SANDERS CAN BE BEATEN IN THE PRIMARIES, BUT HE PROBABLY WON'T BE

How lucky is Bernie Sanders? This lucky: If Amy Klobuchar hadn't had a widely praised debate performance last week, she wouldn't have experienced a surge in support among New Hampshire moderates and Pete Buttigieg would probably have beaten Sanders on his home turf.

Sanders got just under 26% of the vote. He leads Buttigieg by less than 2. The Washington Post tells us, "Youth turnout in the state declined from 2016 to 2020 from 19 to 14 percent."

How much did Sanders underperform? This much:

Sanders beat Clinton in the 2016 New Hampshire primary by a wide margin of 60-38. Today, our exit polls asked NH voters who they supported in 2016. Today's electorate backed Clinton over Sanders by a margin of 50-30, with the remainder saying they supported neither candidate.

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) February 12, 2020

Where was his voter surge? Where did his 2016 voters go?

I was going to write about what happens next, but Rachel Bitecofer said most of what I wanted to say:

Here is the basic fact of where Sanders is in the race. He has won NH by a narrow 2pts, can claim a partial (total vote) win in IA primarily due to no results being reported. These were in 2 overwhelmingly white states. IOW: these were weaker than expected performances. HOWEVER,

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) February 12, 2020

due to the now trifurcation + of the moderate wing of the party Sanders' small plurality of the high 20s is becoming the winning margin & until & unless that changes down the stretch, he will likely become the nominee. And it is quite likely by the time where mods realize they

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) February 12, 2020

have this problem enough to overcome egos, it will be far too late. This is exactly what happened to the mod faction in 2016 (although it should be noted, Trump did NOT face the troubles down the stretch Sanders *may* face w voters of color, which as I show, are the majority of

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) February 12, 2020

the party in many of the states. He came out of the SC primary (Winner Take All) on fire. What we may end up seeing here is a classic collective action problem among the mainstream faction: they would benefit from a cooperation agreement where they put forward 1 & the rest pic.twitter.com/DelAisLKB4

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) February 12, 2020

withdraw from the race but egos (and the massive time & energy investments each candidate & team puts in) make this unlikely particularly bc we have never seen so much equal & robust competition. All 3 (Buttigieg, Klobuchar, & Bloomberg) can taste the presidency now.

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) February 12, 2020

Right -- Sanders could be beaten by one moderate, but Buttigieg, Biden, Klobuchar, and eventually Bloomberg all have motivation to stay in, and all will probably be splitting the non-progressive vote through Super Tuesday. Klobuchar might have dropped out soon if she'd finished well behind the leaders in New Hampshire. Now she's probably postponing the inevitable -- and Buttigieg missed his chance to score a victory that might have given him momentum. Oh, and Tom Steyer is starting to poll in double digits in South Carolina and Nevada, so he'll dilute the anti-Sanders vote even more, all while Elizabeth Warren (probably) continues to underperform. (She seemed poised to draw more voters from Sanders, but he seems to be the progressive category killer -- if you're progressive, you probably see him as the clear preference. He's Amazon -- why shop anywhere else?)

FiveThirtyEight now says that Sanders has a 38% chance of winning a delegate majority before the convention -- but thinks there's a 33% chance no candidate will win a delegate majority. However:

[Sanders] also has a 52 percent chance of a pledged delegate plurality.

If no one has a delegate majority, I think most Democrats will want the candidate with a plurality to be the nominee, assuming the candidate has a decisive lead. That will seem like simple fairness. But the party and most pundits will look for a way out. You'll hear about a Draft Hillary movement. You'll hear about a Draft Kerry movement. You'll hear about a Draft Michelle movement. Michelle won't want to do it, and even if Hillary and Kerry say they'd consider a draft, both options will poll poorly. This could be another opportunity for collective action, but Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Biden, and possibly Steyer and Klobuchar will all insist on being the consensus brokered-convention nominee, and no one will yield. Meanwhile, the Sanders voters will declare the process rigged, which will be an accurate description of what's being attempted but not an accurate description of what's being accomplished, because Democrats simply won't be able to rig the convention successfully.

So, as I foresaw last week, Sanders is the clear favorite, even though he's more beatable than he seemed to be a week ago, and even though he could easily fail to amass a clear majority of the delegates by convention time.

AT THE MOST BASIC LEVEL, AMERICANS DON'T EXPECT DEMOCRACY TO WORK IN 2020

A new Monmouth University poll tells us that, contrary to Trumpworld boasting, most Americans really don't want the president to win a second term.

Just over 4 in 10 (42%) registered voters feel that Trump should be reelected, while a majority (55%) say it is time to have someone new in the Oval Office.

Americans want a new president. However, they don't expect to get what they want.

About two-thirds of American voters believe that Trump will definitely (27%) or probably (39%) get reelected in November. Just 22% say he will probably lose to the Democrat and only 6% say he will definitely lose to the Democrat. Republicans are brimming with confidence – 59% say reelection is definite and 34% probable – while Democrats are not so certain about their chances – just 11% say their nominee will definitely beat Trump and another 44% say it is probable that Trump will lose. On the other side of the coin, 38% of Democrats actually think it is more likely than not that Trump will win a second term. Just 4% of Republicans think Trump will lose to the Democrat.

Most Americans want Trump out but don't believe that most of their fellow voters do, or don't believe that he can be removed through electoral means, or don't trust the Democrats to beat him.

Meanwhile, at the PredictIt betting market, we see these two sets of current prices:



By a large margin, participants believe Democrats won't win the presidency -- and by an even larger margin, they believe the Democratic candidate will win the popular vote.

The results of the 2000 and 2016 election have made an anti-democratic outcome seem like business as usual rather than an outrage. And the loud, braying propaganda of Team Trump has the anti-Trump majority believing that it's isolated and outnumbered.

All this makes me worry that if Trump cheats his way to another win, America will just shrug. After all, we expected no less.

TO PROTECT TRUMP'S FRAGILE EGO

The New Hampshire primary is today. South Carolina's primary is at the end of the month, and we know what Republicans have planned there:

State Republican leaders in South Carolina are urging GOP voters to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the state's Feb. 29 Democratic primary.

The plan — orchestrated by Greenville GOP chairman Nate Leupp and several other prominent Republican Party leaders — revolves around GOP leadership's belief that Sanders poses the least amount of challenge to President Trump in November's general election....

Why aren't Republicans doing something similar in New Hampshire today? One reason is that South Carolina's primary is completely open -- Republicans can vote in the Democratic primary. New Hampshire's is partially open -- you can vote in a party primary if you're not registered with any party, but you can't vote in the Democratic primary if you're a Republican.

But that still leave a lot of potential voters to sabotage the Democrats. According to the state of New Hampshire, 42% of the state's voters are unaffiliated. (Only 29% are Republicans and 28% are Democrats.) In the 2016 Republican primary, 42% of the voters were unaffiliated, according to a CNN exit poll.

So why not try to sabotage the New Hampshire primary? The obvious explanation is that South Carolina won't have a Republican primary this year -- the state GOP canceled it on Trump's behalf last year -- while the New Hampshire Republican primary will still take place.

But so what? Trump will cruise to victory in New Hampshire today. The latest poll shows him leading his one remaining challenger, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, 90% to 7%. So why not spare a few votes for a little sabotage?

I think it's because Trump's tender ego won't allow it. He can't bear the thought that he might win the primary 80%-20% or 70%-30%. (Remember, registered Republicans can't cross over, and nearly all of them will vote for him.)

Trump campaigned in New Hampshire last night, for no apparent reason. This tweet is not entirely facetious:

Hey @nytimes and @nytpolitics headline writers, I have a gift for you, one hed for you, free and gratis, for the story on imPOTUS’s event tonight:

Embattled Trump Stages Last Minute NH Rally To Fend Off Weld

No need to thank me.

— Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos (@TomLevenson) February 11, 2020

I have no idea if the sort of vote sabotage they're planning in South Carolina actually works. But it won't be tried in New Hampshire today, because Trump is too emotionally weak to allow it.

IF JOE BIDEN IS TANKING, COULD MIKE BLOOMBERG WIN OVER HIS BLACK SUPPORTERS?

