Election 2020 (The Pre-Game)

What Joe Biden thought 2020 was gonna be: Look, kids, Bernie just isn't gonna make it, you gotta go with me. And to all the newcomers, get on board with me, there's room for all of you and none of you are ready to do it on your own so I'm your best shot. I'm the leader, I got the money, everyone knows me, Obama loves me, and I can beat Trump. Everyone just get behind me, I'll give jobs to all (most) of you and I'll get you into the White House. All you gotta do is get behind me, tell everyone how great I am and that they need to vote for me. I am the great unifier! Believe in me and we will crush this idiot Trump!

But the Democrats couldn't get over their own fine grained selfish disappointments (the epitome of white privilege) to pull together. (Beware the "inclusive": they never agree on anything) Nancy Pelosi used Biden as a puppet in her Impeachment hearing, AOC never got on board with Biden or the "normal" wing that runs the Democratic Party, the young Progressives have yet to flock to the Biden camp, Obama waited til the bitter end to throw the full weight of his support to Biden, and Biden was bullet absorber #1 in the primary debates. And even though he got smoked in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden was comfortably in control by the third primary. The pundits would say it was only because the rest of the party couldn't build enough of a coalition against him; but I would suggest he was the only candidate the whole time. The first two primaries were a showcase for everyone/everything else the Democratic Party has to offer and it all led back to Joe Biden. No one wanted him to win and even when he did win, no one wanted to give him the credit. Biden walks ahead of the grumpiest bunch of brats in American history--and that's no mean feat.  

What Donald Trump thought 2020 was gonna be: Make a big trade deal with China in the Spring; Wall Street loves it, unemployment hovers near all-time lows; pull troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; unveil a series of normalized relations with Israel; lure Russia and China into a tripartite arms limitations treaty. That's what he had set up in front of him. Turning China from a great enemy into a great friend, a new bigshot deal with Russia, Wall Street fat and happy, Israel gaining some significant victories, taxes lowered, (bond markets limping along), soccer moms are happy and the churches will never vote for a Democrat anyway, so everyone's happy--or at least not unhappy enough to wanna do anything about it--and pulling troops out all at the same time. He pulled off some of that stuff anyway but if that had all gone his way you gotta admit: that's not bad, at home and abroad.  And even if he did fail, it does suggest that perhaps he had much more of a broad sense of leadership in the world than we ever really got to see. (Oh...and we'd probably be in a decent size standoff with Iran...but even the fly he built into the buttermilk didn't turn out right, as even that has yet to materialize)

Then Covid-19 comes along and wrecks all of it. 

China goes back to being an enemy, to blame for all the ills of the world (literal and metaphorical). Russia is more estranged than ever--and breaking off arms treaties without actually doing the follow up isn't necessarily a great idea. Turns out the Israeli lobby isn't as powerful as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe. Europe never did develop any fondness for Trump, nor did Canada or Latin America. But if he'd pull off his vision, it would have worked....but this just shows why entrusting so much power to shape the future in the hands of a single POTUS is something we should take more seriously than ever having someone like Trump to be considered. He walked us into a trade war with China with the intention of pulling his punches going into the election, turning a concocted crisis into a generational victory, then throwing down a 'peacemaking' kinda deal for Xi and Putin and pleasing Wall Street, the generals and America's allies all at once....except that Covid-19 kept him from completing his vision, so now everything's half-finished right when he suddenly needs support (and he's left his presumed successor with a pile of god awful tariffs on China that Trump himself probably meant to get rid of). Trump is such a fucking cursed dude--how the fuck did we ever let him get elected? 

Trump's potential for reelection was based not on anyone liking Trump but on Trump being so successful that the world would have to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, that's not how American politics works. You have to be liked, not respected. Nobody really gives a shit what you accomplished--and most 'accomplishments' are just phony baloney positioning anyway. And Trump is not well-liked--least of all by the 'Trumpists' (*). And whatever the state of his 'plans', Covid-19 came along and upended all that.

I believe it was Jamelle Bouie who pointed out that a crisis like Covid-19 would be a godsend for most politicians. All you gotta do is look solemn and talk like you're in church at Xmas time. A scared captive audience that just wants to hear some soothing words is what most politicians dream of because that such a moment requires the blandest possible human to speak. A nice haircut with some harmless platitudes and everyone will be reassured and tell you how caring you are. But Trump is incapable of even that basic political opportunism. So instead he treats Covid-19 like it's Tuesday night at Wrestlemania and he'll defeat the disease but ridiculing its white trash girlfriend. 

But the complaint that Trump bungled the coronavirus is itself pure cynicism: what Trump bungled was his chance to make himself look like a nice guy. The idea that the POTUS is going to stop a viral pandemic is delusional, there was little for Trump to do except self-aggrandize--he failed at his best chance to win unparalleled support! The coronavirus was a states' issue not a federal one (**), I suggest there was very little for the POTUS to do and not much different from any other POTUS in the same position (although most any other POTUS would've handled the self-aggrandizement with more grace). And...wait...isn't Trump going on TV and telling everyone what to do exactly what we're supposed to be afraid of...and that's precisely what he did not do when the time arose...?

To me, the disgusting part of Trump's response was the severe lack of testing, which is something I think he could've been at the forefront for encouraging people to seek out and enforcing localities' ability to offer. I don't know what the POTUS can actually do but at least his bully pulpit could speed up the market mechanisms for more testing, more evaluation, etc., to properly understand how the virus was moving and its effects, to separate the spreaders from the at-risk population. But he seemed to think testing would merely make him look bad--it probably would, but that's no reason not to do the right thing anyway. Trump made it clear that getting reelected was more important to him than America. And no was surprised by this. 

Then when the George Floyd protests took over in May/June, Trump's powerlessness was as big as the great outdoors and he showed that POTUS has little control over situations like what happened to George Floyd or the response to what happened to George Floyd. There was nothing Trump could do but try to weather the storm, which looked impossible at the time. But the protests which started off with such force and such mainstream support actually accomplished...not much. The calls for police reform morphed into an attack on statues and a bizarre thrust toward the "Karens" of the world and then just sorta melted away into ordinary summertime frustrations, as the People shook off the coronavirus and went back to their lives. 

Americans: easy to incite but impossible to satisfy, so even rioting in the street bores them. Though I would say Americans looked more likely to register and vote and do all that shit more than usual and that's probably just the way of things now: more divisiveness will likely bring more voters into the electorate, which is the first step to modernizing the process. 

As for Biden, he was able to loll the summer away in his basement doing very little campaigning, instead relying on Trump to self-combust, which was pretty much the correct strategy. Biden brought in Kamala Harris as a running mate, which was the obvious move: at this time last year she struck me as every Democrat's second favorite choice, making her a virtual lock for the VP slot no matter who the candidate turned out to be. Biden has taken on Buttigieg to his team but has more or less ditched all the other comers that chose to attack him (rather than fall in behind him) back in Iowa. To my mind this shows that Biden never really had any more faith in the next generation of Democrats than they had in him--if he did, he'd be holding Kamala up for Attorney General rather than Vice President! He'd be telling you Cory Booker is gonna be a great Secretary of Housing or Beto O'Rourke is our next UN Ambassador or Stacey Abrams will be our new VP, but he's not doing any of that. And all those non-Biden candidates are mostly all just gone. Yeah, Democrats, you may hate Biden but he's easily the best you got and that was always true. 

