IF THERE'S A BOLTON BOOK, IT WON'T MATTER

A lot of people seem to believe that John Bolton will blow the lid off the Trump administration now that he's been fired. Here was Lawrence O'Donnell last night:

Lawrence O’Donnell said newly fired national security adviser John Bolton just might become “one of the richest authors in history” if he writes a tell-all book about working inside the White House of President Donald Trump....

“John Bolton is in a position to write and deliver the most explosive Trump book ever, which means it would be one of the bestselling books in publishing history,” O’Donnell said....

O'Donnell said:

“Tonight, in their New York offices, major book publishers are probably staying late, trying to calculate how many millions of dollars they can offer John Bolton now if he can deliver an inside-the-Trump-White-House book that will hit bookstores in the final months of the presidential campaign when such a book would have maximum sales potential.”

In The Atlantic, David Frum is urging Bolton (and other former Trump national security aides) to talk:

Men such as Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, H. R. McMaster, and now John Bolton have all had important pre-Trump careers—and all have post-Trump reputations to consider. Yet even after the unhappy culmination of their work for Trump, they have all continued to protect him. They know he is unfit for the job—morally, intellectually, psychologically. But they keep silent....

Their duty is to speak.

... as national-security officials, all have been party to decisions that exposed fellow Americans to the risk of their lives. Much less is asked of any of them now. They are asked only to risk their quiet retirements—their after-careers of speaking engagements and seats on boards of directors. Is that so dear?

Speak! Speak! Tell the truth, all of it—not just adjectives and conclusions, but the actual details of the self-dealing by Trump, of the security risks he presents, of his inattention and ignorance. Speak so that people feel it, so that people understand it, so that people can do something about it while there is time. “History isn’t kind to the man who holds Mussolini’s jacket,” Ted Cruz reportedly told friends in 2016. Cruz was right.

Frum's Atlantic colleague Graeme Wood suspects that Bolton will speak out:

Most Trump appointees have left quietly, and have begun murmuring their discontent only after a decorous interval. Bolton’s dismissal has come after an unusually long prelude of disrespect.... Bolton might not observe the same period of silence. In talking to his former associates, I heard many marvel at his energy. He wakes up before dawn to plot against his adversaries. He accepts every invitation to write op-eds and go on television to ridicule those who disagree with him. Trump has, in firing Bolton, made an enemy of a man incapable of rest and letting grudges go. Tomorrow morning he will wake up and start plotting, as he usually does. It’s 3 a.m. Do you know who your ex–national security adviser’s enemies are?

But if Bolton decides to talk, will it matter? What will happen if Bolton writes a tell-all book and it's timed for the election, as O'Donnell suggests?

On his show last night, O'Donnell compared the potential impact of a Bolton book to that of Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury and Bob Woodward's Fear. How did those books affect the public's opinion of Donald Trump?

Fire and Fury was published on January 5, 2018. On that day, according to the Real Clear Politics average, 40.4% of Americans approved of the president and 55.9% disapproved. Once the book had been out a month, Trump's numbers were 41.5% approval, 54.5% disapproval -- the approval number was still low, but it was a point better than it had been at the time of the book's publication, and the disapproval rating was a point less. Fire and Fury appears to have had no negative impact on public perception of Trump.

Fear was published exactly a year ago, on September 11, 2018. How did that book affect public opinion? On the day of the book's publication, Trump's RCP numbers were 41.0% approval, 53.5% disapproval. A month later? They were 43.2% approval, 53.0% disapproval. There was a two-point gain in approval.

Bolton can speak out, but it won't matter. Trump's approval rating changes slightly depending on immediate circumstances. It drops when he's been particularly distasteful, as he has been for the past couple of months. It dropped when there was a long government shutdown. It rose after the 2017 GOP tax cut was passed.

But books don't have much impact. For the most part, critical books about Trump are read by people who already dislike him. They don't move the needle.

It would be nice to learn what Bolton has to tell us, even if Bolton is a mad neoconservative warmonger. But the public's perception of Trump won't change as a result.

TRUMP IS NO DOVE, BUT I STAND BY "WAR-AVERSE," WITH AN ASTERISK

I'm told I tweeted the wrong thing today:

The fact that Trump seems war-averse and just fired his most virulent hawk doesn't mean he isn't a fucking horrorshow in every other way.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) September 10, 2019

Some responses were a tad harsh:

"War averse" lol. Delete this messhttps://t.co/rc1m2bCRe2

— Liz Warren = Dow Chemical blood money (@plsnobreadlines) September 10, 2019

I shouldn't have said "war-averse." Trump is averse to starting new wars.

It's not because he's a dove. I think this is correct:

He's not war-averse, precisely. He's Vietnam-averse. Grenada or Panama, he'd adore. And of course that's what the war hawks promise him, it's what they promised Dubya in 2003.

— Warren Terra (@warren__terra) September 10, 2019

But I think the generals tell him that every new war he's considering will be difficult -- months if not years of combat, lots of American deaths, with an ongoing military presence ultimately necessary. And I'm sure Trump thinks: I can't even have a nice quick war in a shithole country like Venezuela? Or Iran? Aren't they Muslims in Iran? Aren't all Muslim countries primitive?

I also wonder if he doesn't want to start a war because he knows that servicemembers who fight and die in wars are regarded as heroes. They're seen as braver than he's ever been. I know he gives out the occasional medal to a servicemember, but can he tolerate a lot of them fighting and dying and stealing all the glory that rightfully belongs to him?

Or is it just that a war would become more important than the president who started it? After all, it would lead the news every day, rather than whatever Twitter beef Trump is having with a nonwhite female member of Congress or liberal actress.

And, of course, Trump believes the myth of himself that was created by The Art of the Deal. He thinks he can smooth-talk his way to brilliant foreign policy outcomes (even though he's been a complete failure at this since his inauguration). If the generals say he can't drop a few bombs and win a war over a weekend, maybe he can negotiate a peace agreement over the same period of time (without, of course, reading any briefing materials, because that would be hard). Nobel Peace Prize, here we come!

Trump really might not get us into any new wars -- but it's not because he's a good person or a peace lover. He's a terrible person and a would-be warmonger. Fortunately for us, warmongering is not instantly rewarding in the way Trump would prefer. That's all that's preventing a new war.

I THOUGHT JUNIOR WOULD RUN FOR PRESIDENT WHEN THINKING THAT WASN'T COOL

For more than a year, I've been telling you that Donald Trump Jr. will be a serious candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. Suddenly that idea is all the rage -- Rick Wilson says Junior will win the nomination in 2024, and now McCay Coppins has a cover story in The Atlantic arguing that Junior, and not Ivanka, is President Trump's natural political heir.

But now that everyone's talking this way, I'm not so sure. I agree with Coppins that Ivanka won't carry on the dynasty, much as Daddy would like her to. She's completely out of sync with the GOP. Coppins writes this about the 2016 campaign:

Ivanka kept her distance from the uncouth rallies in places like Reno, Nevada, and Toledo, Ohio. While Trump riled up the country with Muslim-ban proposals and Mexican-rapist panics, she perched herself on a higher plane, where she just wanted to talk about the issues that really mattered to her, like affordable child care and the gender pay gap. Campaign staffers grumbled that Ivanka’s policy preferences were more closely aligned with Aspen weekenders than Rust Belt voters. “People started to realize this wasn’t about Trump’s vision,” one former aide told me. “It was about Ivanka’s ability to feel comfortable in her New York circle.”

Junior connects with the base, according to Coppins. A couple of days ago, I mentioned a rally in Kentucky at which Junior drew only 200 people to a venue with a capacity of 7,000. But if Coppins is to be believed, that was an anomaly:

As the 2018 midterm elections approached, Don decided to get serious about politics....

At the University of Georgia, more than 2,000 young Republicans lined up to hear him speak. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, he was swarmed by fans clamoring for selfies and autographs. Charlie Kirk, the founder of the student organization Turning Point USA, recalled a summit in West Palm Beach that featured conservative A-listers such as Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld, and Jordan Peterson. Don drew a bigger crowd than any of them.

... the stump was where Don really shined. Taking the stage to wild applause from riled-up MAGA-heads, he riffed and ranted and cracked jokes about gender identity....

