Debatable, Barely

 I. Analysis.

The President is an ignorant, racist, deadbeat. These traits were on full display last night. He did absolutely nothing to persuade anyone that he has matured in office or that he is capable of being civil. 

Vice-President Biden was slightly overwhelmed by the reality of sharing a stage with such a rude, vituperative person for the first 15 or 20 minutes. He didn't have a great night, but he spoke cogently and avoided any terrible gaffes or unforced errors that will sting.

Biden went in with a substantial lead and he came out of it with what is likely to be a slightly larger lead in the days ahead. The instant polls indicate that he won the debate and even some of Trump's media talking heads, like Rick Santorum and Chris Christie, acknowledged that Trump hurt his own cause.

Presidential debates are usually remembered for moment and I think there are three that will be the focus of conversation this week.

1. Donald Trump refused to renounce white supremacists. He started to, but either got distracted or lost his nerve, and wound up giving a rallying cry to an obnoxious gang of racist louts. So far today his team is trying to spin this, but he has not rushed out to clarify or change the impression he made.  

2. Joe Biden invoked the military service of his deceased son Beau.  The President responded by taunting him with comments about the substance abuse issues of Biden's surviving son. Imagine responding to someone bragging about his dead son who won the Bronze Star by bringing up the fact that that person's other son had a drug problem. It is unfathomable.

3. Biden called the President of the United States a clown. He also told him "Shut up, man." These moments struck me as appropriate responses to Trump's rudeness, but I don't doubt that there are some voters who were turned off by that. Of course, people who care about decorum are unlikely to be voting for Trump, unless they are full of shit about why they are voting for that clown.

Oh and Chris Wallace is catching hell for losing control of the ship last night. He did start poorly but I think he reacted well, under the circumstances. He wasn't great, but I don't think anyone else would have done much better. 

II. A Little Bit of News.

It was easy to miss but there were at least 2 news worthy items in the ether of last night's circus.

First, President Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he is open to having the vote on Judge Coney-Barrett's nomination after the election.  He said there was "plenty of time" to do it after the election. I think that means the Republicans have read the polling on this point and are having some doubts about the wisdom of cramming this through. (I still think they will, but it was an interesting comment. I also think they will hold the vote no matter what the outcome of the election is.)

Secondly, Biden seemed to say that the Private Option of his healthcare plan would only be available to people eligible for Medicaid. I hope that reporters ask him to clarify that, but the news will probably focus on other things for the next few days. 

III. Early Signs of Movement.

I don't put a lot of stock in instant polls. The one done by CBS had Biden winning 48 percent to 41 percent. That mirrors almost perfectly the pre-debate polling average. The CNN poll had Biden winning 60 percent to 28 percent.  But only 25% of respondents were Republican, so that's probably a bad sample.

But there is one data point that has to encourage the Biden campaign this morning.  The betting markets have moved, noticeably toward Biden over night. On Predictit.com, both North Carolina and Florida have flipped from Trump to Biden. (By small margins, it must be said.)  States like Ohio and Georgia have also moved toward the Democrats. Biden's chances of winning the election have gone up by about a nickel.

IV. What Happens Next.

One of the most striking impressions last night was that Donald Trump knows that he is losing this race. I assumed that he knew that but it was really evident during the portion of the debate on election security. Trump needs to change minds. Last night was his best chance to do so, but he could not help himself. He is a rude, obnoxious jerk. That works very well with 40% of the country. That's not enough to win.

The next event is the Vice-Presidential debate. This is usually a snooze fest and I think this year will not be an exception to that. Kamala Harris had some good moments in the early primary debates but she is less deft at counter-punching.  

Mike Pence did well against Tim Kaine and I think he will hold his own against Senator Harris. The secret to his success is that he is the ability to lie with great confidence. If he gets asked to defend something absurd that Donald Trump believes, he will just start with "Of course the President does not believe that. The President is an honest, decent man.....etc, etc." The lies do not stop.

The contrast from last night will be telling. Pence might be able to make some coherent arguments that will make some voters say, "See, they're not so bad if you ignore the crazy pants way the Boss talks." But I don't think the needle will move much after a Veep debate.

The next presidential debate is a town hall forum. I think both candidates will do better in that setting. Biden is a natural retail politician and he will look more comfortable addressing regular voters than President Trump. But I also think Trump will benefit from the change in format. Trump knows he can be rude to Biden. His people expect it. He also knows he can be rude to the moderator. That's all in the game. But he has to hold back a little bit when regular old voters ask him a question. I wish the voters had a chance to ask follow-ups in this forum. That tripped up Trump in his last ABC town hall. But they usually do not allow such questions at the Town Hall debate, so we may not get to see how he does when someone tries to hold him to answering the question. 

Fun fact-the next debate will be moderated by Steve Scully, the incredibly patient and poker-faced C-SPAN host who has to listen to all those crazy morning callers. Good practice for listening to Trump's tantrums.