The Democrats hate Trump but they've done nothing but attack him since he arrived and frankly I think their attacks have come up wanting. They suggest only one thing: Democrats don't like Donald Trump. Yeah, I get that...is there more to this? They were wiretapping General Flynn before the inauguration and tripped him up with the sort of ticky-tack nonsense that federal prosecutors do all the time. They spent two years on an FBI-driven investigation that yielded...some Russian Facebook accounts (are those even illegal?). They impeached him without even bothering to prove a crime. I'm no fan of Trump but do you honestly think the engine of our gov't is solely built for rival politicians to wage war on each other? 

And...wait...if they don't like Joe Biden, then what's the point? They hate Trump but really what they're saying is they want a president to be likable. They need to like the POTUS but then their nominee is a guy they don't even like....? So the Dems didn't want to vote for Hillary in 2016 and they don't want to vote for Biden in 2020 and really all they want is a president that they like. When you realize that the "Trumpists" only like Trump because he riles up the people that hate Trump, then the vacillations of the Democrats becomes, to my mind, all the more unforgivable. They've done nothing but attack Trump as hard as they can and yet they still can't get excited about their own guy...what do they want? 

They're gonna hate-vote Trump back into office because they love hating him so much. And they'll continue to hate him and read his Tweets hourly after he's out of office, so its not like this is even an attempt to get rid of Trump. Just a chance to hate on him a little louder than usual. 

Personally I couldn't give a shit about the POTUS being likable--indeed, I think it's weird to wanna like your leaders! If this summer has taught us anything it is that liking your leaders simply means future generations will tear down their statues. (And why the fuck do we build statues of people that ruled over us, anyway?)  I am suggesting that Trump does have a larger sense of his image that goes beyond his twitterings and that being hate-followed can be very lucrative (shit, man, got Trump all the way to the White House, there's really no reason why that should've happened). 

Trump is an unlikable a human being as I think I've ever seen. He goes way above and beyond most assholes and I understand completely why the left/liberals/Democrats don't like him. I get that, I understand...I just don't care. To me the fact that Trump is unlikable is a meaningless detail. I don't care that I don't like the POTUS and I don't understand why anyone needs to. And even though Biden seems like a much nicer guy, that does not instill me with any greater desire to vote for him. 

Rather than reminding me of 2016 (when Hillary (***) was such a sure thing to beat Trump that Democrats didn't even bother to vote for her), this reminds me more of 2004: George W. Bush was exceedingly unpopular and John Kerry seemed a shoo-in to wrest the Presidency away from him...but then forgot to win the election. Trump is so uniquely unpopular that this scenario might not play out, but I wouldn't be surprised. If all Biden has to offer is that he's not Trump, that doesn't mean much to me. It doesn't mean anything at all really. 

Democrats have attacked Trump from Day One (well, before Day One actually) and all they've done is remind everyone that Trump is an asshole, which we already knew. Even the relative corruption they've uncovered is really just the clumsiness of an unskilled politician--which suggests his corruption is actually less than average! They've done nothing to establish a different way of running the gov't, merely that they'd prefer someone more in line with their cult of personality. But hating on Trump is all the Left has to offer and it is no better than it was on Election Day 2016. Trump makes everyone him around him stupid and the Democrats have only gotten dumber in the last four years. 

Covid-19 has turned everything upside down. And what we're just now realizing (right?) is that it hasn't even happened yet. The Fed and Congress have been over-promising since March, which has forestalled economic turmoil for this year (though I would expect end of the year profit-taking to be pretty severe this December). But January 1st is a whole new ball game and if the infections are rising again, then more lockdowns, more mask turmoil, and more volatility in the markets, all that stuff. So at best, we've pushed off til next year the true economic impact of the coronavirus; at worst, we've done the same thing with the virus, too. 

USA has avoided the rising tide of viruses and pandemics over the last 20 years or so but Covid-19 hit us squarely in the crotch. You're free to believe that your gov't is gonna save us from that but I don't see any reason to believe the gov't has that power (or inclination). Viruses have bedeviled humanity since before it looked anything like humanity, governments are much more recent by comparison. As the population rises and the temperature rises, seems like we should be having pandemics a lot more often, so social distancing and wearing masks will likely be long term effects. And elections will come and go--each the most important of your lifetime!

Meanwhile, Congress this year has passed multiple trillion dollar spending bills. The Fed has tripled its debt load!

The Congress/Fed tandem is vastly larger and more influential than the POTUS. That is our future, regardless of who wins the election. And there's still no arms deals with Russia, nor trade deals with China, and Brexit guarantees you pretty much gotta re-do Europe, too. Oh, and war with Iran can break out at a moment's notice. And we just had our single highest day of new cases of Covid-19.  

The good news as we go to election day: look, man, I know it seems like everything's falling apart but actually I think the noise itself suggests more participation by individual people, the People are more powerful than ever. And that is the great leap forward for Humanity, not the outcome of any particular election. The fact that there is complaint in the world is a result of more people being heard. Complaint is not mitigated by growth because there is always someone that wants more and will voice that desire; complaint never goes away regardless of how secure/rich everyone becomes. Indeed, as lives become better and more numerous, the amount of complaint should skyrocket. The scary images you see on the TV would be a lot scarier if the doomsayers were actually right.   

Truth be told: I'd prefer four more years of Trump. Because I love Trump? No, good lord, what's to love? It is that I fear what comes after Trump more than I fear Trump. And term limits allow us to have Trump serve his time and leave rather than being vanquished and giving his successors a mandate they shouldn't rightly possess. Also, I kinda hope that four more years of Trump will show us that the power of Twitter is greater than the power of the Presidency and perhaps we will properly bring ourselves in line with the real power (re: social media) instead of the endless exhortations of piddling politicians. Social media allows the People to rule (for better and for worse). 

I don't dislike Joe Biden--that is, I seem to like him better than most Democrats do! But I don't have any great faith in his snake oil and the fact that he's a nice guy means nothing to me. More than any election of my lifetime this is a referendum on the deep bench of the parties in that I think it's extremely possible that both Trump and Biden are dead four years from now. So you're really betting on the supporting cast as much as the main players. (I've seen more of the Democrats, therefore I like them less)

I think the main player is Twitter. And the supporting cast is the People. Merely a matter of waiting for the People to realize how much social power they already have--and how little political power is worth in an age of tripled debt loads and a viral pandemic that we still haven't stopped. 

It's the economy, stupid. It always was, it likely always will be. What a gov't does is collect taxes from a citizenry and then provides services (or more accurately, the assurance of services, not the actual services). We can argue about the color of our skin or our hair or our shoes or our bandannas or our favorite politicians or commentators. Or we could acknowledge that the gov't doesn't do any of that stuff, that all of that shit is a product of political media and not a product of gov't itself. Instead of having the substantive public debate about infrastructure spending (and raison d'etre), politics encourages cultural mudslinging between the hippies and bluenoses, a story as old as off-Broadway theater. What a gov't does is collect taxes from a citizenry in promise of providing certain amenities to enhance the productivity of the populace.  

Economic productivity is the point of gov't service. It wants us to make more money (re: create more value) and what Covid-19 has done has tripled (at least!) our commitment to this way of life in the form of Fed promises to keep interest rates unnaturally low if need be and Congress's quest to spend more and more on "relief" (****). But who the POTUS is...has never mattered less to me than right now. More than ever the POTUS is a channel I can change whenever I like. 