An African-American academic tweets:

Mike Bloomberg has tremendously effective commercials running here in NC, radio and television. They are going to move the numbers. He is:
1. the only candidate on the air
2. wacking the dickens out of Trump
3. running on education/social safety net
4. courting black voters

— Blair LM Kelley (@profblmkelley) February 10, 2020

Southern black voters like 2, 3, and 4. And they don't know much about Bloomberg, but by blanketing the TV and radio, he is running an otherwise empty table. Radio ads are cheap, other candidates need to focus and build their names in similar ways...

— Blair LM Kelley (@profblmkelley) February 10, 2020

A black Daily Beast writer asks:

Are Black Voters Quietly Turning to Mike Bloomberg?

... Despite a mayoralty defined by the billionaire’s “luxury product” vision of the city that sanctioned stop-and-frisk dragnet policing of men of color, the evaporation of affordable housing, an explosion in the numbers of homeless people, and an exodus of working-class New Yorkers, I’m hearing daily from Democrats evaluating the current crop of candidates and concluding that Bloomberg is best situated to beat Trump and to run the country.

I have spoken to three black NYC political operatives who are quietly thinking about joining the campaign, which is gaining momentum, hiring nationwide, and paying top dollar. These aren’t mercenaries but self-defined pragmatic progressives who believe Bloomberg has the best chance at an electoral victory against Trump in November. I have spoken to a friend who says his black fraternity’s message boards—full of college-educated black men of diverse financial backgrounds, in various professional sectors, living in towns and cities across the country—are full of favorable talk about Bloomberg. As I’m writing this on a trip to Los Angeles, I was surprised to hear my friends here—a diverse group of fortysomething progressives in different professions and from different backgrounds—saying not only that they thought Bloomberg could win but they were inclined to support him.

If this is really happening, I think it's because black voters fear the consequences of a second Trump term in a way that those of us who are white might not -- we know it would be awful, but many of us suspect we'd be somewhat insulated from the worst of it. I think most black voters believe the consequences could be aimed directly at them and the people they care about.

And I think they recognize that Bloomberg loathes Trump -- possibly more than any other candidate in the race. He certainly puts that loathing into his ads in a way that the other Democratic candidates don't.

They may know that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg are good at raising money, but Bloomberg clearly has serious money. I don't want to think that only a billionaire can beat Trump, but I can't blame anyone for believing that that kind of money improves the Democrats' odds significantly.

Finally, I'll add that Bloomberg's ads have a self-assurance that isn't matched by the real-life and ad personas of the other front-runners. Buttigieg is too polite. Biden stammers and seems to have had the fight knocked out of him. Sanders can rouse a crowd, but if you're not already impressed, he comes off as a rumpled grump. Sad to say, Warren and Amy Klobuchar suffer because of the widespread fear, however unjustified, that running a woman didn't work last time.

Which 2020 candidate can you imagine fitting into this meme?



Bloomberg's ads make him seem as if he could. I don't blame black voters if they think they need someone who's "got this" -- who acts as if he knows how to win, who can win white voters while saying enough of the things black voters need to hear. I don't know whether the real-life Bloomberg can live up to his ads. But I understand why, at this moment, he might seem like the best bet.

****

UPDATE: Wow -- Quinnipiac's new national poll has Bloomberg with 15% among white voters -- and 22% among black voters.

BE DECISIVE, TOM PEREZ: REJECT IOWA'S COUNT

You don't have to be a Bernie Sanders fan to believe that what's happening in the Iowa caucuses vote count is preposterous.

Internal Iowa Democratic Party emails over the weekend revealed that although the party was taking a second look at some problematic precincts, close to 5 percent of the total, it would not fix errors that occurred on the official handwritten tally sheets from precincts.

Those records are known as “caucus math worksheets.” The party only corrected discrepancies between the data as recorded on the worksheets and what was officially reported in public releases of the results.

The party could not change even blatant miscalculations on the worksheets, according to a lawyer for the party, because they were a legal record and altering them would be a crime.

“The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process,” wrote the party lawyer, Shayla McCormally, according to an email sent by Troy Price, the chairman of the party, to its central committee members. The lawyer said correcting the math would introduce “personal opinion” into the official record of results.

... because the caucus chair and secretary of each precinct had certified the results on the worksheets, along with representatives of candidates, the documents could not be readjusted without violating election law, the state party lawyer said.

“It is the legal voting record of the caucus, like a ballot,” Ms. McCormally wrote in her opinion. “The seriousness of the record is made clear by the language at the bottom stating that any misrepresentation of the information is a crime. Therefore, any changes or tampering with the sheet could result in a claim of election interference or misconduct.”

We don't care that it's wrong. It's been signed. That's your response to this problem?

How bad is the problem? This bad:

An analysis by The New York Times revealed inconsistencies in the reported data for at least one in six of the state’s precincts. Those errors occurred at every stage of the tabulation process: in recording votes, in calculating and awarding delegates, and in entering the data into the state party’s database. Hundreds of state delegate equivalents, the metric the party uses to determine delegates for the national convention, were at stake in these precincts.

The Iowa Democratic Party released a list of 92 precincts on Sunday that it said were flagged as problematic by three presidential candidates — Mr. Sanders; Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind.; and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. That figure is far fewer than the number with inconsistencies captured in the Times review....

In the Times review of the data, at least 10 percent of precincts appeared to have improperly allocated their delegates, based on reported vote totals. In some cases, precincts awarded more delegates than they had to give; in others, they awarded fewer. More than two dozen precincts appeared to give delegates to candidates who did not qualify as viable under the caucus rules.

Shut it down, Tom Perez. Announce today that the national Democratic Party won't accept the state party's results and wants all the raw data and documentation in order to do its own count, the goal of which will be accuracy. If the state party doesn't want to provide data and paper backups, the state will go without delegates at the national convention. It's that simple.

If it takes months, so what? It's only a handful of delegates, and the convention is in mid-July. It's highly unlikely that the delegate race will be so close that the tiny number of delegates separating Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren will be crucial to deciding who the nominee is. But the numbers need to be right, for the record.

Be decisive. Dithering looks weak to an electorate that's been primed to believe that Democrats are weaklings. Ditch the Iowa count and prove you can get the numbers right.

Also: Democrats believe in democracy. Democrats need to make democracy work in Iowa. Republicans are already mocking Democrats for denouncing Russian manipulation of the 2016 race while being unable to run a vote count in Iowa. Prove them wrong. Democrats will have much less credibility complaining about voting irregularities in November if the party can't get this right.

WHILE DEMOCRATS FRET, SOME REPUBLICANS OBVIOUSLY THINK TRUMP IS OVERREACHING

Most Democrats now seem to believe that the party is doomed and that President Trump is on a glide path to reelection -- which is why this Kyle Smith column in the New York Post is ridiculous:

Election Night 2020 is going to be like Groundhog Day for Democrats

... Get ready to see a lot of stuff you’ve seen before. First there will be denial: “Uh-uh. No way. Can you check the numbers again? That can’t be right.”

Desperate for evidence, the Dems will move on to the next phase: Voter fraud! Diabolical machine errors! Russian hacking! All of this will be given a thorough scourging. Any wisp of a rumor of a hint of a shred of evidence that any of these things happened, regardless of whether any of them happened on a scale sufficient to determine the outcome, will be the subject of screaming headlines and glaring chyrons.

Nahhh. Unless every late October poll shows the Democratic nominee up by double digits nationwide -- and up by similar margins in states with 270 electoral votes -- Democrats will assume that doom is a likely outcome. There hasn't been a double-digit presidential blowout since 1984, and it's extremely unlikely that there could be one this year given the rabid loyalty of the Trump cult, so Democratic voters will assume calamity is inevitable even if Nate Silver is giving their nominee an 85% chance of victory. (Perhaps especially if that's the case.) Most Democrats right now believe that Bernie would alienate centrists, Buttigieg would alienate blacks, Bloomberg would alienate Bernie voters, a brokered convention would alienate everyone, and Trump will hack the voting machines anyway, while Democrats will be the Iowa caucus stumblebums all the way to November. I don't see anyone who's optimistic.

The only people I see right now who think the Democrats could have a good election are Republicans, like this group of senators:

A handful of Republican senators tried to stop President Trump from firing Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who testified in the House impeachment hearings....

