Political Notebook – Republicans’ last chance

It’s February now, and as New Zealand begins to move from summer holiday mode back toward normality, I will, too. That means it’s as good a time as any to begin more normal blogging, too. Maybe I’ll even do more of these Political Notebook posts this year. We’ll see—no promises, of course, but it’d be easy to beat last year, when I did only one post.

At the moment, the USA is still adjusting to saner, more rational politics, now that the loser of the 2020 presidential election is finally gone (Related: Roger Green's post, "January 6 to competence"). Naturally, it can’t and won’t be as easy as simply “going back to normal”, not with so much lunacy afoot and so many radicalised, violent, conspiracy theory-loving extremists on the loose in the USA, determined to wreak havoc—and control the Republican Party. Still, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Republican Party: Do or die?

The Republican Party has one last chance to save itself: Convict the ex-occupant of the White House in the upcoming impeachment trial because he incited the US Capitol riot. If they refuse, despite so many of their lot calling him a danger only a few short weeks ago, then it could be all over for the party. As Republican strategist Sarah Longwell warned, if they don’t convict the ex-occupant of the White House, he’s “going to control [the Republican Party] for the next 10 years.”

It’s likely that even if the losing candidate fades away for whatever reason, there will be plenty of others to take up the cause, such as it is. The Republican leader in the US House boarded a flight to the 2020 loser’s Florida house to kiss his, um, ring. As Steve Benen of MSNBC noted, “GOP leaders would have us believe that they're not necessarily kowtowing to their corrupt former leader; they're merely using him to acquire power.” Sure they are.

The Republican Party has made such “deals with the devil” repeatedly over the past 40 years, and it’s always been a disaster. Reagan brought far-right “Christians” into his coalition, and now they dictate much of the party’s policy and have ultimate say in who is, and who is not, appointed to the federal judiciary by a Republican president. In 2010, the party leaders thought they could control and exploit the teabaggers, but it turned out they couldn’t (funny to think we used to think they were the nuttiest Republicans around). Then, in 2016, when that former reality TV series performer decided to run for the party’s presidential nomination, they decided they could control him, too. In a way, they did, since they could do whatever they wanted, like appointing extremists to Federal courts, but what they couldn’t control was the frothing mob that supported their party’s Dear Leader.

That mob is still there and still dangerous. Just today, “Dodger Stadium’s COVID-19 vaccination site temporarily shut down after protesters gather at entrance”. Everyone knows that more violence is inevitable, and the more we learn about their storming of the US Capitol, the more we can see how very, very, very lucky it was that Members of Congress weren’t murdered. Next time, the seditionists be better organised for whatever violence they choose to unleash.

Insanity seems to be the main problem with what now appears to be the Republican base. Before the blockade of Dodger Stadium, organisers went online inviting people going to what they called their “Scamdemic Protest/March”, and urged them to “please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only. This is a sharing information protest and march against everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc. [Emphasis added]. This means that they’re learning from the huge mistakes in the attempted Capitol Hill coup and are already fine-tuning their tactics.

The modern Republican Party, then, has become the party of bizarre conspiracy theories, “alternative facts”, lies, intimidation, white grievance, and utter insane nuttiness. “Jewish space lasers,” anyone? How about their bizarre and utterly insane belief that Hillary Clinton cut off the face of a young girl, wore it as a mask, and then drank her blood? Then there are the oldies-but-goodies, like the non-existent basement in a pizza parlour where imaginary children being sexually trafficked by imaginary people were supposedly held captive in imaginary cages, or even the shapeshifting reptilian aliens who supposedly control everything (oh, how we used to laugh at that one…).

And then there are their ongoing lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting and also about the shooting six years later at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or maybe Seth Rich’s murder, who, exactly, was behind the insurrection on Capitol Hill, the “stolen” election, and on, and on, and on—all lies and insanity they seem to actually believe.

None of that, nor the fact that the Republican Party’s leadership condones such dangerous insanity, is funny any more. Those people are armed and dangerous—and are now at the very heart of the Republican Party: “A guide to likely member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric”, or “Marjorie Taylor Greene's record of radicalism gets even worse”, or the stunt pulled when “Rep. Boebert causes delay at U.S. House security, refuses to turn over her bag”. These are mere samples of the future of the Republican Party. Clearly good times are ahead…

The leadership of the Republican Party needs to take responsibility for the monster they unleashed, aided, abetted, and encouraged. They need to fix this. The best place to start would be to convict the loser of the 2020 presidential election, and then strip him of the ability to ever run for office again. If they don’t, the insanity of the Republican Party’s base will become the only acceptable way to be a Republican, and the USA will only have one functioning, sane, rational, fact-based political party—and even then it will struggle to gain power. That’s the future the Republicans plan to give the USA this month.

In crisis, there is hope

There are things that could help fix this situation. Most of the reforms that are critically needed are also impossible, or nearly so. One of the things that will help is if the Senate abolishes the filibuster, but, yeah, that’s sooooo going to happen, right?

Failing that, there are more things in the mix. For example, “DC statehood bill introduced in Senate”. No one expects that to go anywhere, but statehood for DC and, if they want it, Puerto Rico, would add more Democratic US Representatives to help reduce the effect of the gerrymandering used to rig elections for the Republicans. If both of them became states, it would also add four Democratic US Senators, and that matters because of how anti-democratic the US Senate is (a better solution overall would be a proportional Senate, with the Senate apportioned like the US House is, though in my opinion abolishing it altogether shouldn’t be off the table).

There’s also hope in that some Republicans do seem to get it. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska wrote a timely opinion piece for The Atlantic, “QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within”. US Rep Adam Kinsinger of my native Illinois is another. He was one of a mere 10 Republican US Representatives voted to impeach the loser of the 2020 election after he incited the seditious attempted coup at Capitol Hill (see also “Betraying Your Church—And Your Party”, also in The Atlantic). Just today, it was announced that, as the Washington Post put it, he “has launched a new political action committee that is designed to become a financial engine to challenge the former president’s wing of the GOP caucus and stand up against a leadership team still aligned with him.” I wish him luck with that—sincerely—but the survival of the republic requires more than those efforts. In the meantime, plenty of Republicans are voting with their feet and walking away from the party, including many with lifetime of service to the party.

The forces of darkness are strong, and the Republican Party is on a knife’s edge. If it survives, it will come down to what Republicans do later this month. A fallback is if a few rational Republicans left succeed in re-capturiing their party. And maybe substantive reforms will actually be made. And, if all that fails? No idea. But the resultt can’t be good.

Political Notebook – Two big elections

Try as I might, I just couldn’t be bothered blogging about the two big elections I recently went through. Naturally, I had stuff to say, but nothing I cared about enough to actually write about. Part of that was was caused by the effects of my prescriptions, but I think I was also just plain worn down, especially by the past 13+ months, but also the three years-ish before that. Still, I noticed stuff, and a Political Notebook post is the simplest way to share some of that.