(*) There are no "Trumpists". This is something that Left wingers say because they need icons, they need cult of personality to sway their passions. Conservatives do not. Liberals need a movement, conservatives do not. Liberals have things they want done, conservatives have things they don't want done. The Left needs personalities and acolytes, the Right does not need any of that stuff. The Right basically wants nothing and nothing doesn't require any activity, any movement, any anything. The Left needs movements and it thinks in terms of movements because as a natural minority, it needs a swirl of passions to create enough volatility for them to find success; the Right needs nothing at all, wants nothing at all and will live with nothing at all if that is what is offered. The "Trumpists" like Trump for his ability make Leftists lose their minds...and nothing else. As long as Leftists gladly lose their minds over Trump, he is dangerous to them but as soon as the Left figures out to ignore him....Trump will be gone.  *poof*

(**)  For the federal gov't as a whole 2020 will simply be an anomalous year in taxation income. Nothing more. It won't even be a significant blip in terms of population. Yet another reason why expecting the federal gov't to do...anything...is unrealistic. It's too fuckin' big to notice your piddly problems. (200,000 dead is a 'piddly problem', you ask? Yes. To a gov't that was here when you were born and will be here when you die, 200,000 dead means nothing. Waiting for it to solve your problems is like waiting for the sky to give you rain: it'll do so when it god damn feels like and not until)

(***) A weird counterfactual on the nature of power to ponder: Personally I think Biden could've/would've beaten Trump in 2016. I think he had a better chance to hold together Obama voters than Hillary Clinton did. I think Biden could've peeled away some of the white voters that went to Trump, whereas Hillary thought her advantage among women and African-Americans was enough. Okay. Now think of it this way: if Biden had won in 2016, he would likely be looking pretty good going into 2020, and what if Hillary had stayed Secretary of State? What if Hillary had seen the State Dept as her fortress and dug in?  She stays all 8 years under Obama and then potentially has another 8 years under Biden...what could a single individual accomplish in 16 years of running the State Dept? She could've had a major effect on USA's foreign policy leading into the entire 21st century. Instead "power" meant running for President, even though the coalition wasn't actually there and she bungled all forward progress for her party. What is political power? Does 16 years in the State Dept equal 8 years in the White House? Can owning the State Dept have a wider, deeper effect than just being another ol' POTUS?

(****) I'd like to leave off with something like good news...here's my best shot at it. I've longed believed that the next great global economic downturn would pull countries down together in such a way that the subsequent economic boom would be of astronomical proportions. The 2007-8 crisis wasn't uniform enough worldwide to tug down on all economies in a similar way. But Covid-19 is. The entire global economy is getting pulled like a sheet and when it straightens back out, it'll grow and grow and grow like a fuckin' beanstalk....at least, I hope it does because the alternative is not worth pondering (think Weimar Germany but with fewer night clubs). The spring 2020 moves of the Fed and Congress will either snap the American economy in half or it'll be the catalyst of the next giant leap of the global economy. I'm betting on growth--because the other side is not at all appetizing. 2021 will suck, it might suck real bad. But think about it: by 2022 USA, China, Europe, Russia, the Arab World, India, the Pacific Rim, Africa, Latin America and everyone else that I left out will all be on economic upswings that will swell like no other economic surge ever in history. I'm talking decades of worldwide growth. Or that's the hope anyway. I've been waiting for it and I think this is it. 

Impeachment (Phase One)

...And it begins. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced last week the intention to form an inquiry into the impeachment of President Trump. This is just a trial balloon but a notable one because, to mix a metaphor, the balloon is out of the barn and now it will become the bedrock of general conversation for the next 12 months or so, taking us right up to the edge of the next presidential election. Funny: this is supposed to be a reaction to entities trying to influence the next election but I can't think of a bigger influence on the next election than this inquiry.

This all kicked off when a whistleblower (anonymous) report suggested that in July Trump had had a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the transcript of which had been put into a secret file rather than the regular public file, which in and of itself may be indicative of some criminality in the conversation itself.

I assume there will be a lot more coming over the next 12 months or so and bombshells and Trump gaffes are certainly possible. But upon first look: this doesn't look like much to me and I feel like going for impeachment is a bit of an overreach.

Under pressure, the White House released the "transcript" (*) of a July phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Trump opponents suggest that Trump's request for an investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of the presumptive (for now) Democratic nominee for the 2020 election, represents pressuring a foreign leader into interfering with a presidential election. To me the language looks pretty colloquial: Trump doesn't say he will hold up the approved aid to Ukraine, he simply moves the conversation to another topic. I would suggest that mentioning two different things in the same conversation does not equal a quid pro quo. Furthermore, the investigation of Biden was already under way, so where is the pressure? And if the Ukrainian investigation yields unpleasant info about Biden or his son, then why is that a bad thing? Is the implication that because Joe Biden is running for president that he is above investigation and that his family can no longer be suspected of a crime? And how would a foreign investigation be unconstitutional or a violation of Biden's rights as an American citizen? As for the aid itself, it was approved in June and delivered in September, which in federal gov't terms is not long at all, so what was the threat?

To me the awkward part of the conversation for Trump is he seems to be equating his personal lawyer (Giuliani) with the attorney general of the United States (Bill Barr) and that's weird to say the least and indicates that this is purely a private matter and not a criminal investigation. And I'm eager to hear the details of the holdup on Ukrainian aid: when did Trump stop the aid? What was his reasoning and language for doing so? How does a president stop aid that has been pledged by Congress, the State Department and the Pentagon? And when/how was the block on aid lifted?

According to the whistleblower memo, Trump's conversation with Zelensky was at first treated like all such conversations: it was transcribed by listeners and then passed on to certain other agencies (I know the memo mentions the State Department, I'm pretty sure it mentions or at least suggests others as well) and then logged as normal in a public file. It was after this period of normality that certain White House figures decided to re-route the transcript from the normal file to the special secret file. But, according to the memo, the original transcript was sent out to other agencies before it got re-classified. I presume this is the reason for the subpoena to SecState Pompeo, who theoretically should have the pre-classified transcript (and is otherwise just a big ol' target for Trump-haters in the House). I presume we'll see a few more of those subpoenas because there should be other pre-classified transcripts floating around out there. Is this out of the ordinary? (I have no idea) Are there other such re-routed transcriptions? (I dunno, will we even find out?) Will this yield impeachment-worthy stuff? (Ehh, I kinda doubt it but that's no reason not to look)

The key (at first) will be the records that the White House keeps secret (or secret-ish) and what oversight Congress actually has over those records. Can Congress demand the logs or even the contents of these files? I dunno, but I'm guessing an exhaustive history of every time Congress has asked for stuff and the White House's response will be forthcoming, whether in defense or prosecution. So will this lead to a deeper look into the secret file? Maybe, I wouldn't say 'definitely', because determining what is actually in that file is entirely up to the White House and what they choose is (I would suggest) an in-born parameter of Executive Privilege: the Prez doesn't really have the ability to share everything and, while some purely political nonsense will be shielded in this manner, it simply is not possible for Congress to receive all that it wants.  And how could anyone actually verify that anything released from those files was complete or thorough? (Trick question: no one can)

It is worth noting that this is not a criminal trial, this is not a matter for the courts. This is a Congressional action that requires only a (party line) vote and needn't concern itself with evidence or witnesses (the whistleblower acknowledges that "he" was not a witness to any of his various accusations) and doesn't really do any of that beyond a shadow of doubt stuff that an ordinary citizen would receive. Hey, man, that's just how this works and the POTUS is not an ordinary citizen.

