Andrew Sullivan: Brexit, impeachment, and which Democrats are electable?

164 thoughts on “Andrew Sullivan: Brexit, impeachment, and which Democrats are electable?”

1. I don’t find much value in “electability” arguments these days. They always seem to be made about Democratic candidates. Republicans just push for their candidate without worrying about appealing to the middle. Why are Democrats more burdened by this issue?

   1. I think it is because Americans are generally conservative and contrast themselves not with totalitarian regimes but with communism. Voting Republican is the default for the average person and they will return to it if scared off by unelectable Democrats. Republicans, despite how crazy and stupid they seem to us, do not seem too crazy or immoral to the average person.

      1. Not sure how you decided that Republican is the default option, considering the more Americans voted for the Democratic candidate in 2016 but were outdone by the EC. More Americans voted Democratic for Senators in that election also, but were outdone by the advantage smaller states have. Votes for the House were slightly in favor of Republicans, but their large majority was due to gerrymandering. In 2018, of course, voters voted Democratic by a large margin, but again gerrymandering held down their advantage. So I’m not sure why you think the default for voters is Republican.

      2. Voting Republican is only the default for Republicans. I have no idea how you’ve determined your “average person”.

      3. In terms of actual policies, polling I’ve seen referenced suggests that Americans are *left* of the Democrats on most issues. The problem lies in branding. If one names the policies according to the party or mentions that party affiliation, one gets the split and so on.

   2. The right has a personality type called “Right Wing Authoritarian”. It was discussed here as:Guest post: Linda Calhoun reviews “The Authoritarians”. Linda summarises:

      Altemeyer describes the personality traits of high RWAs [right wing authoritarians] as submissiveness, fear, self-righteousness, hostility, lack of critical thinking, compartmentalized thinking, double standards, and feeling most empowered when in groups. He describes the lack of logic in their thinking; when they like the conclusion, how that conclusion was arrived at is irrelevant. When they like the behaver, the behavior is acceptable; when they dislike the behaver, the behavior is not.

      While this and what follows also neatly describe the Wokerati, it’s very common for Conservatives to rally behind a leader, and warp everything else around what the authority and their tribe says and does. For example, they are outraged when an opponent does something, but quickly excuse the same behaviours but in a worse instance and rationalise this as that they’re “only human”, everyone can make mistakes etc.

      1. The link:
         https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/guest-post-linda-calhoun-reviews-the-authoritarians/

2. I agree with Sullivan. The Democrats will nominate Warren and she will lose the election.

   1. I doubt she would lose, and I’m sure that her healthcare position will shift once the candidate (well, nearly sure).
      I also note she’s about 70.

   2. I agree that Warren will get the nomination. I think she has a good chance of winning the general election. What we see of Warren now is her positioning for the primary. She’ll do the inevitable move to the middle for the main event. I don’t particularly like it but accept it as a feature of US politics.

   3. I wrote an enormous post but then you click submit and the site asks you to login and everything got erased.

      Anyways, post your map from 270towin.com.

      It is mathematically impossible for Trump to win.

      It only comes down to about 5 or 6 states but you really think the states that have consistently voted for Democrats since the 80s are gonna vote for Trump again? I’m referring to the complete and utter shock of MI, WI, and PA randomly flipping red.

      As a rebuke to Trump in the 2018 gubernatorial races — MI elected its governor by +400K votes and in PA +800K votes. WI it was much closer +30K but same thing. All three solidly Democrat states dating back decades.

      Do you see what happens when PA/MI/WI are blue on 270towin? Over, done, finished.

      That’s why the election via the Electoral College system truly is “rigged” to favor democrats.

      A Republican must win the 2 real swing states: OH/FL. BOTH OF THEM!

      Plus he has to win ALL OF THE supposed other swing states that really aren’t much of swing states.

      Plus he has to pull a shocker like taking MI by 10k votes which is the amount he won by in 2016 that was a complete surprise. Pretty rigged path to victory.

      Meanwhile the Democrat only would have to take 1 of the “real swing states” (OH/FL) and 1 additional state between PA/MI/WI.

