January 31, 2020--His Majesty the President

If you are wondering why Nancy Pelosi took so long before authorizing the House Intelligence Committee to begin an impeachment "inquiry," wonder no more. 

Just look around at what is going on and the reasons should be clear.

As I write this (Thursday afternoon), it looks as if Mitch McConnell has the votes needed to beat back attempts to call witnesses and  turn documents over to the Senate where the impeachment trial is underway.

If this is true--and we will know by Friday afternoon when the vote about witnesses takes place--Mitch if nothing else is as good a vote counter as was Lyndon Johnson when he presided over the Senate. And, if necessary, Mitch is about as good as it gets when he sees it necessary to twist arms.

So, expect to have witnesses voted down by at least one vote from among the Republican caucus of 53. And almost immediately after that, Friday night, under the cover of darkness, expect to see Trump exonerated by all 53. He will be able to trundle off to the Super Bowl where he will take a bow and then, a few days after that, deliver his State of the Union address before an  ecstatic sea of congressional Trumpers and disgruntled Democrats.

Susan Collins and her wobbly colleagues will be able to say they voted for witnesses; and even though they ultimately voted to find Trump not guilty, this they feel will provide enough political cover for them to eek out close reelection victories. Thus this means the GOP will retain control of the Senate.

How will this be regarded by Democrats, those in Congress and millions among the general population? Not well. With a likely weak candidate nominated to take on Trump, his reelection is more likely, but not certain, than when the impeachment process began.

Anyone who knows political history and human psychology, like Pelosi, knew these outcomes were easy to predict.

How then to think about this? 

I am hearing from friends and family members that, "It's all over." With the "it" being our way of life and representative democracy. The Constitution, they contend, failed us.

When I disagree they accuse me of being a lazy optimist.

Perhaps.

For what it's worth here's what I think--

Yes, if the obvious scenario plays out, we will indeed be in peril. Four more years of Trump could see us as a people"crossing a bridge" of no return.

Those who feel this way, to me, are missing the three most powerful of our remaining checks and balances--an activated free press, the federal courts which have as yet not weighed in, and ultimately the people themselves when we vote in November.

In regard to the courts, perhaps the most significant aspect of the Senate trial is the fact that Chief Justice Roberts was required to sit through dozens of hours of debate where Trump's lawyers came up with preposterous arguments to bolster their defense. It is difficult to imagine that as Trump-related cases make their way to the Supreme Court Roberts will forget what he witnessed and how dangerous the Trump view is of the president as monarch.

But, if the free press is abrogated, if SCOUS because of a perverse reading of Article Two votes to allow the president to "do whatever he wants," and, by far most important, if we either sit out the election or nominate weak candidates, it is indeed over.

So, our future is in our own hands. Where it should be.

January 30, 2020--Chaos Theory

If you're obsessing as I am about the Trump impeachment trial, your focus is likely on the struggle about witnesses.

Almost all Republican senators appear to oppose having any and want to get to the business of exonerating Trump to allow them to get home in time to watch this weekend's Super Bowl. (This is literally true.)

And it appears that all Democratic senators will vote to include witnesses. Especially John Bolton.

To include witnesses and documents the Dems have to secure at least four maverick Republicans to get to the required 51 votes. This Kabuki drama is being fueled by the cable news networks that like nothing better than covering political horse races.

Republican senators are saying if four members of their caucus bolt and vote with the Democrats to call witnesses, as a quid pro quo, they will insist on subpoenaing Hunter Biden, who, along with his father, they contend, is at the center of all things Ukrainian. Including corruption. 

A few reflections--

If the Republicans are so eager to haul the Bidens in to testify under oath they can arrange that for later this afternoon. 51 votes are all that are needed to compel that and with 53 members the GOP already has the votes they need to force the Bidens to appear before the House.  

Speculate away as to why they do not seem eager to do so. My view is that they really do not want to have even the Bidens as witnesses since they know there is no significant dirt there to stir up and one never knows what will leak out if there is an open process. Perhaps, the truth.

And, if they are ready to vote to keep Trump in office, they also have the votes for that and could get that done in time for the kickoff.

I therefore see it to be likely that Mitch McConnell has the votes to squelch any move to call witnesses and therefore will let the witnesses and expulsion votes occur on Friday. He and Trump and all but two or three Republican senators are on board for that. They also assume the public, 75 percent of whom want witnesses, will be upset about a Senate coverup but within just a week or two will have moved on to the next outrage. Call it outrage overload. 

If you've been following what I've been writing you know none of this disturbs me. In fact, the opposite as I wrote last week--"the worser the better." 

The more things drift toward chaos, the better it is for Democratic chances to defeat Trump in November and take control of the Senate. The voting public will make Republicans pay for this shameful coverup.

I would feel otherwise and be focused on the upcoming House votes--on witnesses and Trump's fate--if there was any chance of attracting, say, 10 Republican to vote with the Democrats. That would be a different story with very different outcomes. 

I am thus a proponent of chaos. 

September 30, 2019--Ukraine Fall Out

We should stay focused on the House of Representatives' move toward the impeachment of Donald Trump. That is obviously the most important and promising news of the last two, three years.

But also of consequence is the effect it will have on the 2020 election. Concern that it could tip things in Trump's direction was the primary reason Nancy Pelosi was so reluctant to proceed. She remembered how Bill Clinton's approval rating went up while his impeachment unfolded.