The senators were concerned that it would look bad for Mr. Trump to dismiss Mr. Sondland and argued that it was unnecessary, since the ambassador was already talking with senior officials about leaving after the Senate trial, the people said. The senators told White House officials that Mr. Sondland should be allowed to depart on his own terms, which would have reduced any political backlash....

Among the Republicans who warned the White House was Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who after voting to acquit Mr. Trump said she thought he had learned a lesson. Others included Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Martha McSally of Arizona and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Why did these senators feel the need to go racing off to A-list New York Times reporters (Peter Baker, Michael Schmidt, and Maggie Haberman) to tell them about this exercise in futility if Trump is triumphant and Democrats are doomed? Apparently Collins, Tillis, and McSally, all up for reelection this year in purple states, don't quite believe that Trump's currently improved poll numbers will necessary hold up over the next nine months. Apparently Ron Johnson isn't persuaded that Trump is certain to win a second time in the crucial state of Wisconsin, where the most recent Morning Consult poll shows Trump at 43% approval and 53% disapproval (Civiqs has Trump at 46%/52%).

Maureen Dowd tells us today that, especially after Iowa, "a master class in Democratic dysfunction ... Democrats should be scared to death watching the president play to thuggish type, re-enacting the chilling final payback scenes of 'The Godfather,' when Michael Corleone took out all his enemies." Many rank-and-file Democrats seem to agree. Oddly, though, Senators Collins, Tillis, McSally, and Johnson aren't nearly as certain about what happens next.

YOUR LIBERAL MEDIA

So this happened after last night's debate:

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews freaked out at the prospect of Bernie Sanders becoming the 2020 Democratic nominee, warning that his views of socialism go back to the 1950s and that he believes he might’ve been a victim of “executions in Central Park” if “[Fidel] Castro and the Reds” had won the Cold War....

“You know, I have my own views of the word socialist and I’ll be glad to tell them, share them with you in private,” Matthews said forcefully, right before sharing his views in public in an almost panicked, rat-a-tat-tat tone. “They go back to the early 1950s. I have an attitude about them. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude towards Castro, and I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park and I might’ve been one of the ones executed and certain other people would be there cheering. So, I have a problem with people who took the other side.”

... “I don’t know who Bernie supports over these years. I don’t know what he means by socialism. One week it’s Den-mahk, we’re going to be like Den-mahk,” the MSNBC host said, lapsing into an impression of Sanders’ Brooklyn accent. “Ok, that’s harmless. That’s basically a capitalist country with a lot of good social programs. Den-mahk is harmless.”

“He’s clearly in the Denmark category,” [Chris] Hayes gently pointed out.

“Is he?!” Matthews shot back.

“Yeah,” Hayes replied.

“How do you know? Did he tell you that?” Matthews pressed.

Bernie shoot me in central park pic.twitter.com/y8cK9VvjSo

— Shuja Haider (@shujaxhaider) February 8, 2020

And there was also this, earlier in the day:

Panel on MSNBC defending billionaires, saying Bernie is “alienating” them, they made “our lives better”, it’s being “against aspiration” & have to be careful about “creating unnecessary class war.” pic.twitter.com/3TKXgzywA4

— Ibrahim (@ibrahimpols) February 7, 2020

It's not just Chuck Todd in that clip. Early on, we have Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino (which was co-founded by Rosario Dawson, a 2016 Sanders supporter) saying, "There's not an American that wakes up every single morning that doesn't say, 'I'm going to get up in the morning so that I someday either can be rich or my kid can be rich.'" (My father drove trucks for a living. My parents wanted my sister and me to do better than they'd done. They weren't dreaming we'd be rich, just comfortable.) We have Michael Steel, a former adviser to John Boehner, saying, "When you think of billionaires in America -- at least when I think of billionaires in America -- I think of Bill Gates. I think of Jeff Bezos." (Easy to say if you're someone who's never has to pee in a bottle in one of the tax-avoiding Bezos's un-air-conditioned warehouses because you'll lose your job if you take a bathroom break.) Todd minimizes the problem by saying, "Donald Trump has given billionaires a bad name" -- as if deindustrialization, the destruction of the union movement in America, and the economic collapse of 2008 never happened.

The "liberal media" expresses despair when the right is at its worst, but much of it loathes genuine progressivism. If it's Sanders vs. Trump, Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd will write in Mitt Romney or Colin Powell. So will most of the regulars on Morning Joe. Some conservative Never Trumpers -- Max Boot, for instance -- have said that they'll vote for any Democratic nominee, including Sanders, to defeat Trump. Chris Matthews, how about you? On this question, are you to the right of Max Boot?

And please note that nothing like this happens in the right-wing media. Fox and talk radio rallied around Trump, even though they did so with some reluctance at first. Nearly all dissenting voices were banished a long time ago. I value a range of opinions -- but at this point a range of opinions could be killing us. Any Democratic nominee is better than Trump is a premise that should be as unquestioned on the left, left-center, and center as The sun rises in the east. But it isn't.

SO, IS THIS A "WASTE OF TIME"?

Last week, FiveThirtyEight reported on the results of its most recent impeachment poll. Here was a key finding:

Many Americans don’t think Congress should be spending its time on impeachment.... Overall, a slight majority (51 percent) of Americans say the process is a bad use of Congress’s time, while 45 percent say it’s a good use of time....

Among those who said impeachment was a bad use of time, a plurality (39 percent) said that it’s because the process distracts Congress from more important issues....

Among Republicans, 23.6% called impeachment a "waste" of Congress's time -- and so did 4.5% of Democrats.

You probably know some people who talk about impeachment this way, or you've seen them being interviewed on TV. Congress should go back to focusing on the issues! they say.

Democrats in the House, of course, passed nearly 400 bills in 2019 before the impeachment process started, many of them on important subjects like infrastructure, prescription drug prices, and early childhood education. For the most part, those bills are languishing in Mitch McConnell's Senate, and will never be voted on.

But if many ordinary citizens thought Democrats in Congress had the wrong priorities, will they have the same reaction to this?

Trump warns on impeachment payback: 'You'll see'

... When asked about his press secretary's comments that the president was suggesting in his remarks Thursday on impeachment that his Democratic political opponents "should be held accountable," Trump said, "Well, you'll see. I mean, we'll see what happens."

Trump showed little sign of wanting to mend fences with the Democrats, saying they suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome" and that there is "a lot of evil on that side.” ...

He left open the possibility that the White House will dismiss Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, after he testified in Trump’s impeachment inquiry.

That happened, and Trump is also looking for ways to punish Mitt Romney, investigate Hunter Biden, and otherwise get payback.

(UPDATE: Trump also fired Gordon Sondland.)

Will the public call that a waste of time? Will the public demand that Trump focus on the issues?

We'll see.

WARNING: THIS ONE IS ABOUT DAVID BROOKS

David Brooks writes:

As several people have noticed, this was the most politically successful week of the Trump presidency.

First, President Trump’s job approval numbers are rising. When the impeachment inquiry got rolling in October his Gallup approval rating was 39. Now it’s 49. If he can hold this level, he’ll probably be re-elected.

Let's stop there. Is Trump's approval rating at near-parity now? Jacob Long of The Monkey Cage has serious doubts:

... is Trump really getting more popular? His recent polling gains have the hallmarks of a specific kind of polling error called differential nonresponse bias.

Long tells us that under circumstances like this, it's quite likely that pollsters are getting responses from more Republicans and fewer Democrats.

It may be that Trump’s approval is going up because Democrats feel demoralized by the apparently hopeless impeachment trial and so don’t feel like talking to pollsters. Or it could be that Republicans feel so moved to support Trump at when he’s under attack that they are more likely to talk to pollsters than usual.

Long analyzed polls that reported partisan breakdown and found that, yes, more Republicans seem to be responding than in previous surveys from the same pollsters. The difference was most noticeable in Gallup's surveys, but it's also showing up in other recent surveys.

This means there is reason to believe Trump’s historically stable job approval hasn’t changed much since before the impeachment process began.

So what else have you got, David Brooks?