Pelosi was reticent to go forward with the impeachment and I'd say it's because she's in a World Cup conundrum: when a coach does poorly in a World Cup, he gets fired; when he does well in a World Cup, he goes off to a better job. Either way, he's not coaching the team in the next Cup. Likewise, with Pelosi: if this effort fails, she will be cannibalized by the Dems and drummed out of office; if she's successful, she'll be a folk hero, an important talking head for life and a worthy party fundraiser, but being Speaker will probably become more trouble than it's worth. So no matter what ends up happening with Trump, I think this is Pelosi's swan song. Her mission is to take one for the team with the hope of driving public opinion away from Trump heading into the 2020 election.

So where does this all go? Well, I'd say getting Trump out of office is not likely. Perhaps several months of constant Congressional attack will push the Senate Republicans to topple, but I doubt it. It's not impossible: Trump has no shortage of powerful enemies that would love to put the shiv in him, so if his support in the Senate begins to wobble, it could go downhill very quickly. If the public opinion becomes too much to bear, then the Senate will have to follow suit and run him out. (Trump has already begun throwing shade at Vice President Pence just in case Pence develops support as a potential white knight; also, don't be surprised if the ghost of John Bolton ends up taking a lot of blame) Trump's greatest liability is himself: he clearly has no grasp of how Washington works, he keeps trying to run the White House like he ran his company but the two entities are not the same. I think House Dems are employing a 'give-him-enough-rope' strategy and Trump is the kind of idiot braggart that could well hang himself. We'll see if death by tweet is listed on his death certificate.

Trump's crime here is being a neophyte politician--which is precisely what won him the election to begin with. But what was attractive to voters is deadly to the actual candidate who doesn't know what he's doing. Trump was under investigation prior to being inaugurated and he fought it with stonewalling, prevarication and outright lies, all of which work just fine in open court, but not so well when dealing with federal prosecutors. Trump has played lawyers against each other numerous times in his life but the White House is not a courtroom and in the court of public opinion double jeopardy just keeps going and going. Trump tried to connive personal support out of James Comey and it backfired badly; the way you cajole loyalty from a junior VP doesn't work as well on the head of the FBI. Trump thought firing Gen. Flynn would end the investigation; it did not. He thought Mueller's inability to hang anything notable on him (or Russia, for that matter) would be the end of it; it was not. In the game of politics the players are active 24 hours a day whether they've won or lost, simply surviving is nice but not enough. And remember: the House Democrats don't need 'evidence', they just need to call a vote.

Trump's supporters love his ability to enter the realm of the liberal media and stick fingers in the eyes of the culture warriors. But I'm not at all convinced they love anything else about him. Trump thinks they love him but if his ability to credibly inflict pain on the social media elite dissipates, then Trump's support will be gone in a flash. And once he's out of office, the politics won't stop, he's a lifelong prisoner to it now. (Ever heard of Wang Mang? Or Oliver_Cromwell? Study up on them, because I suspect Trump's future looks a lot like what happened to them)

Trump's detractors already hate everything about the man and won't need anything more than what they've seen to vote him out. But do we want an American power structure where a sitting president can be removed for any conversation that looks goofy on paper? If this was the impetus to ridding ourselves of all corruption once and for all, that'd be great! If we just needed a sacrificial lamb to slaughter to redeem all our sins and finally become the nation we were supposed to be, then I'd be all for letting Donald J. Trump be that lamb and let him carry the sins of America to his grave. But I don't think it works that way. Indeed, I think an impeachment here would be giving in to the inchoate mob that only wants to hang their unceasing frustration on someone else. If we give them Trump, they'll want more--and the next time it'll be the other side feeling like they've earned some bloodletting, too. Do you really think President Warren walks comfortably into the post-impeachment White House? Do you really think President Pence will be the savior we need to restore order?

Doomsayers love to compare contemporary USA to the Roman Empire. Rome fell and one day so will we (I'm not actually convinced that's true, the world is an entirely different place today, but it seems reasonable to most, I guess). They point to the imbalances in the economy, the militarism, the dishonorable treatment of foreigners. I've been reading lately on Rome and I don't think any of those comparisons last beyond the average mediocre cable news 'debate'. I think the real downfall of Rome was the perversion of their political processes, the way senators began tabling measures rather than voting on them, skewing the system rather than making their cases and playing it out, and the endless and fruitless argument over the concept of citizenship. The doomsayers haven't reached for this conclusion--which is precisely why I'm starting to fear they may be right! They don't see themselves as the bringers of the doom but they could be.

To me the danger of Trump isn't Trump himself but what comes after. I'm convinced the Republican Party is completely broken now and the Democratic Party is wobbling further out of control. And the message of Trump is non-politicians cannot be allowed to survive or can only survive by further perverting the system. What comes next is going to be worse and impeachment could be the worse. Flinging out a duly elected president because you didn't bother to win the election is not a good way to go (that's how California got Governor Schwarzenegger, you may recall). 

So who benefits from this? Well, the bizarre possible answer is Trump. If he survives, he'll be stronger than ever, virtually impervious to attack of any kind--indeed, I'd say he needs this, he needs to overcome impeachment to really cement his standing as one of the great partisan hacks of all time because if he doesn't...bad things, man. But until we know the outcome I'd say the winner is Elizabeth Warren, who gets to distance herself from Trump and Biden simultaneously now. Or perhaps the collective prosecutorial spirit will revive the chances of Kamala Harris. And certainly a new bright shining star could emerge from the Democrats in the House or the Republicans in the Senate. And, of course, Mike Pence could go from nobody to Prez before all this is done. But I don't think this raises the hopes of the pseudo-challengers on the Republican side, nor does much for the other Democratic candidates (Buttigieg, Beto, Klobuchar get pushed even further from recognition, although this could give Cory Booker a chance to re-boot, to bring a new perspective on the whole situation). Sure Bernie gets to be even more Bernie, he gets to be louder and Bernier, but I think his time as a serious candidate has passed and I don't see this as an opportunity for him to win back lost voters.

Okay, you ready for the conspiracy theory? This isn't about getting rid of Trump (of which I'd say there's roughly a 1-in-5 chance), I think it's about getting rid of Joe Biden. If we're gonna spend the next several months digging into Trump's dealings in Ukraine we're going find out a lot about Biden's dealings in Ukraine, which won't seem any better and will only get him married with Trump in public opinion, which does not bode well for him. For the Warren wing of the Democratic Party this is two birds with one stone. Seems weird but I think Biden may take the brunt of this.

Still a long way to go, new files and transcripts to dig into, more accusations and shouting to come. Politically speaking this will suck the oxygen out of every room for the next 10-12 months, this will be everyone's main talking point, not much else will seem important (no matter how hard Iran tries). And when it is all said and done, we may have a new president, a new secretary of state, a new speaker of the House, and possibly even brand new Republican and Democrat nominees for the 2020 election. Vladimir Putin has never effected an election the way Nancy Pelosi is about to.


(*) Transcript-ish. Thorough but no reason to think this is complete. Was the call recorded? The White House tends to tape everything but taping a phone call with another foreign leader is pretty hacky, so even odds if there is audio of this conversation.