      The odds are very favorable to Democrats — regardless of who is nominated.

      1. That’s encouraging. Thanks for the link.

         The Cook Report:
         September 30, 2019: North Carolina from Leans Republican to Toss Up, Ohio from Likely to Leans Republican, Michigan from Toss Up to Leans Democratic.

         This shows the trend is good for Dems. That’s a relief.

         1. Makes me think of that fat lady singing…

   4. I fear most of the democratic candidates are unelectable. If you don’t think so now, just wait until you see the GOP’s ads featuring footage of the 4 hour LGBT town hall. As a mo, I wish the dems would ignore me and the other alphabet people until after the election.

3. The Brexit referendum was three years ago. Since then there has been a turnover in the electorate of something approximating 6%. It would take a swing of only 2% to change the result and based on the assumption that the three years worth of new voters would vote the same as the young end of the demographic in 2016, and nobody else changing their minds, the majority do not want Brexit anymore.

   Sullivan also conveniently ignored the fact that the referendum was already the second one we have had on the subject. He also ignores the fact that we all know a lot more about Brexit than we did in 2016, including that we were lied to by the leading Brexiteers.

   Brexit will affect everyone in the UK, not just the approximately 26% of the pop

   Democracy is a process, not a once and for all time vote. Why can’t Brexiteers like Sullivan understand that?

   1. The word “pop” should have been “population that voted for Brexit”

      1. I agree entirely with what you say. The referendum in 2016 was a one-off vote, and legally was of advisory value only. It’s been used by the Leave campaign to try and turn Parliament from a representative democracy into a Parliamentary delegation. Ye gods, we’re going to be four years on from the vote before Brexit happens, if it does, by which time we’ll have had two general elections in the interim, at which time voters get to be able to change their minds.

         Had Brexit happened immediately, or within a reasonable time, then okay, we’d not have had an opportunity to mind change. It didn’t happen quickly and now we’re facing an understanding of the reality that attaches. Giving voters an opportunity to change their minds via a second referendum would actually be the democratic thing to do.

         1. Yes it was advisory only ,maynot should not have triggered Article 50 so soon ,if at all.
            And fargo said before the vote 50% remain and 48% leave would mean unfinished business ,so you know he would have started bleating for a new vote the day after .

   2. You can make plenty of logical arguments about holding up Brexit, but I don’t think “it’s the democratic thing to do” is one of them. Telling the people they can vote on something and then stonewalling for several years when you don’t get the result you want, and then waiting until you think enough people have changed their minds that if you have another vote it will go your way, does not scream “democratic” to me. If we treat all big votes this way, we have no democracy at all.

      I didn’t like that people voted for Trump; just like voting for Brexit, I thought it was incredibly stupid. But I wouldn’t want the government to somehow hold up his swearing in for several years until I think enough minds have changed to have another vote that will reverse the original, democratically made decision.

      This is the argument Sullivan is making, and I agree with it.

      1. I think there is a critical difference that you’re just ignoring. The voters who went for tRump knew, or at least had the evidence to know, what they were voting for. The same can not be said for those who voted Leave.

      2. I’m not sure that “stonewalling” is the correct term to be applying in this case, BJ. The Leave option in the referendum did not define what Leave meant, and we were told it was all going to be so easy. It was only after the meaning of the vote (or the public opinion poll which would more accurately describe it) started to sink in and the problems that started to arise (the major example being the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) that MPs in the Parliament began to realise it was not an easy thing after all. And also, many Brexiteer MPs voted down, time and again, Mrs May’s team’s attempts to sort out the problems in negotiating a withdrawl agreement.

         So, I’m in agreement with Jeremy’s comments on the democracy obtains in this case.

      3. The leavers have tried to turn an advisory vote on an undefined plan into a Constitutional imperative. If the “will of the people” is so important, why are the supporters of Brexit so opposed to another referendum now that the consequences of Brexit are better known to the voters?