To the extent that it was noticed, impeachment worked for Republicans and against Democrats. Approval of the Republican Party is now at 51 percent, its highest since 2005. More Americans now identify as Republicans than as Democrats. As Gallup dryly observed in announcing these numbers, “Gallup observed similar public opinion shifts when Bill Clinton was impeached.”

And guess which party swept the first election after Clinton's impeachment?

... Trump has cleverly reframed the election. I can see why Nancy Pelosi ripped up his State of the Union speech. It was the most effective speech of the Trump presidency.

In 2016, Trump ran a dark, fear-driven “American carnage” campaign. His 2016 convention speech was all about crime, violence and menace. The theme of this week’s speech was mostly upbeat “Morning in America.”

I don’t know if he can keep this tone....

There's no accounting for taste -- if Brooks thought the State of the Union address was warm and fuzzy, that's his right, though a lot of us thought it was more of Trump's usual partisan trash talk, and also thought it was, as The Atlantic's David Graham put it, "dark" and "bloody-minded." Graham wrote:

... Trump reached for violent examples to bolster the case for his preferred changes to immigration policy. “In recent weeks, two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the visa lottery and chain migration,” he said. “In the age of terrorism, these programs present risks we can just no longer afford.” ...

Trump’s view of the world beyond America’s borders was no less dark—a globe occupied by rivals, rogue regimes, and terrorists. “In confronting these horrible dangers, we know that weakness is the surest path to conflict, and unmatched power is the surest means to our true and great defense,” he said. Trump warned that “we have no choice but to annihilate” terrorists (but that they should be sent to Guantanamo Bay when captured.

But even if Brooks thought the State of the Union was all sunshine and puppies, please note that he posted this column after Trump's appearances yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast and in the East Room. Following those howls of rage and grievance, how could Brooks possibly write, "I don’t know if he can keep this tone" of "upbeat 'Morning in America'"? We just got our answer, David. He can't.

Trump’s speech reframes the election around this core question: Is capitalism basically working or is it basically broken?

Trump can run on the proposition that it’s basically working....

Americans seem to accept this position. Confidence in the economy is higher now than at any moment since the Clinton administration. According to Gallup, 59 percent of Americans say they are better off than they were a year ago. Three-quarters of Americans expect to be even better off a year from now.

Yes, but on the larger question -- is the country on the right track or the wrong track? -- "wrong track" has a 17-point lead, according to the Real Clear Politics average. That gloom about the country's direction has been consistent throughout Trump's presidency. This is astonishing in a country with low unemployment. (Of course, while unemployment may be low, how good are the jobs?)

It’s hard to defeat a president in good times. U.C.L.A. political scientist Lynn Vavreck, the author of “The Message Matters” and a co-author of “Identity Crisis,” has found that the rare candidates who do succeed find issues that voters care about just as much. In 1960, John Kennedy ran on the missile gap. In 1968, Richard Nixon ran on law and order. In 2016, Trump ran on Middle America identity politics.

What would that issue be?

Even David Brooks can't be that stupid. The issue is Trump.

I wish the issue were the Republican Party, which throws stumbling blocks in the way of universal, affordable healthcare coverage and won't allow us to do anything about climate change or gun violence, while demagoguing a hundred other issues and clogging the courts with far-right zealots. But this year the moral issue is Trump. The majority of Americans despise him and would have been happy to see him removed from office. He sickens people.

Republicans might have the message discipline to make the election all about Burisma or socialism or Mike Bloomberg's height, but if Trump opponents stand firm, the election will be a referendum on Trump. Can David Brooks possibly be unable to grasp that?

TRUMP IS JUST ASKING FOR AN ELECTORAL BEATDOWN

This is why most of America despises Donald Trump:

President Donald Trump blasted "dishonest and corrupt" people Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, bashing his impeachment at the nonpartisan event with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just steps away....

In an apparent shot at both Pelosi, D-Calif., and [Senator Mitt] Romney, Trump said: "I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, 'I pray for you,' when they know that that's not so." ...

Trump did not raise his hand when Harvard University professor Arthur Brooks asked those in attendance to raise their hands if they love someone whom they disagree with politically....

Nearing the conclusion of his address, Trump said people of faith sometimes "hate" people, adding, "When they impeach you for nothing, then you’re supposed to like them? It’s not easy folks."

And this:

At a jampacked ceremony in the East Room of the White House that veered back and forth between celebration and condemnation, the president complained about the “crooked politics” that had resulted in his impeachment and trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress....

“It was evil,” Mr. Trump told the roomful of supporters from Congress and his administration in a long, rambling, stream-of-consciousness talk, tossing aside the text that had been so carefully prepared for him by his staff. “It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars and this should never ever happen to another president, ever. I don’t know that other presidents would have been able to take it.”

He ... suggest[ed] that the “top scum” at the F.B.I. had plotted to stop him from serving as president.

... “It was all bullshit,” he said, a rare presidential use of profanity on camera in the East Room....

He assailed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam B. Schiff, both Democrats from California. “They’re vicious and mean,” Mr. Trump said. “Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person.”

He ridiculed Ms. Pelosi for saying that she has prayed for the president even while opposing him. “She may pray but she prays for the opposite,” Mr. Trump said. “But I doubt she prays at all.”

I hope this is what I predicted yesterday -- Trump taking center stage once again and being as vicious, vengeful, and polarizing as he knows how to be, because vengeance is the greatest joy in his life and because he's under the mistaken impression that acting this way will get him reelected.

Maybe it will get him reelected. But I suspect that this is the aspect of Trump's presidency that disgusts voters more than his corruption or his policies. I can't prove this, but over the past few months, when approximately half of poll respondents repeatedly said that they believed Trump should be convicted and removed from office, I think what came to mind, at least for many of them, was something other than the specific crimes in the articles of impeachment. I think they wanted him out (and still want him out) because he's such an asshole.

Democrats look awfully hapless right now. I don't know if they can seize on this opportunity. But it's there for the seizing.

EXPLAIN TO ME HOW SANDERS LOSES THE NOMINATION

In the immediate aftermath of the Iowa caucuses, some observers looked at partial results and declared Pete Buttigieg the winner. Now, however, with more votes counted, Bernie Sanders leads on first-ballot votes, leads on final-alignment votes, and ties Butiigieg on likely convention delegates. Elizabeth Warren exceeded expectations but finished third, well behind the leaders. Joe Biden continues to trail Warren.

In New Hampshire, Sanders has a solid lead -- 8.5 points, according to the Real Clear Politics average -- but Buttigieg appears to be surging. In the past two days, Buttigieg has gained 9 points in the WHDH/Emerson College tracking poll, and 8 points in the Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll. In both polls, Biden and Warren are well behind the leaders.

But Buttigieg is competing with Biden and Amy Klobuchar for moderate votes in New Hampshire. Maybe non-progressive voters will abandon those two and rally around Buttigieg -- but what happens then? Buttigieg needs support from non-white voters to be competitive in the next two states, Nevada and South Carolina, and he doesn't have it -- RCP has him at 7% in Nevada and 5.5% in South Carolina. Biden has a slim lead in both states, but Sanders is coming on strong in both -- as is Tom Steyer, of all people, in South Carolina.

What happens if Biden gets shellacked in New Hampshire? Can he win Nevada? And if he loses in both states, what will older black voters in South Carolina do? They like Biden for a number of reasons, but one of the most important is that they think Rust Belt whites will also vote for him in a race against Trump, whom they're desperate to beat. If they stop believing white people will vote for Biden, will they bother to vote for him? And if not, where will they go? I think they'd defect, but I have no idea who'd pick up their votes.

In states after South Carolina, Mike Bloomberg will be competing -- and he's starting to show some polling strength: Morning Consult has him tied with Warren for third nationwide, with 14% of the vote, and also tied for third with Warren in Super Tuesday states, also with 14%. Morning Consult also says he beats Trump by 7 -- the best showing of all the big-name contenders. (Biden and Sanders lead by 4, Warren and Buttigieg by 1.)

But after the first four states, Sanders might seem to have a commanding lead -- and Sanders-averse moderates might continue splitting their votes among Buttigieg (who'll probably continue to struggle with non-white voters), Biden (who might not win any of the first four states but probably will stay in the race through Super Tuesday regardless), and Bloomberg. Warren will be near the top, but she doesn't seem poised to win any state except her own, and her presence in the race no longer seems to be a drag on Sanders.