How Trump Spent His Summer Vacation

The setup: When the G7 got together in Quebec, the vibe was already uptight by Trump's trade shenanigans and his non-stop rhetoric that Europe should pay more for its defense. By all accounts Trump was fine throughout the week but then refused to sign off on the Friday press release--which is the whole reason get-togethers like this happen--thus resulting in this already-classic photo. 

G7 Summit (June 10, 2018)

The takeaway: These meetings are pre-planned down to the last detail, there's no reason to meet unless you're all going to agree on something bland like the Friday communique. I suspect all week long, Trump told them he was going to be a jackass and they should prepare for his bull headedness, so I suspect all week long they worked on this precise pose: Trump being an obstinate ass and the other leaders of the world looking like exasperated parents. By now these leaders have properly internalized Trump for their own constituencies: Merkel is an inch away from a no-confidence vote, at least she can go back home and say it's all Trump's fault (and find much succor from her citizenry). Macron looks like a tough guy, John Bolton looks like a fucking ghoul, Abe is above all this. That said, let's be sure to remember that the G7 means nothing, these meetings mean nothing and, again, working out how best to make Trump look like a party pooper is in everyone's best interest. If the G7 disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice or care, it doesn't matter and its existence at the moment merely produced this already-classic photo (and nothing else because there's nothing for the G7 to do except produce photo ops).

The setup: If the G7 is an annual photo op, then the Singapore Summit was a seemingly impossible photo op. For decades the Kims of North Korea have demanded a public audience with the President of the USA and for decades American presidents have demurred. But Donald Trump is a different kind of president and he took Kim up on his offer. So here they are shaking hands shortly before signing an utterly meaningless piece of paper that pretty much matched the last piece of paper we signed with North Korea (in the Obama years). So what happened? Well...this now-classic photo...and not much else.

Singapore Summit (June 12, 2018)

The takeaway: I dunno, I can't for the life of me figure this one out, except that they each called each other's bluff...but they were both bluffing...so neither of them had anything in the end. It's like a theater company that booked a bunch of shows then forgot to rehearse. The world talked up this meeting like it was gonna be important and nothing happened. They shook hands, Trump looks more like Alfred Hitchcock than I'd ever noticed before and Kim is actually a little taller and fatter than I would've thought...but otherwise...that was pretty much it. Since then, Kim met once more with Xi in Beijing, called off all further meetings with South Korea, may have made a secret trip to Vladivostok, and otherwise has done nothing, said nothing and blown off most of his meetings with Sec State Pompeo and his underlings (where the actual work of diplomacy gets done). So who got played? Trump got nothing out of it, Kim got nothing but this now-classic photo (though I'm betting a top drawer Singapore hotel would probably be a pleasure palace to a great leader such as this), and the world isn't any safer. Indeed! The USA-North Korea relationship seems to be exactly where it was this time last year. After all the weird shit that has gone down in the last 12 months, we're in the exact same place! The Singapore Summit will go alongside Al Capone's Vaults for all-time over-hyped letdowns.


The setup: Unlike the G7 which could disappear tomorrow and no one would notice, NATO is so rock solid that dissolving it would likely take a major war or multiple presidential administrations. The general perception that Trump clamoring for the Europeans to spend more on defense was some great crisis to the institution is just hogwash. The POTUS complaining about money is the purest indication that there isn't anything more important to complain about. So, though NATO is important while the G7 is not, this meeting was pretty much the same (though Shinzo Abe doesn't appear in this now-classic photo).

NATO 2018 (July 11, 2018)

The takeaway: I think Trump genuinely believes the Europeans should pay more for their defense. And since the USA is paying so much for European defense, if POTUS really had something he wanted to discuss about the defense of Europe, I think he'd be eager to talk about it. Turns out there isn't anything to say about Ukraine or Serbia or Montenegro, so Trump went back to complaining about money. Now personally I agree that the Europeans should be paying more for their defense, it is unifying and empowering on their part to exert their control over NATO (and letting American presidents have this much power over their borders sure looks kinda dumb right now, don't it?); but the Europeans aren't ready to go down that road, they're still figuring out how their money works, so letting the Americans shoulder the burden in staring down Putin is something that will continue for a while. Rather, the Europeans will go back to their constituencies and turn Trump's NATO rhetoric back to his trade war (presumably his method of extracting value from allies) and blame all their local problems on Trump (and they'll be successful because...well, he's a total douche). The good news is NATO is so rock solid and without problems, they can spend an entire summit together and just goof around on nonsense (like producing this now-classic photo).


The setup: Supposedly Trump called for a one-on-one summit with Putin a few months back and now the time had come for the two to go mano-a-mano (and the interpreters to go lingua-a-lingua). Tongues wagged worldwide but no one knew what Putin and Trump discussed even after this now-classic press conference.

Trump-Putin Summit (July 15, 2018)

The takeaway: I dunno. What do I care what they talked about? At this particularly point in time, neither of these guys has anything to offer the other. There's no room for USA to budge on Ukraine or sanctions, no room for Russia to budge on Syria, Iran or oil. (If they were talking about anything really juicy it was probably North Korea, who knows what Putin knows about Kim?) Trump's one taboo back home is anything related to Russia, so I suspect this meeting is purely for Trump to annoy his political foes (they are his lifeblood). There's nothing for Trump and Putin to talk about,so this meeting was likely purely social, just a coupla joes ditching their wives and commiserating over political nonsense. (Or perhaps they peed on hookers together or whatever the conspiracy theory du jour is, I can see that, too) At any rate, there's nothing for them to talk about, so what difference does it matter what was said?


We increasingly live in a world where people want their leaders to take pictures together. The G7, for example, is of little use but a photo op, the organization does nothing, discusses nothing, administers nothing, and isn't even what it purports to be (top 7 economies in the world....so why isn't China there? India? Saudi Arabia? Or even *gasp*...Russia?). Seriously, the G7 does not need to exist and if Donald Trump harrumphs around and ruins the get-together, then honestly....who gives a shit? I got a better idea: let's never have another G7 meeting ever again! I'm all for multi-lateral organizations that can get stuff done but the G7 is not one of those, it can be done away with. No way POTUS can screw up something that doesn't happen.

NATO, on the other hand, is not going away and if there were grave matters to discuss, they would get discussed....not by the leaders, of course, the serious matters would get discussed by the various under-secretaries that actually do that kind of work. When this many national leaders get together it is either to discuss something very important or something not important at all. (I got two grand on the latter, who's taking the former?) This is a meeting that doesn't need to happen and the only point of it is the sure spectacle of getting this many leaders together (want a grave matter? How about discussing how comfortable everyone is with NATO member Turkey invading two other countries for the purposes of genocide and seems to be intent on annexing their ill-gotten territory...are we cool with that? Hmmm....never came up). If any one of those leaders wants to grandstand and make it all about him/herself, they are free to do so because these meetings don't mean anything.

Now the Kim summit and Putin summit would appear to be different, right? These aren't annual meetings where nothing but a photo-op can possibly be accomplished. These are wildly out of the ordinary affairs where important stuff must be going on, right? Well, no. In the case of Trump, he clearly loves to engineer moments like these to grab the attention--and Americans love nothing more than giving Trump attention. Meeting with Kim felt like it was going to be a breakthrough, it was not; it was all whimper, no bang. And the meeting with Putin was meant to be confusing and anticlimactic, it was meant to produce an awkward press conference and nothing more because, again, these guys have nothing to offer each other except an ambiguous public appearance together.