I really only published one expressly partisan political post just before the US election, and also one about voting in the US election. Apart from that, I haven’t really said anything since before Nigel died. All together, prior to today I published 53 posts about the US elections.

Up until today, I’d published 19 posts about the NZ election, and a large number of them were general in nature. Only a few posts were partisan in focus. I also had one about voting in the New Zealand election.

I think that I’d have had a lot more to say about both countries’ elections if Nigel hadn’t died. I can’t be sure, of course, but at the very least, I’d have been more motivated. Fortunately plenty of other people have written about stuff so I didn’t have to.

The USA’s elections

We all knew that the US election was going to be a mess, no matter what happened. What happened was all that and so much worse. The graphic above demonstrates how wide Joe Biden’s victory margin really was, though, of course, that’s irrelevant: The only thing that matters is getting enough votes in just the right states. Of course, Joe Biden did that, too.

As the result of again losing one single Electoral College Vote in Nebraska to the Democratic Candidate, the state’s Republicans are again determined to make the state “winner takes all” to ensure they all go to the Republican candidate. Of course.

Hypocritical electoral antics are one of the many reasons “The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.” As Vox's Ezra Klein’s interview of Anne Applebaum points out. Which makes Marco Rubio’s opinion that his party “must rebrand as party of 'multiethnic, multiracial, working-class' voters” all the more laughable. Now, if Rubio had pledged to end his party’s reliance on disinformation, that would be a start (See: “Americans Were Primed To Believe” in FiveThirtyEight).

So, where to for Republicans? A better question might be what can Democrats do for disaffected Republicans? Before the election, long-time Republican strategist Stuart Stevens wrote “A Message to Democrats from Your New Ally: Victory is near”. At the same time, it’s often been pointed out that Democrats need to learn to speak to non-Trumpian Republicans. Published in NZ’s Stuff, Lana Hart suggests “Midwestern oddities help explain voting patterns”. She has a point, even if some of how she got there is arguable. This of course puts aside the question of whether it might be viable for Democrats to move Left, but that’s too big a topic for a links post. Maybe another day.

On the positive side, there were more women elected to Congress. Writing for FiveThirtyEight, Meredith Conroy talks about “How A Record Number Of Republican Women Will — And Won’t — Change Congress”. The short version: It’s not enough to really change things, either for the Republican Party or the politics of Congress.

New Zealand’s Election

By anyone’s reckoning, New Zealand’s election was huge and decisive. 82.2% of enrolled voters cast ballots (and 94.1% of eligible voters were enrolled by the day before the election; voter enrollment is compulsory). Of those votes, 68% were cast in advance (before Election Day).

The New Zealand Labour Party (full disclosure: I’m a member of the party) received 50% of the Party Vote, entitling it to 65 seats in the new Parliament (out of 120). This is the first time since MMP elections began in 1996 that a party has received enough votes to govern alone, and it was the largest intake of new MPs the party has seen since the First Labour Government was elected in 1935. The new Labour Party Caucus is also its first to be majority female. Overall, the new Parliament is the most diverse New Zealand has had. Among other things, thanks to the election, "NZ Parliament most rainbow in world".

Naturally, it wasn’t all clear sailing. Rightwingers were up to mischief, as they so often are. Some Australian lobbyists for the energy industry slandered NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in part because she pledged to take action on climate change (an example they’re clearly afraid Australia will follow).

There was also a nonsense theory that the election wasn’t really an overwhelming vote of approval for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government; instead, it was conservative “National Party voters voting for Labour as a way to keep the Green Party out of government. There’s no evidence of that, and a far more likely explanation is that it was just an overwhelming vote of approval for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government. Personally, I think any National voters who voted Labour—or, more likely, for the libertarian-ish far right Act Party, which got its highest vote in many, many years—did so because of how extremely unpopular National’s leader Judith Collins is. I know I’m not the only one who thinks that, either. We’ll eventually have more data about that later on.

A newly elected Green Party MP, Ricardo Menéndez March, who is the first Mexican immigrant to be elected to Parliament, was the target of abuse because of a sarcastic Tweet he made about having to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Now, full disclosure, I’ve always liked him, even when I’ve disagreed with him, because of his endearing politics nerdiness (takes one to know one), and it’s nice that he’s also openly gay. However, the main reason I back him on this is because there’s nothing wrong with sarcasm, even about a stupid oath. Besides, I’ve long been critical of the oath used precisely because it requires an oath of affirmation of allegiance to the Queen, not the people of New Zealand. The oath needs to change, no matter what the mouth-breathers choose to think.

Finally, there was one weird thing about the New Zealand Election, delivered courtesy of Facebook. When I shared the NZ Labour graphic above celebrating the new government being sworn in, Facebook inserted one of its standard links to election information—about the US election results. This is a company that has no problem serving up ads for things I’ve searched for online or mentioned in a FB comment (or even spoken about out loud…), yet it can’t tell the difference between something about the US election and that of another country. No wonder they have so much trouble stopping disinformation and hate speech. Maybe I’ll talk about politics more now. Maybe not. But at least I now have these things off my list.

That, and the NZ election shows how well a democracy's elections can be.

Political Notebook – Departures and arrivals

Yesterday the number of Democratic Candidates for US President dropped by one, only to go in the wrong direction today, going back up by one. On the other hand, today we also saw an interesting Democratic candidate enter a US Senate race. There will be more of these sorts of stories in the weeks and months ahead.

Yesterday, US Representative Eric Swalwell of California dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, three months after entering it. It had become clear his campaign wasn’t catching on, despite a strong performance on the second day of the first Democratic Debate. [See also: “Why Eric Swalwell’s Campaign Failed” from FiveThirtyEight].

Today, Tom Steyer, a billionaire who is best known for funding a campaign to impeach the current president, joined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Earlier this year he said he wouldn’t do that. I’ll be honest: When I saw that he was running, the first thought that popped into muy head wasn’t charitable. “Oh great,” I thought to myself, “Just what we need: Another white male billionaire who’s sure he has all the answers for us.” Having said that, his ideas are definitely a lot more sensible than a certain other white male billionaire could ever achieve, but we have two dozen Democratic candidates! We should be winnowing down the field, not adding to it. [See also: “Impeachment and environmental activist Tom Steyer announces presidential bid” from Politico and "Why We’re Not Treating Tom Steyer As A ‘Major’ Candidate (Yet)" from FiveThirtyEight].

One of the reasons Swalwell dropped out of the race is that, struggling to poll above 1%, it was improbable that he’d make the next Democratic Debate. Steyer acknowledges it’s similarly improbable that he’ll make the next debate, and they say they’re aiming to make later debates. Maybe he will, but is that really what we need?

Defeating the current occupant of the White House is the most important job for the 2020 elections, but it’s hardly the only one. There are plenty of state legislative races and Congressional races that might be swung if they got cash infusions, and, in my opinion, that would be a far better use of Steyer’s money than mounting what could well prove to be a quixotic campaign. Still, maybe he’d prove me wrong. It’s happened in the past.