As I write this, the President has just appeared on the White House lawn to try to undo the damage of his Proud Boys answer last night.  His words were less than convincing but the important thing is that he seems to understand that he had a bad night and had to try to put this fire out.

He will probably be more sedate at the next debate. It would be hard not to. But by the third debate his polling situation might be so dire that he comes completely unhinged.

President Trump (Volume 2)

I wrote Volume 1 of this series less than six weeks into the Trump administration. I was planning to write them roughly every three months. The main purpose of these posts was to be tracking predictions I made the night Donald Trump was elected. I have neglected writing them in part because while Donald Trump has a rare gift for making controversy, none of the events of the past ten months seemed to clearly delineate the end of the beginning of this presidential term.  Then yesterday happened.  Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted and we learned that George Papadopoulos had plead guilty to lying to the FBI about meetings between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

It is no longer possible for Trump world to say with a straight face that there is no evidence of collusion.  There was collusion. It remains to be seen how significant that collusion in breadth and scope, but it happened. And now Trump must govern under the credible shadow of Bob Mueller for the foreseeable future.

I. New Business: The first 284 days of President Trump.

The bad news is that Donald Trump is bad at being president.  The good news is that Donald Trump is bad at being president.  The bad part is that almost a year into the job, he continues to embarrass his country and cheapen his office every time he speaks.  He fucked up a condolence call to a war widow. He danced with a sword in Saudi Arabia.  He welshed on a promise to pay $25,000 to a gold star dad, until the media shamed him int doing it. He referred to the governor of the Virgin Island as their president. He started a needless fight with NFL players and an ESPN broadcaster.  He is, in short, a feckless idiot.

And this stupidity manifests itself, more substantively in an inability to get much done in congress.  He has failed to repeal Obamacare. His tax reform ideas are laughably shallow and languishing before a tepid congress.  He hasn't passed anything difficult or meaningful, despite having control of both houses.

Which is not to say that he has not done damage.  His cabinet appointments have almost without exception proven to be inept. His secretary of state called him a fucking moron, while also compiling a reputation for his own incompetence as the head of our most important department of government. His ambassador to the United Nations seems hell bent on scuttling the Iran deal, which would mean that we would go back to having nuclear crises with 2/3 of the Axis of Evil.  Ben Carson can not be bothered to learn what his job is and we all have to wonder how Rick Perry's doing at learning what nuclear energy is.

And then there's his own White House staff.  Bannon and Priebus were both fired so the reigns could be turned over to John Kelly, whom the president insists on referring to as General Kelly.  Just 30 days ago it was still fashionable to think that Kelly was going to save us form this mess.  Since that time he has been trotted out to defend Trump for offending the widow of Sgt. Johnson during the condolence call. While doing so he smeared a member of congress. The falsity of his statements about her were established by video tape within hours.  A week later, he still refuses to apologize for his inaccurate statement.  Oh and he chalked up the Civil War to a "failure to compromise". It was unclear at press time how Mr. Kelly proposed the slaves should have compromised their way out of bondage.

The strongest impression that I get of Donald Trump is that he is a very lonely man.  He is obsessed with television and reportedly watches Fox News for hours at a time. He often tweets what Fox & Friends covers in the morning. At night he sometimes complains about television reporters and editorial boards. Now he has indictments to worry about.  I still think it's unlikely that the Russia scandal ends with him in handcuffs or even being removed from office.  But I see dark days ahead, because this lonely old man worries about things like that.  And worst of all, he knows exactly what he is guilty of.  That can't be comforting.

II.  Old Business: The State of My Predictions About Trump.

1. "The Iran Deal will be torn up."
Well, probably. He has taken the first steps towards this but his inner circle seem unwilling to blatantly lie about the fact that Iran is complying with their end of the deal.  As it stands, I believe he will back out of the deal.  Which means that our sanctions will go back in place but the European Union and Russia and China will not sanction Tehran at all.  So Iran will be free to pursue nuclear weapons, and do business with the rest of the world.  America would gain the theoretical ability to conduct military operations against Iran, which would result in a calamity roughly three times as big as what Iraq has been for the past 14 years.  Let's hope that Mattis and Tillerson continue to delay their boss from being completely reckless on this front.

2.  "Antonin Scalia will be replaced by a conservative rather than Merrick Garland."
Check.  And there are some real signs that Neil Gorsuch will be worse than Scalia on substance and form.  He is perhaps second only to Kelly in giving up the ghost about being a moderating influence on our politics.

3.  "ISIS has a new propaganda talking point."
Well, yeah, that's true.  But to be fair to the president, ISIS has lost a lot of territory this year.  In normal times that would be a big story.  But no one is paying attention to that because Trump keeps making side shows here at home. And because no one really thinks that the destruction of Islamic State will be the end of what westerners really care about: large acts of terror committed in Europe and North America.


4.  "It is now the official policy of the United States government that Climate Change is a hoax perpetrated by China to disrupt American manufacturing. "

Still true.

5. "At some point next year the Congress will repeal Obamacare."

