart released a comedy album that included a skit titled "The Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Co.)." Yesterday, I flew on it.

 

Hymn to the great Pacific Northwest

Hello, I must be going
I cannot stay
I came to say
I must be going
I'm glad I came
But just the same
I must be going, la-la!

I'll stay a week or two
I'll stay the summer through
But I am telling you
I must be — going

I'll do anything you say
In fact I'll even stay!

But I must be — going!

See you in the morning.

 

Hungarians, at least, are screaming "Enough!"

An impressive sample of mass mobilization on behalf of the common weal, 4,555 miles from the more powerful epicenter of government corruption, the White House.

Anti-Orban Hungarians are protesting the government's new "slave law" — it permits employers to increase annual overtime hours to 400, and take three years to pay it — the government's crackdown on press freedom, the government's shuttering of a Soros-financed university, and, writes the ever-balanced Washington Post, "a perceived increase" in government corruption.

Said an eloquent Hungarian at a later, and violent, protest, "Enough of the lies, enough of Orban and enough of this filth. We would like purity, honor and light in this country, not this shadow, this darkness." We understand.

While Hungary is in Stage 2 of a cancerous authoritarianism, the United States lags behind, in Stage 1. The potential of the world's No. 1 economy and greatest military power going full authoritarian, however, is far more frightening than whatever might happen in an East European nation. (My apologies to Hungarian exceptionalists.) Still, Hungary's protests should be an inspiration and guide to those Americans who must endure, but detest, the transatlantic lies and filth of Trump.

 

No pity for screwed Trump voters

By backing the wall, my party has abandoned the conservative principles I treasure: less government, less spending, and respect for the law and private property. The wall is expected to cost between $8 billion and $67 billion to build, and its rushed construction requires the waiver of 28 federal laws meant to protect clean air and water, wildlife habitat and historical artifacts. As I  followed the news [last week], I was amazed to find myself agreeing with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who called the project "immoral, ineffective and expensive."

— Luciano Guerra, nature photographer and educator for the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas

Sagas of betrayal by self-professed hoodwinked schlemiels such as Mr. Guerra — he voted for Trump — seemingly ask for sympathy that is beyond my emotional, intellectual, and even mortal abilities. He "treasures" conservative principles, yet he supported the least conservative, most radical moron of the 2016 pseudoconservative pack. Presently he's paying for his foolishness, as the rest of us are paying for his foolishness as well.

He claims that, to his thinking at the time, Trump's promise of an immoral, ineffective and expensive wall was but a demagogic ruse never to materialize. Now he finds "government contractors illegally enter[ing] our property and … cutting down trees and clearing brush without permission or notice," land surveyors "hopp[ing] our fence to mark off property lines," and surveyors "accompanied by armed federal agents to guard them from visitors who might approach with questions."

This is indeed a heart-rending tale; more than the trespassing, the wholesale devastation of "clean air and water, wildlife habitat and historical artifacts." For Mr. Guerra himself, however, my heart rends not. With unprecedented malice of forethought (of sorts), the gentleman voted for a glaringly egregious mountebank of ignorance and privilege. He sees that now, and rather implicitly begs our understanding and compassion.

But I haven't any, not one whit — not for a dumb sucker who so eagerly was taken by a two-bit grifter.

 

Should Dems go populist? Please define.

"The Secret to Winning in 2020," by the Times' David Leonhardt, is an amusing, bemusing, confusing and rather distressing essay. "The secret" for Democrats, the columnist opines, is no secret at all — populism. Yet we are left mystified by what, precisely, his populism means.

In Leonhardt's definition, as it were, Democratic populism means "a candidate who can and will run as an economic populist … a candidate who will organize the 2020 campaign around fighting for the little guy and gal." His definition, then, means a political strategy that has been rolled out in every presidential campaign season since the late 18th century. It's Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan, the Roosevelts, und so weiter. This is a secret?

But, although populism is defined, somewhat superficially, by lexicographers as "support for the concerns of ordinary people," rhetoricians, political scientists and historians and sociopolitical analysts go deeper, in that such "support" must have a delivery system. And this is where populism ordinarily courts immense danger — Jackson, Bryan, Trump, QED.

For in argumentation theory, the delivery system is, more often than not, argumentum ad populum, which simply means that whatever the masses believe is that which is to be supported, defended, argued for. It makes no difference if the masses believe they should receive, say, a colossally idiotic, colossal tax cut — in the face of spiraling deficits. No, if the uniformed, reckless masses believe it, then by virtue of mass popularity it is endowed with the wisdom of Solomon, and must be tub-thumped by the politically virtuous.