Meanwhile, Amy McGrath, as described by the Associated Press, “a Marine combat aviator who narrowly lost a House race to an incumbent Republican in Kentucky, has set her sights on an even more formidable target: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell”. If she succeeds, it would be a HUGE national service to the entire United States.

Naysayers (Republicans, that is…) point out she lost her race in a Blue Wave election, which is cute, but irrelevant. Kentucky is a deep Red state, and ending up only three points behind the incumbent Republican is remarkable. Can she pull off a big upset victory? Maybe. She should have plenty of cash at her disposal, but given how hard Mitch and his party will fight, and how low they’ll be prepared to go, she will have to be awesome. [See also: “Former fighter pilot launches Senate challenge against McConnell” from Politico, and “The Democrats Have A Candidate In Kentucky. But Can She Beat Mitch McConnell? FiveThirtyEight].

There will be more Democratic candidates dropping out, including some who may be persuaded to run for the US Senate instead in order to improve Democrats’ chances of taking control of that chamber. However, one person who won’t be among them is Former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. She told Politico that she will not be running for open the US Senate seat from Kansas currently held by Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who is retiring. After stepping down as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama Administration, she said there was “not a chance” she’d run for office again in Kansas, which means her announcement is no surprise.

Meanwhile, Politico has also reported that “'Members are looking over their shoulders': Democrats spooked by new primary threats”. That could mean a lot of turmoil in Democratic primaries—or not. Very often such candidacies turn out to be all talk, however, the talk alone can weaken an incumbent Democrat, especially if it convinces Leftist voters to not vote for them, and that creates an opening for Republican challengers.

Speaking of departures and arrivals, the Associated Press tells us “Who’s in, who’s out: Meet the Dems running for president”, a list that will be changing a lot over the next few weeks and months. Related to that, Politico tells us “Who’s in and who's out of the next Dem debates?”. That list will change, too—in fact, since it was published before the comings and goings among Democratic candidates this week, it’s already getting out of date, though it’s basic information is still correct.

And that’s it for this edition of the Notebook.

Political Notebook – 2019 Pride Edition

Four years ago today (US time), the US Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land in throughout the USA. Since then, the Radical Right has been working hard to reverse that and all other gains made by LGBT+ people over the past 50 years. Every single day we something in the news about (mostly) political attacks on LGBT+ people. The current regime controlling the White House has been waging a war against trans* people, and theocratic extremists in the Republican Party are working hard to turn the clock back on the human and civil rights of LGBT+ people. These are not all good days.

So today, as an important anniversary, is the perfect time to summarise just a small sample of all the bad currently going on in the USA—and some good things, too.

The enemies in government

The longterm plan of the Radical Right in the USA is to abolish marriage equality and to end protections of the civil and human rights of LGBT+ people. They have some “creative” solutions: “Alabama lawmakers pass bill to end marriage licenses” so that they don’t have to issue any to same-gender couples. That’ll show ‘em who’s boss! The main way Republicans are working to end LGBT+ equality is appointing extremist radicals to federal courts. This takes time, but it’s easy enough to do with Republicans constrolling the US Senate: “Senate confirms Trump nominee with anti-LGBTQ rights
record for lifetime federal judgeship”. This is their way to undo marriage equality and other advances for LGBT+ people because that happened afater positive rulings from federal courts. Meanwhile, there’s a detective with a sherrif’s office in Tennessee “called for the execution of LGBT+ people”. He didn’t have any reason other than his peculiar religious beliefs, and “on no more grounds than a cell phone photo of a person participating in a Pride event.” That went too far even for Cracker Barrel, something that may have surprised some LGBT+ activists.

Political and religious extremists are enemies, too

The current regime is controlled in many areas by extremist, far-right “Christians”, and that affects much of their domestic policy [see: “‘Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration”). One of the strongest radical, extremist “Christian” supporters of the current occupant of the White House defended the regime of his Temporal Lord when they banned the Gay Pride Flag flying at US embassies. The charming guy declared it was “offensive to Christians and millions of people of other faiths”, which is pretty hilarious, really: The only time that those radical extremists ever care about“people of other faiths”is when they try to use them as props in their propaganda. That’s not just silly, it’s also yawn-inducingly boring, since religious crackpots attack the Gay Pride Flag all the time; in fact, I blogged about it way back in 2010. Still, it’s not all smooth walking across the water for them: “Mike Pence: Why his role as Trump's evangelical ambassador is facing new pushback”. Good news, indeed.

A bunch of fake “pastors” took part in a “death to gays” stunt in Orlando, Florida, chosen and timed deliberately to mock the anniversary of the Pulse massacre. Outside the event, one of the evil hoards declared, “Pray that if they do any protests, that it gets violent. They have Stand Your Ground in Florida. So we’re allowed to fight back.” A loving Christian, huh? A Missouri man threatened to "kill every gay person I can" at St. Louis’ PrideFest.

The Roman Catholic leadership cut ties with a school that refused to fire a married gay teacher, which is pretty awesome. But another school in the same archdiocese followed its orders and fired a gay teacher.

Community without unity?

The LGBT+ communities aren’t a monolith and more than Christians are. There are good Christians who stand up to the bigoted hate mongers on the Right, which means there are two sides even among Christians. So, it should be no surprise that there are divisions among the LGBT+ communities, too. “In Praise of Identity Politics and the Long History of Desire” looks at a different focus for Pride. “A match made in heaven” talks about the struggle between the two factions. The “corporatisation” of Pride events has long been a flash point in the LGBT+ communities. “These rainbow flag-waving corporations donated millions to anti-gay members of Congress”, which is a common enough criticism, though—in my opinion—unfair: Plenty of corporations give to both parties.

Despite it all, there is good news

Appropriate for today’s anniversary, Gallup reported that ” U.S. Support for Gay Marriage Stable, at 63%” . Sure, it should be higher by now, but a minority will still oppose it decades from now—after all, some still oppose interracial marriage. Meanwhile, as smaller majority, 53%, told Gallup that new anti-discrimination laws are needed to protect LGBT+ people. Gallup also found that “In U.S., 71% Support Transgender People Serving in Military”, which is stark contrast to the actions of the current regime controlling the White House. On gthe other hand, they also reported that "Americans Still Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population".

Gallup also reported on the change over time: “Gallup First Polled on Gay Issues in '77. What Has Changed?”. Overall, things are much better now—but there are dangers looming. Finally, for a geeky take on it all, their Methodology Blog Blog answered the question, "How Do You Measure the LGBT Population in the U.S.?"

A couple last related pieces

There were a couple more things worth checking out, starting with "Stonewall at 50: stories from a gay rights revolution". An article that was unusual and targeted also answered a question more people ought to consider: "Here’s what a good LGBTQ ally looks like".