I don't see how this doesn't lead to a Sanders victory -- which worries me because Sanders didn't generate a youth voting surge in Iowa. If he can't do that, can he win in November? (The head-to-head numbers in the Morning Consult poll and elsewhere suggest he can, though he's not the strongest possible opponent.)

Could Bloomberg, of all people, pick up older non-white vote if Biden falters? It's not crazy to think so -- in the last Quinnipiac poll, in which Biden had 52% of the black vote among Democrats, Bloomberg had 8%. 7%. (Buttigieg had zero. Sanders had 15%, and I bet they're mostly millennials.)

So I think Sanders is the clear favorite now. Anyone else have an alternate scenario?

YOUR RIGHT-WING UNCLE THINKS MITT ROMNEY IS A MORMON BIDEN

Not long after Mitt Romney announced that he intended to vote for the first article of impeachment in the trial of President Trump, right-wingers began responding:

ROMNEY>BURISMA

— Michael Kessel (@AgoraObscura) February 5, 2020

Romney is a DS owned puppet & he's up to his eyeballs in the Ukraine corruption with Burisma. Nothing to see here.....and so it goes.

— Madhopper (@Madhopper59) February 5, 2020

Former Mitt Romney Adviser Sits on Burisma Board of Directors https://t.co/2E4E1NGAdz

— David Jones (@davidjones720) February 5, 2020

Here's the September 2019 Breitbart story cited above:

Joseph Cofer Black, a national security adviser for the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign, sits on the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian oil and gas giant that paid at times more than $83,000 per month to Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son.

The American Thinker, which first brought the story to light, noted it is “an odd coincidence that Mitt has as CNN puts it ‘been a lone Republican voice expressing concern about President Donald Trump’s July phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Ukraine’s President to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.’”

The link above is legitimate -- Black does sit on the Burisma board. But would Romney convict because of one guy he relied on for foreign policy advice in a couple of long-ago presidential campaigns? Your right-wing uncle thinks so.

But if your uncle was right-wing during the early George W. Bush era, Black is precisely the kind of person he was likely to admire, and to accuse you of not admiring, you dirty little terrorist-coddling hippie.

From a 2017 Daily Beast story by Eli Lake:

Early in his career, Black was credited with doing much of the street work that led to France’s apprehension in Khartoum, Sudan, of the master terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. After the 9/11 attacks, according to Bob Woodward’s first book in his series about the Bush presidency, it was Black who briefed the president on the CIA’s war plan for Afghanistan. He’s also the guy who promised to leave al Qaeda’s operatives with “flies walking across their eyeballs.”

In his memoir, former CIA chief George Tenet relays a story about how after the 9/11 attacks, Black insisted on staying at his office with his staff at the Global Response Center, even though the center was located in an exposed area of the agency's headquarters, on the sixth floor—a possible target for terrorists. Tenet had wanted to evacuate the center, but Black rebuffed him. "Well, they could die," Tenet remembers telling Black about his staff. Black’s response: "Well sir, then they are just going to have to die."

In December, 2002, Black transferred to the State Department as the ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. In 2004 he left government, and the following year he became a vice chairman of the controversial security contractor, Blackwater USA, managing a subsidiary company known as Total Intelligence Solutions....

Yup -- he may have overlapped with Hunter Biden at Burisma, but he also worked at Blackwater under Erik Prince, Trump's pal and Betsy DeVos's brother.

More, from a 2005 BBC story:

Gary Schroen flew out [to Afghanistan] soon after the [9/11] attacks on New York and Washington, helping to set up the 2001 invasion, he told US National Public Radio.

He recalled his orders from the CIA's counter-terrorism chief.

"Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice," he quoted Cofer Black as saying.

As for other leaders of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan, Mr Black reportedly said: "I want their heads up on pikes."

Contacted by the radio network, Mr Black would not confirm that these were his exact words but he did not dispute Mr Schroen's account.

Of course, Black never got those heads. But right-wingers in America used to thrill to tough talk like this. Now, though, your right-wing uncle thinks Black is just another Deep State traitor.

TRUMP BEING TRUMP COULD BE THE DEMOCRATS' SECRET WEAPON

I don't think it was a good idea for Nancy Pelosi to tear up her copy of the State of the Union address at the conclusion of the speech. I know Trump refused to shake her hand before the speech began. People on our side will say (correctly) that it's wrong to get upset over torn paper when Trump tears families apart, or they'll argue (also correctly) that Trump gets away with far more divisive acts. But Pelosi is supposed to be the unflappable one in the room. Last night she was trying to beat Trump playing his game, not hers. The clip will show up in GOP campaign ads for the rest of the year.

But I'm hoping this is the last bad moment in a bad week for Democrats -- or the second-last, after Trump's acquittal today. The Iowa caucuses were a debacle (though no one will remember them in November, or even in a week), and Trump got a better-than-expected Gallup poll number (though his job approval is still underwater). Nevertheless, I think this is precisely the peak Trump I was talking about on Sunday. It's possible that what we're seeing from Trump right now is hubris.

There were outreach moments in last night's State of the Union, but when you're asking your wife to hang a medal around Rush Limbaugh's neck on live TV, you've decided that you don't really need much more than the angry Republican base to get elected, and you don't need to be particularly conciliatory even in an election year.

We know from quite a few news reports that Trump is not at all interested in conciliation. After impeachment, he wants to focus on vengeance, not statesmanlike words and deeds with broad appeal. We know this from Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman:

Republicans briefed on Trump’s thinking believe that the president is out for revenge against his adversaries. “It’s payback time,” a prominent Republican told me last week. “He has an enemies list that is growing by the day,” another source said. Names that came up in my conversations with Republicans included Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Mitt Romney, and John Bolton. “Trump’s playbook is simple: go after people who crossed him during impeachment.”

And from Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast, who wrote about Trump's White House lunch with news anchors yesterday:

Much to the disappointment of folks at CNN, nobody at the long table—who included NBC’s Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s David Muir and George Stephanopoulos, and CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan—bothered to ask why the president had gone out of his way to exclude the cable network run by Trump’s former friend Jeff Zucker.

“MSDNC isn’t here as well,” Trump quipped....

Trump ... was sanguine about his participation in the fall presidential debates, saying, ”Yeah, I’ll do it,” even though, he claimed, “the debate commission is filled with a bunch of Never Trumpers.”

... Trump ... promised that the White House will spare no effort in blocking his former national security adviser John Bolton’s book from publication....

We're told the assembled journalists described this as a "chill" Trump. If that's chill -- snubbing CNN, grumbling about the debate commission, boasting about his plans to engage in prior restraint of John Bolton's book -- not-chill Trump is going to be even uglier than usual.

Maybe America is numb to all this by now. Maybe America is lulled by low unemployment and a surging Dow. But I have my doubts -- according to the Real Clear Politics average, only 39.3% of Americans think America is on the right track, while 55.5% think it's on the wrong track. Across all polls, Trump's job disapproval is 7.1 points higher than his job approval -- and if I'm right, this is Trump at his peak of popularity.

If Trump plans to spend more time in the next year punishing John Bolton than trying to improve Americans' lives (though when has he ever really tried to do the latter?), then his numbers are likely to go down, especially if coronavirus weakens an economy that has probably also peaked.

For weeks, the lead voices in the news have been people like Adam Schiff and Jay Sekulow. Now it will be Trump again. When Trump dominates the news cycle, we're reminded of how obnoxious he is. And he's planning to be particularly obnoxious now.

I SURE HOPE THIS OPERATION CHAOS WORKS AS WELL AS THE ORIGINAL ONE

Omigod, we're doomed!

Upstate GOP leaders plotting to meddle in SC Democratic primary by boosting Bernie Sanders

A group of prominent Upstate Republicans are preparing to launch a wide-scale effort this week to encourage GOP voters across South Carolina to vote for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Feb. 29 Democratic primary....

Greenville GOP chairman Nate Leupp, Spartanburg GOP chairman Curtis Smith, Anderson GOP chairwoman Cheryl Cuthrell and the leaders of multiple Tea Party activist groups in the Upstate are behind the effort to undermine the Democratic race, with other officials still considering joining them....