      4. I think Brexit brings to the fore the debate about what the purpose of a government is.

         Is it to:
         a) do what the dominant party wants?
         b) do what ‘the people’ want?
         c) do what’s best for the country?

         I’d hope for c), but for those people (including BoJo) who insist that the ‘will of the people must be delivered’, I would like to paraphrase my dear, departed Mother: “If 52% of your friends asked you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?”

      5. The delays we have had are nothing to do with Remainers.

         The reason we are not out of the EU yet is because certain elements of the Brexit camp (the DUP and the Tory Party ERG) did not like the deal Theresa May did and blocked it.

         Remainers have not, in any sense, held up Brexit (which is a failure on our part). To suggest they did is another Brexiteer lie.

         1. Yes I agree. The 2016 referendum question did not specify the details of what Brexit would be; it was just a binary leave vs remain.
            As subsequent events have shown, ‘Brexit’ meant different things to different people (despite Theresa May’s vacuous ‘Brexit means Brexit’ mantra). Parliament has had a number of meaningful votes relating to three different versions of ‘Brexit’ (Theresa May’s deal, Boris Johnson’s deal and a no-deal Brexit) as well indicative votes on a whole variety of other versions of Brexit. Each of these versions has been opposed by different groups of MPs and Brexit supporters have been implacably opposed to most of them. Anyone who claims to know which of the various versions all of the famous 17.4 million people voted for is simply talking out of their fundament.
            In the face of concerted abuse from large sections of the press I think Parliamentarians have been right to scrutinise the different proposals carefully and to have refused to simply rubber stamp whichever deal the government has put before them. The consequences of getting this decision wrong are very serious for the country and it is quite wrong to vilify MPs for refusing to be railroaded into supporting whatever the government presents them with.

            1. +1

   3. I agree with Jeremy. The Brexit offered three years ago was a pig in a poke: voters were encouraged to imagine different versions of Brexit, whichever that suited them.
      Now the bag is open, and we can finally see the pig, and smell it.
      We have a right to vote on whether we want THIS pig.

      1. That’s fine Jon, I’m with you. Do we get 3 choices on the ballot then, leave with the deal on offer, leave on WTO rules and remain? The two leave votes count against the remain vote and the larger of the the two votes wins if leave wins overall. I bet you’re not quite so cocksure of your further ‘right to vote’ if that’s the choice…

         1. A vote framed in that way could result in a version of Brexit being selected that was supported by only a minority of the voters. A fairer way to frame the referendum would be:

            Q1 – leave or remain?

            Q2 – If we vote to leave do you prefer
            (a) deal on offer
            (b) leave on WTO terms?

   4. As I have a poor understanding of the history of Brexit, it’s been good to hear the perspective of some folks over there. It is clear to me how wrong Sullivan is on this and Jeremy is correct – one of the strengths of any democracy are legislative do-overs. Over here, some of our most cherished rights are secured by do-overs. It seems to me that Brexit ought to be put before the people again.

      1. The Government sent a booklet to all UK Households explaining what Brexit would mean (in general terms) and said that the result of the Referendum would be honoured. At the next General Election after the Referendum both major parties said they would honour the result. Despite that there has been much political turmoil caused by the attempts to dishonour the Referendum result by the minority that wish to Remain.

         Significantly the current position is that most parties in opposition will not sanction (required under our Fixed Term Parliament Act) another General Election which would stand as a swift proxy for another Referendum and help resolve Brexit. You may draw your own conclusions about their reasons for that.

         1. I do draw my own conclusion. Every poll shows that Remain would beat Leave handily in another referendum. But the Remainers are split party wise, so the Conservatives want a general election in order to push through their unpopular Brexit plan using your first-past-the-post electoral system to their advantage.

         2. Did that booklet say anything about how the problem of the Irish border would be resolved?

            1. No – nor did it mention joining the euro zone, losing our veto in certain areas, or subordinating our armed forces to the ‘EU Army’ control if we Remain. All of which arise from the Lisbon Treaty which we were promised a Referendum on but were denied.

