Americans Are Largely Unaware That, As A Country, We're Doing Worse And Worse-- And There Is No Political Solution In Sight... At Least Not For The Next Few Years

In his NY Times column yesterday, that the U.S. is #28... and dropping. And he wasn't talking about soccer. He wrote that "The newest Social Progress Index... finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s." It's worth noting that Brazil and Hungary have also elected fascist-type leaders similar to Trump.

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being-- nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more-- to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th-- having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.

...The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.

Make sense of the moment.

The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access... and lags in sharing political power equally among all citizens. America ranks a shameful No. 100 in discrimination against minorities.

The data for the latest index predates Covid-19, which has had a disproportionate impact on the United States and seems likely to exacerbate the slide in America’s standing. One new study suggests that in the United States, symptoms of depression have risen threefold since the pandemic began-- and poor mental health is associated with other risk factors for well-being.

That's what neoliberal policies have wrought-- and what Trumpism has exacerbated. If if we get rid of Trump, we still have one of the worst examples of neoliberalism in American politics sitting in the Oval Office. Dartmouth economist David Blanchflower told Kristof that "Rising distress and despair are largely American phenomenon not observed in other advanced countries." Kristof suggests we "wake up, for we are no longer the country we think we are."

You think Trump is going to resign or even seriously consider resigning? It would be a smart move for him, since he could make a deal with Pence-- who would get to be "president" for a couple of months or weeks-- to pardon him and his churlish family. But he won't. He'll fight to the last second and then refuse to give up the White House until Biden pardons him. How's that possible? In David Remnick's words, "Trump is who he has always been, and the details that we learn with every passing day merely fill in the portrait with sharper focus and more lurid colors. The man who lied about the nature of the novel coronavirus to the American people (but confided in Bob Woodward) is the same man who, as a real-estate huckster, used to say that the best way to hype a new building was to 'just give them the old Trump bullshit.' Deception is his brand." It's worth reading Remnick's take on RAGE-- the nightmare presidency that doesn't want to let us wake up from. "As he proves almost daily, Trump is capable of saying or doing anything to win. And if he doesn’t win, the presumption that he will hand over power without some sort of duplicity is far from assured."

Trump’s Presidency has been appalling–– but not unpredictably so. That he would bring misery and division to this country should have been obvious from the start. Flagrantly corrupt and instinctually autocratic, he immediately set about threatening democratic values and the rule of law, while encouraging autocrats abroad and white nationalists at home. He has aroused hatred for the free press and slimed the patriotism of everyone from John McCain to John Lewis. It is a painful thing to say, but the evidence assaults us daily: Trump is a miserable human being. Ask his sister, a retired federal judge; in a taped conversation with the President’s niece, she refers to him as "cruel." It is the rare adviser or satrap who leaves the White House and does not hasten to write a memoir or speak to the press with the intention of sounding a common alarm, that Trump poses a threat to national security even more profound than the news-weary public can imagine. Woodward reports that the former director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, came to believe, more and more, that the Russians had something on Trump. "How else to explain the President’s behavior?" Woodward writes. "Coats could see no other explanation."

“So you just had to deal with it,” Woodward quotes Mattis as saying, about the situation inside Trump’s White House. “It was, how do you govern this country and try to keep this experiment alive for one more year?” Mattis says he resigned only when Trump went “beyond stupid to felony stupid” and made an abrupt decision to withdraw troops fighting ISIS.

Trump’s reaction to the book has been Trumpian. He gave Woodward eighteen interviews, often calling Woodward at home at night just to deepen the hole he began to dig at more formal sessions in the Oval Office. Woodward taped the conversations with the President’s knowledge. But, as a way to cover all bases, Trump tweeted last month, “The Bob Woodward book will be a FAKE, as always, just as many of the others have been.” And, of course, he has now tried to pick at the critical thread that the reporter should have published his remarks about the dangers of covid-19 earlier. “Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”

The executive in charge of saving lives was, and is, Donald Trump, not Bob Woodward. And the President’s delays and denials insured that the American response, compared with that of other nations, would be tragic. William Haseltine, the chairman and president of access Health International and a world-renowned biologist, told CNN, “How many people could have been saved out of the hundred and ninety thousand who have died? My guess is a hundred and eighty thousand of those. We have killed a hundred and eighty thousand of our fellow-Americans because we have not been honest with the truth.”

...Early in his term, there were moments when Trump would seemingly abandon his customary venom and wildness and do something ordinary, such as read a bland speech from a prepared text. The spectacle would be so striking that we’d hear commentators say such things as, “This is the night that Donald Trump became President of the United States.” Meaning that there was half a chance that he would now behave somewhere within the bounds of sanity and decency. There was never any chance of that happening. Trump is who he has always been. The rest is details. And he is not going anywhere until he’s compelled to do so.

Hearing AOC's Inspiring Floor Speech About Ted Yoho's And Roger Williams' Assault On Her Shouldn't Be Just Read-- It Should Be Heard

AOC's speech should stand alone and there is no man nor any woman who should not hear it in full. In the words of New Yorker editor David Remnick, in was a rare example of the kind of "rhetorical dynamism long ago vanished from the hallways and chambers of the United States Congres." She called out a boor and a bully in front of all his friends and colleagues in Congress, someone who should have never have been elected to Congress to begin with, someone who voted-- along with just 3 of his vicious extremist collaborators-- against making lynching a crime. We covered the confrontation before her speech.

Remnick noted that Yoho's pretend-"apology" and lack of remorse by quoting his own speech: "No one was accosted, bullied, or attacked. This was a brief policy discussion, plain and simple, and we have our differences... The fact still remains, I am not going to apologize for something I didn’t say." Remnick noted that "With confused logic, Yoho invoked his wife and daughters and said that he objected to Ocasio-Cortez’s views because he had experienced poverty when he was young. 'I cannot apologize for my passion or for loving my God, my family, and my country,' he said. It was unclear who had asked him to apologize for his religious faith, his patriotism, or his love of family, but he was ardent all the same. In all, Yoho’s was at best a deflective, jittery performance that was in no wise enhanced by his spokesman, Brian Kaveney, who e-mailed the Washington Post to say that Yoho 'did not call Rep. Ocasio-Cortez what has been reported in The Hill or any name for that matter. . .  Instead, he made a brief comment to himself as he walked away summarizing what he believes her policies to be: bullshit.'"