So what should we expect?

Unlike Trump, Clinton was in his second term and the economy was booming. Not as currently primarily for wealthy people. So, I am not expecting to see Trump's number rise. In fact, in just the one week since Ukraine Gate was exposed they appear to be plummeting.

Expect then to see Trump take a political hit. Enough, perhaps, to upend his reelection chances.

What then about the Democrats?

I am anticipating that as we get deeper into all that was going on between Ukrainian officials and oligarchs and Trump, his children Giuliani, Paul Manafort (remember him?), and many others there will be much more fall out. Ukraine, after all, is primarily a place known as a money laundry.

Fairly or not, therefore, expect to see Joe Biden driven from the race.

Again, fairly or not expect to see his son Hunter Biden dragged deeper into the mess. Does anyone believe that if his last name wasn't Biden he would have been invited to serve on the board of Burma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas producer?

He served on that board from 2014 to 2019, which happens to be among the same years that his father was Barack Obama's Vice President. That didn't hurt his employment prospects.

We know that Trump will hammer away at this. Who could expect him not too. It is teed up for him.

And so Joe Biden will have to leave the race because Democratic voters really do care about draining the swamp. And to make the case that Trump made the swap swampier, Biden needs to not be our nominee. He is already being characterized as part of the problem. By Democratic activists. And as a result he has little chance of being nominated. 

By remaining in the race he will only further sully his reputation.

The main political beneficiary? That's easy--Elizabeth Warren.

October 27, 2017--Trump's Get Out of Jail Free Card

Up to now here's how I thought Donald Trump's presidency would end:

For many months I've been writing that the real threat to him is not the ideological split among Republicans, the opposition of the Democrats, his failure to accomplish anything, or his intemperate and outrageous behavior. Like the sort of things he said recently about John McCain, Senator Bob Corker, and gold star families, among the many targets of his ire.

Most perilous, I have felt, would be the looming findings of the investigation being directed by special council Robert Mueller. This, I thought, will turn out to be the ticking time bomb that would bring him down before the end of his term. 

We would learn about collusion between Trump and the Russians who worked together to doom Hillary Clinton's candidacy, Trump's corrupt business practices in Moscow and elsewhere, illegal money-laundering activities that would be discovered through an examination of his personal finances, and his various efforts to obstruct justice as this investigations unfolds.

That the weight of evidence would turn out to be so overwhelming that he would either be impeached and voted out of office by the Senate or, like Richard Nixon, be forced to resign.

None of this is any longer likely.

No matter what Mueller finds it will be at most a one-week story.

Here's why--

Trump and his enablers have come up with a winning defensive strategy. Much of it focused on Hillay Clinton, the Clintons (plural) and Trump's favorite nemesis, Barack Obama.

They are working on three themes--

First, they are in the process of turning the focus of the collusion-with-the-Russians narrative from Trump to Hillary. Earlier this week Trump and his people basked in the revelation, reported in the fake-news Washington Post of all places, that the infamous BuzzFeed dossier that outlines in literally explicit detail Trump's nefarious business activities with Russian oligarchs and frolics with prostitutes was largely paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. More than $10 million worth.

People close to Hillary Clinton acknowledged this, claiming that it was routine opposition research. Everyone does it they blandly said. Well, that may be true, but from a political perspective it is ruinous to any attempt to use the dossier revelations as part of a case against Trump. Now the whole episode will become a case against Hillary. Slimy political jujitsu at its best.

Then there is the uranium flap. 

This was reported by the New York Times many months ago and at that time I had a few things to say about it. The paper of record alleged that at the behest of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton herself while Secretary of State and Barack Obama was president approved the sale to Russian business interests of the Canadian company that produces of 20 percent of our uranium supply. 

Bill Clinton was shown to be in the middle of this--he was paid $500,000 to deliver a speech in Russia after which more than $100 million was donated by Russians to the Clinton Foundation. These, it is speculated, lubricated the approval process by U.S. governmental agencies, including Hillary Clinton's State Department. 

Republicans at the time did not make that big a deal of it. They were focused more on pillorying Hillary about Benghazi. But periodically during the campaign Trump alluded to it. Now, reprised earlier this week by Trump's Minister of Propaganda, Sean Hannity on his radio and Fox TV shows, it is proving to be another effective diversion from the Mueller investigation, which reportedly is moving along quickly.

Then, to finish the trifecta of Trump preemptive defensive strategies there is the slow boiling process of sliming Robert Mueller. 

Again, Fox News and Trump himself are beginning to bring up things, I should say, make up things in an effort to undermine Mueller's reputation. They are saying he was and is chummy with fired FBI Director James Comey and that he has ties to the law firm that was paid by the Hillary people to come up with the BuzzFeed dossier. Thus, they are asking how can we trust anything Mueller and his staff uncover.

Couple this with a large part of the public's disinterest in anything critical of Donald Trump and the very recent reports that Republicans in Congress are rolling over for Trump and giving him standing ovations, afraid that if they don't Steve Bannon and his people will come after them with pitchforks and toss them out of office, putting all of this together, I am coming to think that whatever Mueller reports and recommends will be largely ignored, except on MSNBC.

With the resignation of congressmen such as Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, the Republican Party is in the process of becoming the Trump Party. 

He may be all the things critics say about him, but one thing he surely is--when it comes to fighting back he's shameless and effective.