By November 2018, Don had appeared at more than 70 campaign events across 17 states—and powerful Republicans were abuzz. “I could very easily see him entering politics,” Senator Kevin Cramer told me. “I think his future is bright,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Newsmax’s CEO, Chris Ruddy, told me he’d personally encouraged Don to run for office; Sean Hannity called him “a born natural leader.” Senator Rand Paul went so far as to say that Don was one of the best Republican campaigners in the country. “If you can’t get the president,” Paul told me, “he’s a close second.”

... Cramer ... spent 15 minutes in a phone interview gushing to me about Don’s “accessibility” and “irreverence” and gift for “connecting” with voters. But when I asked him about Ivanka, he paused. “She’s a little bit harder to get,” he replied, politely. “Her faith prevents her from traveling on the Sabbath.” Charlie Kirk was similarly careful when we spoke. While all of Trump’s adult children were helpful to the cause, he told me, “I can honestly say that outside of his father, Don is the No. 1 most requested speaker, and he brings the most energy to the conservative base.”

But Coppins describes a family dynamic in which Dad continues to praise Ivanka (even as he calls his daughter and her husband "New York liberals") while treating Junior with contempt.

His attitude toward each of his adult children on any given day is shaped by how they are playing on cable news. Ivanka tends to draw rave reviews, while Don’s are more mixed, with the president muttering things like “Why did he say that?” and “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Coppins thinks Dad has been warming to Junior lately, though he doesn't present much evidence. It seems likely to me that Trump would try to sabotage his son's moves into politics. Remember this:

When fans began calling on [Junior] to run for mayor of New York City—and Don responded with a bit too much enthusiasm—his father quickly shut it down. “Don’s not going to run for mayor,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity.

Ivanka would probably try to sabotage Junior as well:

... as Don’s visibility grew, the cold war between him and Ivanka intensified. Now that each had their own teams of allies and advisers, they had grown paranoid that the other’s henchmen were planting damaging stories about them in the press. A few days before the midterms, McClatchy published a story under the headline “Trump Kids on the Campaign Trail: Don Jr. Wows, Ivanka Disappoints.” Ivanka’s camp was enraged, and suspected that Don was behind the story. Later, Don confronted Ivanka over rumors that her team was undermining him in off-the-record conversations with reporters. “Tell your people to stop trashing me to the media,” he said, according to someone familiar with the conversation.

George W. Bush was his family's unloved son and he became president -- but he was mentored by Karl Rove, who believed in him more than his own family did. Dubya liked himself, even if his family didn't. I think Don Jr. has an inferiority complex. Instead of imagining himself as president, he's looked into running for office in the Mountain West, according to Coppins. By Trump standards, that's aiming low.

So while I think Junior should be a contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nominee -- he's stupid, he believes in conspiracy theories, and he's consumed with right-wing rage -- I question whether he'll run, or win if he does run. Dad will never willingly pass the scepter to him. He feels sabotaged within his family. His ego isn't as massive as his father's (or his sister's). I'd almost feel sorry for Junior if he weren't such a horrible person.

TRUMP, A MALIGNANT NARCISSIST, IS NOT VERY GOOD AT NARCISSISM

The president tweeted this a few hours ago:

94% Approval Rating in the Republican Party, a record. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2019

There's just one problem: As The Washington Post's Philip Bump notes, no recent public poll shows Trump above 88% among Republicans. All of the latest polls show him in the mid- to high 80s -- which seems impressive enough -- but Trump feels the need to bump that number up even more.

As CNN's Daniel Dale has noted, Trump has a habit of boasting in numbers -- and inflating those numbers, even when the correct numbers are already boastworthy. He does it with unemployment statistics and drug price declines. In his business career, he did it with the number of floors in his buildings.

Now that he's president, reporters actually fact-check him in something close to real time, then report on exaggerations like this. But he still keeps exaggerating.

Why is Trump bragging about his favorability within his party? Presumably because he now has three challengers for his party's presidential nomination. It might be embarrassing if one of them were to register a significant vote percentage against him -- but that clearly won't happen. Somewhere between 84% and 88% of Republicans approve of the job he's doing. And yet four state parties are canceling their nominating contests so Trump won't have to run against these three guys.

Wouldn't it be more impressive if he beat these candidates overwhelmingly? But Trump would rather be seen as too scared to run than as the guy who wiped the floor with his challengers.

This is the same president who insisted for an entire week that he correctly reported risk to Alabama from Hurricane Dorian, simply because he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge error. This was a function of Trump's desperate need to be admired -- but he seemed less worthy of admiration than if he'd simply admitted the mistake and moved on. Instead, the people he's trying to impress have spent a week laughing at him -- or worrying that he's too unstable to be entrusted with the nuclear codes.

We know that Trump craves approval -- but the things he does to win approval inspire disapproval. He insists on a ridiculous hairstyle and an embarrassingly fake skin tone so people won't think he is what he is -- a 73-year-old man with something less than a full head of hair. Has he not noticed that many balding septuagenarians have been respected and loved throughout history despite making no effort to conceal their age? Why does he do this?

Trump is not just a narcissist -- he's an inept narcissist. More people might like him if he didn't do so many preposterous things in an effort to make people like him.

TRUMP TRIES RUNNING FOR REELECTION LIKE A NORMAL INCUMBENT, FAILS MISERABLY

What's surprising to me about the Trump administration's Afghan negotiations is that they're apparently being conducted in an adult manner, more or less -- or at least they were until this past week:

In an interview on Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, argued that it had been clear for years that the only lasting peace would come from some kind of political process between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

He said that his idea of a successful negotiation would be one that “reduces the level of violence” and sets up an intra-Afghan dialogue.

That was the goal of the negotiations that Zalmay Khalilzad, the special envoy for Afghanistan, had been painstakingly negotiating in Doha, Qatar, for nearly a year, and seemed on the verge of achieving. On Thursday, Mr. Khalilzad was in Doha again with Gen. Austin Miller, the commander of the United States forces in Afghanistan, who has also said that he believes the battle between the Afghan government and the Taliban would never be resolved militarily.

Negotiations have been taking place for nearly a year! That doesn't sound Trumpian at all.

Khalilzad said an agreement with the Taliban had been worked out "in principle." But the Afghan government wasn't involved -- and once a draft had been drawn up, the U.S. wouldn't let the Afghan president keep a copy.

The talks between Afghan-born U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leaders in Qatar, where the insurgent group has a political office, have been so closely guarded that last week Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was shown — not given — the final draft. The Afghan government has been sidelined because the Taliban refuse to negotiate with what they call a U.S. puppet.

But with the Afghan government not on board, Trump decided it was time for the presidential equivalent of a sweeps-week Very Special Episode. He invited President Ghani and representatives of the Taliban to Camp David, wanting to be seen as the master negotiator who wrapped the deal up:

Mr. Trump did not want the Camp David meeting to be a celebration of the deal; after staying out of the details of what has been a delicate effort in a complicated region, Mr. Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be.

But, as AP reports, the plan broke down several days before Trump announced on Twitter that it wasn't going to happen:

Trump said he axed the Camp David meetings and called off negotiations because of a recent Taliban bombing near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that killed a U.S. service member, even though nine other Americans have died since June 25 in Taliban-orchestrated violence. But the deal started unraveling days earlier after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani postponed his trip to Washington and the Taliban refused to travel to the U.S. before a deal was actually signed, according to a former senior Afghan official.

The deal wasn't done -- and it wasn't much of a deal:

Far from guaranteeing a ceasefire, the deal includes only a reduction in violence in Kabul and neighboring Parwan province, where the U.S. has a military base.

And now there's no deal, because Trump wanted to rush the process and stage a dramatic moment, probably because the presidential campaign in this country is heating up, with Trump trailing the top contenders in most polls. Attempting to notch a significant foreign policy achievement during election season is normal behavior for presidents -- remember, Nixon went to China in 1972. But you need to be reasonably certain that you'll come away with something. Trump, being Trump, was too impatient. He couldn't let the process play out because he thinks he needs to put points on the board now. He lacks impulse control.

And here's the result:

President Trump’s decision to break off peace talks with the Taliban, at least for now, left Afghanistan bracing for a bloody prelude to national elections this month....