Trump is really good at playing the American media. The media is a 24-hour beast that needs constant feeding and Trump loves to feed. Perhaps this is undignified of the office of President...meh, it is the media that devalues the presidency by failing to differentiate between the G7 (unimportant) and NATO (indispensable). It is the media that pisses in the pool by not differentiating between the presidency and some other attention-hungry celebrity (like, say, Stormy Daniels).

Trump is the effect, not the cause. We've been on this road a long time and Trump is the end of it. I don't know what comes next (at the moment it feels like another 4 year term for Trump, which is even more shocking than his original victory!) but after Trump all this shit will be different. I never really felt it before but a third party seems to be in the offing. The Republicans and Democrats are gradually skewing to their extremes, time for a middle way to emerge.

As for foreign policy, North Korea is the same problem it always was. Libya is a mess, Yemen is embarrassing for all thinking, feeling human beings, Syria is still a clusterfuck, Ukraine is no closer to resolution. Otherwise, not bad. Trade wars are not anyone's idea of a good time but the worst of it has yet to hit the fan and its not hard to imagine all this trade kerfuffle actually leading to new and improved trade relations for everyone. Our world leaders still have time for photo-ops and perhaps that is a good thing.

As for the state of Trump, here's the good news:

Trump just needs to not be the 6th guy, right?

Syria

A quick note about Arab culture: the father and the eldest son are the leaders of the clan, everyone else is just the flock. When the king dies, the eldest son is the new undisputed leader, that's just how it goes. But in the House of Assad in Syria there was a detour: the current Assad in charge, Bashaar al-Assad, is the little brother. He wasn't meant to be king, he didn't think he would be king, no one trained him to be king. King Little Bro did not instantly command the fealty of his people. Instead the citizenry splintered and began preparing for what was next (egged on by the bellicose Americans and Israelis). Syria then steadily drifted into a mix of revolution, civil war, invasion and chaos while the Assad regime continues to linger like last night's fish dinner. The citizenry of Syria is made up of a host of small ethnic groups none of whom ever truly trusted the others. The unrest drove millions of Syrians out, mostly into Europe where they did not find sweet relief.

Is Obama to blame? Though many want to say yes (solely because they assume the President of the United States to be at fault for all things), I will say no. Syria is one of those rare pockets of the world that has never been in the American sphere of influence. Throughout the the 20th century Syria was under the sway of Russians (slash Soviets), while in the 19th century it was the British and/or the French and for centuries before that it one of the more significant Ottoman centers. Damascus is an ancient city and the road to it is, as well. But for the Americans it has been an elusive place, either a Cold War stronghold of our enemies (Russia, et al) or a prickly neighbor of our allies (Turkey and Israel). We haven't sold guns there or fought wars there or bought oil there or sold blue jeans there, we don't have allies in Syria. So when the place falls apart and everyone expects POTUS to jump into the breach, that is an unrealistic expectation. Obama looked at his options in Syria and realized he had none. There are no good guys, no one to root for, no one to support. There are only waves and waves of unhappy minorities chipping away at each other (not unlike the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s). 

What was Obama supposed to do? Militarily remove Assad? (Good lord, what a terrible idea!) Fling bombs at Assad's supporters? (What would be the point of that?) Develop networks of anti-Assad factions? (We've done some of that, but I bet it ain't easy work or of much reward)  The problem with this kind of factional warfare is that no one is ever on anyone's side, there are no allies only people you shoot at and people you don't waste your bullets on. 

What is the outcome the Americans want in Syria? Again, we've never had any influence in Syria, so why would we want (or expect) any outcome? As an American, I don't care who runs Syria. I have never cared and I don't really see why I would start now. And I certainly don't see why anyone in Syria would care what I (as an American) think. The Israelis are wary of an Iranian-backed Shia-friendly leadership and the Turks aren't too keen on that either, so that is the de facto American policy as well. 

My assumption is the Russians have long since banked on Assad's demise and have their next choice waiting in the wings. Perhaps Iran does too, maybe the French and the Brits as well. I'm sure the Israelis are familiar with the factions and may even have one or two that they'd be willing to deal with. Maybe China does, too (they've loaded troops into the Syrian maelstrom just like everyone else). I have no idea who any of their rooting interests lie with, I don't know any of the players. Everyone else has a dog in this fight but I can't for the life of me figure out who the Americans are rooting for. It seemed like we were backing the Syrian Kurds but though we've traditionally been sympathetic to the Iraqi Kurds, it appears Russia has claimed their support (and their oil fields in the east) instead.

Somewhere along the way, Daesh (you may know them as ISIL, ISIS or Islamic State), appeared and threw in their lot. The pissed off Iraqi Sunnis weren't strong enough to lope towards Baghdad so instead they were hoping to find Sunni comrades in Syria and take Damascus for themselves. For a while they become a cause celebre in the Arab world, drawing the ire of USA and Iran, Turkey and Russia equally. But personally I never saw anything that would make me think there was any military savvy in the Daesh camp. Their only weapon is fame and the ability to recruit worldwide through digital social networks. Daesh has now largely been defeated (Iraq just declared victory against them in the last few days) but realistically they weren't defeated, they just melted back into the towns and cities where they came from. Perhaps they will stay gone, perhaps they can be rejuvenated at a moment's notice. One puzzling detail about Syria these days: now that Daesh is gone, the world is generally acting like Syrian conflict has been resolved but Daesh was just one of the myriad of agitators in Syria. Were they the largest one? (No) Were they the most dangerous one? (No) Were they the most important or the most dynamic or the most impactful? (No) So why does everyone think that the Syrian Civil War is resolved?

Increasingly Iran and Saudi Arabia are flexing on each other and they're making everyone choose sides. In 2015 the President of the United States went to Iran and showered them with a fresh infusion of cash thanks to a historic 'peace' treaty; in 2017 the President of the United States went to Saudi Arabia to deliver a fresh infusion of weapons to the Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques. Heretofore the Saudis and Iranians have pumped their new toys into Yemen but that has become a frustrating fight for both and nothing but a pointless humanitarian disaster to the rest of the world community. Syria is the economic engine that keeps the war machine rolling.

Syria is the powderkeg that has unleashed all the tensions. George Bush invaded Iraq after 9/11 for the purpose (I believe) of creating a super battlefield where the Americans could duke it out with their counterparts across the Arab world...but nobody showed. The chaos that ensued after the American invasion was largely Iraqi Shia groups elbowing each other for power. Al-Qaeda influence in Iraq was driven out by the Iraqis and no one else volunteered for the fight. So where does the battle go? Iraq is not the battlefield, Syria is the battlefield. Syria has a multitude of ethnic groups, none of whom are really powerful enough to rule. Assad's Alawites were, I think, a fluke of larger tide of world history: old man Assad was in the right place at the right time and he didn't fuck it up...until he accidentally left it all to the younger son. The instability of Syria goes back to that transition of power, the place has been rickety ever since with no end in sight and a million trillion outsiders flooding in to keep it going.

While Russia leads the Syrian Constitutional Convention, an attempt to approximate the interests of all the various groups of Syria with Russia's chosen leader on top, Syria is poised to be the skirmishing ground of Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Turkey and Israel making periodic jabs. The newfound alliance of Russia, Turkey and Iran will face some rough times going forward as their interests begin to diverge. And what of the refugees? Will the UN stand up for the right to return? Does the EU get a seat at the new Syrian Constitutional Convention? Some commentators will bemoan the lack of American presence but I think President Trump is eager to be somewhere else (gotta admit: Trump does his best work when he's complaining about the places he's not allowed to go).