'Tis a pity; this wretched species of populism works. Just ask the current occupant of the White House, who campaigned on all manner of populist bunk and now reeks of catastrophe everywhere.

The further danger in 2020 is that of a Democratic populist arms race; any perceived gap in populist enthusiasm by a candidate will ensure that that candidate accelerates his or her policy recklessness beyond that which threatened the candidate's sustainability. There would be no end to the madness — as competing Republican populist psychoses have demonstrated, to the GOP's ruin.

All politics is populist, in the lexicographical strain. All populism, however, is not smart politics — if the nation's welfare is of paramount concern. Hence I would agree with Leonhardt's populist exhortation, if only he had demarcated the misguided sort from the prudent.

 

David Brooks, the Weekly Standard, and a NeverTrump consensus

David Brooks has penned a strikingly cogent analysis of the Weekly Standard's death throes. He describes the magazine's owner, Phil Anschutz, as "a run-of-the-mill arrogant billionaire," and his management aide de camp, Ryan McKibben, as "an ordinary corporate bureaucrat — with all the petty vanities and the lack of interest in ideas that go with the type." Having set the stage of corporate banality, Brooks then goes in for the counteroffensive kill:

[Last] week, Anschutz and McKibben murdered The Weekly Standard, the conservative opinion magazine that Anschutz owned. They didn’t merely close it because it was losing money. They seemed to have murdered it out of greed and vengeance….

John Podhoretz, one of the magazine’s founders, reports that they actively prevented potential buyers from coming in to take it over and keep it alive. They apparently wanted to hurt the employees and harvest the subscription list so they could make money off it. And Anschutz, being a professing Christian, decided to close the magazine at the height of the Christmas season, and so cause maximum pain to his former employees and their families….

The magazine has been critical of Trump, and so this is another example of the gradual hegemony of Trumpism over the conservative world…. But that’s not the whole story. In reality, this is what happens when corporate drones take over an opinion magazine, try to drag it down to their level and then grow angry and resentful when the people at the magazine try to maintain some sense of intellectual standards. This is what happens when people with a populist mind-set decide that an uneducated opinion is of the same value as an educated opinion.

Alas the neoconservative Weekly Standard's Billy Kristol, noted hero of the Iraq War, and his continuing battles with nemesis Trump have been more than an addition to That's Entertainment. Any president who can convert Lt. Colonel Kristol into a sputtering militant of crypto-liberalism has splendidly accomplished the heretofore unthinkable. The magazine's best-known writer seems to have intuited that the combination of a rabid partisan base and a "unity executive" of inexorable authoritarianism is also a formula for American ruin. Kristol has harbored the gonads to say so publicly, rather than bow to the savagery of Trumpism. And for that, I say, "I salute you, Mr. Kristol."

 

Is a return to Obama's progress just a return to the past?

Elizabeth Bruenig, opinion columnist for the Washington Post, heroically writes — in that her preference is clear in this opening line — that "In 2020, Democrats will have a new opportunity to either reach backward for the Obama era, or to lay the foundation for a bolder, progressive future."

I have been reading exhortations for a bolder progressive future for more years than I care to admit. The activist chorus of "boldness" constantly vocalized would strike me as more harmonious only if more than a quarter of Americans identified as liberal — 70 percent, as conservative or moderate — and only a fraction of that quarter as very liberal, or boldly progressive. Progressives' indifference, or blindness, to the mainstreams of political self-identification is a gift to propagandistic Republicans and a betrayal of sensible Democratic politics. I myself am a social democrat, but I draw the line at abstract ideology as tangible political suicide, which presumptuous progressivism promises.

When it comes to centrism — a much-maligned term that more intelligently means political pragmatism; simply, a practice of the possible — Bruenig's sour deportment toward it is almost comically on display. "So much of centrist-Democrat fantasizing about 2020 already seems aimed at repeating a golden past," writes Bruenig. "Consider the groundswell of interest in Beto O’Rourke.... For Democrats excited about O’Rourke, his primary draw is his similarity to Barack Obama — both in form and content…. O’Rourke’s politics also fall into the same ambiguously centrist zone as Obama’s…. Meanwhile, other candidates straight from Obama’s orbit — such as former vice president Joe Biden and former housing secretary Julián Castro — are also eyeing the nomination, with appeals to unity and centrist perspectives."