Expect more war, says Kabul University's Abdul Waheed Wafa.

" ... Until [talks] resume again, the Taliban will throw everything they have — with explosions, and with even more pressure on cities under siege. And the U.S. military can pressure back too.”

All because a ratings stunt didn't go as hoped.

But this is not what I expected from Trump. It's a move meant to appeal to people outside his base. I didn't think he'd bother. Unfortunately for him, this kind of thing seems beyond his abilities.

BRAD PARSCALE BUTTERS UP TRUMP KIDS BECAUSE HE WANTS WORK AFTER 2020

Baghdad Brad Parscale -- the guy who predicts that President Trump can more than quadruple his 2016 support among black voters next year, and also claims that the president can win New Mexico because "Latinos support this president" -- is making another implausible prediction about the GOP beyond 2020:

President Donald Trump’s campaign manager predicted Saturday that the president and his family will become “a dynasty that will last for decades,” transforming the Republican Party while hewing to conservative values.

[He was s]peaking to a convention of Republican Party delegates in Indian Wells, California....

“The Trumps will be a dynasty that will last for decades, propelling the Republican Party into a new party,” he said. “One that will adapt to changing cultures. One must continue to adapt while keeping the conservative values that we believe in.”

Parscale later declined to elaborate on his prediction of a coming Trump “dynasty,” or whether the president’s children could become candidates for public office.

He told reporters after the speech, “I just think they are a dynasty. I think they are all amazing people with ... amazing capabilities.”

You might think I'd agree with Parscale -- after all, I've predicted on several occasions that Donald Trump Jr. has the inside track for the 2024 presidential nomination, a prediction echoed last week by #NeverTrumper Rick Wilson:

Republican political strategist Rick Wilson predicted that Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, will run for office in 2024 and is likely to secure the GOP nomination in a Daily Beast op-ed published Thursday....

"... the clues have been there all along that the real 2024 primary will be between Donald J. Trump, Jr. and everyone else." ...

"He is fluent in the language of whining, dickish grievance-mongering, which has replaced modern conservatism," Wilson said.

Junior certainly is that. I've thought for a while that he looked like a strong candidate for 2024, but then this happened at the end of August:

Donald Trump Jr. ... spoke on Thursday at a rally in Kentucky for Gov. Matt Bevin (R), who is running for reelection in a tight race against state Attorney General Andy Beshear (D).

Local CBS station WYMT reported before the event that “locals expect a memorable turnout.” And indeed it was, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons for Trump.

... according to Louisville radio station WFPL, only about 200 people turned out for the Bevin event at the Appalachian Wireless Arena. The venue has a capacity of 7,000....

I'd been assuming that in 2024 he'd be embraced as the best possible Trump surrogate -- but that sparse crowd tells me that he may be seen by the deplorables as Frank Sinatra Jr. to his father's Chairman of the Board.

Even if he stirs up interest, I don't think he can actually win a general election. Much of America thinks his father is a brilliant businessman -- he played one on TV for fourteen seasons. Junior is ... a guy who hunts big game and trolls liberals on the Internet. To Republicans, that's a strong set of qualifications, but not that strong. There are too many up-and-comers in the GOP political establishment who know how to campaign and troll. They can probably beat Junior in 2024, and some might even be able to win a general election.

And who would win Trump Senior's backing in the primaries? I'm not sure Dad likes Junior enough to back him wholeheartedly. He'll probably regard Junior's candidacy as a manhood challenge.

As for Jared and Ivanka, you know that I don't see any chance of a successful presidential run by either one -- GOP voters regard them as liberal Democrats, while the rest of us regard them as Trumps. Who'd vote for them?

This doesn't mean they won't try to run. Maybe Ivanka will be stupid enough to go for a third-party bid in 2024 or beyond. Daddy would like that. But it won't work. Third-party bids never do, especially by platitudinous trust-funders with no natural political constituency.

Parscale probably hopes he can work for Ivanka (or for Junior) if there's a campaign -- I think that's the reason for the flattery now, unless he's worried that he could be fired in the middle of this campaign if he doesn't flatter the kids sufficiently.

In any case, I think Donald will be the last Trump to win the presidency -- not because the Trump kids will go to prison soon (this is America -- we don't send the economic elites to prison). It's because non-Republicans despise the Trumps and the GOP doesn't like any of the younger ones enough.

PUT RUSSIA ON THE BACK BURNER AND FOCUS ON TRUMP'S SELF-DEALING

Fairly or otherwise, the Russia probe took on the stink of failure several months ago: Mueller punted on obstruction, much of the public bought the "no collusion" line, no Trump family member was indicted, and the response in the House has been a slow walk. So this just seems sad:

The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to take its first formal vote to define what Chairman Jerry Nadler calls an ongoing “impeachment investigation” of President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources briefed on the discussions.

The panel could vote as early as Wednesday on a resolution to spell out the parameters of its investigation....

Advocates of opening a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump have clamored for the Judiciary Committee to more clearly spell out the contours of its investigation -- a move they hope strengthens the House’s hand in a handful of court cases to obtain evidence and testimony against the president.

Ahh, yes, the forlorn hope -- that if you call it an impeachment process, the courts will be more inclined to compel witnesses to testify, because that's the legal precedent. As if the Republicans in the federal judiciary care about precedent, and as if the Trump White House would yield if the courts demanded an end to the stonewalling and withholding of witnesses.

The inability to compel witnesses to testify compounds the sense of failure. Russiagate was a crime, or series of crimes, but to much of America it looks like a conspiracy theory. I don't think it's possible to restore its reputation.

But that's not the only issue the House is pursuing.

In addition to probing potential obstruction of justice by Trump, the Judiciary Committee is weighing allegations that Trump directed hush money payments to women accusing him of extramarital affairs in the weeks before the 2016 election, as well as evidence that Trump has sought to steer U.S. and foreign government spending to his luxury resorts, raising questions about whether he has violated the Constitution's Emoluments Clause.

The Stormy Daniels story is juicier, but it ultimately turns on questions of campaign finance law, which the public can't comprehend and never will. The public hears about multi-million-dollar donations to PACs, and untraceable dark money to organizations that are effectively arms of political campaigns, and all of it's legal, yet a six-figure payoff to a porn star isn't? Nothing about campaign finance passes a common-sense test -- nearly all of it seems corrupt, but only certain payments are probed. Beyond that, the juicy part of this story -- Trump's adultery -- is a forgivable sin in much of the public's eyes, just as Bill Clinton's was twenty years ago.

Emoluments and self-dealing? That's what the House should focus on, for a simple reason: It's a much fresher story. Most of America believes that Russiagate has been dealt with; Trump's consensual dalliances were litigated in the media quite a while back. They're old news.

But stories like this aren't old news:

In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

The inquiry is part of a broader, previously unreported probe into U.S. military expenditures at and around the Trump property in Scotland. According to a letter the panel sent to the Pentagon in June, the military has spent $11 million on fuel at the Prestwick Airport — the closest airport to Trump Turnberry — since October 2017, fuel that would be cheaper if purchased at a U.S. military base.

This is new news -- and it's easy for the public to understand. Everyone knows that previous presidents simply didn't do this. The story of Mike Pence's stay at Doonbeg is easy to understand. Start there and work back to the promotion of Trump properties to aides and foreign governments.

I'd like to see Trump brought to justice on Russia, or on hush money payments, but it won't happen. To the public, those are dead stories. This isn't. Put Russia and Stormy on the back burner and focus on Trump lining his pockets as president.

SO WHAT MADE OUR NIHILISTS IN EXPENSIVE SUITS THE WAY THEY ARE?

In his column today, David Brooks tries to give voice to a representative modern-day Internet extremist of no particular political persuasion (or, rather, of all possible political persuasions). In Brooks's view, today's extremists are Dostoevskian Underground Men. They're warped by -- naturally -- the same societal forces Brooks has been decrying ad nauseam for years.

To know anything about me you have to understand the chaos at the core of my innermost being. I was raised without coherent moral frameworks. I was raised amid social fragmentation and division, the permanent flux of liquid modernity.