The politics of our moment are dominated by a bully of miserable character, a President who has failed to contain a pandemic through sheer indifference, who has fabricated a reëlection campaign based on bigotry and the deliberate inflammation of division. His language is abusive, his attitude toward women disdainful. Trump is all about himself: his needs, his ego, his self-preservation. Along the way he has created a Republican Party in his own image. Imitators like Ted Yoho slavishly follow his lead. On the House floor Thursday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exemplified a different sort of character. She defended not only herself; she defended principle and countless women. And all in just a few short minutes on the floor of the House of Representatives.

The coordinated forces of hard core conservatism and special interests just an immense sum of money trying to destroy AOC in her own district. New York has 27 congressional districts and quite a bit of money is being spent in contested primaries-- like the one that saw AOC ally Jamaal Bowman defeat Pelosi ally Eliot Engel-- and in red hot general election contests-- like the one in Syracuse where Trump enabler John Katko is desperately clinging to a seat that has slipped out of his grasp. Yet known of the other 26 districts witnessed the amount of vitriol and hatred-- nor the amount of cold hard cash-- thrown against AOC. Nearly $16 million was spent in NY-14, far more than anywhere else in NY. They put in a life-long Republican and Wall Street whore, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, pretending to be a Democrat to run against her and she raised over $3 million from fellow fat cats. One, Dan Backer, the founder of both the Stop Hillary PAC and the sleazy Trumpist Great America PAC and treasurer of the Conservative Action Fund, the Citizen Revolt SuperPAC, the Special Operations Speaks PAC and the Tea Party Leadership Fund, started a PAC devoted specifically to defeat AOC-- Stop the AOC PAC. Although Backer put over $30,000 of his own into it and got a couple of cronies to write checks-- like Shaun McCutcheon-- the attempt to smear Ocasio-Cortez fell flat. AOC won the primary-- overwhelmingly:

• AOC- 72.6%
• Michelle Caruso Cabrera- 19.5%
• Badrun Khan- 5.4%
• Sam Sloan- 2.5%

In the general election, she will face Caruso Cabrera again, this time running on the Serve America Movement Party, as well as the official GOP/Conservative Party nominee John Cummings, who has raised $3,291,224. But these nefarious political and economic forces have largely moved on from NY-14 to MN-05, to take aim, as we noted last week, at AOC-ally Ilhan Omar. Millions are being funneled into Minneapolis to try to do to Ilhan what they failed to do to AOC. There is a similar smear campaign against Rashida Tlaib in Detroit, where Republicans David Dudenhoefer and Al Lemmo (a wealthy self-funder) have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lying about her, in the hopes of seeing establishment conservative Democrat Brenda Jones, Detroit's City Council President, beat her in the primary. The primary is August 4. If you'd like to contribute to Rashid, Ilhan and AOC all in one shot, you can find the three of them by clicking on the Blue America 2020 Worthy Incumbents thermometer on the right.



UPDATE: An Open Letter to Ted Yoho, From a Former Congressional Intern

Rep. Ted Yoho, as one of your former Congressional interns, I’m incredibly disappointed and appalled not only by your misogynistic behavior towards Rep. AOC and women at large, but your dismissive behavior as a whole.

I used to look up to you, for your role as a former Chairman on the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. As someone who intends to pursue a similar career path, I should have known better when you asked me whether or not I considered having a family instead. When you voted against making lynching a federal crime. When you don’t believe the Civil Rights Act is constitutional. When I had to personally ask you what your thoughts on the separation of children and families were because you were silent for days while hundreds of constituents-- mothers, nurses, professors, teachers, students-- demanded answers. And when your reply to me was to stop buying into everything the media said, you dismissed me, too. The unwanted pats on the back didn’t help either.

Congressman Yoho, you may not have directly uttered “f — b — ” to AOC, but you accosted her by telling her she was “disgusting, crazy, out of her mind, dangerous.” You denied and tried softening what reporters have corroborated. You tried to justify your actions by using poverty as a back up. That is inexcusable.

You’re right about one thing though, Congressman Yoho-- women are dangerous. We will not stand by as you, and other members of Congress, continue propagating this behavior. The reason for this post is to encourage others-- former congressional interns, staff, anyone who might be looking for a voice, who might be afraid-- to speak out about these kinds of experiences. It’s time to hold our elected officials accountable for this behavior.

Rep. AOC, thank you for using your voice to embolden and empower individuals to #SpeakOut.

Also, Congressman Yoho, don’t forget to pay your interns.

Historic November Landslide In The Making?

Utah has a couple of blue and purple counties-- Salt Lake and Summit (which Hillary won in 2016) and Grand which she kind of won too-- 1,934 for Hillary and 1,932 for Señor Trumpanzee, a 43.4% to 43.4% tie, with #NeverTrump conservative Evan McMullin and Libertarian Gary Johnson getting most of the balance. In 2018 Mitt Romney lost both Summit and Grand to Jenny Wilson, a Democrat. And a putative Democrat, Blue Dog Ben McAdams narrowly ousted (50.1% to 49.9%) Republican incumbent Mia Love in UT-04, where the D+9 performance of Salt Lake County overcame the massive red tide in Utah, Sanpete and Juab counties.

But we all know that Utah is a beet red, blood red state. Utah voted for FDR and Truman and in 1964 backed LBJ against Barry Goldwater, 219,628 (54.9%) to 180,682 (45.1%). But 1964 was the last time Utah gave its electoral votes to a Democrat. In fact, since 2000, Obama's first race was the only time Utah gave over 30% of it;'s vote to a Democrat. McCain beat him 62.6% to 34.4%. Usually, Democrats get around a quarter of the presidential vote in Utah-- worse than in the Deep South. And that's why the new poll from UtahPolicy.com was so shocking yesterday:

If it gets so bad for Trump that he loses Utah, he'll wind up the way Strom Thurmond did when he ran for president in 1948 on the Dixiecrat Party and won 4 states. The electoral map looked very different then and current Republican bastions now-- like Texas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Georgia and Utah-- were deep, deep blue. But these were the states that went for Thurmond in 1948 and will go for Trump in November:

• Alabama

Thurmond- 79.75%
Truman- not on the ballot
Dewey- 19.04%

• Louisiana

Thurmond- 49.07%
Truman- 32.75%
Dewey- 14.45%

• Mississippi

Thurmond- 87.17%
Truman- 10.09%
Dewey- 2.62%

• South Carolina

Thurmond- 71.97
Truman- 24.14%
Dewey- 3.78

Thurmond also did pretty well in Arkansas, Florida and Georgia. He wasn't on the ballot in Utah. Anyway, as I was saying, if Trump can't win Utah... the national election results in November will be pretty gratifying for normal Americans. How could that happen, though? Well, ever hear of a U.S. president conspiring-- relatively openly-- with Russia and Saudi Arabia to drive up the price of gasoline at the pump? Yesterday the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia and Russia ended their oil price war on Sunday by finalizing a deal to make the biggest oil production cuts in history, following pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to support an energy sector ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic." That may give economically hard-pressed American voters some food for thought... at least about where Trump's priorities really are. Cliff Krauss, writing for the NY Times, noted that with "Trump, facing a re-election campaign, a plunging economy and American oil companies struggling with collapsing prices, [he] took the unusual step of getting involved after the two countries entered a price war a month ago. Mr. Trump had made an agreement a key priority. It was unclear, however, whether the cuts would be enough to bolster prices. Before the coronavirus crisis, 100 million barrels of oil each day fueled global commerce, but demand is down about 35 percent. While significant, the cuts agreed to on Sunday still fall far short of what is needed to bring oil production in line with demand... While the planned cut is slightly smaller than a tentative pact reached last Thursday, the deal should bring some relief to struggling economies in the Middle East and Africa and global oil companies, including American firms that directly and indirectly employ 10 million workers."

Higher gas prices are never popular but Trump is counting on the fact that most Americans aren't using gas now and that they might not notice him driving up the price. Unfortunately for him though, most Americans probably agree with the New Yorker's David Remnick that Trump is the preëxisting condition in the Oval Office that has made everything worse than it had to be. "From the start," he wrote, "the Trump Administration has waged war on science and expertise, making a great nation peculiarly vulnerable to the foreseeable public-health calamity of the coronavirus. When has New York known a grimmer week? The sirens are unceasing. Funeral parlors are overwhelmed. Refrigerator trailers are now in service as morgues, and can be found parked outside hospitals all over town. We’re told that there are 'glimmers of hope,' that hospital admissions are slowing, that the curve is flattening. Yet the misery is far from over... Across the country, the coronavirus continues to ravage the confined and the vulnerable, from inmates of the Cook County jail, in Chicago, to workers at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Camilla, Georgia. Data from a variety of reliable sources show that African-Americans, who suffer disproportionately from poverty, inadequate housing, limited access to good health care, and chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension, are dying from covid-19 at horrific rates. The pandemic is an event in the natural history of our species, but it is also a political episode. Its trajectory is shaped by policy measures specific to particular governments. The fact that the United States is experiencing tremendous losses-- that it has far more covid-19 cases than any other country in the world-- relates to a number of collective risk factors and preëxisting conditions. The most notable one is to be found in the Oval Office." Remnick joked that from the beginning of his term, Trump "practiced social distancing from anyone who told him what he didn’t want to hear."

The coronavirus has inflicted a level of pain that is deep and global. And yet many nations, from South Korea to Germany, have done far better at responding to it than the United States has. The reasons for the American failing include a lack of preparation, delayed mobilization, insufficient testing, and a reluctance to halt travel. The Administration, from its start, has waged war on science and expertise and on what Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon called “the administrative state.” The results are all around us. Trump has made sure that a great nation is peculiarly vulnerable to a foreseeable public-health calamity.

...The knowledge that we are led so ineptly and with such brazen self-regard is humiliating to millions of American citizens, if not to their leader. Trump gives himself “a ten” for his performance and berates any reporter who dares to challenge that premise. “You should say, ‘Congratulations! Great job!’ ” he told one, “instead of being so horrid in the way you ask the question!”

A nation facing a common threat normally pulls together, but Trump’s reflex is always to divide; he has invoked a multiplying litany of enemies. He directs his fire at the Obama Administration, at the World Health Organization, and at governors from Albany to Sacramento, with their constant pleas for ventilators, test kits, and face masks. The Democrats are to blame for everything. Early in the year, as the pandemic grew, they “diverted” the attention of the federal government, because “every day was all about impeachment,” as Trump’s unfailing loyalist Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, put it.

At a time of medical peril and economic devastation, the President heads to the White House briefing room and frames the terms of his reëlection campaign. It is a campaign of cynicism and authoritarian impulses. To begin with, he has made it clear that he does not approve of efforts to make voting easier in November. Why should he? He takes a dim view of early voting, voting by mail, and same-day registration. Such reforms, he complains, would produce “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Let's hope. As Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) told DWT readers a few hours ago, "Last week, Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.  I will support him wholeheartedly, with no reservations. As many of you know, I supported Elizabeth Warren in the primaries.  Her leadership in our current crisis, as exemplified by her April 8 NYT op-ed, shows why she could have been one of our greatest presidents. After she dropped out of the race, I switched my Michigan primary vote to Bernie Sanders. Why? Because Senator Sanders and I agree on the need to transform our country in bold ways, including:  

•  Medicare for All
• A Green New Deal
• Real worker voice and power in individual companies, industries and society

Bernie didn’t just run two successive presidential campaigns-- he inspired a movement that will have deep impacts on American policy and politics for years to come. Now, Bernie, Elizabeth and I will join with other progressives to create a veritable tsunami of organizing around our priorities to help sweep Joe Biden to power. The more we contribute, the more we help shape the fall campaign with open hearts and our best ideas, the more a Biden presidency will move America towards dignity and justice for all."

Ageism

Biden's Not Passing Any Torches Voluntarily by Nancy Ohanian

Almost two decades ago, I was talking with a guy I worked for, a guy with tremendous accomplishments who I both respected and liked. But I noticed he was slowing down a little and there were a couple of moments where I could see the senility starting to creep into the conversation. He's in his 90s now and I ran into him the other day, He seemed on top of his game and as fresh and spry as he had ever been. I'm not a doctor but digging around online I found this helpful explanation: "When people get older, their bodies and minds slow down. In the best cases, the decline is barely perceptible, and these folks stay as sharp as tacks through their 90s or even 100s. They can walk well and get around independently like pros. In fact, some active seniors weightlift, bike and bungee jump way past the age anyone thought they could. In the worst cases, seniors may develop dementia and be unable to remember the names of their loved ones and what happened yesterday. They may still be strong and physical, or they could have mobility issues. Many seniors fall into a middle ground between these two extremes, and it is called senility... If you become occasionally forgetful or can’t remember the name of your co-worker from 10 or 20 years ago, that’s normal. It could just be part of senility, or the aging process. Other common symptoms of senility include occasionally:

• Stumbling to find or use a word
• Forgetting events or things
• Forgetting the names of acquaintances or people you know/knew casually
• Straining to remember the particulars of a long-ago conversation or even a conversation or event from last year.