            2. No they don’t. I’m afraid you’ve been lied to again.

   5. The Brexit referendum was taken with no deal in prospect, therefore it should be taken as a vote to start the process not one to complete it no matter what. They should negotiate a deal (which has now been done twice) and then have a 2nd referendum to decide based on an actual deal and “don’t leave” needs to be an option.

   6. And he ignores that is was a “non-binding” referendum, and presented as such. Moreover, such monumental decisions should need at least a 2/3rds majority
      If I put myself in the place of a Briton: ‘non-binding means we are not really going to leave, and a good occasion to give that stinker Cameron his comeuppance.’
      I positively disagree with Sullivan there,

      1. I somehow appear to remember that if it had been a binding referendum, it would indeed have needed a 2/3rd majority indeed.

   7. It irks me beyond belief that the Brexiteers are allowed to get away with their BS about how the British people are overwhelmingly in favor of leaving,

      In the referendum, they got a narrow majority, yes. But that amounted to just over 37% of the total electorate. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of Brexit by the overwhelming majority of the British people. And there;s good reason to think a whole lot of people didn’t bother to vote because they though a remain outcome was a foregone conclusion Even Cameron’s Conservative government thought that which was why they made no preparations for leaving.

      I read in a review of John Le Carre’s most recent novel that one of the characters calls the current UK Parliament a bunch of tenth-raters and what else can you say about a system which elects a clown like Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, for Mog’s sake.

      1. “But that amounted to just over 37% of the total electorate. ”

         …and Remain achieved 34%. Whichever way you try to present the referendum results Remain received fewer votes than Leave.

   8. Well said. Sullivan also says:

      Preventing a new election in order to keep a zombie government in power, even when it is begging to be put out of its misery, is unprecedented.

      This buys into the Downing St narrative too easily (although Downing St more properly calls *parliament* zombie). It’s only unprecedented because the law on parliamentary terms changed in 2011, so having fixed term parliaments is unprecedented.

      This parliament was voted in in 2017; the Tories lost their majority. Did the Tories immediately declare parliament zombie and refuse to form a government, and demand an election? No they were happy to retain power and plough on with Brexit as if they hadn’t lost their majority. Nothing has changed since then that they haven’t brought on themselves by their own intransigence and arrogance.

      The Fixed Term Parliaments Act is law and expects parliaments to last 5 years. Are we supposed to ignore this law just because the Tories want to railroad a Brexit deal (or No Deal) that doesn’t have the support of the majority of the population? I don’t think so.

      It’s perfectly reasonable for this democratically elected parliament to demand a price for ending this term prematurely.

   9. Exactly. Sullivan’s opinion on this is way past the sell-by date. Echoing Sullivan, it seems obvious to me that the only proper course of action for a democracy to take after all the chaos and time that has passed would be to have another referendum. The previous one was hopelessly tainted and too much time has passed for the “will of the people” argument to have any validity.

4. “Louche” is also what happens when you pour cold water into your absinthe.

   1. Or indeed, Rupert Everett onto a sofa.

5. On Brexit, one of the principal arguments of remainers is that ithe Brexit referendum was anything but a legitimate vote. Democracy doesn’t just require that you win a majority – it requires respect for the rule of law and at least a tolerably well-informed electorate.

   We know that the Brexit referendum was won by the greatest electoral fraud in British political history (massive overspending on campaigns – illegitimate use of data etc). We also know that the Leave campaign engaged in industrial scale lying.

   On top of this, the referendum result was a wafer-thin majority for leave (not the super majority you would expect for such wrenching constitutional change), and many of the older leavers have since died and been replaced in the electorate by younger, better educated people who are almost all remainers.

   No-one seriously doubts that a significant majority of people in the UK now want to remain in the EU. It is also unarguable that the Brexit that was promised in the 2016 referendum campaign bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to what is on offer today.

   The arguments that democracy demands that we leave always have been extremely weak, and are continue to get weaker by the day.

   What democracy actually demands is a confirmatory referendum, without law breaking and without industrial scale lying, to see if people still want Brexit.

   We all know what the outcome of such a vote would be, which is why the government so fiercely opposes it.