Adults in my life have not been trustworthy. Friends have not been trustworthy. Women reject me. I passed through school unseen. You have no idea how ill equipped I am to deal with my pain. I was raised in that coddling way that protects you from every risk except real life....

I yearn for order. Blunt simplicities. Politics provides the Manichaean binaries I can’t find anywhere else, and so I make everything political. Own the libs! Smash the racist right! A war of pure good and pure evil....

Online war is a force that gives life meaning. Hatred gives me that delicious simulacrum of power. Did you really think you could raise me on gourmet coffee and yoga pants and I wouldn’t find a way to rebel against your relativism and materialism? Didn’t you observe the eternal pattern — that if you try to flatten a man to the bourgeois he will rebel by becoming a fanatic?

To quote a better writer (though who isn't one?), today's Underground Man is depraved 'cuz he's deprived (spiritually). Gee, Officer Krupke...

Is that really the reason that there are young people online who want to smash everything they see? Well, it's a theory. But here's what I want to know: How does Brooks explain the existence of the nihilists who weren't born in our fallen age of gourmet coffee and yoga pants?

What formed the soul of Rupert Murdoch, who's injected poison into the political discourse of three continents for nearly seventy years? What about the soul of the late Roger Ailes, who devised the ultimate delivery system for Murdoch's poison?

What made the Koch brothers the way they are? It certainly wasn't cultural liberalism. How about Mitch McConnell? I'm pretty sure he didn't grow up getting participation trophies while his parents shopped at Whole Foods.

Brooks's young Underground Man says,

... I see a world in which my opponents are elite oppressors and my kind are oppressed. They have their exclusive cliques and I am disdained. And here we get to the ultimate injustice: Why are they recognized while I am not? This is the molten core from which my indignation flows. The status quo does not respect me, and therefore I despise it.

Hasn't that been the message of the Republican Party since the rise of Fox and talk radio, if not since the rise of Nixon? That society is run by liberal elitists at their Georgetown cocktail parties? That everyone else, even right-wing billionaires, belongs to an oppressed class? (Remember all the plutocrats who warned a few years back that the Occupy movement and calls to reduce inequality were the moral equivalent of the rise of Hitler?) This is the worldview that Republicans and the right-wing media have weaponized for decades.

And what's the result? The economy, on its present course, will never work well for the young. Most jobs will never pay decent wages. Student debt will continue to be a crushing burden. Climate change can't be addressed, or even acknowledged, because the GOP and the fossil fuel industry won't allow it. The gun lobby blocks regulations that 90 percent of America supports. And then there's racism, police brutality, the demonization of immigrants, and much more.

The elderly, powerful nihilists who run the country don't want these problems solved because they prefer the status quo, even if the world burns. Some young people hate these old nihilists and the world they've made. Others echo the old bastards and want to take their lib-owning nihilism even further.

Yoga didn't make this happen. The dominant nihilists of our era did. Their third wives might do yoga, but they don't. Tell us what made them the way they are, David.

NO, WE WON'T BE RID OF THE GOP AFTER 2020

Michelle Goldberg writes:

Toward the end of his new book, “R.I.P. G.O.P.,” the renowned Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg makes a thrilling prediction, delivered with the certainty of prophecy. “The year 2020 will produce a second blue wave on at least the scale of the first in 2018 and finally will crash and shatter the Republican Party that was consumed by the ill-begotten battle to stop the New America from governing,” he writes.

It sounds almost messianic: the Republican Party, that foul agglomeration of bigotry and avarice that has turned American politics into a dystopian farce, not just defeated but destroyed. The inexorable force of demography bringing us a new, enlightened political dispensation. Greenberg foresees “the death of the Republican Party as we’ve known it,” and a Democratic Party “liberated from the nation’s suffocating polarization to use government to advance the public good.”

Goldberg is skeptical. I'm even more so.

It's not that I reject the possibility of a blowout Democratic victory in 2020 -- that could happen, as could a Trump win and everything in between. (My prediction: a Democratic victory that's well short of a landslide.) It's that Republicans will regroup very quickly in the face of defeat, just the way they did after the 2008 election.

A Democratic win won't mean that the country is suddenly progressive. Alexander Agadjanian of the MIT Election Lab notes in The Washington Post today that Joe Biden is the leading presidential candidate among Democratic voters who score highly on measures of racial resentment, even as he's also the favorite of African-American voters. That's a reminder that there are still quite a few Democratic voters who aren't progressive. I think there should be enough anti-Trump votes to put a more progressive Democratic nominee than Biden over the top in 2020, but the racial resenters (many of whom also score high on measures of sexism) won't welcome everything a progressive president does. They'll be susceptible to right-wing propaganda during the new presidency. (We can't vote Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media infrastructure out of existence.) And, of course, even if the president is Biden, the right will cry "Socialism" -- and even some anti-Trumpers who voted Democratic will believe the propaganda.

If the Senate is still Republican, the next president will struggle to advance an agenda. If Democrats sweep Congress and the president is a progressive, there'll be moves to make serious change on climate, inequality, taxation, gun policy, and a host of other issues -- but many voters, including some who were Trump, won't like the price tags on these items. Some will believe that national bankruptcy is imminent. Some will think all their guns or hamburgers will be confiscated overnight by jackbooted thugs. And remember, all this could be happening in a cooling economy, or one that's already in recession.

Goldberg writes:

... Greenberg sees an omen for the Republican Party in California. It’s hard to remember now, but the state was once the heartland of conservatism, nurturing the political careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. From 1968 to 1988, it voted Republican in every presidential election, and regularly elected Republican governors.

But in 1994, California Republicans, fearful of changing demography, campaigned for Proposition 187, a ballot initiative meant to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants. It won — though courts blocked its implementation — but it also turned expanding constituencies in California against Republicans. Today the party has been reduced to an irrelevant rump faction in state politics.

... California can ... be seen as a sign of how a political party can drive itself to ruin by making a cruel, doomed stand against the coming generation.

But that transition wasn't effortless. As late as 2003, Republicans engineered a recall of a Democratic governor and got one of their own, Arnold Schwarzenegger, elected, and then reelected. He governed as a right-centrist, but only after running a Trumpian campaign.

A new Democratic president will confront a lot of problems. On climate, firearms, race, and gender, the angry right will be ready to pounce as soon as the solutions can be portrayed as requiring too much sacrifice. And the new president will stumble sometimes. The right will try to exploit every misstep.

We need to make the transition to a post-Republican America. But it won't be universally accepted overnight. It will be a slow, difficult process.

AS LONG AS HE HAS AN ELECTION COMING UP, TRUMP WILL KEEP PENCE AROUND

Yahoo News has a story about President Trump's relationship with his vice president and, well, now we know where the Nikki Haley rumors are originating:

Current and former Trump and Pence advisers interviewed for this story, as well as my forthcoming biography of Pence, “Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House,” consistently described a personal relationship between Trump and Pence that is warm but somewhat aloof. Pence has a lane that he sticks to in the White House — conservative social policy — but he is not considered to be as influential as people like Jared Kushner or Stephen Miller.

But the relationship between their political teams has soured greatly in the past year, according to a dozen Trump and Pence aides and Republican advisers familiar with the dynamic. In particular, rumors that Kushner and Ivanka Trump wanted to consider replacements for Pence — specifically trying to find a woman running mate to help win back the suburbs in 2020 — have worried the vice president’s camp, according to Trump and Pence campaign advisers who spoke on background for this story.

Naturally, it's Jared and Ivanka pushing Trump to pick a running mate who elicits few liberal tears. They have a point, obviously -- if Trump were sensible, he'd consider a running mate who appeals to swing voters. But Trump wants to own the libs, and he's also terrified of alienating the evangelicals before the 2020 election. So despite the lack of rapport, Trump will keep Pence around -- the president might humiliate Pence, but he won't dump him.

I was about to tell you that Trump might get rid of Pence after November 2020 if he wins reelection -- who needs Goody Two-Shoes at that point? -- but then I remembered that Trump doesn't really believe he'll be forced to leave office after two terms. He'd happily create chaos by running through a series of replacement and/or "acting" vice presidents -- but I think he believes he'll need Pence around when he runs for his third term.