Obama's innovation on Syria was to pretend like he was working with Russia. Russia's interest in Syria transcends Assad, if he falls I don't think that puts them out of Syria. So while the Russians are ostensibly propping up Assad, I think they can un-prop him at a moment's notice. And when the time comes to declare a winner, the Russians will be there to act like that's what they wanted the whole time. So while coordinating with Russia against Daesh was always a pretty weird idea, I give Obama props for weaseling his way into Russia's business. And, again, Obama didn't have any good choices anyway, so much like the Sacramento Kings front office, any decision he made was likely to fail, circumstances are just not in POTUS's favor. In the end, Obama effectively removed the USA from the Middle East and left Russia holding the bag, a situation Trump seems eager to continue.

Perpetual instability used to be the goal of American policy in the Middle East. W Bush tried to alter American policy in the Arab World by aggressively choosing sides (he chose Iran, not that anyone noticed at the time). Obama shifted it back by removing the troops meant to hold the military gains made in Iraq. Trump seems eager to go back even further to a time before the American Revolution, when these Asian nations all fought each other but we only heard about it years later. We have come back around to the Samuel Huntington thesis of all cultures at war with all other cultures as globalism throws them together, though this time it seems like we've removed ourselves (and don't be surprised if China is the one who appears victorious in the end). 

I expect the resolution of all this action to be the powers that be figuring out what the Western world knows: people are worth a lot more money when you keep them living a life of improvement than when you run them into battle with each other. Living people produce a helluva lot more GDP than rotting corpses. Humanity is gradually becoming aware of this. The beauty of market forces is it produces technological innovation in service of peace rather than war. When the warriors embrace building nations rather than destroying them, when they choose to encourage life rather than ruin it, then the world will be a peaceful place, where battles are fought on PlayStations or Twitter rather than desert graveyards. Could take a while but I suspect that's where this is all leading.

Trumped!

Okay, I was caught off guard by the Trump landslide. I'm less surprised by the Republicans keeping the House and Senate but I didn't see Trump astriding the Republican colossus. The real eye-opening part of watching last night's return: I kinda knew this but, man, I didn't realize how badly America hates Hillary Clinton. I knew she had her detractors, she had her doubters and she was an uncommonly dull candidate for a Democrat but I thought there was enough skepticism of Trump and enough of a left-wing groundswell to keep Hillary around for four more years. Nope. She is officially done as a public persona in America. And Donald Trump's career just took an unexpected setback. Trump is about to realize what I have long known: President of the United States of America is the ultimate dead end job. He could've been out making big money being a loud mouth political type, instead he's stuck actually governing. What a drag for that guy.

As I wrote in a previous post, the Congress runs the government while the President gets all the attention. We may think we just witnessed a revolution of the right wing weirdos but I would suggest the opportunity has swung back for the Republican establishment to treat Trump like a pinata for the next four years and purge the party of the loons. We'll see. To that end, I think the real winner last night was Paul Ryan: he has the job of herding cats (stupid ass Republican cats, no less) but if he can build a coalition within the House and a bridge to McConnell in the Senate, he can pretty well do whatever he wants for the next 2-4 years. I have a bold suggestion for each of the Republican leaders: McConnell should immediately affirm Merrick Garland (I kinda like him and I think he could bring a fascinating shift to the Court) and Ryan should immediately push through whatever immigration bill (*) he thinks he wants. I think its important for both houses of Congress to give an early thumb to the eye of the new President (that they don't actually like) by removing the only two things he might genuinely have an interest in. Encourage President Trump to reform NATO (yeah, go solve that Europe problem, Don, we'll take care of everything til you get back) and pick up where Michelle Obama left that obesity epidemic.

Since I'm hanging on the notion that last night was about vanquishing Hillary more than welcoming Trump, I am still skeptical of Trump's popularity. Who likes this guy? The guy just got 100 million votes and I still can't figure out who actually wants this man to be president--including the man himself! The idea that Trump is gonna clean up Washington is just straight foolish. He has no idea how to accomplish that task and who the fuck is gonna help him figure it out? Under Obama the Republican Congress just laid low but under Trump they'll have a mandate to do what they want with an Executive to rubber stamp their desires and offer little resistance. Trump didn't get rich by being a consensus builder and in DC he'll be so out of his element, he'll just yap and yap and do nothing at all. I think Ryan and McConnell will effectively control him behind the scenes and sponge off his popularity enough to look like real statesmen. Ideally, after four years Trump will be tired of being president and the Republican establishment will be back in control (look for Cruz to get marginalized and Rand Paul better do something bold or he'll be long gone by 2020), ready to take a real run at the White House (how about a Ryan/Rubio ticket in 2020?). Meanwhile the Democrats will have a few years of loudly suffering to develop some kind of hero by 2020 (sorry, kids, I don't think Elizabeth Warren is that guy and who drank more sad gulps of Chivas last night than Joe Biden?).

I'm not a political guy but I found myself more amused than I thought I would be by watching the liberals flounder and look all aggrieved. When they're in control their self-important smugness is unbearable, their moral pseudo-superiority is maddening and the way the fall prey to their own malformed observations is embarrassing. And, of course, political losers always portray the victors as...(fill in generational pejorative)...and themselves as kindly victims wondering why God lets bad things happen to good people. Conservatives are uptight assholes no matter what happens and George W. Bush was so tired of being president that I didn't get the same joy of watching the Obama revolution sweep out the last of red hot Cheneys.    

Is Trump dangerous? Good lord, I think he'll be the most ineffective President since Carter--and I just thought that about the last guy! I see no scenario where Donald Trump wants to be re-elected in 2020. He'll enjoy the inauguration (legendary for executive blow jobs!) but by Day Two, he'll be ready to pull the ejector seat and get back to where he once belonged. Foreign policy-wise I think he could have some minor successes but they'll be the kind that disappoint his most ardent supporters. In short, Tuesday night was his absolute peak in this business, nothing but a black diamond slope in his future. And this Presidency will soak up what influence he might've had, as opposed to Obama who will be a beloved public figure for the next 30 years, Trump will be shown to be ineffective and useless and defeated. Coke-fueled benders in the White House are probably a total drag, no fun at all, and tweeting about fat chicks at 3 in the morning will eventually get him murdered by his bodyguards. Seriously, I'm kinda feeling sorry for the guy, his life is ruined! He thinks his parents are on vacation and he's got the whole house to himself but, no, he's gotta run the family business 24 hours a day instead. This ain't doggie heaven, it's doggie hell.

Mitch McConnell is old, his job is to groom the next old white guy to dominate the Republican side of the Senate. But Paul Ryan could be the one, he's the ascendant star right now. And if he pulls the House Republicans together, he'll rule Washington for the next few years while the Democrats point all their weapons at hapless Trump.