   1. Yes, Sullivan’s arguments don’t stand up to even the minimum of examination.

      There are many issues with the referendum, as Ted points out. But even if we allow that it was a valid vote, it *still* is insufficient to endorse Johnson’s deal.

      Why do I say that? Because arch Brexiteers like Nigel Farage are describing it as “not Brexit” (https://tinyurl.com/y2bsthq4).

      So, what this means is that Sullivan, by insisting on the acceptance of Johnson’s deal is in fact *not* delivering Brexit, by the light of one of the main advocates of Brexit and the leader of the Brexit Party.

      This proves what Remainers have been saying for some time: the 52% who voted Leave hold a wide range of views, and it is dishonest to claim they were of one mind.

   2. 2016: Brexit means great economic opportunities
      2017: Brexit means we’ll have to make a good deal
      2018: Brexit means we’ll have to make some sacrifices, but it is still worth it
      2019: Brexit must go through, even if we have to eat grass.

   3. “I also believe in abiding by the result of legitimate national, democratic votes.” this is the money quote. I was resigned to the result until the illegality came to light. From that point this referendum should have been ignored and Johnson, Gove and Cummings who were running this campaign prosecuted for electoral fraud.

6. Agreed on all points, especially in regard to Bill Maher. As for Andrew Sullivant, he makes one obvious error: the “smug, well-meaning, mediocre doom” of Gore and the second Clinton won the popular vote. In the former case, the doom was sealed by the geniuses of the pop-Left, with their brilliant achievment of 97,421 votes in Florida where Gore lost to Bush by 537 votes.

   1. One can as easily say that the doom was sealed by the geniuses of the Democratic establishment who couldn’t figure out a way to appeal to the left leaning side of the Party.

      1. I agree. Conservatives like Sullivan who don’t like Trump would really be enthusiastic about the Democrats if only they would nominate George W. Bush. Moreover, I don’t give a crap who Sullivan likes or how he handicaps the race. He is nothing more than one of a thousand pundits that can be found on the Internet, each one thinking he/she has a profound understanding of American politics. Any person commenting on this site is as worthy a pundit as Sullivan or any of the others. As I’ve stated many times before, anyone with a basic knowledge of American politics can be a pundit and, best of all, there are no consequences for being wrong. What a gig!

         1. Exactly right. Sullivan is an old-time conservative masquerading as an enlightened realist, where unelectable simply means “I don’t like her.” Bush is a perfect example of his ideal candidate.

            1. The factor in the background with too many of the Never-Trumpers is very simple: tribalism.

               When it comes to the crunch they will go with the conservative side, even if they “hold their nose” while doing so. Conservatives like Matt Lewis spend a lot of their time on liberal media snarking about Trump to the approval of anti-Trump audiences, but when asked refuse to say whether they’d vote for Trump’s opponent.

               It’s all very well sounding off for four years and getting pats on the back for being a ‘decent conservative’, but tribalism has a stronger hold on these people than we’d like to think.
               They always seem to find some bullshit clutch of reasons why they simply can’t vote for any of the frontleading democrats dontchewknow – they’re all ‘crazy’ apparently, although as far as I can tell none of them have recommended firing nuclear bombs at natural disasters yet.

               If they’re still this torn about who to vote for, after three years of a mental patient running naked around the White House, then you cannot rely on them to be solid allies.

7. As usual,I disagree with nearly everything Sullivan says, like I have for the last decade.

   1. You’re not alone.

   2. +1

   3. Only a decade? Wasn’t Sullivan horribly wrong about Iraq? And horribly smug about it at that?

8. ” O’Rourke is a woke, moronic bigot, who believes we live in a white-supremacist country, and would happily remove tax exemptions from most traditional churches, synagogues, and mosques”

   I don’t like O’Rourke either, but the idea of removing tax exemptions from traditional religions is an amazing idea, especially the ones electing their Christian nationalist candidates into public office and perverting the separation of church and state. It’s time they paid their fair share, profiting off the minds and hopes of gullible sheep.