That, at least, is one explanation of the following:

One former adviser to Trump and Pence noted that Trump would more warmly embrace the vice president in public if Pence simply announced that he wasn’t planning a run for president. Trump, the former adviser noted, hates aides who display more ambition than him.

“All of this would go away if he announced he wasn’t running for president in 2024,” the former adviser said.

Why should this matter to Trump? It could just be because can't stand having anyone around who has an ambition equal to his own (and, of course, if Pence is elected in 2024, that will mean he's president and Trump isn't, a thought that, I'm sure, is simply intolerable to Trump). But I also believe Trump doesn't think he'll ever have to leave office. Kim Jong Un is head of state for life. Xi Jinping is head of state for life. Why not Trump?

So Pence's job is safe, for as long as he can endure humiliations like the trip to Doonbeg. But Pence seems to tolerate being abused quite well. So he'll stick around.

THE THREE VARIETIES OF REPUBLICAN THOUGHT

Today offers an extraordinary opportunity to witness the wide range of contemporary Republican thought. There's short-term resentment:

In the Oval Office at lunchtime on Wednesday, Donald Trump held a briefing on Hurricane Dorian. At one point, the president held up a National Hurricane Center (NHC) map from 29 August, displaying the hurricane’s track and intensity.

Bizarrely, someone had apparently used a Sharpie ... to add a black loop falsely extending the hurricane’s path from Florida to Alabama. It was apparently a belated effort to justify Trump’s previous baseless claim that the latter state could be affected.

(Trump was criticized for the Alabama claim, and contradicted by the National Weather Service. He's been seething ever since.)

There's also near-term resentment:

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said Wednesday that during a recent visit to a migrant detention facility he drank from a toilet that also served as a water fountain and that the water was "actually pretty good."

"I actually went into that cell where it was reported that they were advised they had to drink out of the toilet,” King told a crowd of about 80 people at a town hall in Eagle Grove, Iowa. "I took a drink out of there. And actually pretty good."

King’s story was in reference to conditions inside immigration detention facilities in Texas that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others have described as abysmal.

King is responding to assertions Ocasio-Cortez made two months ago:

Just left the 1st CBP facility.

I see why CBP officers were being so physically &sexually threatening towards me.

Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets.

This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

This was in fact the type of toilet we saw in the cell.

Except there was just one, and the sink portion was not functioning - @AyannaPressley smartly tried to open the faucet, and nothing came out.

So the women were told they could drink out of the bowl. https://t.co/rcu9Rt6B2x

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

And then there's long-term resentment:

The Trump administration is rolling back requirements for new, energy-efficient lightbulbs....

The new standards ... were set to go into effect in January 2020 and gradually phase out incandescent and halogen bulbs used for items such as bathroom vanities, recessed lighting and candle-shape lights, to be replaced with energy-efficient, LED versions, which are illuminated by light-emitting diodes.

Republicans have been upset about energy-efficient lightbulbs for years. When Michele Bachmann ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, anger about energy-efficient lightbulbs was a centerpiece of her campaign.

Few issues get Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) going quite like lightbulbs. At campaign stops across the country, she has repeatedly denounced a 2007 law that required manufacturers to develop energy-efficient lightbulb varieties. Bachmann sees the law as an affront to American values. “I think Thomas Edison did a pretty patriotic thing for this country by inventing the lightbulb,” she told a New Hampshire audience in March. “And I think darn well, you New Hampshirites, if you want to buy Thomas Edison’s wonderful invention, you should be able to!”

At times it seemed as if Republican anger on this issue was fading -- in 2014, Politico ran a story titled "Lights Out for the Light Bulb Battle?" -- but no grievance ever dies on the right.

I would be unfair to say that the Republican Party has run out of ideas. It has plenty of ideas, such as ... um ... cutting taxes on the rich, and ... er ... cutting regulations on rich corporations, as well as ... oh ... stirring up anger about guns, gays, and abortion so voters will keep reelecting Republicans who'll cut taxes and regulations on the rich and big corporations.

But apart from that, there are just resentments -- new, not so new, and old. That's Republican thought.

MAYBE TRUMP REALLY IS AS GULLIBLE AS HIS CUSTOMERS

I'm angry about self-dealing in the Trump White House, but maybe there's an alternate explanation for what's going on. This is from a CNN story about Vice President Pence's trip to Ireland:

The vice president's problems began in Doonbeg ... where he stayed for two nights at the five-star golf property owned by Trump. That required commuting 181 miles back and forth to Dublin, where he was holding meetings with government officials....

Later Wednesday, Trump denied to reporters he'd ever spoken to Pence about using his hotel during the vice president's trip this week. But ... he defended the use of the property.

"People like my product, what can I tell you? I can't help it," he said....

Trump has suggested before that Cabinet officials and advisers stay at his properties while they are traveling. He himself has spent 289 days of his presidency at a Trump property, according to a CNN tally.

A person familiar with the President's thinking explained the pattern as Trump's genuine belief that his locations are the best place for aides to lodge, and makes similar recommendations to his friends who do not work for him.

Obviously Trump is trying to profit from the presidency -- but couldn't this be at least part of his motivation? Consider several facts:

* Trump is not doing a very good job of grifting, as The New York Times made clear in May:

President Trump’s family business saw its overall revenues decline modestly in 2018, according to his annual financial report released Thursday....

The revenue declines were most pronounced at some of Mr. Trump’s best-known properties, including the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which experienced a nearly 10 percent drop. Hotels in Chicago and Hawaii, as well as golf courses in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and the Bronx, also saw declines....

The results were somewhat better for the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which has become a favored spot for Republicans, lobbyists and some foreign governments and accounts for nearly 10 percent of the Trump Organization’s revenues.

The hotel took in $40.8 million, up about 1 percent from what it reported in 2017.

The D.C. hotel is Ground Zero for Trump's ethics violations, yet its revenues were up a piddling 1% last year. By contrast, there are those who believe that Vladimir Putin has used his office to become the richest man in the world, richer than Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates combined. Now, that's how you run a kleptocracy!

* Beyond the fact that Trump isn't grifting very effectively (which might just be because he's always been a terrible businessman), there's the fact that he hates to travel, and rarely stays anywhere except his own properties. It's assumed that he does this because he wants to give the properties free publicity, but he was doing this long before the press followed every move he made 365 days a year. It's clear that Trump, while he's obviously a self-promoter, is also a guy who doesn't like anything unfamiliar. He likes the comforts of home, or, in his case, of his several homes. He decorates them to suit his own tastes. Then he says they're the best. I think they legitimately are what he considers the best. Which brings me to my last point:

* Trump is a narcissist. He's obsessed with himself and isn't happy unless everyone around him feels the same way he does about everything. Therefore, it's quite likely that he expects everyone around him to like the overdone glitz of his own properties -- he likes them, so how can other people not like them?

So, sure, he's trying to turn the presidency into a business opportunity. But I think he also believes his properties are the finest available, mostly because he's afraid of the big, scary world and the vast number of non-Trump things in it.

FOR TRUMP, HYPERBOLE IS A TIC

Steve Benen reminds us that when President Trump says he's never heard of a Category 5 hurricane, he's echoing previous moments when he also said he'd never heard of a Category 5 hurricane:

And then, of course, there was his unexplained unfamiliarity with Category 5 hurricanes.

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he’s “not sure that (he’s) ever even heard of a Category 5” hurricane, despite four such storms – including Hurricane Dorian – having threatened the US since he took office.

“We don’t even know what’s coming at us. All we know is it’s possibly the biggest. I have – I’m not sure that I’ve ever even heard of a Category 5. I knew it existed. And I’ve seen some Category 4’s – you don’t even see them that much,” Trump said at a briefing with officials at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

“But a Category 5 is something that – I don’t know that I’ve ever even heard the term other than I know it’s there.”

If the rhetoric seemed familiar, it wasn’t your imagination. It was two years ago this month when Trump first said, “I never even know a Category 5 existed.” The president has repeated the line and similar phrases several times since, including at an event four months ago.

Benen links to this tweet:

Here's a record of Trump's comments on Category 5 hurricanes during his presidency: pic.twitter.com/0cZYrypPrZ

— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) September 1, 2019

Benen writes:

... if he keeps saying he’s never heard of a Category 5 hurricane, after repeatedly being made aware of Category 5 hurricanes, it doesn’t reflect well on the president’s ability to learn and remember new information.