(* Immigration is the ultimate pointless American debate: every 20 years or so since 1650 the locals have complained about interlopers and the local constabulary hems and haws and pretends to do something about it and the never does because deep down they kinda like the newcomers and are powerless to stop them anyway. Immigration is a function of economics not politics but political animals think nothing is beyond their entreaties. When the economy dried up in 2007 so did immigration to America, the rednecks didn't notice but the chances of them getting served by the political sphere is just as remote under Trump as it was under Obama. He'll give them a voice but will he give them actual power? Oh, come on, man! Remember Trump wasn't elected by rich white people, he was elected by poor white people--and even then it was only because the minorities where wary of Hillary)

Decision 2016

We're less than a week away from the next Presidential election. Hillary Clinton's lead had shrunk a bit recently because of (vague) news about new revelations in her email scandal.  To recap: When Hillary was Secretary of State she chose to keep a personal email server rather than the gov't issue version. This is probably illegal though probably not unusual. What are the American people to think of this activity? I dunno. I know nothing about how the gov't keeps its emails and I don't know why I would know or would want to know. My instinct is that the Madame in Charge makes the rules of order and if she chooses to have email sent to her AOL account instead of her .gov account, it matters not to me. The gov't gets hacked all day every day so the argument that her machinations imperil cyber-safety doesn't really wash with me. The emails are the property of the American people and subject to FOIA requests and such, that's true. But I don't see how the serves itself makes any difference: if the sitting Secretary of State chose not to release certain communications, I don't know what the New York Times or the American people are gonna do about it. That's not a function of Hillary Clinton or her predecessors or successors, it is the cold fact that Executive Privilege is beyond the citizenry and that's just how it lays, bro.

The President could go on TV tonight and explain every intricacy of...say, the tax code...but who would watch and who would understand it anyway? The White House could not possibly give a complete accounting of its day-to-day affairs even if it wanted to and why would it want to? Donald Rumsfeld at the height of the occupation of Iraq could calmly explain the ins-and-outs of policy to the American people but how would that make his job any easier? How would that make the American people safe or more secure? Or even more well-informed? Knowledge is a malleable commodity and your politicians want to mall-u as much as they can. We can pretend that the Blue Guy is more trustworthy than the Red Guy or vice versa, but that's hopeless bullshit and you know it. Politics, like tic-tac-toe and global thermonuclear war, is a losing game and the only way to win is not to play. (Said it before I'll say it again: if they wanted to take away my right to vote, I'd vote against it; until then I think voting is not merely a dumb waste of time but a deluded and quite possibly dangerous way to engage in the civic sphere. The idea that is your duty is absurd nonsense and an indication that we are doing it wrong as a people)

This election has been backwards in the sense that it is the Republican who is the fiery rabble-rouser while it is the Democrat who is the staid old hand who preaches a stay-the-course philosophy. And to continue the backwardness: I believe a Trump presidency would look like an Obama presidency (zero foreign policy interest, no support from the Republican Congress, able to win people over with press conferences but not much else) while a Hillary presidency would look like the George W. Bush administration (active military, sucking up to elderly voters, defiant and defensive in the face of criticism). So do Trump supporters really want change because I don't think they'll get it; and do Hillary supporters really want more of Obama because I don't think they'll get what they want either. The electorate is been turned inside out--thank goodness Americans don't actually pay attention once the election is over.

My previous post was about the steady rise of an executive branch that wants to communicate more directly with the American people leading to a rise in responsibility without any commensurate rise in actual power. This has led to elections where people increasingly put unrealistic expectations onto the candidates. For example, this election seems like a referendum on women's issues where Hillary represents womens' reach for more power while Trump represents the recalcitrant old ways. But I would suggest this embodiment is entirely skin deep. Once the President is chosen, women will possess no greater power under one than they would have under the other because the President doesn't have much control over how women live their lives in this society. African-Americans may have believe that an Obama Administration would make everything obviously better for black people but after 8 years is anything really different for minorities in this country? Perhaps. Perhaps a black president inspires black people to take more professional control or be more bold in their social dealings but does any of that really come from White House policy? America is run by the culture and the economy, not the government. The government is there to safeguard our basic freedoms, not make anything better. We can ascribe symbolic significance to our leaders but that's not the same as leaders actually having transformative powers.

These candidates have legendary negative ratings from the electorate. Again, though, this strikes me as false. The idea that Trump would be a dangerous president doesn't really account for the checks and balances of the American system. I think Trump would be a largely ineffective president, neutered at best. The President's only real clear power is in foreign policy and so far Trump has shown no acumen or philosophy for dealing with foreign affairs. He has an old timey Republican bluster about being a powerful foreign presence but his bluster is the talk of a guy who has never had to do any of this shit before and I suspect if he was in power he would be every bit as reticent to send troops abroad or drop bombs on other countries as Obama has been. And the idea that Hillary is some crazed socialist ideologue misses that I think she would actually be a coldly calculating pragmatic politician that America hasn't seen since the days of Bob Dole as Majority Leader. I think she would be much more likely to reach out to the Republican Congress than Obama (or Trump) and I think she would give them the opportunity to make deals more than the popular consensus realizes. I think Hillary gets how Washington works more than any President since HW Bush, maybe even Nixon. Hillary will be an active executive and will force Congress to act in a way that Obama never had any appetite for.

I think the next four years will be brutal on whoever wins this election. I think Trump doesn't really even want to be President and this is all the perfect setup for a new network to compete with Fox News: he's discovered his core audience who thinks the system is rigged, that Hillary is a criminal and that the Republican Party (and Fox News) is too soft to be of much use any more. Winning the election would be a major career setback for Trump and, let's face it, good god this guy would suck at being president. As for Hillary, I've long thought the she would be the next president and I also long thought that she would not run for reelection in 2020. I think her health is not as strong as she likes to make us think, I think she has no stomach for another election run, I think the next four years will see a lot of international and economic challenges (I'm hoping my next blog post will be on that topic) and I think giving herself only four years will keep her high intensity each day in office. As much as the commentary as suggested the political parties are tearing themselves apart, I suspect four years from now we will have long forgotten what a clusterfuck this election season truly was (no Trump, no more Bushes or Clintons, no Christie, no Sanders, no Pence, I see a completely new slate of challengers).

I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president and I'd like to think she'll be good. Like I said, I think she'll be a measured and pragmatic (and stonewalling) executive. I think she'll alienate her supporters with her active foreign policy, I think she'll look to make deals in Congress (my dream is Social Security reform, which has to come from a Democrat) and she'll try to restore the presidency to the unfun office it used to be. I think she'll be able to use Bill as the perfect sponge for controversy, look for Bill to put on the clown suit whenever the focus needs to go somewhere else. As for Trump, he'll be off to be a TV star and randomly appearing on Fox News or Twitter won't be enough for him. Pillorying Hillary will be fun for a while but soon enough he'll move on to other things, puncturing the presidency will always be low hanging fruit but he'll find other things to keep the audience watching.

The good news: America is fine. We waste a lot of resources, a lot of time and money, but in general its because we are rich and can afford to. The day will come when we can't afford it any more but hopefully that'll be a hundred years from now. The reason everything looks bad is because we're looking at all the bad parts (partisan politics) and acting like its way more important than it actually is. If we'd just deflate the pompous megalomaniac political motherfuckers we'll all be better off. I don't vote because I don't like any of these people and I don't feel like any of them truly represent me. Fortunately I don't feel like I need these people to pander to me. Ignore the politicians and give them less money--SPEND THE MONEY ON WHAT YOU WANT IT SPENT ON INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR CONGRESS TO PLEASE YOU!--and America will seem like a much more egalitarian and enlightened place. We have resources, we have opportunity, we have fun and sexy lives. Live healthy, live smart and don't wait for others to make your dreams come true and all will be well.