• • •

This is only a small sampling of the sort of stuff about LGBT+ people and our rights that I see all the time. On this special anniversary, and as we get closer to the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall, it’s worth the Notebook and putting in a page just about these issues.

Political Notebook for 12 May 2019

The pace of political news never let’s up, and when combined with a lack of time, that means things pile up. Today’s collection of political stuff was built up over a few weeks, so it's a bit longer than usual. Sometimes it’s necessary.

The rogue ones

The current regime’s war on democracy and the rule of law has picked up speed since the redacted Mueller Report was released. For example, “Trump and his allies are blocking more than 20 separate Democratic probes in an all-out war with Congress”, and, of course, there’s the big fight building because “Refusal to hand over Trump's tax returns sets up legal fight”. There are lot of excuses the regime is making, most of them downright silly, but one of them is “executive privilege”, something that’s not actually in the US Constitution, but that presidents have been claiming for years, mostly to hide what they’re doing from Congressional scrutiny and oversight. Thankfully, Politifact, the project of the Poynter Institute, has provided a handy guide to “What you need to know about executive privilege”.

All of which is why “Trump’s lawlessness is an unfolding Shakespearean tragedy”, as a ThinkProgress piece puts it.

The desperate despot

The current regime is headed by a man who has openly and often expressed his love of and admiration for brutal dictators and their authoritarian regimes. He tries to emulate his heroes, often comically, like when he wanted his eventually cancelled military parade. It’s clear he never quite gave up on the idea of using legitimate patriotism to flatter and exalt himself, as the Washington Post explains in “Trump takes over Fourth of July celebration, changing its location and inserting himself into the program”. Because what all narcissists crave is adulation; dictators have the power to make everyone join in.

Obviously, at the moment the current occupant of the White House can’t force all Americans to worship him, not yet. But what happens if he loses the 2020 election and simply refuses to leave office? “Scholars echo Pelosi’s concerns: Trump will not step down in 2020 if he loses re-election”. As well they should—consider what the man himself has been joking about how me may not leave, and his strongest allies, the allegedly comprised son of a dead TV preacher, has said he should get two extra years to “make up” for being investigated for the crimes he and his campaign committed.

There are those who point out that, as per the Constitution, whoever is elected in November, 2020 will become president automatically at Noon on January 20, 2021, regardless of what the current occupant does or doesn’t do in the event he loses the election. But Speaker Pelosi’s concerns, as she pointed out in the New York Times piece the Slate piece linked to above mentioned, Democrats will need a massive victory so that its legitimacy is beyond any question. If he loses by a small amount, he will rally his supporters in his defence. There are 78 days between Election Day and Inauguration Day, which is more than enough time to get his frothing fans—especially the heavily armed ones—to Washington, DC to prevent the normal peaceful transfer of power. It doesn’t matter if they could prevent the US military re-taking Washington and ending the rebellion, what matters is that the last norm of constitutional law would be shattered, and if he prevailed it would mean the end of the USA. Anyone who says that’s “impossible” hasn’t been paying attention for the past 27 months.

His frothing fervent fans laugh at all this, arguing that, just like in 2016, we take him literally, but not seriously, while they do the opposite. If we’ve learned anything about him it’s this: Don’t ever underestimate that man again. He may be “joking” about overthrowing the Constitution, but only a fool would dismiss the possibility that he’s serious about doing so.

Second-worst case scenario

While the current occupant could reject his election defeat and seize power as a dictator, it’s also entirely possible—maybe even likely at this particular moment—that he could win the 2020 election. The election is a long way off—the better part of a year and a half—and there are far too many unknowns to permit any kind of firm opinion on that. After all, at this point in 2015, polls showed that the leading candidates for the Republican Nomination were Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Marco Rubio (depending on the specific poll). The eventual Republican nominee was either not named or polled very, very lowly. The common wisdom was that Jeb would get the nomination.

We can take two things from this history lesson: First, current polling of Democrats may be true at the moment (since all polls are at their heart a snapshot of a moment in time), but one should never assume that the current polls predict who the Democratic nominee will be next year. So, it’s not surprising that, as Real Clear Politics has shown, polls testing theoretical matches between the Current Occupant and various Democrats are all over the place. Once there’s an actual Democratic nominee—or, at least, a clearly likely one—then we’ll start seeing polling data that will be more useful. [In the meantime, FiveThiryEight’s tracking of Democratic Primary polling is interesting, if nothing else]

Similarly, the ongoing unpopularity of the current occupant is not necessarily permanent, and, in any case, nationwide polling is irrelevant: What matters is who wins what states with how many Electoral College votes. End of story. A candidate can lose the popular vote and still become president, as the current occupant did. But this time, the current occupant might win both.

The 2020 presidential election will, as always, come down to a handful of “swing states”, and—at the moment—polls suggest that it doesn’t look good for the current occupant. His approval ratings in swing states, including ones that gave him the White House, are terrible, often far worse than his national average. But 2016 proved that we can never assume anything, and Democrats should work as if they’re underdogs—especially because they are. Fortunately, the Democratic Party is already working at building their “on the ground” staff for the General Election campaign, rather than wait until the nominee is known, as they did in 2016. That’s good—and vital.

Meanwhile, the current occupant isn’t depending on holding onto the swing states that handed him the White House in 2016, and he’s looking for new opportunities. For example, he thinks he has a very good chance of winning Virginia, and he also thinks he could flip Minnesota. It would be a fatal mistake to laugh at him and ignore the danger in the opportunities he thinks he sees.

Even though he hasn’t delivered much for his frothing fans, we must at least acknowledge that the current occupant has a very, very good chance of winning the election in 2020. First, he will take credit for a positive economy—assuming it still is and that his trade war with China doesn’t destroy it. Nit-picking over whether he deserves any credit for that economy won’t change anything in the eyes of ordinary voters who will, at the very least, give him the benefit of the doubt. In fact, even suggesting that he merely benefitted from existing trends, etc., is likely to make voters perceive Democrats as negative and mean-spirited, playing into the current occupant’s rhetoric about “angry Democrats”. To avoid a close election they could then lose, Democrats cannot afford to wilfully alienate any voters.

A better strategy, in my opinion: Acknowledge what’s going well and then pivot to how many people are being left behind, how income for most people has been stagnant—often stalled—for decades, even as it’s soared for the rich and skyrocketed for the super-rich. The inequality of the economy and the unfairness of how they’re doing are things that ordinary people can and do actually feel; it’s unreasonable to expect them to get upset or care about whether the current occupant is taking credit he doesn’t deserve. After all, they’re used to him lying and shamelessly promoting himself; what they want to know is what Democrats will do to make their lives better, to fix the inequality and unfairness that the current occupant and the Republican Party he controls seek to increase.

And, of course, we must never forget that the current occupant begins with the huge advantage of the powers of incumbency at his disposal, and that shouldn't be underestimated. He could even start a war or three if he thinks it’ll help him win the election, or take some other sort of action to stoke fear and hatred. He’s clearly not above doing that, especially if he thinks he’s losing.