   1. But, as Maher points out. That’s a valid argument, but not one a presidential candidate should shout about. Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, have more churches than bars, gas stations, and grocery stores combined (that may not be literally true, but you get the idea).

      1. O’Rourke has almost no chance of winning the nomination, so it matters little what he says.

      2. I don’t know where you live, Rick, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t Wisconsin.

         1. I’m in Idaho, but I lived in Michigan most of my life, so I know how small town Midwesterners are. Very churchy. They may attend 3 days a week.

            1. I can’t speak for Michigan, but you’ve called Wisconsin wrong. Taverns are us. Wisconsin and beer are near synonyms. To say nothing of the Brandy Old Fashioned.

            2. I can believe that, but Trump won the state in ’16.

            3. Tell me about it.

               My objection is not to tRump winning the state, which is a fact. It is to notion that this is because churches outnumber taverns, saying nothing of other sellers of alchohol, which isn’t. We’re among the wettest of states and pretty average for religion.

   2. I definitely agree with O’Rourke on removing tax exemptions on churches. He’s not my favorite Dem (those are currently Pete and Michael Bennet), but he’s far from being a moron.

      1. I think the “moron” part is choosing that particular hill on which to die. I’m sure O’Rourke and other lower tier candidates are hunting for issues on which to get some attention, the taxing of churches and the collecting of assault weapons do not seem like positions that will help him very much. Attention, yes, but perhaps not the good kind.

         1. Has the smell of desperation.

   3. And I don’t see Ms Klobuchar ‘shrinking’ at all. On the contrary, she would beat the Trump hands down.

      1. +1 I keep waiting for Amy Klobuchar to get the attention she deserves.

9. The Brexit irony for all of you over the pond is maybe the word sovereignty and your inability to share it. You have come to this problem before if you recall that little revolution back in 1775. The colonies wanted some of the power and you said no, never. So what happened?? And now you are doing it again with Europe. Briton’s want control of this and that and do not want to share. So here we go again.

   The Bill Maher version of the party is tired and old. It makes good comedy but otherwise is just not relevant today. I do not care how many plans Warren has or what she thinks about 150 prisoners in jail. In fact there are a few things she has on her list I don’t like. So what?? You can say that about any candidate. Since when did you have to agree with every little damn thing. It is a stupid idea. Ask yourself how many things did Trump actually get done. How many things did Obama actually get done? Not many in either case. Why, because it takes a lot more than a president to actually get things done. That is how government works here. So just because your candidate comes up with something really odd that you don’t like, just forget it. It’s not going to happen.

   One thing that needs to happen is impeachment. I have said that since the middle of the Mueller investigation. Is it going to happen….probably not but I cannot predict the future.

   1. I think there is now little doubt that he will be impeached. He will not, however, be convicted and he will remain in office. Those things I will predict.

10. Another item I would run passed the British on this Brexit business. How do you get out, you just take a vote. That seems just a little strange. A big flaw in the European Union if you ask me. Oh, we want out so we just take a vote? Really not the smartest thing this EU ever did.

    Over here we past this constitution thing and everyone who joined up, joined for life. Or until the rest of the group decided for some reason to let someone out. But to just get out, walk away, you cannot do that. We had a little war when some of the group decided to do that. Not allowed. The EU should have considered this when they started the group.

    1. I think that’s the problem that many Remainers have with the referendum, Randall. It was set up to solve a problem with the continually moaning Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. Cameron (then PM) thought the Remain vote would walk it and so did not set the terms apptropriately for such a major constitutional change. It’s a fair bet the EU fathers did not think a nation would be as stupid as the UK has proven to be in “just take a vote.”

       1. I think the EU would do well to create a new law or something to make entry into the EU permanent to stop this nonsense. If you allow individual countries to just come and go as they please, that is no union. If the U.S. had allowed that, we would have nothing today. Thanks to Lincoln we lasted a bit longer.

          And sometimes we do not learn from history and get to repeat our mistakes. I think Britain has done this with sovereignty.