It's easy to believe that the president's mind isn't very sharp, but I don't believe that the problem is Trump's cognitive ability. Consider another odd moment in Trump's commentary on Hurricane Dorian, as noted by Benen:

... the president published a tweet including Alabama among the states “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Twenty minutes later, the National Weather Service, while not referencing Trump specifically, published a tweet of its own, telling the public, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”

When news outlets noted the president’s error, Trump took great offense, insisting he was right, reality notwithstanding.

Why did Trump add Alabama to the list of states likely to be affected by the hurricane? I think it's because he has a psychological compulsion to exaggerate, even when the plain truth would be a compelling message. Back in July, CNN's Daniel Dale noted Trump's habit of doing this when talking about numbers:

For President Donald Trump, a big inaccurate number is almost always preferable to a slightly smaller accurate number. Even when the truth is in his favor, Trump tends to choose the lie.

Take prescription drug prices. They went down last year for the first time in 46 years, according to the Consumer Price Index.

"First time in 51 years that drug prices went down," Trump said in May. "First time in 53 years," he said at an event with Pakistan's prime minister on Monday.

Or take the unemployment rate for women. For three months, it has been at its lowest level in 66 years.

"With women, we have the best numbers we've had in now 71 years," Trump said in May. "Women: 75 years," he told his Cabinet last Tuesday.

Preliminary data released last week showed that overdose deaths had declined in 2018 for the first time in 28 years.

"It's dropped for the first time in more than 30 years," Trump said at his rally in North Carolina last Wednesday.

When Trump has good numbers to report, he compulsively makes them 5% better. When four states are in the projected path of a hurricane, he has to add a fifth state.

In addition to Florida - South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever. Already category 5. BE CAREFUL! GOD BLESS EVERYONE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2019

And when there's a Category 5 in the Atlantic, it's not enough that it's the worst kind of hurricane -- it has to be an unprecedented hurricane. I'm sure he'd like to call it a Category 6, but even he has his limits. (With so much weather news on television, we all know there's no such thing as a Category 6.)

I understand that Trump has been been a grubby, two-bit hustler for his entire adult life. He presumably learned this sales technique when he was very young and has continued using it for years.

But he's the president of the United States now. He's not selling members in some piss-elegant golf club in New Jersey. He should stop now. Except he can't.

DICK MORRIS: ABOUT AS PLAUSIBLE AS QANON, BUT MUCH MORE BORING

Dick Morris? Is he still alive? Yes, and apparently there's still an audience, however small, for his political punditry. Here's an embarrassingly bad column of his that ran last week at a Z-list right-wing site called the Western Journal:

Dick Morris: Bloomberg Could Win Dem Nomination

I told you it was embarrassingly bad.

Bye bye Biden. As Joe stinks to 19 percent and 22 percent in the latest Monmouth (8/26) and Economist/UGov (8/21) polls, putting him in a statistical tie with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the first time, there is an opening for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the Democratic primary.

Actually, for better or worse, Biden still has a lead of 13.5 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average. But go on, Dick.

Here’s how it might come about:

Step One: Biden fades into a tie with Sanders and Warren (already happening) and then falls to third place. Biden has no way to come back. He is the candidate of events that happened between 2008-2016. If the past is not enough to propel him into the future — as it manifestly is not — nothing he can say now will boost him further....

Since he announced, he has fallen from 42 percent of the vote to 19 percent. He ain’t coming back.

Actually, according to RCP, Biden's peak was 41.4, back in May, but he's at 30.4 now. The old bastard still has some fight in him.

Step Two: The former Biden voters all go to Warren.

Hunh?

They won’t go to Sanders. Ever since he announced, Sanders has never made it past the low 20s in the polls. The remaining 80 percent are immune to his charm. Warren’s surge from 8 percent to 20 percent is what has laid Biden low. And she will continue to pick up the votes he sheds, as she is now doing.

Um, Dick, you know there are like three hundred other candidates still in the race, right?

How about Harris and the others? The swish of Warren’s momentum will eat up all the oxygen that might otherwise fuel their candidacies. It will be all Warren, all the time.

Wow, glad we settled that! Don't know why we're even having debates or primaries or caucuses!

So, in a few weeks, look for Warren to become the front runner by an increasingly large margin.

I'd like that, but you make it sound much too easy, Dick.

Oh, but then:

Step Three: That will freak out the establishment and center of the Democratic Party. They know Warren can’t win and is too radical and shrewish to pull it off.

Shrewish!

She looks like what she is: A former professor who is tough as nails and will flunk you as soon as look at you.

I find her engaging and appealingly nerdy. But what do I know? I'm an aging soy boy, I guess, not a rugged, traditionalist man of the soil like, er, Dick Morris.

... So the hunt will be on for the Great Moderate Hope. Hillary will test the waters and find them scalding.

He mentioned Hillary! Drink!

Tom Steyer will hope for lightning, but he’s too unknown and too conservative.

Does Morris even know who Tom Steyer is?

But Bloomberg would fit the bill precisely. There’s still time to file for the primaries and his brand of social liberalism and economic moderation will attract voters who are scared of a Warren wipeout in 2020.

Does Bloomberg want to be president? Duh. Yes.

Can he go toe to toe with Donald? He’s been mayor of New York and held his own with the toughest press corps outside of Washington.

He can demagogue with the best of them and still appeal to the business community as they look up from their Bloomberg software terminals in their offices.

It can happen.

Bloomberg opposes tax increases on the rich and still likes stop-and-frisk. You think he'll appeal to core Democratic voters, of all races? At least Biden is trying to move himself to the left a bit. On these issues, Bloomberg is to Biden's right. Plus, voters find Biden (or at least The Onion's version of Biden) likable. I've met morticians with more charisma than Bloomberg.

Is Morris angling for a job? I assumed Doug Schoen, that other fraudulent faux-Democrat, would have that gig locked down in Bloomberg ever runs.

In any case, that's what Dick Morris is up to these days. Now you can go back to ignoring him.

TOLERANCE OF TRUMP'S SELF-DEALING IS A NATURAL EXTENSION OF WELL-ESTABLISHED REPUBLICAN BELIEFS

The corruption is flagrant:

President Donald Trump suggested that Vice President Mike Pence stay at his Irish golf club on an official trip funded by taxpayer dollars, Pence's chief of staff Marc Short told reporters Tuesday.

Pence, who is traveling with his wife, sister, and mother, is staying at the president's golf club in Doonbeg, Ireland, during his visit to the country. Rather than stay in Dublin, where he is set for a day of meetings and events with Irish officials, Pence is making the back-and-forth trip from Doonbeg to Dublin, more than an hour flight each way.

As Matt Yglesias explains,

In distance terms, this is like staying at a hotel in Baltimore for your business trip to New York.

This is now standard operating procedure for the Pence family:

Since 2017, Pence’s political group, the Great America Committee, has dropped about $224,000 at Trump properties, chiefly the Trump International Hotel in Washington and its on-site steakhouse, according to Federal Election Commission records maintained by ProPublica.

Such spending appears to be a family affair. Pence’s brother, freshman Rep. Greg Pence (R-IN), has also dropped considerable sums at the Trump hotel. In fact, Rep. Pence’s campaign amended a number of FEC filings this year after USA Today noted that the campaign appeared to be illegally paying for the congressman to live at the Trump hotel. The Pence campaign said those expenses were reported incorrectly, and amended FEC filings accordingly.

As of March, when Rep. Pence’s campaign reported its latest Trump property expenditure, the campaign had spent about $45,000 at the president’s businesses.

All of this is indefensible, like much of what the Republican Party does these days, but Jonathan Chait believes that it's a uniquely Trumpian form of indefensible behavior:

Trump is generally an outgrowth of the party’s broader authoritarian evolution, but one way in which he is an outlier is his determination to blend his business with his public duties. Before Trump, Republicans never contemplated the idea that a president could run a private business while serving in office. Trump has blurred this line so repeatedly it barely registers when he does so. His staffers promote his daughter’s brand, he touts one of his resorts as a potential host site for next year’s G7 summit, his Washington hotel becomes a marker for foreign and domestic allies to pay tribute — the accretion of small violations gradually implicates the entire party establishment.