Random bits

Two other things are worth pointing out. First, this week “House passes Trump-opposed disaster-relief bill with more funding for Puerto Rico”. At the Washington Post article puts it: “Thirty-four Republicans joined all of the chamber’s Democrats to pass the sweeping relief package, 257 to 150.” Republicans vow to kill it in the US Senate, so this could be a short victory, but these days you just never know.

The other thing is that caught my eye this week was "Sick Of 2020 Already? Most Voters Aren’t." in which FiveThirtyEight's weekly "Pollapalooza" looks at voter enthusiasm. It doesn't mean much, really, but, still: Political data. It's fun.

There’s always plenty to talk about, when the pace of political news never let’s up. Oh well, time to start a new page in the Notebook.

Political Notebook for 13 April 2019

The circus is now open! Actually, it never, ever closes.

To everything there is a treason…

The current occupant of the White House loves throwing around loaded phrases to attack his political opponents (or anyone he doesn’t like at the particular moment he hate-Tweets about them). This week, he favourite word was treason. Dana Millbank’s piece in the The Washington Post, “For Trump, the name of the season is treason”, explains the story of the current occupant’s misuse of the word. It’s an ugly tale, not the least because of how puerile and utterly ignorant it is: The guy has absolutely NO idea what the Constitution says about treason (or anything else, of course), or why it’s so tightly and specifically defined and restricted—or, does he? Is this part of his plan to end democracy?

Maybe so. As ThinkProgress put it: “Trump’s accusations of ‘treason’ are a hallmark of fascism”, because it absolutely is. Author Zack Ford lays out the case for what treason really is—including how the Left uses the word incorrectly, too—and then sums up why the current occupant’s use of the word is fascistic:

The contradiction speaks to the way Trump tries to frame his positions as the only positions that actually serve the interests of the country. As slogans like “Make America Great Again” and “America First!” indicate, he’s attempting to co-op patriotism, such that any opposition to Trump is by extension anti-American. Thus, asking for cooperation means exactly the same thing as asking for obedience, and being rebuffed is the same as betrayal.

Writing for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf details why “A President Falsely Charging ‘Treason’ Is What the Founders Feared”, because:

The Framers were guarding against the possibility that Americans would one day elect a man so morally weak and corrupt that he would falsely accuse political enemies of treason. In 2016, Americans narrowly elected a man who is that degraded.

So, is this part of a strategy to bend the US Constitution to his will? There are worrying trends—aside from the current occupant’s Twitter Tantrums and off-the-cuff idiocy.

A couple days ago, the current occupant’s sycophantic lackey Attorney General told Congress he thought the FBI had “spied” on the Republican candidates campaign—echoing the current occupant’s own conspiracy theory that his frothing fans, including Fox “News”, parrot every chance they get, despite it being totally untrue, of course. A couple days later, the current occupant doubled-down on his conspiracy theory, using Barr’s own testimony as support for his loony assertions.

What all of this could lead to is explained by Dana Millbank in his Post column:

Because Trump knows the seriousness of the charge, he therefore must be interpreting treason the way King Henry VIII did, in the lèse-majesté sense: Treason is anything that offends the dignity of the sovereign. Disagreement with Trump is an offense against the state, just as Henry executed unfaithful wives for treason.

This means the following people have committed capital crimes: All journalists and late-night hosts. Anyone who leaks. All Democratic members of Congress and people who worked in Democratic administrations. Anyone who ran against Trump. Anyone who criticizes Trump on social media. Anyone who voted against Trump.

This means 65,853,514 Hillary Clinton voters will have to be imprisoned or executed. The U.S. criminal-justice system can’t handle much more than the 2.3 million people it already holds. This unfortunately argues for mass execution — unless exile is a possibility? Imagine the size of that caravan heading south toward Mexico. [link in the original]

Is this what will happen? Of course not. Well, that’s what we’re supposed to say, right? But given the contempt this regime has for the US Constitution and the rule of law, can we be sure of anything anymore? The fact is, warning about where this loose and dangerous rhetoric can lead is the only thing that can prevent it from actually doing so.

We see bad people

The current occupant has a long history of hiring people who show staunch loyalty to him. They may not be very smart, they may be corrupt, they may be incompetent, or any combination of those things, but as long as they publicly display their loyalty, they’re in. We saw that when a spokeswoman for his “re-election” campaign declared that Congress had no right to see the current occupant’s tax returns: “Ironically, the only person whose tax returns they’ve asked for — the only president — is Trump. So it’s a sham reasoning.” She’s either lying to people who don’t know any better, or else she’s pitiably ignorant: Every modern US President except for the current occupant has released their tax returns. Every. Single. One. Mind you, she said that on Fox Republican Propaganda Channel, so it’s unlikely viewers or the performers would know she was lying or, at best, “deeply misinformed”.

Speaking of one of the current occupant’s contemptible appointees, it appears that, according to ABC News, “Herman Cain expected to withdraw from Fed Reserve Board of Governors consideration”. So, that’s a bit of good news among so much unrelenting bad news.

Mayor Pete’s wild ride

Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend Indiana, has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, so much so that “Pete Buttigieg has gone from totally unknown to polling third in Iowa and New Hampshire”. Still, he’s pretty far behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, and he’s not actually that far ahead of Elizabeth Warrant or Kamala Harris. But, it’s noteworthy when he still has little name recognition among Democrats.

The media has been talking about a “feud” because Mayor Pete said, “"Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: That if you have a problem with who I am, your quarrel is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.” In fact, Mayor Pete has been criticising Pence for a long time.

The fury of the rightwing response was predictable. Mrs. Mike Pence declared that people “shouldn’t be attacked for what your religious beliefs are,” though he never “attacked” her husband’s religious beliefs—he himself is religious.

Her husband responded a few days later, whining that “I hope that Pete will offer more to the American people than attacks on my Christian faith,” because That Must Not Be Beyond Criticism, so he sayeth. Mike added, “he'd do well to reflect on the importance of respecting the freedom of religion of every American," ignoring that Mayor Pete IS religious—except he didn’t. He dismissively said, "all of us have our own religious convictions. Pete has his convictions, I have mine."

That last quote is the very heart of this: Mike has a brutally anti-LGBT+ record and while he can cry his fake tears about his religious beliefs being “attacked”, and he can lie that he doesn’t condone discrimination, his record proves that’s a flat out, deliberate lie. When he was Governor of Indiana, he backed and signed into law what was at the time the most vicious and brutally anti-LGBT+ law in any US state—so disgusting that the state faced a massive national boycott movement leading the legislature to soften the bill a little bit. When he was in Congress, he backed diverting federal tax money to be spent on “curing” gay people with “reparative therapy” psychological torture. He is a truly awful person, and it’s his record, not his religion, that makes him one. The mainstream media is letting Mr. Pence and his wife get away with lying that this about “religious freedom” when, in fact it’s that Mike is a bigot.