          1. Randall, are you really arguing that South Sudan should not have been allowed to secede from Sudan? Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia should not have been allowed to secede from the Yugoslav Federation? Biafra should not have been allowed to secede from Nigeria (as it was not)? Should the Union of Kalmar (1397) have dictated that Denmark, Norway, and Sweden remain a single state forever?
             Should Czechs and Slovaks not been allowed to leave the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918? Should they have been allowed to separate in 1993?

             1. What takes place during and after wars is not the same thing as you should know. Some of those countries were created out of one country after years of war. Again, not the same at all. If a civilized group of states or countries, get together to form a union, such as happened in the U.S. constitution or such as happened with the EU, the contract should be for life, unless all parties agree to end it. If you had this agreement, Britain would not be in the mess they are in. The fact that the U.S. had this agreement is why there is still a U.S. Otherwise it would be gone. Look at what happens with weak agreements such as the Articles of Confederation in the U.S. It was not worth a damn after the revolution.

11. I have to agree with Sullivan about the candidates. I’d vote for Biden or Bernie but not Warren (for all the reasons he mentions), and I think I’m a fairly representative Independent voter.

    1. Does that mean you’d vote for Trump over Warren? You’re not agreeing with Sullivan overall, as he said he’d vote for Warren over Trump.

       Seriously, you’d vote for TRUMP?

       1. “Does that mean you’d vote for Trump over Warren?”

          Can’t say I’m happy about it and I hope it doesn’t come to that, but yes, I’d vote for Trump over Warren just as I voted for Trump over Hillary, though not for the same reasons. Voting for Trump is like murder–when you’ve done it once the second time is a lot easier.

          1. I can’t imagine anyone voting for a narcissistic and dangerous moron whose Presidency endangers our country more than anything else. I would think it’s better not to vote at all than to vote for someone who is so unstable and dangerous. Do you seriously want four more years of this stuff? You realize that by voting for Trump you are endorsing him?

             1. “Do you seriously want four more years of this stuff?”

                I certainly don’t want four more years of partisan-motivated investigations, but they do serve the purpose of keeping Trump from accomplishing anything.

                As for endorsing him, I suppose there’s an element of that in the sense that my views on immigration and health insurance are closer to Trump’s than to Warren’s. But that’s incidental. Given that my vote will have no effect on the outcome—I’m from Oregon—I see it mainly as a symbolic expression of disappointment in the Dems: You can do better than this, and until you do you won’t get my vote.

                I could never in good conscience “not vote at all.”

             2. This is about the worst defense of Trump I can imagine: saying that it was the Democrats who kept this maniac from doing anything. Remember, the man is about to be impeached, he’s a narcissist, and has cozied up to dictators. As for the investigations, that shouldn’t have kept Trump from a lot of stuff, like implementing his immigration policy. It was the courts who prevented him from implementing that.

                And saying that voting for Trump won’t accomplish anything, as it won’t effect the outcome, well, that’s pretty lame. You want to chastise the Democrats by voting for an insane narcissist? Seriously? You can chastise the Democrats while not voting for a madman.

                The main effect it has will be disappointment by people like me in how indefensible your views are, and in your propensity to support a wannabe dictator, and an unstable Tweeter as President of the United States.

             3. “The main effect it has will be disappointment by people like me in how indefensible your views are.”

                Believe me, I’m painfully aware of this and don’t take it lightly.

             4. Trump is perfectly capable of not accomplishing anything by himself. He could easily let his lawyers and other staff deal with the impeachment by supplying the necessary documents to Congress. Just like committing crimes is a choice, so is devoting all his time to his disinformation campaign and threatening his GOP senators in order to keep them on his side.

12. ABD Johnson insists on pursuing brexit because that was the “will of the people” back in 2016 but he refuses to acknowledge the “will of the people” as expressed in 2017. A general election after just two years when the MPs were elected for five is ignoring the public’s wishes that this lot sort it out.

    1. Maybe the fair thing to do then is to never solve the problem so that everyone is equally disappointed for all time.

13. … I’d prefer Nancy Pelosi as a candidate. She’s 79—a year older than Sanders—but she’s savvy and understands, as did Lyndon Johnson, the ins and outs of Congress.