“Bernie Sanders is the most socialistic, liberal candidate running in the Democratic presidential preference primary,” Leupp told The Post and Courier....

The idea is inspired in part by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” in 2008....

Yes, Limbaugh's Operation Chaos still strikes fear in some Democrats' hearts. But notice the date: 2008. How'd that work out in the long run?

First he urged Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton, in order to prolong the primary fight. He got a lot of mainstream media attention -- this story, for instance, in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's crucial Pennsylvania primary victory last week came with the help of a patchwork of political support: working-class voters, seniors, white men, Catholics, women and - maybe even the Great Satan.

Rush Limbaugh may be his real name, but to millions of Democratic grassroots voters, especially on the left, the conservative icon who's been called the most influential radio broadcaster in America reigns as the political Prince of Darkness.

Even more so during a 2008 presidential race in which Limbaugh has assumed a new title, "commander," as he heads a drive dubbed "Operation Chaos," a gleeful and, he argues, increasingly successful effort to wreak havoc with the Democratic primary system and its candidates, Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Limbaugh's effort, which began early this year, is a call to arms urging conservatives and Republican voters to re-register as Democrats - and create chaos in that party's presidential nomination process by casting a vote.

Then he switch it up and urged his Dittoheads not to vote for Clinton. Here's a CNN report on the changeover:

He has publicly urged Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to keep the divisive Democratic nomination fight alive, but talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday he really wants Sen. Barack Obama to be the party's nominee.

"I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees," Limbaugh, among the most powerful voices in conservative radio, said on his program. "I now urge the Democrat superdelegates to make your mind up and publicly go for Obama."

"Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to win -- blue-collar, working-class people," Limbaugh said. "He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that."

How'd that work out for you, Rush?

I guess it worked out fine for him personally -- here was Politico giving him gushing coverage:

... Entering his 20th year on the national airwaves, Rush Limbaugh is having a dandy 2008 cycle.

Regardless of how many votes Limbaugh actually pushed into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s column with his mischief-making “Operation Chaos” plan to encourage his listeners to keep the Democratic primary going, the endeavor was a success in another important way. It reminded the mainstream media and others outside the conservative orbit of the following he commands.

And that the “drive-by media” he so delights in tweaking would recognize his influence enough to put his stunt on the front page, as The Washington Post did last week, underscored another essential fact about the right-wing talk show host: Limbaugh is one heck of a showman....

“In my universe, there is no doubt it worked like a charm,” Limbaugh wrote to Politico in an interview conducted via e-mail last week. “My audience loved it, they participated in it, they had fun with it, as did I.”

But it didn't work electorally, schmuck. You were wrong about the chaos. You were wrong about Obama's electability.

Let's hope this effort is exactly as effective as Limbaugh's original.

AFTER IOWA, HEADS SHOULD ROLL

I'm being told that the app failure that prevented the reporting of results from last night's Iowa Democratic caucuses is the fault of the state party. I think the fish stinks at least partly from the head:

The app that the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on Monday was not properly tested at a statewide scale, said people who were briefed on the app by the state party.

It was quickly put together in just the past two months, said the people, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

And the party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.

We had a year's buildup to this. It was going to be the first real showcase for the Democrats in 2020. It was important not to fuck this up.

But I guess the DNC -- apart from weighing in on the app choice, of course -- ceded most responsibility to the state Democratic Party, whose chair is this guy:

.@MajorCBS asked Iowa Democratic Party Chair @troymprice yesterday if he had any fear about technology glitches or other problems:

“These are probably the most prepared we’ve ever been as a party for these caucuses.” #IowaCaucuses pic.twitter.com/D4unQruCCT

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) February 4, 2020

And on the use of the app, he ceded responsibility to county-level officials.

The state party did not provide any training on how to use the app, [Polk County Democratic Party chair Sean Bagniewski] said, adding that while the caucus trainings are done at the county level, the app itself came from the state level.

Local officials had trouble downloading the app, getting a PIN to log in, and activating it even when they had a PIN, Bagniewski said.

Then, when precinct chairmen tried to call the results in via the hotline, they were placed on hold for as long as two hours, he said.

“When our chairs are calling, it’s a wait time of an hour and a half or two hours. In some cases they have dropped the call,” he said.

In my fantasy, heads roll immediately. The Iowa Democratic Party chair resigns today. So does the head of the DNC, Tom Perez. Someone genuinely smart and reassuring gets Perez's job -- I'm thinking Stacey Abrams.

She immediately announces that the Democratic Party is strongly leaning toward an all-primary system in the future, and is also strongly considering a schedule that no longer places Iowa first. Then she gets to work making sure that the remaining caucus states -- which include another crucial early state, Nevada -- don't have similar problems. If she has any doubts whatsoever, she orders future caucus states to report the way they did in 1988. If that was via landline and nobody has landlines anymore, then she announces right away that the votes will be tallied by hand and be ready when they're ready, because Democrats are going to do this right.

Democrats should demonstrate that they know this was a failure and that they're taking the job seriously. And while I realize that resignations will lead to a lot of "Democrats in Disarray" headlines, putting people in charge who care about competence (and who radiate a sense of caring about competence) would do a lot to dispel the impression that Democrats are woolly-headed bumblers who shouldn't be allowed to run a lemonade stand (which is precisely what the president of the United States is saying this morning, and for once I can't blame him, because Democrats have this coming).

The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the Country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is “Trump”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2020

I mention Abrams, but there are probably subordinates somewhere in the system who are super-competent and long-suffering and would never be considered for the top position because they spend their time mastering the job rather than grabbing for the brass ring. Who was warning the loudest that this debacle was coming? Hire that person. I bet it's someone you'd never consider for a prestige gig, and I bet she'd do a much better job.

ONE WEIRD TRICK THAT DIDN'T SAVE RUSH LIMBAUGH'S LUNGS

Rush Limbaugh has lung cancer.

Talk radio king Rush Limbaugh stunned his 20-million member audience Monday with the announcement he’s been diagnosed with “advanced lung cancer.”

The 69-year-old conservative talk pioneer closed his broadcast with the grim news, saying he will be leaving his golden EIB microphone for treatment, but hopes to return later this week.

As the New York Daily News notes, Limbaugh, who was frequently photographed smoking cigars, downplayed the effects of smoking on a 2015 radio show:

Limbaugh denied second-hand smoke caused any deaths.

“That is a myth. That has been disproven at the World Health Organization and the report was suppressed,” Limbaugh claimed. “There is no fatality whatsoever. There’s no even major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke. It may irritate you, and you may not like it, but it will not make you sick, and it will not kill you.”

... Limbaugh went on to claim “firsthand smoke” isn’t that serious either.

“Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does,” he said. “Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”

On a 2013 show, he claimed he was safe because he switched from cigarettes to cigars as a younger man:

Get this. “People who quit smoking by age 44 tend to live nearly as long as those who never smoked, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Toronto analyzed health and smoking records collected from more than 200,000 Americans, then compared the lifespans of smokers to non-smokers. One of the study findings was predictable: Those who never smoke live a decade longer, on average, than lifetime smokers. But for those who quit — even well into middle age — the study results are encouraging: Men and women who smoke their last butt before turning 44 die just 1 year earlier, on average, than those who never smoke.”

So basically the way you can look at this is if you are smoking and you’re under 44, have at it, go ahead, no problem.

... I started smoking. I was 16. Let’s see, it was 1980, ’81, ’82, somewhere around there when I quit. We played flag football. I worked for the Kansas City Royals, and when the baseball season was over we played — the Royals front office played — flag football, touch football with the Chiefs front office every Thursday afternoon. One day I got a real bad case of bronchitis, almost like walking pneumonia, so I could not smoke a cigarette without coughing spasms.

So I said, “Well, I’m never gonna have a better time than now to quit when I can’t smoke.” So I quit then. So I’m safe, folks. I got out of it long before I hit 44. It’s like I never smoked, because of this research today. (interruption) Yeah, I smoke cigars, but I don’t inhale the cigars. You don’t inhale those. William F. Buckley inhaled his cigars. I kid you not. That was a real man. Mr. Buckley inhaled his cigars. Now, he didn’t smoke ’em all the time, but he was very proud of it. He’d blow smoke rings. He’d exhale smoke. He loved them.