Mayor Pete pointed out the way that Mike could end this: ““If he wanted to clear this up, he could come out today and say he’s changed his mind, that it shouldn’t be legal to discriminate against anybody in this country for who they are.” That will never, ever, happen, of course.

Still, it’s not just the Rightwing that’s going after Mayor Pete: The Left—what one acquaintance recently called those who are “Leftier than thou”—are attacking him, too, often on highly dubious grounds. Such as: “Is Pete Buttigieg Just Another White Male Candidate, or Does His Gayness Count as Diversity?”, on Slate last month—or, it was called that until wiser heads prevailed and the headline was toned down to, “In a Diverse Candidate Field, How Is Pete Buttigieg’s Sexuality Factoring Into His Appeal?” The piece rightly decries “oppression Olympics”, in which people from historically marginalised minorities are judged by how oppressed they have been. But then the author—who describes herself as “a queer woman”—fully embraces the “oppression Olympics” to declare that Mayor Pete “ can be more accurately lumped in with his white male peers than with anyone else.”

Queerty summed up the appropriately negative reaction: “Writer questions if Pete Buttigieg is ‘gay enough’ to be the first gay president. Cue the outrage.”. My favourite was that of Five Thirty-eight’s Nate Silver, who said in a Tweet:

Just want to get this out of the way so I only have to say it once:

It's a big deal that an openly gay man is a serious contender for a major party's presidential nomination, and if you're liberal who wants to equivocate about that too much, you can pretty much fuck right off.

Exactly, Nate, exactly. I have absolutely no idea who I’ll vote for when the Illinois Democratic Primary rolls around next year—it’s way too far away!—but cheap shots and bullshit attacks on Democratic candidates by other Democrats is utterly unacceptable. We will have policy disagreements, we will have different priorities, we will disagree on who can best deliver on those things, and all of that is part of a robust selection process. But arguing that a candidate is unacceptable because he’s “not the right kind of gay” or isn’t as oppressed as he should have been is as repulsive as declaring a candidate “isn’t female enough” or “isn’t black enough” or—you get the idea. My advice to Democrats of all stripes: Stick to policies or shut up. And that’s the last time I intend to dignify this sort of thing with a mention.

There are FAR more important things to talk about.

Political Notebook: Politics this week

Here we are in the first of the (more or less) weekly Political Notebook posts. I'll do these unless I get tired of them or, less probably, the pace of political news slows down. Whichever comes first?

It’s all about justice

Criminal justice is a topic that often comes up in politics, and it’s just come up in the USA thanks to New Zealand. Vox reported that “The New Zealand mosque shooter could be the country’s first person sent to prison for life”, which may or may not end up being the case. The author, German Lopez, pointed out, correctly, that in most of the world, life sentences, especially without parole, aren’t used frequently, as they are in the USA. He wrote:

While this may sound strange to us, there’s good evidence that European countries and New Zealand have the right idea. Because as much as America carries out much harsher penalties, there’s no evidence that these harsher punishments actually keep us safer. In fact, the US has the highest murder rate among developed nations—even as it imposes much longer prison sentences.

The article goes into some detail on probable reasons why this is the case, but what the article doesn’t say is that New Zealand also has no death penalty and is a firm opponent of its use by other countries. Maybe they thought that mentioning only one thing that would shock and appall some Americans was enough for one article.

The Right thinks it knows about Democrats. They don’t

The USA’s Rightwing is pretty consistent in its very wrong belief that it understands the Democratic party. Their delusion arguably begins with them thinking it's monolithic like the Republican Party, rather than a coalition of very different kinds of Democratic Parties.

Writing for The Atlantic, rightwing religionist commentator Peter Wehner declares, “The Democratic Party Is Radicalizing”. He cherry picks individual positions made by individual Democrats and assumes that they represent the views of the entire party. Anyone who knows a real, live Democrat knows that they often disagree with themselves, let alone other Democrats, so the assumption is silly. He uses it mainly to attack positions he doesn’t like, including deliberately mischaracterising Democrats’ positions on abortion to fit his narrative. It turns out, the piece is useful mainly as a way to understand the thinking of a Rightwinger who seems to believe he’s “objective” when, in fact, he’s pushing his own ideology. Multiple polls of real, live Democrats demonstrate the party is absolutely NOT “radicalising”, though obviously it is not rightwing, and is pretty much the opposite of the Republican Party. So, basically, he was talking through his butt.

Much more useful was a piece in Mother Jones, “'The Left Can’t Meme': How Right-Wing Groups Are Training the Next Generation of Social Media Warriors”. The piece talks about how young Rightwingers are trained “how to own the libs” by creating memes. Two things. First, it’s clearly true that young Rightwingers actually believe that social media is real life and their memes matter. Second, and more ominously, they see it as a means of delivering mass propaganda in a way that people don’t even realise they’re consuming falsehoods, distortions, and outright lies designed to get people to oppose Democrats even more than to win them over to the Right. This has huge implications.

Is he losing his mind?

People have speculated about the mental health of the current occupant of the White House since before he ran for president, but most have concentrated on his personality disorder, malignant narcissism. Increasingly, experts are warning that he has pre-dementia and deteriorating cognitive skills. We’ve all seen him engage in some pretty bizarre behaviour that seemed as if he wasn’t all there, including minor ones like calling Tim Cook “Tim Apple”, to the repeatedly mixing up his father and grandfather, wrongly saying it was his father who was born in Germany (it wasn’t).

Still, it’s possible that his bizarre behaviour is just because he’s a bad man. Things like when he “made two remarkably authoritarian remarks in one day”, as Vox put it, are examples. But maybe it’s better to look at a whole cluster of behaviours.

Like his utterly bizarre behaviour around Puerto Rico.

First we found out he “opposes further disaster aid for battered Puerto Rico”, and he seems utterly unaware that Puerto Ricans are American citizens, complaining about how they taking “from USA”, something he’s never said about any US state when it receives disaster funding. He’s even got his allies, like Florida’s Marco Rubio, singing from his songsheet. But, as usual, the current occupant doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about (see “AP FACT CHECK: Trump misstates hurricane aid for Puerto Rico”), and his apologists all ought to know better. Still, and surprising absolutely no one, the Braggart in Chief also “says he’s taken better care of Puerto Rico than anyone” which is just another of his lies—or maybe it is pre-dementia confusion. Or, it could just be his firm racism. We simply don’t know.

Time to start a new page in the Notebook.

Political Notebook: International edition

These days it seems like there are too many political events happening too fast for anyone to keep up with. One thing is no sooner reported before another pops up. When one is following political events in several countries, things get even more complicated. This post is the start of one solution for me.

When I began these Political Notebook posts, I saw them as a way to talk about subjects that would never get a post of their own. But these days there’s too much to keep up with, things that ordinarily would get posts of their own, so these Notebook posts have taken on new duties—and more frequency.