I'm very glad to be wrong so far about this one. The next trick will be to convince Trump that it's good for his reputation to save Obamacare by fully funding the exchanges and the advertising for Obamacare plans.  The hardcore Trumpers like Bannon and Miller will hate that, but it might be something he could be Rumplestilkin'd into doing.

6. "At some point next year the Congress will pass massive tax cuts and the overwhelming majority of these cuts will benefit very wealthy people.:

This is a coin toss now.  Paul Ryan seems to be a dead-ender on this one and I think that a tax bill will get out of the house.  But I'm not sure the Senate will be able to pass anything along the lines of what is being proposed.  Trump needs this bill but he's spending his very limited political capital on Twitter feuds. Frankly if the Republicans don't bass tax cuts, I don't know what their game is even about.

7. "Immigration policy is about to become a lot less thoughtful."
This was the safest prediction I made, but even I didn't think they would be detaining 10 year old girls with cerebreal palsy.

8. "There will be a bunch of dumb protectionist policies put in place. "

Well he did withdraw from TPP, and he's always prattling on about trade deficits.  But it seems this issue was more symbolic than anything.  The biggest thing to watch for on this front next year is NAFTA.  Trump would be wise to get some marginal changes to the deal and claim that it's a huge, tremendous win for American factories.  But if things go bad for him elsewhere, he might decide to blow the whole thing up. And that will hurt the whole world.

9. "The implements of the federal government will be used to settle the president's political scores. "

Every damn day.

10. "The new school of political science thought will be personality based."
Meh. Sure.

III. New Business: What to Look For.

It is easy to fulminate on the spectacle that is Donald J. Trump living in the White House and flying on Air Force One and being saluted by colonels and green berets.  The ludicrous nature of these visuals is captivating.  The damage this spectacular narcissist will do is going to be hard to measure.  But there are at least some signs that institutions are holding the line, as best they can.  Yesterday's news was the best sign of that yet.  I do think the next nine months will be worse than the previous nine.  But maybe, just maybe, the senate and the courts and the man's own incompetence will make things less terrible than I feared they would be 51 weeks ago when this horrible man triple bank shot his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  

But if there is one thing to look for between now and the next time I get around to chronicling this b-list gangster movie of a government, it is this: the way that right-wing news outlets kowtow to their leader.  The Wall Street Journal editorial board yesterday proposed this modest solution: Trump should pardon everyone in his inner circle, including himself, of any and all crimes related to Russia, and then resume governing.  Maybe this is just the Wall Street Journal's fever dream about tax reform not passing.  But someone in that room should have said "Guys, you've just disavowed the rule of law. Do that and we can never be taken seriously again."

But no one said that and no one will say it on Fox or Breitbart, etc. But those people need in the #MAGAsphere on Twitter and every asshole uncle around the Thanksgiving dinner table in a few weeks needs to hear the truth: we are nothing without the rule of law. And it's the job of citizens to tell them. Every chance you get.

Ferguson Expectations

Someone will agree with Grandpa Simpson.

Earlier today it was announced that the Gran Jury has reached a decision on whether or not to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. I am writing this about 3 and a half hours before the decision will be made public.

I don't have a strong opinion on what their decision should be, because I haven't paid as close attention to the evidence as the grand jurors (presumably) have.  Whether or not a crime was committed comes down to whether the cop's judgment was merely poor with disastrous consequences or either reckless or negligent to a really high degree.

Because of this ambiguity, I will not have an emotional reaction to the decision itself.  I might develop one on further reflection and consideration of the evidence, but as of today, I don't have an opinion and I don't think there are many people outside of Ferguson, Missouri who have sufficient knowledge to support either opinion definitively.

The reason I'm writing this is because I get the feeling from my social media feeds that there is no shortage of opinions or certainty on this complex subject.  And I don't think most of them are based on the evidence.  This case has become a culture war and people are lining up with their team rather than relying on the evidence.

A Conflict of Interests

The worst aspect of this rush to judgment is what I suspect is going on at the board rooms of major media outlets right now.  Those rooms are (rightly) preparing for either outcome.  But the really cynical part of me thinks that on some level, they are rooting for an outcome. And that outcome does not necessarily align with what their viewers are rooting for.  I expect that the interests of the cable networks and their viewers are somewhat misaligned.

No matter what the grand jury decides, the focus of our media will immediately shift to covering the reaction to that decision.  The best result for a cable news network is a result that will please their viewers, immediately followed by some degree of chaos. MSNBC's dream night would be to have  wants an indictment, followed by rednecks saying it's the end of the country as we know it.  An impromptu Klan march or cross burning would be really great for them.  Fox News wants Officer Wilson to not be indicted but not so much because they care about the facts of that case or are worried about the truth of the matter. They want no indictment to come down because they think it will lead to civil unrest that will scare (and enthrall) their viewers.

One thing we won't get is a rational discussion of the evidence and what it means for the use of force by police in similar situations.  It will be sideshow, and the only thing we don't know for sure is which carnies will draw the bigger crowds.