The key word here is occasionally! Heck, even people in their 20s and 30s may come up against this kind of thing... [T]hese changes are as perfectly normal as graying hair. They can also be just as dismaying, if not more so... If you’re wondering whether you have dementia or senility, a useful question is this: 'Is it affecting your daily life?' In other words, is not being able to remember the details of a few conversations from 10 years ago impairing your ability to cook? Probably not. On the other hand, not being able to remember where the food is every day or not being able to buy food does impair your ability to cook."

When I ran into Bernie in Burlington a few months ago he was totally cooking. We talked for a few moments about James Madison High School where we were both students. He recalled that Chuck Schumer, who, unlike Bernie, was there when I was. Bernie seemed fit as a fiddle and able to slide right behind the Resolute Desk and start-- well achieving this.

I don't get that same idea about some of the octogenarians in Congress, like Pelosi and Hoyer, nor about Biden or Trump. AOC, tased a little about it in her interview with David Remnick for the New Yorker this week.

David Remnick: Well, when you came to Congress, did you have a plan? How you wanted to be? What you wanted to push forward? How you wanted to communicate?

AOC: I think in some parts—how I wanted to communicate, yes. And I think for me, over all, the plan was to try to expand our national debate and reframe our understanding of issues, because I felt as though that was something that wasn’t being done enough, especially on the Democratic side, for Democrats.

We don’t know how to talk about our own issues in ways that I think are convincing, so we fall into Republican frames all the time. And we’re too often on the defense, we’re too often afraid of our own values and sticking up for them. And I feel like we run away from our convictions too much. And so one of the things that I wanted to do was to hold a strong line, and redefine our values, and remind people that I think what we need to be doing right now is coming home as a party. I don’t think we should be afraid of being the party of F.D.R. I don’t think we should be afraid of being the party of working people. And it feels to me that at some point we did start becoming afraid of those things.

DR: And became the party of what instead?

AOC: I think we became the party of hemming and hawing and trying to be all things to everybody. And it’s not to say that we need to exclude people, but it’s to say that we don’t have to be afraid of having a clear message. To say, we believe in the human dignity of all people. We believe that health care should be a right. We believe that all people should be paid a living wage. We believe that, as our economy evolves, it’s time to expand public education beyond K through twelve, to K through sixteen, K through college, or K through vocational. And what we call bold agendas, or Republicans call socialist, are things that they’ve always called socialist. And [we should] wear it, understand that that’s what they’re going to say, but don’t run away from the actual policies that can transform people’s lives... I’ve been pretty shocked with the concentration of power internally-- not just the influence that lobbyists have, which I think a lot of people kind of understand and see-- but how the actual rules within Congress have changed over the years to put, I think, an insane amount of power in a handful of people within even just the House of Representatives.

DR: Are we talking about the House Speaker? The majority leadership in the Senate?

AOC: The Speaker, leadership, committee chairs . . . Congress used to function in a way where each member used to have much more power as an individual than they do now. And over the years the rules have changed to kind of consolidate power, to a very large degree, with the Speaker, with the Minority Leader, et cetera. In fact, Justin Amash, who just resigned from the Republican Party, congressman from Michigan, made this same exact point when he decided to leave the Republican Party-- the Republican caucus, rather.

...DR: You worked for Bernie Sanders. How do you think he did? Is he too old?

AOC: I don’t think that! I don’t think it’s about being too old.

DR: You can’t be too old in this situation? I mean, let’s face it, we’re looking at two guys who, going in, going in to the Presidency-- Biden and Sanders-- they’d be older than Ronald Reagan coming out.

AOC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think that, when it comes to age, I think age gets used as a proxy for capacity. And so I think there are some folks that are of a certain age where you can kind of question their capacity.

DR: AOC: I think Donald Trump is a perfect example.

AOC: [Laughs.] I don’t think he’s all there.

DR: Joe Biden?

AOC: I think Joe Biden, his performance on the stage kind of raised some questions with respect to that. But I don’t want to say, just because someone is seventy-nine, they can’t or shouldn’t run for President. I don’t want to use those proxies, a number as a proxy for capacity. I think you have to assess a person’s capacity on a case-by-case basis.

DR: What makes Joe Biden “not there” for you? And if he were to get the nomination-- or a centrist of any kind, center-left, however he’s defining himself, but certainly a center figure in the Democratic Party-- how should progressives behave?

AOC: Well, it’s not just about being centrist, per se. It’s, when you are struggling to talk about segregationists, and you err on the side of discussing them in glowing terms, that is a big problem. I think struggling in talking about women’s rights is a big issue. Struggling to convey respect for women in this day and age is a big issue, I think those are systemic issues. Like, those are very deep. Those are not gaffes. They are problems. And so it’s before you even get to, where are you on public college and where are you on a living wage, I think, just, like, where are you on understanding the people that live in this country?

DR: I guess what his supporters would say-- and even you could make this argument-- is, when you take somebody who’s had a long career, and they were living in times of old standards of speech, political reference, mistakes, when are they disqualified? And when is that just part of the package? Because you’re twenty-nine, and, let’s say we’re sitting here, or somebody’s sitting here with you, in twenty years, and you’re running for President. It’s possible that you’ll do everything perfectly for the next twenty years and make no mistakes. But maybe not likely. How do we hold people accountable for old standards of the way people addressed each other, and the way they were physically with each other? In Joe Biden’s case. Busing itself was certainly an incredibly complicated issue at the time.

AOC: So I think the No. 1 indicator on this is, does the person know how to apologize? And if you don’t know how to apologize for praising segregationists, then that’s a red flag already, because I think people are very forgiving on that. I think people understand that over the course of a career, as the country evolves, our politics will evolve.