But one aspect of what Chait calls "the party’s broader authoritarian evolution" is the belief that corporate chieftains should be able to run roughshod over the law, doing whatever they please without facing regulation or scrutiny. Trump may be the highest-ranking officeholder to test the limits of this principle (and to reach the conclusion that there are, in fact, no limits), but recall, for instance, that Republican Rick Scott has now won three statewide elections in Florida after his company was fined $1.7 billion for what was the worst Medicare fraud in history. His voters didn't care. For all we know, the fraud may have endeared him to them. (If the government is after you, you must be doing something right!) Also see the post I wrote last week reproducing Free Republic commenters' reactions to the Oklahoma judgment against Johnson & Johnson for its role in the opioid crisis -- commenter after commenter took J&J's side against the government.

I even see a link between the belief system of right-wing evangelicals and the high tolerance for unethical business practices. It's clear that the moral code of the evangelical right is Certain people are good, and we'll tell you who they are, and whatever they do is therefore moral and godly. This is how they can deride Barack Obama, who's had one loving marriage and is a good father, as a tool of Satan, while embracing the thrice-married, compulsively promiscuous, family-avoiding Donald Trump as the ideal Christian paterfamilias -- Trump is a good man, you see, so whatever he does is good. Similarly, capitalists are good -- we know this because liberals criticize them -- so whatever they do is good. It's simple.

No president has dared to do what Trump is doing, but Republicans wouldn't have batted an eyelash if a previous Republican president had engaged in relentless self-dealing from the Oval Office. Capitalism is moral. Republicans are moral. So what's the problem?

IMAGINE DEMOCRATS TAKING THEIR OWN SIDE IN AN ARGUMENT

I'd just written a post about the likelihood that Texas will remain a red state for a while, then I saw this:

Prediction:

If Democrats manage to turn Texas blue, giving them an advantage in the Electoral College, conservatives will suddenly discover how undemocratic the institution is, while progressives come up with novel arguments about its deep and lasting legitimacy. pic.twitter.com/f0Sf654g5j

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) September 2, 2019

Republicans denouncing the Electoral College? Maybe -- as the New York Daily News reported a few days before the 2000 election, some Republicans thought Al Gore might win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote. They were preparing to contest the outcome:

So what if Gore wins such crucial battleground states as Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania and thus captures the magic 270 electoral votes while Bush wins the overall nationwide popular vote? "The one thing we don't do is roll over," says a Bush aide. "We fight."

How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course. In league with the campaign - which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness - a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. "We'd have ads, too," says a Bush aide, "and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted."

Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. "You think 'Democrats for Democracy' would be a catchy term for them?" asks a Bush adviser. The universe of people who would be targeted by this insurrection is small - the 538 currently anonymous folks called electors....

But would Democrats and liberals suddenly discover the virtues of the Electoral College if Texas were now perceived to be a solidly blue state? No, for a lot of reasons. Democrats know how easy to lose "firewall" states -- it wasn't just Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that went Republican in 2016, it was also Iowa, which had been Democratic in six of the previous seven elections, and Ohio, which had been Democratic for four out of six. Also, a single Democratic Electoral College victory accompanied by a popular vote loss still wouldn't offset the two wins of that kind by Republicans since 2000.

But more important, Democrats and liberals have a habit of not taking our own side in an argument. The day after a Democrat with a minority of the popular vote secured an Electoral College victory by winning Texas, there'd be a piece in Vox titled "Democrats Now Have an Overwhelming Advantage in the Electoral College. We Should Still Get Rid of It." Similar pieces would appear all over the liberal opinion sphere.

And there's this:

On this one I think you’re forgetting about the enthusiasm among journalists for right-wing news narratives. The day after Dems win Texas, the GOP will begin attacking the EC as fundamentally undemocratic and Dems everywhere will be challenged to explain why it isn’t.

— L.A. Goldenrod (@LAGoldenrod) September 3, 2019

Bothsider journalists and pundits who'd previously sneered at critiques of the Electoral College would now embrace those critiques, because Republicans would be vigorously working the refs.

I'll admit that I wouldn't defend the Electoral College in the abstract. I'd demand that we follow the rules in place for George W. Bush and Donald Trump, since they haven't changed. But the institution still needs to go, as a matter of principle.

What won't happen is a widespread shift by Democrats and liberals to a pro-Electoral College position. The progressive campaign for a national popular vote would run out of steam, but Democrats wouldn't be likely to defend the institution vigorously. We pat ourselves on the back for having principles other than self-interest. We're not Republicans, who don't bother with any of that nonsense about what's best for the country.

TEXAS REPUBLICANS KNOW THE RECKONING ISN'T IMMINENT

Jennifer Rubin thinks Texas Republicans don't get it.

Another mass shooting in Texas. Once more, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is, oh, so concerned and sad, as new laws go into effect weakening gun regulation. (“I am heartbroken by the crying of the people of the state of Texas. I am tired of the dying of the people of the state of Texas. Too many Texans are in mourning, too many Texans have lost their lives.”) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sent out the standard “thoughts and prayers” statement (“lifting up in prayer all the victims, their families, and the entire Midland-Odessa community”).

... state representative Republican Matt Schaefer posted on Facebook the kind of statement that the vast majority of Americans would find infuriating: “As an elected official with a vote in Austin, let me tell you what I am NOT going to do. I am NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period. None of these so-called gun-control solutions will work to stop a person with evil intent.” ...

The Republican Party of Texas faces a challenge in 2020 that the gun debate only aggravates. An increase in Hispanic voters combined with population growth in major urban centers and suburbia, which now trends blue in Texas and across the United States, could well put Texas in play in the 2020 presidential race and in down-ballot races....

Republicans’ collapse in the Texas suburbs — which is a major factor in making the state competitive — will only accelerate with its defiant attitude on any gun-safety measure.

Except that even as Texas becomes more moderate -- if not actually liberal -- very right-wing Republicans remain quite popular there. As The Dallas Morning News noted in June, the popularity of liberal ideas in Texas isn't hurting Abbott:

The Quinnipiac University poll ... found that 60% of Texans approve of "the way Greg Abbott is handling his job as governor," compared to 28% who disapprove.

... a majority of Texas voters polled said they agree with the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which establishes a woman's right to have an abortion. The poll found 57% of Texas voters agree with the decision, while 36% of voters disagree.

... By a margin of 3 to 1, Texas voters polled said they don't believe businesses should "be allowed to refuse service to someone based on their sexual orientation or sexual identity."

When asked, "What if the business says homosexuality violates its owner's religious beliefs?" Texas voters still said by a margin of 58% to 35% that businesses should not be allowed to refuse service.

And as a New York Times op-ed notes,

Over 60 percent of Texans want more rigorous background checks, according to [University of Texas] polling. A plurality of Texans favor stricter gun laws. Only 40 percent want to ban semi-automatic weapons, admittedly. But Texans are split nearly evenly on banning their high-capacity magazines.

Even 40% support for banning semi-automatics seems high in Texas. And a clear majority support more rigorous background checks.

But it doesn't matter. The zeitgeist of Texas is Republican. Politicians whose positions are the antithesis of what the majority of Texans support remain popular. Beto O'Rourke ran a serious race against Ted Cruz in 2018, but he only came close to beating Cruz. And Texas is one of only 20 states where President Trump's approval rating is higher than his disapproval rating, according to Morning Consult.

Also, it can be very difficult to register to vote in Texas, as Adam Serwer noted last year:

Registering to vote was simple enough. The post office had a form I could print out with my personal information and change of address.... Although I was more than a week ahead of the deadline, the sheer number of new registrations meant that I was not in the system until weeks after the deadline had passed. I was able to check online and see that I was registered, although my registration card did not arrive until several weeks later.

Obtaining an ID was another matter. Texas ... is very selective about which IDs are valid—the Republican-controlled state legislature determined that military IDs and gun licenses are fine, but employee and student IDs are not—and to vote I would have to obtain a Texas state ID. I could get a driver’s license if I turned in my license from Washington, D.C., from where I’d recently moved, and as long as I brought proof of citizenship, proof of my Social Security number, proof of identity, and proof of residency. So I brought along my passport, W-2s, bank statement, insurance statement, phone bill, and D.C. driver’s license....