Oh my, appeals to unity and pragmatic perspectives. What are O'Rourke, Biden and Castro thinking? Why must electoral victory be expressed through the unification of center-left, center and mildly center-right, when doctrinaire progressivism could make a bold hash of it, but on the upside, be proud of its executed ideological commitments?  

"When not absorbed in hopes of re-creating the Obama era" — that is, the boring Obama era; you know, economic recovery, expansion of healthcare coverage, rescue of the auto industry, etc. etc. — "Democrats," says Bruenig, "mainly seem intent on beating Trump, with little comment or insight, at least so far, on what they will do with power once they have it." The latter, Bruenig herself does in a column largely devoted to the splendor of bold progressive politics. Furthermore, her implied devaluation of "beating Trump," which is the apotheosis of true political splendor in 2020, is oddly out of sync with national sentiment.

Concludes Bruenig, "If all the Democrats can manage is to hark back to the past and focus on winning for its own sake, they’re missing an opportunity to lay out a blueprint for the future."

Is a return to presidential decency and dignity a yawn-inducing fixation on the past? Is the overseas reassertion of American values and reattachment to traditional allies and treaties overlooking an opportunity for a healthier future? Is the protection of healthcare gains and essential reversal of Trump & Co.'s disastrous, deficit-inflating tax cuts a blueprint for America abandoned?

Ms. Bruenig seems to be missing what's right in front of her nose: huge progress via the adoption of Obama-era progressive-conservatism, which is also where the American electorate is.

 

It's just not right

I may look a trifle tipsy, but I swear I wasn't. Not yet, anyway. My reason for posting this, though, has nothing to do with the status of my blood alcohol level in Portland. The reason is, instead: You should be able to see, just above my left bicep, the faintest splotch of red. It's a geranium. Outside. In December. Where I come from, there should be no outdoor flowers, and all snow. I'm not sure I could ever get used to this.

 

In Iowa, Biden leads

Polling from Selzer & Co., rated A+ by FiveThirtyEight, via the Des Moines Register:

Thirty-two percent of respondents say [Joe Biden] is their first choice for president. ['Eighty-two percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers say they have a favorable view of Biden.']

Sanders … follows Biden with 19 percent. O’Rourke earns support from 11 percent of respondents.... Eight percent say Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is their first choice. No other candidate tops 5 percent.

The Register notes that "candidates who take an early lead in polling may face more hurdles than others who initially poll lower." It's a bit like winning the first hand in a poker game. Beware. But thus far Biden's opponents aren't much of an intimidating bunch, with, perhaps, the exception of Beto O'Rourke. Bernie Sanders seems played out, and Warren I can't quite figure, which is Warren's problem, not mine.

 

America in tatters

From the NY Times' online front page, I give you a snapshot of reemergent American greatness.

First, there's the headline: "Texas Judge Strikes Down Obama’s Affordable Care Act as Unconstitutional," which compelled an outraged op-ed by two law professors of once-differing opinions on Obamacare: "We were on opposing sides of the 2012 and 2015 Supreme Court challenges to the Affordable Care Act.... But as experts in the field of statutory law, we agree that this decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy."

How did Trump, persistent critic of out-of-control, partisan judicial power, react (on Twitter, where else?) to this mockery of the law? "Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America!"

Below the Obamacare story, there is this: "Ryan Zinke, Face of Trump Environmental Rollbacks, Is Leaving Interior Department." That headline was accompanied by another: "Zinke has faced more than 15 ethics inquiries; at least six are ongoing."

And below that is this: "Investors Have Nowhere to Hide as Stocks, Bonds and Commodities All Tumble." Reads the story's text: "For the first time in decades, every major type of investment has fared poorly, as the outlook for economic growth and corporate profits is dampened by rising trade tensions and interest rates."

Assuming one has the stomach to persevere, one would then encounter this headline: "How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments." That would be McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, which "At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, [is helping] raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests."

It's a curious thing, this Make America Great Again slogan. That its agenda is in tatters is beyond dispute. Yet its unfolding is precisely what Trump promised the American electorate. Which means that Make American Great Again always meant make America lawless, unprincipled, economically precarious and capitalistically cutthroat — "sometimes in ways that counter American interests." This — all of it — was to be anticipated; still, it triumphed in the 2016 contest. Which further means that John Adams' remark was, perhaps, frighteningly prophetic: "There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."