Jacinda superstar

The world has learned something over the past couple weeks that many of us here already knew: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is pretty awesome. Sure, she’d been feted before, like last September. Which I mentioned in “New Zealand’s very good week (https://amerinz.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-zealands-very-good-week.html).

Now, of course, the world has taken note of the calm, rational, compassionate, strong, caring, and stunningly admirable leadership shown by the Prime Minister after the terrorist attacks in Christchurch. Bryce Edwards, a politics lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington, does a Political Roundup column in the NZ Herald. I frequently disagree with his conclusions, but this time he seemed genuinely taken with the “International fascination with Jacinda Ardern”.

There’s been some grassroots reaction to her, too. I heard there was a petition for Jacinda to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which actually seems a pretty reasonable thing to happen. I don’t know how serious that is. However, there’s definitely a petition on Change.org: “Speaker Pelosi: invite New Zealand’s Prime Minister here to America to address Congress”. I have no idea whether anything like that could or would happen, but I’d love to see it happen, not only because Congresscritters need to hear what she has to say, and also for the entertainment value that would come from the inevitable Twitter Tantrum that a certain someone would be sure to descend into.

Meanwhile, this past Friday the Prime Minister spoke at the National Remembrance Service. Newshub reported: “'The nation that discovers the cure': Jacinda Ardern's anti-racism speech sparks standing ovation”, and it was pretty awesome (the transcript of the speech is at the link). But, then, by now we pretty much expect her to say just the right thing, don’t we?

Random notes

A couple other pieces caught my attention this week, too:

“Trump Warned Us He Would Be a Terrible President” because he did, really, didn’t he?

“Associated Press offers new guidance to media on 'racially charged' vs 'racist'". This is motivated, at least in part, by the racist motivations of the Christchurch terrorist and some newsmedia’s reluctance to call it that. Meanwhile, a debate has broken out over whether the newsmedia should mention the Christchurch terrorist by name (he should not be referred to by name). Radio New Zealand’s CEO and Editor in Chief published a shallow defence of their plan to sometimes name the terrorist in their news coverage: “Explaining RNZ’s mosque shootings coverage – and why we’re naming the accused”. I couldn’t possibly disagree with him more, and I found his excuses self-serving and a bit arrogant. Your mileage may vary.

Time to start next week's page in the Notebook.

Political Notebook: About that ‘summary’

This week, the filing of the Mueller Report, and the letter summarising it from Bill Barr, has dominated the news in the USA. It will for a few days more days, too, before the summary becomes fully weaponised by the USA’s rightwing. Which makes this the perfect time to look at where we’re at. Consider this a sort of reader on what the rightwing doesn't want people to know or think about.

It now appears to be as bad as we thought

In my post yesterday, I pointed out some reasons why Barr may have been economical with the truth about what the Mueller report really says. Naturally, I’m not the only one who’s suspicious.

John Dean, who was White House Counsel to Richard Nixon, suggested that Barr’s word choices may have been an attempt to “put a little lipstick on something that might’ve been fairly ugly.” He wasn’t alone in this view. On Slate, William Saletan explained “Bill Barr’s Weasel Words” in detail. He’s right—actually, they both are.

Washington Post columnist Dana Millbank suggests that “William Barr has made this a win for Moscow”. Clearly the problem, once again, is Barr’s curious word choices. Sean Illing at Vox added: “A former prosecutor explains why Barr’s hasty obstruction conclusion should raise red flags”.

It was never just about collusion

The biggest bit of deliberate disinformation coming the rightwing is that somehow the alleged contents of the Mueller Report “exonerates” the current occupant of the White House when it does no such thing. Jumping off from that absurd claim, Republicans then leap to declaring that Democrats have “nothing” against the current occupant.

Oh, really?!!

“For many of his critics, Trump is still ‘unfit’ to be president”, writes Eugene Scott for The Washington Post. He wrote, “Anyone viewing Mueller’s report as the end of concerns about Trump’s fitness for office are showing a lack of understanding about his critics’ actual concerns about Trump’s presidency.” That’s absolutely correct: There is so much about that man that makes him fundamentally unfit to occupy the White House. In fact, here’s another reason, something we just today: “Trump asked aides to cut federal funding for Puerto Rico: report”.

Frank Bowman pointed out what “What the Left Got Wrong About Robert Mueller”:

Robert Mueller was never going to save us from Donald Trump. He was certainly never going to indict a sitting president of the United States. Indeed, given the narrow scope of Mueller’s charge—to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and any “matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation”—uncovering evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of an underlying crime was always a long shot. It was extraordinarily unlikely that he would find that Trump or high-ranking members of his presidential campaign “colluded”—or, to use the better and more precise legal term, conspired—with the Russian government to fix the 2016 election.

Exactly so. Which is why it’s true that “2020 Democrats’ Strategy of Restraint on the Mueller Probe Was Wise”. But it was also never going to be the focus, anyway, unless Mueller had called for indictment, maybe, which, obviously, was never going to happen, no matter what.

It’s also worth noting, as Vox put it, “What we already know Mueller found”.

The battle lines are drawn

While it’s true that “Washington politicians spin competing storylines on Mueller report”, the obvious important thing is that the only one side will be using Barr’s summary as a weapon: “Trump and his allies plan to use Barr’s summary of Mueller report as a cudgel against critics”, because, well, of course they will. That’s politics.

Republicans have already started to trying and use Barr’s questionable summary as a weapon: “Pelosi defends Schiff after Republicans call for resignation”. Then, too, “Some conservatives say the end of the Mueller investigation is the beginning of new investigations — of Democrats”. Sure. Whatever. Oddly enough, the fine individuals mentioned in the story are never—ever—interested in investigating anyone for anything if they’re Republican. Just so we’re clear about their true motivation: Partisan politics, and nothing more.

Republicans are playing partisan political games, of course, and a pretty stupid one, really: We have nothing other than Barr’s questionable summary to go on right now, and they know that, which is how we can tell it’s all a game, something just for their base, and nothing more.

Is the division unbridgeable?

As if playing partisan games over Barr’s questionable summary wasn’t bad enough, or politicians of both parties trying to score political points as best they can without either side having actually read the report, there’s worse: The bitter and toxic divide in the USA’s politics may be permanent. That’s a subject in itself, but Zack Beauchamp, a Senior Correspondent for Vox, mentions an important aspect of this in “Robert Mueller and the collapse of American trust”, writing:

…this reflects a collapse in trust in two core American institutions: politically independent federal law enforcement and the free press. This lack of faith, combined with a concomitant rise in partisanship, means that virtually every major political event is interpreted through a partisan lens. There’s no political institution widely accepted as being neutral anymore; instead, Americans judge the quality of the country’s leading institutions based on how favorable each one’s outputs are to their political interests.

Is there a way forward? On this issue, yes, and it’s stupidly simple: Release the entire report and the evidence it’s based on. Without that, the two sides can never be at peace. Republicans, even ones who know better, will continue to use Barr’s questionable summary as if it’s the final word, and Democrats and Independents will continue to be very suspicious of it—and rightly so. There’s absolutely nothing else that can ever put this issue to bed, not even investigations by House committees, because Republicans will always dismiss them.