Texas billed me $35 for my new license; with transportation to and from DPS and the Bexar County elections office, the cost of my registering to vote in Texas topped $80.... For anyone who is missing any of those documents and would need to obtain them, the price would be far higher. I work from home, so I have the privilege of being able to visit these facilities during working hours, and I can afford both the cost of transportation and the necessary documents. I live in the city, so public facilities are not difficult for me to get to. For people with more traditional jobs or who have less disposable income, these barriers stand much higher

Moreover, Texas has all but banned voter-registration drives, which is how many low-income and minority voters are registered, through laws that bar anyone but a deputy voter registrar in a particular county from registering voters in that county. If they tried to register a voter in another county, even they would be breaking the law. From trying to register to casting a ballot, it is hard to vote in Texas, maybe harder than in any other state.

I hope Texas Republicans' luck runs out in 2020 -- but I'm not holding my breath. They seem to have everything under control for at least another electoral cycle of two.

I'M SURE TRUMP DOESN'T THINK IT WAS A LOST SUMMER

Here's a headline from The Washington Post:

Trump’s lost summer: Aides claim victory, but others see incompetence and intolerance

"Lost summer"? Makes sense to me -- but does the president feel that way?

When President Trump presided over the battle tanks and fighter jets, the fireworks and adoring fans on July 4, he couldn’t have known that the militaristic “Salute to America” — as well as to himself — would end up as the apparent pinnacle of the season.

What followed was what some Trump advisers and allies characterize as a lost summer defined by self-inflicted controversies and squandered opportunities. Trump leveled racist attacks against four congresswomen of color dubbed “the Squad.” He derided the majority-black city of Baltimore as “rat and rodent infested.” His anti-immigrant rhetoric was echoed in a missive that authorities believe a mass shooting suspect posted. His visits to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso after the gun massacres in those cities served to divide rather than heal.

... His trade war with China grew more acrimonious. His whipsaw diplomacy at the Group of Seven summit left allies uncertain about American leadership.

And this happened just as campaign season is beginning:

In the final lull before the 2020 campaign starts to intensify this fall, Trump could have worked strategically to solidify his position and broaden his appeal. Instead, his words and actions this summer served to further divide the country and to harden public opinion about the ever-polarizing president....

“Trump squandered a summer of opportunity to enhance his reelection campaign,” Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and chief executive of Canary, a drilling services company, wrote in an email. “While Democrats are divided and focused on their own primary, President Trump could have focused on solving the trade war, a genuine infrastructure plan or a decisive foreign policy victory. Instead, he fanned the flames of the trade war, attacked Baltimore, ‘the squad’ and the Federal Reserve, and failed to add a cornerstone achievement to his 2020 election credentials.”

But everyone's forgetting that Trump is the world's greatest expert on winning elections -- just ask him and he'll tell you -- based on his record of precisely one victory (in which, of course, he didn't win the popular vote). Trump didn't squander the summer -- he did exactly what he wanted to do. He divided the country. He wanted to divide the country.

That's the reason I'm (cautiously) optimistic about the 2020 presidential election. Trump's poll numbers are bad, but they could get better -- as the Post story notes, Barack Obama's numbers weren't great in the summer of 2011, and he went on to win reelection decisively. The difference is that Obama wanted to appeal to a broad coalition of voters. Trump doesn't. He wants to piss off everyone but the superfans.

Maybe this works if you're running a business that's disdained by most consumers but loved by others -- like, um, the Trump Organization. If you keep selling the Trump brand in a way that alienates certain customers, it might be very appealing to others, who'll buy more and more Trump merchandise and spend more and more time at Trump properties.

But that doesn't work for voting. The superfans can't vote more than once. Trump already has them locked down. They're going to vote. They're already maximally motivated, yet the president thinks it's a brilliant strategy to keep motivating them by alienating everyone else, including potential voters who haven't made up their minds how to vote (or whether to vote).

There'll be many more stories like this one, stories that ask, "Why isn't Trump trying to broaden his appeal in time for the election"? He won't. He thinks he's hacked electoral democracy. It wouldn't take much to make Trump a very tough candidate to beat, but he intends to do the exact opposite of what it would take.

He might still win, of course. But if that happens, it will be despite his best efforts.

BREITBART COMMENTERS HAVE THEORIES ABOUT MASS SHOOTINGS

There's been another mass shooting, this one near Odessa, Texas, and the folks who comment at Breitbart would like you to know that they have theories:

It certainly seems as we get closer to the 2020 elections,
A big wave of mass shootings just magically start happening.
As the Democrats keep pushing for gun-control as part of their election strategy, it certainly seems to be quite a coincidence.
No?

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Not much doubt about more lefties going postal !

They know they are going down in 2020 and the violence will escalate because they will going from unhinged to totally freaking berserk !

(It's widely believed on the right that all mass shooters are left-wingers.)

In reality, every last mass shooting since Columbine has seen the mass shooter have one or more of the following 3 factors:

1) Porn use
https://www.newsmax.com/pol...
2) Psychotropic drug use
https://www.wnd.com/2018/02...
3) Islam.
https://www.thereligionofpe...

Solution is to ban the former two and closely monitor the latter.

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I think the MSM has THE MOST influence on all these crazies going out and doing these atrocities. The Dem leaders just add fuel to the fire. As wikileaks has proven, All the MSM are in collusion to stop patriots and our freedoms and freedom of information.

They work in tandem with each other, going to dinner parties etc.. We didn't need Wikileaks to show us the obvious but it's nice to have evidence.

The media won't even put out articles unless the DNC approves. In fact the MSM actually send Dems their articles BEFORE publication to ask if anything should be changed!!

What a joke our press has become. Propagandists plain and simple.

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They already ban heterosexual white males as "toxic" on many US University and college campuses ...and they are going for the younger ones, every year..

Seriously, take any demographic, and spend decades of their academic setting telling them and all of their peers in classrooms, that their demographic is "toxic" ... I don't know, what would you expect?

Making guns illegal, will do no more good than making street opiods, illegal. Building a wall, might help though.

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Our "doctors" kill 10 to 100 times more of our fellow Americans than El Chapo.

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That would be foreign doctors brought to the USA by the RATS!!!

(This commenter is blaming either the opioid crisis or mass shootings, or possibly both, on the fact that many doctors in America are immigrants.)

White males are used in the fake shootings because the deep state most wants to get rid of white males. Just turn on your tv.

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What about all the black guys killing black guys daily... especially in Chicago?

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Robert you know we are not allowed to talk about black on black KILLINGS in democrat CONTROLLED GHETTOS.THAT IS RACIST.

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Exactly, according to the lying MSM the truth is racist!!!!

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Those are actually real events

(All the killings in Chicago are "real events," but all the mass shootings are fake, apparently.)

The lefttard who pulled the trigger, lamestream media and leftist politicians like mad maxine waters OWN these crimes.

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The Communist Control Act of 1954 has to be revived!

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It's not the guns, it's the mindset. The left are using people with weak minds to push their agendas. THAT is the very reason we all need to keep our guns. A Government and their players who will use the weak to gain personal power and control should be fought at every turn, by every means, with every breath, so that they never get the power they seek.

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America : the land of the God forsaken ,the uneducated ; 'home' to broken homes , multi marriages , Planned Parenthood , multi genders , men allowed in women's restrooms...from the top to the bottom . The whole " Declaring of our Independence " , the well thought out Constitution , the Bill of Rights.....these were written by adults . Today ? All the Amendments have been abused because there is no ( none ) responsibility to go along with our 'freedoms'. Supreme Court silliness , Monica with a President , 'no new taxes' , 'your health care'....guns ? In the hands of a decent people i see it. This sinkhole will drown in its selfishness. " I have a right ...! " All the while , a tranny is reading books to your young ones. What a comic strip America is today.

So there you have it: Transsexuals, porn, critiques of toxic masculinity, and immigrant doctors killed those people in Texas -- except the shooting was probably a staged incident, because it didn't take place in Chicago.

I feel so well informed now.