But if we approach past mistakes with defensiveness, then that, I think, is indicative of a problem. Because if you’re defending a past position that the country has moved on from, then it calls into question your judgment for the present.

It's worth taking a look at the way Alex Shephard wrote about the fight Pelosi's in the middle of with the younger activist member of her caucus. Yesterday, writing for the New Republic about how her feud with these freshmen reveals a great deal about her approach to leadership and her disinclination to use her power, to the point that she has to be viewed as being completely risk-adverse.

The rift between Pelosi and her left-flank says much about the generational divide in the Democratic Party. But more than anything, it speaks to a profound philosophical difference. Pelosi and Democratic leadership believe in accumulating power, but rarely wielding it. They believe that taking action-- whether it be on issues like health care, or holding a criminal president accountable-- could backfire. Any use of power, the theory goes, any spending of political capital, risks being met with a profound reaction from the GOP, from swing voters, and from conservative Democrats that will ultimately hurt the party’s ability to win elections, and so, retain power. Ocasio-Cortez and others, meanwhile, are arguing not just for the party to use the tools at their disposal, but that using their Constitutionally mandated power to hold people and institutions accountable will lead to electoral gains rather than losses.

Pelosi’s approach to impeachment is probably the clearest example of this schism. Fearing that opening impeachment proceedings will distract from-- and undermine-- the 2020 campaign, she has put the brakes on many measures to hold Trump and his administration accountable. Instead, she has made opaque and confusing public statements, claiming that Trump is “just not worth it” and that he “self-impeaches” every day. She has similarly declined to go after other Trump officials. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, most recently, has been rightfully attacked for his shameful handling of a plea deal with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein while serving as U.S. attorney for Florida’s southern district. Pelosi could launch impeachment proceedings against Acosta. Instead she launched a petition-- attached to a fundraising ask.

While Pelosi has a well-earned reputation for whipping votes and retaining loyalty, thanks in large part to her ability to dole out the huge sums she rakes in from donors, she has also consistently wielded power in this cautious manner.

As Ryan Grim argued last week in the Washington Post, there are historical reasons for this approach. “Democratic leaders like Pelosi, Joe Biden, Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer were shaped by their traumatic political coming-of-age during the breakup of the New Deal coalition and the rise of Ronald Reagan-- and the backlash that swept Democrats so thoroughly from power nearly 40 years ago,” Grim wrote. “They’ve spent the rest of their lives flinching at the sight of voters. When these leaders plead for their party to stay in the middle, they’re crouching into the defensive posture they’ve been used to since November 1980, afraid that if they come across as harebrained liberals, voters will turn them out again.” These Democrats are “haunted by the Reagan era” and equate moving left with devastating losses.

Over the same period, the Republican Party has embraced a completely opposite approach to politics. While Democrats have long seen power as something to accrue and wield responsibly, they typically do little more than hoard it. The GOP, meanwhile, seeks power at all costs and wields it with abandon. No figure in contemporary politics sums up this approach better than Mitch McConnell, who has gone to extraordinary lengths, particularly when it comes to the federal judiciary, to use his power to reshape the government. The kinds of bold gambits on which McConnell has embarked-- blocking Merrick Garland from the Supreme Court is a particularly galling example-- are based on the idea that not only should power be used to the fullest extent possible, but that Republicans will more likely be punished for not acting than they will for taking aggressive action.

And in response, more often than not, Democrats are reactive, almost apologizing for what power they have. Leaders like Pelosi contort themselves to appear moderate and eager for compromise. They are terrified about any approach that looks like open, unabashed advocacy for the rights of undocumented immigrants, or restoring some degree of economic equity by (gasp) raising taxes on those who can most afford to pay them. They fear being called tax-and-spend socialists, more than they desire progressive results. And so they retreat, again and again, fearing that doing much of anything could cost them campaign contributions, and, ultimately, cost them seats. Looking over the barren landscape of recent American politics, it’s easy to see that this is not a particularly rewarding strategy.

Another day in the life...

McConnell’s nihilist approach often involves wielding power not for the sake of a specific policy outcome, but to accrue yet more political power. Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez are arguing that their party has the means to profoundly alter people’s lives: They can take action on the border, where ICE and CBP agents are torturing migrants; they can bring to justice members of the Trump administration, including the president himself, for flouting the law and favoring the wealthy; they can fight for economic policies that don’t benefit party donors, but instead make it easier for all people to afford housing and health care. In other words, they can do something. The other option, too much of the time, is doing nothing.

The Trump Referendum

National Journal's Josh Kraushaar started the year very reticent about predicting a blue-- or, more accurately, an anti-red-- wave. Yesterday he was writing more realistically about GOP gloom and doom, albeit still defending his own lack of vision by referring to "rank-and-file members who looked in solid shape several months ago." The battle lines have moved deep-- really deep-- into the GOP heartland, with Ryan's slimy SuperPAC unleashing millions of dollars to defend floundering Republican incumbents Fred Upton (MI), Mia Love (UT), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), Karen Handel (GA), Brian Mast (FL) and George Holding (NC), as well as more red open seats like the ones seeing Dennis Ross (FL) and Tom Garrett (VA) retire. "The flurry of cash in GOP-friendly areas," wrote Kraushaar, "also underscores how big the map of targets has grown, forcing any Republican running in a remotely-competitive district to worry about their political future. Privately, Republican leaders expect to lose around 30 seats-- and the House majority-- but acknowledge that there could be a number of unexpected outcomes pushing those numbers higher on Election Night. That’s an all-too-realistic scenario given the supercharged liberal engagement in districts across the country, lackluster re-election efforts from unprepared GOP members of Congress, and impressive fundraising figures from even long-shot Democratic challengers."

Outside GOP groups particularly Ryan's SuperPAC but plenty of other dark money groups funded by a small handful of billionaires, have been effective in undermining some of the leading Democratic challengers in conservative districts. The flood of smears against some of the best Democrats running, like Randy Bryce and Kara Eastman, have taken a toll, as voted have been left confused and unsure about what to believe and where they heard what. While conservative Democrats under attack by this outside sewer money have been defended by the DCCC, most progressives have not been. So far Ryan and allied PACs have spent $1,280,743 smearing Kara and $2,446,043 smearing Randy Bryce, the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC have spent a total of ZERO on defending either of them. Nor have they put a cent into defending Ammar Campa-Najjar against the vicious racist attacks the GOP has rained down on him. There's a torrent of DCCC and Pelosi cash for Blue Dogs and New Dems-- but nothing at all for progressives like Mike Siegel in Texas, J.D. Scholten in Iowa, Jess King in Pennsylvania or James Thompson in Kansas. You know what that Blue America thermometer above is for-- righting that wrong so that these candidates can execute their get out the vote strategies.