But he inhaled the things.

I’ve never done that.

Limbaugh turned thirty in 1981. So he smoked cigarettes for approximately fifteen years. He said smoking takes fifty years to kill you. He's been smoking either cigarettes or cigars since he was 16, and he's 69 now. That's approximately 53 years.

The switch didn't save him. From the National Cancer Institute:

Do cigars cause cancer and other diseases?

Yes. Cigar smoking causes cancer of the oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, and lung....

What if I don’t inhale the cigar smoke?

Unlike nearly all cigarette smokers, most cigar smokers do not inhale. Although cigar smokers have lower rates of lung cancer, coronary heart disease, and lung disease than cigarette smokers, they have higher rates of these diseases than those who do not smoke cigars.

I should be a good person and say that even though I disagree with him, I wish Limbaugh well in his battle with cancer. Then I remember that he's one of the people most responsible for the toxicity of modern American politics. I remember the viciousness of his attacks on people like Sandra Fluke, whose advocacy of contraception coverage was met with this over several days in 2012:



Yeah, good luck, Rush. But for the good of the country, I hope you never broadcast another radio show or speak in public again.

COLLECTIVE ACTION: TRY IT SOMETIME, AMERICAN JOURNALISTS

Nicely done:

Political journalists have boycotted a briefing at No 10 Downing Street after one of Boris Johnson’s aides banned selected reporters from attending.

The walkout took place after a confrontation inside No 10 in which Lee Cain, Johnson’s most senior communications adviser, tried to exclude reporters from the Mirror, i, HuffPost, PoliticsHome, Independent and others.

Reporters on the invited list were asked to stand on one side of a rug in the foyer of No 10, while those not allowed in were asked by security to stand on the other side.

After Cain told the banned journalists to leave, the rest of the journalists decided to walk out collectively rather than allow Downing Street to choose who scrutinises and reports on the government.

Among those who refused the briefing and walked out were the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, ITV’s Robert Peston and political journalists from Sky News, the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Financial Times and Guardian.

The briefing ... did not happen because of the walkout.

The tactics from No 10 mirror those of Donald Trump in the US, who has been known to try to exclude journalists from reporting on his activities....

Imagine if there'd been a similar response to this:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s quarrel with NPR escalated on Monday after one of the radio network’s reporters was barred from flying on the secretary’s plane during an upcoming trip to Ukraine.

Michele Kelemen, a veteran reporter for the network, was removed from the list of reporters allowed to fly with Pompeo on a trip to Eastern Europe, only days after the secretary reportedly exploded at another NPR reporter for asking questions about Ukraine....

The [State Department] correspondents association concluded that the exclusion was in retaliation for a testy exchange between Pompeo and NPR host Mary Louise Kelly on Friday morning. During a roughly 10-minute interview, Kelly asked Pompeo a number of questions on U.S. policy in Iran and on Pompeo’s involvement in the Ukraine scandal at the center of President Donald Trump’s impeachment. Kelly asked whether Pompeo owed an apology to former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch for her unceremonious ouster from her post in Ukraine....

Pompeo responded tersely and reportedly met with Kelly afterward behind closed doors, yelling at her for asking questions about Ukraine.

“He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine,” Kelly recounted on NPR. “He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence and many others.”

There was no walkout when Kelemen was banned. To be fair, there was a strongly worded statement -- but like all strongly worded statements directed at Republicans, it had no impact at all.

Update: The State Department has removed @NPR correspondent @michelekelemen from Secretary Pompeo's plane for his upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia following Pompeo's criticism of his NPR interview. Statement from the State Department Correspondents' Association: pic.twitter.com/PW1Ykcu30r

— Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) January 27, 2020

You can't have "a respectful, professional relationship" with an administration that hates you if you're not supine. The American media needs to develop some self-respect and stand up for itself.

YOU AND WHAT ARMY, JONI?

Is this supposed to scare us?

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst warned Sunday that Republicans could immediately push to impeach Joe Biden over his work in Ukraine as vice president if he win the White House.

“I think this door of impeachable whatever has been opened,” Ernst said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Joe Biden should be very careful what he’s asking for because, you know, we can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, right the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him.’”

Let's not rehash the Biden-Burisma story. Let's just talk about the practicalities of trying to do this.

Who impeaches? The House. Who controls the House right now? Democrats. If Joe Biden wins the presidential election, who will have won the popular vote? Biden, because it's Republicans, not Democrats, who can win the presidency while losing the popular vote. And if Biden wins the popular vote, how will Democrats do in House races? Well enough to hold the House and maybe even gain seats.

So there simply won't be an immediate impeachment if Biden wins. It's not like four years ago, when Republicans controlled the House and were promising endless investigations in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory. I don't doubt that they'd like to impeach Biden. They just can't.

Ernst is hoping you haven't figured all this out. On behalf of her president, she's trying to deter Iowans from voting for the Democratic candidate Trump regards as his most dangerous opponent.

Except that Trump isn't sure anymore that Biden is the candidate he needs to fear most. Here was Trump over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, according to The New York Times:

... Mr. Trump’s anger over impeachment, and his antipathy toward his possible 2020 election opponents — in particular, Michael R. Bloomberg — spilled into public view....

Sunday night the president and Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and a latecomer to the Democratic race who is not on the ballot in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, would face off in costly Super Bowl ads. But Mr. Trump, who seems to be increasingly fixated on Mr. Bloomberg and the fortune he is vowing to spend on the election, apparently could not wait.

In a tweet sent just after midnight, Mr. Trump tried to implicate Mr. Bloomberg in a conspiracy theory he has used in an apparent attempt to sow divisions in the Democratic presidential field.

Many of the ads you are watching were paid for by Mini Mike Bloomberg. He is going nowhere, just wasting his money, but he is getting the DNC to rig the election against Crazy Bernie, something they wouldn’t do for @CoryBooker and others. They are doing it to Bernie again, 2016.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2020

... More tweets about Mr. Bloomberg followed, culminating in an interview with Sean Hannity, the Fox News personality and presidential confidant, that was taped on Saturday but aired three hours before the game.

In the interview, the president reiterated a false claim he had sent in a late-night tweet: that Mr. Bloomberg had demanded a box to stand on should he participate in a Democratic candidates’ debate.

... “You know, now he wants a box for the debates to stand on. O.K., it’s O.K., there’s nothing wrong,” Mr. Trump said. “You can be short. Why should he get a box to stand on, O.K.? He wants a box for the debates. Why should he be entitled to that? Really. Does that mean everyone else gets a box?”

The leader of the free world, ladies and gentlemen.

Mike Bloomberg has a colossal ego. This won't fluster him the way it flustered Marco Rubio. (It would be good if it offended more people, but contempt for short people is a widely acceptable prejudice.)

I have problems with Bloomberg, but I'm delighted that he's getting under Trump's skin. I pissed some of you off by making it clear that I'm ready to get behind Bernie Sanders if necessary, but I'm also ready to get behind Bloomberg, who's the antithesis of Sanders in many ways. Whatever it takes. Bloomberg would at least be good on reproductive rights, climate change, and guns. The taxes on the rich he's proposed might be modest by comparison with the ones proposed by Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but they're more than I expected. (You know the rich will get another tax cut in a second Trump term.)

Maybe in a few months we'll be hearing about Republicans' plans to impeach Bloomberg or Sanders or Warren. But they'll have no opportunity if the Democratic nominee wins the White House.

IS THIS PEAK TRUMP?

Some perspective:

[Liberals'] hand-wringing about their structural disadvantages ignores the advantages that Trump keeps giving them — the fact that in the best economy in 20 years he can’t stop making people hate him, can’t stop missing opportunities to expand his base, can’t stop forcing vulnerable Republicans to kiss his ring and thereby weaken their own prospects.

Impeachment has only extended this pattern, with Republicans voting to shorten the trial even when it makes them look like lackeys, and too cowed in many cases to even take the acquit-but-still-condemn approach that Democrats took with Bill Clinton. So now most of the country thinks the president did something wrong, most of the country thinks Republicans are protecting him, and most of the country is open, entirely open, to voting Trump and the most vulnerable Republican senators out in nine short months.