As for whether the partisan divide itself can be bridged and healed, the odds are clearly against it, and it would be impossible if the current occupant manages to hold onto power next year. But that subject is another page in the Notebook.

Political Notebook: Stupidity and hope

These Notebook posts have always been about related topics that were too short for their own posts. This time, however, they’re mostly things that were parts of brewing posts. Until they weren’t. But the topics nevertheless are worth commenting on.

Yes, he really is that stupid…

The current occupant of the White House is world-renowned for his lying prowess. He’s made more than 8,000 false or misleading statements since taking power, and uncounted thousands more in the 2016 campaign. Insiders have also reported that he’s spectacularly ill-informed about nearly every topic, and lacks curiosity about pretty much of everything. So, it’s no surprise that he keeps showing us how utterly stupid he is.

The current occupant was recently shown on video having absolutely no understanding of how international trade negotiations work. He declared he didn’t like Memoranda of Understanding, the standard way that trade agreements are finalised. His chief trade negotiator, Rober Lighthizer, corrected him, the occupant misstated what they are and do (causing the Chinese negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He, to laugh at him). In the case of the occupant’s ignorance, Lighthizer abruptly switched tactics, saying, “From now on we’re not using ‘memorandum of understanding’ anymore,” to audible laughter in the room. “We’re going to use the term ‘trade agreement,’” he said. “We’ll have the same document; it’s going to be called a trade agreement. We’re never going to have an MOU again.” To which the Idiot in Chief replied, “Good”.

…but WE’RE not stupid

Breathless reports recently told us “Trump administration launches global effort to end criminalization of homosexuality”. Trouble is, when asked about it later, the current occupant himself seemed “unaware of his plan to end criminalization of homosexuality”. Of course, this isn’t the first time he seemed to have absolutely no idea what action of his regime reporters were talking about.

For the first couple days, no one in the radical “Christian” professional anti-gay industry said a word. But on the other side, Matthew Rodriguiez, writing for Out said “Trump’s Plan to Decriminalize Homosexuality Is an Old Racist Tactic”, basically one of “white men trying to save brown gay men from brown straight men”. This was, predictably, savaged by the current occupant’s fervent fans who mocked the Left for not understanding anything, nor appreciating that the self-proclaimed best-ever president for LGBT+ people was, in fact, the mostest bestest best-ever president for LGBT+ people (I don’t ever knowingly link to extremist sites, but if you really want to read the charming and occasionally correctly-spelled comments for yourself, copy and paste this link: https://bit.ly/2GZWIKa).

Turns out the “Christians” were just slow. A couple days after the news of the “global effort” broke, the Head Bigot from one of the USA’s most notorious professional anti-LGBT+ hate groups called the move “cultural imperialism”. A particularly vicious professional anti-gay activist chimed in, declaring that his god would withdraw its “hand of favor”. So… is his god righthanded? Lefthanded? Can’t be ambidextrous, obviously, or there would be no hand favoured.

Putting the most out-there bigot aside, the leading hate group leader and the piece in the LGBT magazine seem to be talking about roughly similar things, right? After all, the hate group leader purred, “Let’s find common ground in calling for an end to all forms of physical violence against homosexuals,” almost as if he even meant it—though, obviously, he didn’t, and that’s the difference: The writer for Out was at least sincere.

What’s really going on here are two things. First, the man behind it was US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, was at the time running for US Ambassador to the United Nations, though the current occupant later decided on someone else. Grenell, who has long been a hardliner against Iran, was also trying to get Europe to join the current US regime’s crusade against Iran. Some in the regime clearly realised that they could gain sympathy for their efforts by focusing on human rights, something Europeans care about a lot, even though, ironically enough, the current US regime couldn’t possibly care less about—unless it can claim “Christians” are being “persecuted”; it certainly couldn’t possibly care less whether people are being executed for being gay, unless they can use that against Iran.

Put another way, whoever was behind this supposed effort to help LGBT+ people was playing European nations for fools by pushing their buttons, just as the Right does to the Centre and Left in the USA and in some other countries. Within the USA, LGBT+ people and the Centre and Left generally aren’t stupid: We all know how this regime has waged an ongoing war against LGBT+ people, and they’re not done yet. Given all the harm the current regime has done to LGBT+ Americans, how likely was it really that they suddenly gave a damn about decriminalisation of homosexuality overseas? It’s obvious that the most likely explanation isn’t that they suddenly have a new-found passion for ending oppression of LGBT+ people, but, rather, that they thought of a new tactic to use to try to hoodwink other nations into joining their anti-Iran crusade.

The 2020 Republican nominee is certain

Barring impeachment, criminal indictment, or actuarial tables manifesting themselves, the Republican Party’s 2020 presidential nominee is certain: The current occupant of the White House will be re-nominated. His many opponents—Republican and Democratic alike—would like to think a challenge, and re-nomination defeat, is possible, but it just isn’t.

In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, Henry Olsen declared that:

The Republican Party is now the party of Trump, but not for the reasons anti-Trumpers think. It is not Trump’s party because he has bent it to his will; it is his party because its voters have bent Trump and the party to their will. Anyone who wants to lead today’s GOP must engage with that will, or they will continue to feel politically homeless.

He’s right—kind of. As he himself points out, the current occupant has given everyone except “moderate” Republicans the things that matter most to them. Those “moderate” Republicans make up, at most, 20% of the party’s base, and that right there explains why the current occupant always has at least 80 approval among Republicans, and more than 90% approval among those who voted for him: The vast majority of Republicans are getting what they want from this regime.

Because the vast majority of Republican voters approve of the current occupant’s performance, this means there’s no room for anyone else to cut through. It seems unlikely that level of support would be affected by impeachment, which would almost certainly not result in removing him from office, nor would criminal indictment of the current occupant bother them. With an unshakeable base, there’s no room for “moderate” Republicans who will be faced with losing their fight for their party, and will be left with the choice of staying home on November 3, 2020, or else voting for the Democratic nominee.

Meanwhile, a different 2020 Democratic nomination battle

The campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination has hardly begin, but as the thousands (more or less…) of candidates vie for attention, Five Thirty-eight has been tracking the endorsements the candidates have received.

The thing is, since Democratic “Superdelegates”, the sort of people this list tracks, won’t have a vote on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention (and so, almost certainly no vote), their endorsements just aren’t that important. Sure, endorsements are nice, and maybe they’ll help build momentum with volunteers and donors, but the reality is that hardly anyone pays any attention to them, especially this year.

• • • • •

That’s all that’s in my Notebook at the moment. But with so much going on—too much to keep up with—it’s likely that there will be more posts that were brewing, but that’ll end up in my Notebook instead. At least they’ll find another life—unlike those “moderate” Republicans.