You know what we're going to hear a lot of for the next week? The elections are a referendum on Trump. You're been hearing it here at DWT all year. And it's true. To a pretty big extent, the midterns are always a referendum on the president and his party. But this year, more than ever. How will we know that hypothesis is true? It's true if you see between 50 and 60 seats flip a week from Tuesday. Have you ever heard of a president-- even a make-believe, illegitimate president like the asshole Putin installed-- spending all this time-- at our expense no less-- campaigning with his cookie-cutter/one-size-fits-all bullshit and nonsense?

David Remnick's new column for the New Yorker, The Midterm Elections Are A Referendum On Donald Trump, is dated the day before the voting, but it's out now. "What," he asks, "is there left to know about Donald Trump? Robert Mueller, various state officials, and a legion of reporters around the country are dedicated to penetrating any stubborn mysteries that still linger, yet who can argue that there is insufficient evidence to make a rational judgment about the character of the man, the nature of his Presidency, and the climate he has done so much to create and befoul?"

The #MAGAbomber case will be investigated more months to come "but what’s already clear is that it occurred at a moment of tragic division and conspiracy-mongering generated, foremost and daily, by the President of the United States. The right has no monopoly on insult and incivility-- the online universe can be a sewer of spite-- but there is no real equivalence: no modern President has adopted and weaponized such malevolent rhetoric as a lingua franca. Trump is a masterful demagogue of the entertainment age. His instruments are resentment, sarcasm, unbounded insult, casual mendacity, and the swaggering assertion of dominance. From his desk in the Oval Office, on Twitter, and at political rallies across the country, he spews poison into the atmosphere. Trump is an agent of climate change, an unceasing generator of toxic gas that raises the national temperature."

When the leaders of the Republican Party first acquainted themselves with Trump’s rhetoric and character a few years ago, many of them were appalled. Ted Cruz, after hearing Trump insult his wife’s appearance and insinuate that his father bore some responsibility for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, called his rival a “pathological liar,” a “snivelling coward.” But, after Cruz became one more casualty of the 2016 Republican primaries, and reckoned that he could not hold his Senate seat while attacking Trump, he, like almost every other light of the “party of Lincoln,” capitulated. The G.O.P. is now Ted Cruz writ large, a political party that has debased itself in the image of its standard-bearer.

The midterm elections are being held in an atmosphere of immense national stress. It could only be so when the singular actor in the drama is Donald Trump, who thrives on the idea that American life is a daily cliffhanger, in which the hero bravely sets out to deepen the divide between his supporters and everyone else, to dismantle international agreements and alliances, and to protect corporate interests over the interests of working people and the natural world. There are, unquestionably, countless local and regional issues being debated, but, above all, this election is a referendum on Trump, a contest between his base and those who feel that it is in the national interest to establish at least some brake-- a new majority in the House of Representatives, a new crop of governors and state legislators-- to slow his disintegration of American life and his despoilment of the national spirit. Two years ago, the prospect of a Trump Presidency represented an emergency. Tens of millions of voters found a reason to stay home. This year, the polls are tight. The stakes cannot be overstated.

YouGov's polling from Friday showed an average disapproval of 10 points for Trump. Marist, my favorite pollster-- also from Friday-- showed Trump down an average of 13 points. Their generic ballot shows Democrats up by 10. The Big Sky poll from the university of Montana, doesn't just show Tester being reelected to his Senate seat 48.9%to 38.8%, it shows a race that was barely on anyone's radar outside of Montana, the House race pitting violent GOP incumbent Greg Gianforte against a not well-known Democrat, Kathleen Williams, beating him 45.8% to 45.3%. He spent $8,632,559 ($2,500,000 from his personal bank account) to her $2,852,527. Friday polls showed Bill Schuette floundering hopelessly in the Michigan gubernatorial race; Congressman Stevan Pearce without a hope to be New Mexico's next governor and Laura Kelly beating Kris Kobach in Kansas, 40-36%. Meanwhile, Democrats continue publicizing the fact that Trump has endorsed their opponents:

America's Greatest Challenge Since... The Civil War

Does anyone doubt the news reports that Putin is about to "win" a landslide reelection? Of course not; he counts the votes and sets the rules. And Trump must be seething with jealousy. Last week, Annie Linskey, writing for the Boston Globe, reported that Señor Trumpanzee "would be able to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling places nationwide during a federal election, a vast expansion of executive authority, if a provision in a Homeland Security reauthorization bill remains intact. The rider has prompted outrage from more than a dozen top elections officials around the country, including Secretary of State William F. Galvin of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who says he is worried that it could be used to intimidate voters and said there is 'no basis' for providing Trump with this new authority. 'This is worthy of a Third World country,' said Galvin in an interview. 'I’m not going to tolerate people showing up to our polling places. I would not want to have federal agents showing up in largely Hispanic areas.'"

Trump is, in fact, as David Remnick wrote in the new issue of the New Yorker The Stress Test Of Liberal Democracy. Referencing a Regime obsessed with diversion and diversion from diversion, Remnick wrote that "Minute by minute the wheels are coming off the clown car that is the Trump Administration. The circus animals are deserting, wriggling through every available window and door. Last week, it was the chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who had countenanced the President’s falsehoods and flights of bigotry but who finally took a stand on the question of steel and aluminum tariffs. Still others-- the Secretary of State, the national-security adviser, the chief of staff, the Chief Daughter, and the Feckless Son-in-Law-- are surely imagining either their own retirement from government service or multi-part indictments. Meanwhile, Robert Mueller’s investigation grows increasingly ominous for the President. Also, porn stars.

But the spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue diverts attention from an arguably more consequential matter; namely, who now speaks for the values and the institutions of a liberal democratic country? Donald Trump did not ignite but merely joined a miserable, destabilizing trend of illiberalism that has been under way for years in Russia, Turkey, China, India, Southeast Asia, and Western, Eastern, and Central Europe. In France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, far-right parties and factions have not yet taken power, but they are contenders to do so, and they influence the debate on everything from immigration to foreign policy.