... American liberals are fortunate to have Trump as their Great Foe. If he were merely as disciplined and competent as Boris Johnson or Viktor Orban, to choose leaders with whom he has a few things in common, he would be coasting to re-election.

I withheld the name of the pundit who wrote those words, because I assumed you wouldn't read them if I told you in advance. It's Ross Douthat. He's right about this. Trump may appear triumphant now, but he's very beatable.

The gloomy response to the failure of impeachment is: Now Trump will be free to ask every country in the world to sabotage the election. But it's not at all clear that he'll have sufficient mental focus to do that. It seems more likely to me that he'll fixate on how he can punish Mitt Romney for voting in favor of witnesses. (Mitch McConnell will talk Trump out of trying to punish Susan Collins because she's up for reelection in a purple state.) Or he could just as easily get distracted by a feud with a TV news presenter or random celebrity. The Daily Beast has just published an excerpt from Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng's forthcoming book Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump’s Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington that reminds us of Trump's many feuds with media figures -- Meghan McCain ("One confidant to whom the president vented his grievances ... put the phone on mute, hit the speakerphone button, and allowed others present to hear President Trump bash Meghan McCain’s cheeks and ... her waistline"), Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Katy Tur (whose biological father is trans and who, according to Markay and Suebsaeng, is referred to by Trump as "that bitch with the tranny dad"). A different man would consolidate power now. Trump might just obsess over defeating Adam Schiff.

Trump's poll numbers have improved somewhat during the impeachment period, but so did Bill Clinton's: According to Gallup, Clinton's job approval rating, which ranged from 54% to 62% in 1997, increased to 69% in late January 1998, just after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. After nearly a year consistently in the 60s, Clinton got his best job approval number, 73%, just as he was being impeached, in a Gallup poll conducted December 19 and 20, 1998. As he being acquitted, Clinton registered at 68% in a Gallup survey; by April, however, he was at 59%, and his numbers stayed in the high 50s and low 60s -- still impressive, but well below his peak -- from then until Election Day 2000.

If Trump reverts to his pre-Ukraine-scandal numbers, he's in trouble in November. I think there's a good chance he will revert -- Trump's approval numbers seem to go down when the news cycle is focused on some new outrageous act or utterance of his. For a couple of months we've been focused on his past acts, but we're mostly watching members of Congress debate him. Now he can freely hijack the news cycle any time he pleases, with behavior that will cheer the base and disgust everyone else. All this as it dawns on non-deplorable America that the arrogant blowhard got away with a crime most of the country thinks he committed. As I said on Twitter yesterday, he's now President O.J. -- although he doesn't even believe that the acts he was tried for were crimes.

OR ASSUREDLY WE SHALL ALL HANG SEPARATELY

Stop. Just stop. Now is not the time for this:

Hillary Clinton said on Friday in a podcast interview that Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters did not do enough to unify the Democratic Party after the prolonged 2016 primary, calling the behavior of his supporters “distressing” and saying it affected the general election.

“All the way up until the end, a lot of people highly identified with his campaign were urging people to vote third party, urging people not to vote,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview with Emily Tisch Sussman for her podcast “Your Primary Playlist.” “It had an impact.”

Mrs. Clinton also drew a sharp distinction between her efforts in 2008 to bring the party together after her bruising primary battle with Barack Obama and the efforts by Mr. Sanders in 2016: “Night and day,” she said....

Mrs. Clinton already caused a stir last week when footage from an upcoming documentary revealed her saying of Mr. Sanders, “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.” When promoting the film, she initially declined to tell The Hollywood Reporter whether she would endorse or campaign for Mr. Sanders if he were the nominee; hours later, she clarified on Twitter that “I will do whatever I can to support our nominee.”

I don't want to silence Clinton. She's free to speak out, hold forth, endorse a candidate, whatever. But for the sake of the country, she should use this power wisely. This is not the time to be dividing people -- not when we need to come together. And if you say that she may as well be divisive because Sanders and his campaign are, well, your mother probably told you when you were in second grade that two wrongs don't make a right, and she was correct.

Hillary shouldn't continue sniping at someone who might well be the Democratic nominee -- and his backers need to stop doing what they did at a campaign event last night:

... three of Sanders’ supporters in Congress, Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal, and Ilhan Omar, came on stage to discuss policy with local activist Dionna Langford. When Langford mentioned that “someone by the name of Hillary Clinton” recently remarked that “nobody likes” Sanders, the crowd booed. It seemed cathartic. Langford tried to reign in the conversation. "We're not gonna boo, we're not gonna boo,” she said. “We're classy here.”

Tlaib interrupted. “I'll boo. Booo!” she said. "You all know I can't be quiet.” Jayapal grabbed her hand and laughed, seemingly trying to get her to tone it down. "The haters will shut up on Monday when we win,” Tlaib said. The crowd loved it.

Michael Moore, at the same event, was also not helping:

"The fact that ... the DNC will not allow Cory Booker on that stage, will not allow Julian Castro on that stage, but they're gonna let Mike Bloomberg on that stage because he's got a billion fucking dollars!" Moore said, drawing yet more boos from the crowd. "I'm sorry. Those days are over. Those days are over."

An audience member shouted, "Fuck Bloomberg!" Others responded, "Yeah!"

... Moore didn't leave it at that. He then mocked a recent television advertisement by Joe Biden characterizing the former vice president as a safe choice. "I'm like, what? That's how low the bar is right now? You just have to be safe? You don't have to be on work release? You're not on a list of offenders? You're just safe?"

Then he really dug in the knife.

"I’m here to tell you, Joe Biden, here’s who's not safe: those who voted to send us to invade the nation of Iraq. You did that, Joe Biden. You’re not safe," Moore said. "Every time we have run a Democrat who voted for war — [John] Kerry, Hillary and now Biden — we’ve lost. We lose when we put these Democrats on the ballot in November. I'm tired of losing. Aren't you tired of losing?"

Followed by this:

So proud of my longtime friend from Michigan who spoke the truth last night at the Bernie rally in Clive, Iowa. The audience booed Hillary, then somebody tried to shoosh them, and #Rashida said don’t shoosh them — boo Hillary and anyone else who doesn’t speak the truth. pic.twitter.com/cNjrV5mpAF

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 1, 2020

Now is not the time. The obviously guilty president of the United States is about to be acquitted in an impeachment trial -- and this is what the candidates running to replace him, and the candidate who ran against him four years ago, are doing? Forming a circular firing squad? Really?

Stop it -- all of you. We need to concentrate our anger on the Republican in the White House and the Republicans in other offices. If you're Team Nobody But Sanders, you're hurting America. If you're Team Anybody But Sanders, you're hurting America. We need to row in the same direction.

HAVE YOU PEOPLE LEARNED NOTHING?

Some Democrats are too stupid to breathe:

A small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention.

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

... it is possible [Sanders] could arrive at the convention with the most delegates — but without enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. It is also possible that he and Elizabeth Warren, a fellow progressive, could arrive at the convention in second and third place, but with more delegates combined than the frontrunner.

And so these folks are discussing the possibility of making an eleventh-hour change to restore full first-ballot voting rights to superdelegates -- now called "automatic delegates" -- after previously agreeing, under pressure from Sanders supporters, not to do this. Do I have to explain what a terrible idea this is? And why you shouldn't want it to happen even if you detest Sanders?

Democrats need to bring together as many voters as possible once a nominee is in place. Sanders supporters are already deeply suspicious of the Democratic establishment; many of them believe they were cheated out of the 2016 nomination. So instead of working to win their trust, these DNC members are loudly proclaiming (within earshot of a reporter from Politico, where this story appeared): "Yes, I think we should cheat this year. Anything to keep that damn socialist off the ballot."

If you want to guarantee a massive vote for Jill Stein or Tulsi Gabbard or whoever is this year's designated third-party lefty, then yes, this is exactly what you should do.

I should note that even the people behind this scheme don't think it will happen.

Even proponents of the change acknowledge it is all but certain not to gain enough support to move past these initial conversations.

But the fact that you clowns have allowed this to go public means that you've already done some of the damage you'd do if you could actually carry this cockamamie scheme out. Now every suspicious Berner can point to this Politico story and say, "See? The neoliberal bastards are cheating again!" Even if it never happens. Nice work.