Trump is not the most extreme case. He may denounce his own Justice Department as disloyal and skeptics in the media as “enemies of the people.” But, at least for now, he operates within a constitutional order-- a still-standing system of laws, a separation of powers, and a civil society-- that has so far proved resilient. Yet the threat of Trumpism is unique in its scale and its influence. It is one thing for Viktor Orbán to shrink the nascent liberties of post-Communist Hungary, a nation of fewer than ten million people; it is another for Trump to assume the title of “leader of the free world,” when he has such casual disregard for democratic freedoms and assumes control of an unimaginably powerful arsenal with no sign of recognizing the gravity of his responsibility. As President, Trump is the putative guardian of a set of political values, and, no matter how often those values have been undermined, threatened, or betrayed in the course of American history, they have served for countless millions abroad as a democratic standard, an ideal.

Trump’s illiberalism-- his cockeyed expressions of admiration for such leaders as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Rodrigo Duterte, and his heedless detachment from American norms-- betrays that faith. It has also inspired a stream of books with titles like How Democracies Die, Can It Happen Here?, The Road to Unfreedom, Why Liberalism Failed, and It’s Even Worse Than You Think. Yascha Mounk, the author of the most recent addition to this library of anxiety, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It, offers a trenchant survey from 1989, with its democratic euphoria, to the current map of autocratic striving, “from Athens to Ankara.”

Mounk, who teaches government at Harvard, points out that one reason for the increasing indifference to democratic rule and the rising enthusiasm for authoritarian alternatives, particularly among young people, is the widening historical distance from any direct experience of the horrors of German Fascism or Soviet Communism. “Over two-thirds of older Americans believe that it is extremely important to live in a democracy; among millennials, less than one-third do,” Mounk writes. In 1995, “only one in sixteen believed that army rule is a good system of government; today, one in six do.” It’s easy to forget that we live in alarming times when you can just switch the channel to Vanderpump Rules.



Mounk emphasizes that history laughs at complacency and illusions of permanence. Athenian democracy lasted two centuries, the Republic of Venice a millennium, but both eventually faced decline and dissipation. The Trump era represents a test of sturdy-seeming American values, and the stakes are global. Just as a prosperous and self-confident American government helped rebuild Western Europe and Japan after the Second World War, and then helped protect them for decades-- through the establishment of various security, diplomatic, and economic alliances-- the Trump Administration’s disdain for that legacy has left our allies feeling exposed and vulnerable. European leaders routinely tell reporters and former American officials that the U.S. government is barely recognizable to them, in rhetoric or in action. The reductions in the diplomatic corps have often left them with no one to talk to; the Administration’s transactional relationships with authoritarian regimes give them the sense that the President is uninterested in any moral dimension in his foreign policy.

The next significant chapter in this stress test for liberal values will be the midterm elections of November, 2018. If the Democratic Party fails to win a majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, Trump will be further emboldened. His capacity for recklessness will multiply and go unrestrained. The Republican leadership, which has already proved shocking in its cowardice, will be even less inclined to challenge him.

Popular resistance to Trumpism began on the Mall the day after his Inauguration. The youthful uprising against the National Rifle Association in south Florida is the newest source of inspiration. But, for Trump and Trumpism to be rendered an unnerving but short-lived episode, history will require more than cogent critique. It will require that millions of men and women who do not ordinarily exercise their franchise-- some sixty per cent in off-year elections-- recognize the imperatives of citizenship. For those who aspire to office, it will require not merely renunciation of a President but an affirmation-- critical and thorough-- of the values and the institutions that the President has scorned and threatened. It will require an honest, complex, open-minded debate on immigration, income disparity, distrust of government, guns, race, gender, speech, social media, and the environment.

Such a debate will mean grappling with the many ways in which American values have yet to be fully realized. In the 2016 election, this territory was too often left to Trump’s demagoguery and his promise of simple solutions. But, whether or not the clown car is finally pulled over by the rule of law, the restoration and the renewal of America’s democratic traditions will be achieved only by democratic means.

Last night Alan Grayson, bemused, said, "I understand why people see parallels between Putin and Trump, but in Putin’s case it comes as no surprise that Head Spy would become Ruthless Dictator. In contrast, here there is a disconnect (or maybe a negative feedback) between campaigns and governance, and Donald Trump was elected on the theory that having no record of accomplishment in public life whatsoever was somehow a good thing. Would you choose your brain surgeon that way? (Leaving aside Ben Carson, of course.)" I got this quote (below) by Octavia Butler from Joy Reid's twitter account. Everyone in America should read it and read it again before they decide if they're going to the polls in November... and again in 2020. Trump-- and his enablers-- really are the biggest threat to this country since the same kind of people started the Civil War over a century ago.

Have You Had Enough Of Fire And Fury Yet? Trump's Mental Health

Rick Wilson is a Republican strategist and Never-Trumper who has become something of a celebrity on MSNBC for his pithy denunciations of the Orange Orangutan and his supporters, once referring to Trump “alt-right” supporters as "childless single men who masturbate to anime.” His Daily Beast column Friday, Bannon Banished for Telling Truths About Trump as MAGA Monsters Turn on Each Other is the kind of schadenfreude that millions of Trump haters will enjoy. “Watching Bannon fall victim to the claws of the monster he helped create mostly invokes the response of ‘Alexa, order all the popcorn,’” he wrote. Even Trumpanzee might agree with some of Wilson’s analysis: “Bannon wasn’t just one of Trump’s most senior aides and an architect of the destruction of the Republican Party; he was the multi-shirted, red-eyed White House troll, leaking tales of his brilliance to a constellation of reporters in the ostensibly hated mainstream media. His house organ Breitbart and a host of Trump-right websites and news outlets sang praises to his dank genius. Bannon, they proclaimed, was Trumpism in its distilled essence: revanchist, ahistorical, racially inflected, and consumed with an imaginary war on the media and America’s broader society.” But not all of it.

Now, like two rats in a bag, Trump and Bannon are tearing at one another in a delicious public spat that has every possible bit of drama, except Bannon drunkenly bellowing for a round of fisticuffs with all comers and Trump offering to compare the length of their relative manhoods on live television. They deserve one another in so many ways.

Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury (President Postliterate Bestwords is waiting on either the audio book or for Kellyanne to organize tableaux vivants of the various chapters) is blowing Washington apart today, and the biggest rift is between Trumpism and Bannonism. I’ve written before about the inevitable, tragic dynamic of this brokeback bromance; Trump needs a mindless cheering section screaming hosannas no matter how often he stumbles toward the nuclear and political precipice. Bannon needs an avatar for his Alt-Reich national socialist-- oh, sorry, I meant populist-- fantasies.

The bold new counter-establishment Bannon sought to create in the wake of Trump’s fluke victory was like most of Bannon’s hustles: contingent on a kind of balls-out bravado and a willingness to lie and scrap with equal intensity. It was easy to be a political arsonist when Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah were writing the checks, but the Mercer money train came to a halt when the Metternich of Alabama, after getting beaten like a cheap drum in the U.S. Senate race, was then quoted boasting to Wolff that the Mercers would be funding his 2020 presidential campaign.

Late Thursday, rumors swept the media world that Bannon was about to be booted from his role as Caudillo of the Breitbart empire. For Bannon, this would be a fate worse the death. His power derives almost entirely from a website that bears the name of a better man, and rebuilding a new version from scratch would be a costly and difficult process. Republican senators are breathing a deep sigh of relief. After watching Bannon hitch the GOP’s wagon to a pedo-curious Roy Moore in Alabama, the idea of Bannon mounting a slate of National Socialist-- dammit, there I go again, populist-- candidates seems more distant, particularly without Sugar Momma Mercer keeping that sweet bank rolling in and the lights on at advertiser-poison “news” outlet Breitbart.

The other day I was in a room with CNN being broadcast and a host asked his table of clueless guests if he though people would still be talking about Fire and Fury the next day. They all agreed, solemnly, that it would fade away quickly. The segment should have been titled “watch the morons on TV who don’t understand what a feeding frenzy is.” You can’t turn on TV news anywhere in the world without seeing or hearing about Michael Wolff and his book.

Friday NBC News was reporting that Wolff called Señor Trumpanzee, quote accurately, "a man who has less credibility than, perhaps, anyone who has ever walked on earth." Maybe “ever walked on earth” pushes the boundaries a little... but only a little.

Wolff, in an exclusive interview on NBC's "Today," said that everyone he spoke to for the book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, described the president the same way.

"I will tell you the one description that everyone gave, everyone has in common: They all say he is like a child," Wolff explained. "And what they mean by that is, he has a need for immediate gratification. It is all about him."

Wolff added that "100 percent of the people around" Trump, "senior advisers, family members, every single one of them, questions his intelligence and fitness for office."

…Wolff writes in the book, and explained during his Today interview, that top aides said at various points Trump that is “a moron, an idiot.”

“Actually there’s a competition to sort of get to the bottom line here of who this man is. Let’s remember, this man does not read, does not listen. So he’s like a pinball, just shooting off the sides,” Wolff said.

Wolff also revealed how people around the president noticed an apparent decline in his mental stamina.

“In the beginning, it was like every 25 or 30 minutes, you would get the same three stories repeated," Wolff said about Trump. "Now it’s the same three stories in every 10 minutes."

Wolff was then asked to elaborate on an anecdote he described in an article in the Hollywood Reporter this week in which he said Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over the winter holiday break, didn't recognize old friends.

"I will quote Steve Bannon-- he’s lost it," Wolff said, referring to Trump's former strategist.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, appearing on Fox News Friday morning, said it was “outrageous to make these types of accusations" about Trump's mental health.

It's "sad that people are going and making these desperate attempts to attack the president," she added.

And, yes, Wolff has tapes and notes to back up his reporting. In the new issue of the New Yorker, David Remnick begins by suggesting we imagine what it would have been like if Nero had a Twitter account. “Chaotic, corrupt, incurious, infantile, grandiose, and obsessed with gaudy real estate, Donald Trump is of a Neronic temperament. He has always craved attention. Now the whole world is his audience. In earlier times, Trump cultivated, among others, the proprietors and editors of the New York tabloids, Fox News, TMZ, and the National Enquirer. Now Twitter is his principal outlet, with no mediation necessary… Future scholars will sift through Trump’s digital proclamations the way we now read the chroniclers of Nero’s Rome— to understand how an unhinged emperor can make a mockery of republican institutions, undo the collective nervous system of a country, and degrade the whole of public life… Trump’s tweets are most valuable as a record of his inner life: his obsessions, his rages, his guilty conscience. No bile goes unexpectorated. Trump, who does not care for government work, is more invested in his reputation as a creative writer, declaring more than once that “somebody said” that he is ‘the Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters.’”

A new book by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, amplifies, in lurid anecdote and quotation, what we have been learning elsewhere every day for the past year: Trump believed that he would lose the election, but would multiply his fame, his fortune, and his standing in American life. To near-universal shock, however, he won. And the consequences followed. Trump has no comprehension of policy and cares about it less. He surrounds himself with aides who are either wildly incompetent or utterly defeated in their attempts to domesticate the mulish and bizarre object of their attention. There are no lingering illusions about the President’s capacities: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump ‘a fucking moron’ and spared us a denial. Wolff’s book, which leans heavily on interviews with Steve Bannon, makes it plain that pretty much everyone in the President’s circle agrees that he is, in terms of character and intellect, fantastically limited. There is no loyalty or deliberation in the White House, only a savage Lord of the Flies sort of chaos. Each day is at once preposterous, poisonous, and dangerous.



…Scandal envelops the President. Obstruction of justice, money-laundering, untoward contacts with foreign governments—it is unclear where the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will land and what might eventually rouse the attention of the U.S. Senate. Clearly, Trump senses the danger. A former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been indicted. A former national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, has admitted to lying to the F.B.I. and has become a coöperating witness. The President sees one West Wing satrap and Cabinet official after another finding a distance from him. “Where is my Roy Cohn?” he asked his aides angrily, according to the Times, when his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, defied his wishes and recused himself from the Russia investigation.

In the meantime, there is little doubt about who Donald Trump is, the harm he has done already, and the greater harm he threatens. He is unfit to hold any public office, much less the highest in the land. This is not merely an orthodoxy of the opposition; his panicked courtiers have been leaking word of it from his first weeks in office. The President of the United States has become a leading security threat to the United States.