    Yes, like LBJ, Nancy Pelosi is a savvy parliamentarian who knows the ins and out of congress. But, like LBJ, she doesn’t have the makings of a national candidate in her own right.

    Sure, Johnson kicked the shit outta Barry Goldwater in 1964, but that was only because he was running on the head of steam he had from JFK’s assassination. Lyndon was never much of a candidate on his own — hell, even in Texas, where it took a bottomless pit of Brown & Root cash, and the infamous stuffing of “ballot box 13,” just to get him to the US senate on his second try. He was a flop in his run for the Democratic nomination in 1960 and only made it onto the national ticket (against the wishes of Bobby and the other Kennedy insiders) because it was thought he could help Jack carry Texas. And in 1968 he got run outta the race by Eugene Mcarthy’s scoring 38.7% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary.

    If Nancy Pelosi had the makings of a compelling candidate, she’d’ve been in the hunt for national (or at least statewide) office long before reaching age 79.

    1. Yet despite all that, LBJ went on to be one of the most consequential presidents since FDR.

       1. Indeed, he was quite consequential. On the plus side, there was the Great Society and civil rights legislation. On the negative, the Vietnam War. I can only muse how American history would have been so different if LBJ hadn’t bought into the domino theory.

       2. Consequential, he was. Still, I don’t think he’d’ve ever made it to the Oval Office under his own steam.

    2. As a result of the impeachment, my estimation of Pelosi has gone up quite a bit. I think people who dismiss her political intelligence do so at their peril.

       1. If I wasn’t clear, it’s not Speaker Pelosi’s political IQ I question; it’s her electoral appeal at the top of a presidential ticket.

          1. I know Ken. I was just bloviating.

       2. Pelosi’s hand was forced. She was a strong obstacle to impeachment for the longest time then finally acted when the Ukraine situation started to blow up and made further inaction impossible.

          If it hadn’t been for the still-unknown whistleblower, none of these events would be happening.

          1. Exactly. Pelosi was dragged to the impeachment table kicking and screaming, after insisting for months that it was a bad idea. If she had allowed it to begin six months earlier there wouldn’t be the time crunch they’re in now and things would look a lot better. Pelosi has been a disappointment to me from the beginning.

             1. I think NP knew exactly what she was doing. If she had allowed impeachment to begin s months earlier, public opinion would have been against by a huge margin. She had to wait for the right time.

             2. I agree. She first waited (wisely imo) for the Mueller report to come out. Then Barr got out in front of that and public opinion didn’t move much. Then the whistle blower revealed some damning information and the snowball began to roll. Pelosi opened the inquiry at the same time public opinion began to shift in favor of it. And by public opinion I mostly mean the opinion of Independents. Dems and Reps polls haven’t moved much in regards to impeachment. Now if Republicans actually start turning on Trump in a big way, he’s utterly whipped.

             3. That’s right Mark and what I think a lot of people are missing is that Pelosi sees impeachment as a political tactic not a legal one. The Mueller report showed Trump committed some impeachable offenses so it seemed to many that it was sufficient, in a legal sense, to start impeachment hearings. But Pelosi rightly saw that even though the Mueller report could be used to begin hearings, politically there was just no percentage in it. And never forget that impeachment is a political process, not a legal one.

             4. “And never forget that impeachment is a political process, not a legal one.”

                This has become common wisdom, yet it is flawed. As this Washington Post piece, Stop calling impeachment a political decision, points out, that is not what the Framers intended.

                In fact, impeachment is a constitutional mechanism, and the Constitution is a legal document. Impeachment is the legal mechanism designed by the framers to permit the republic to hold the president accountable for wrongdoing while in office.

                It doesn’t proceed through the Court system, but that doesn’t make it any less of a legal process. True, impeachment is assigned to elected politicians, but many judges are elected and they are still responsible for legal and constitutional procedures. Just as the elected politicians are.

                In spite of Nancy Pelosi, it’s not always about politics.

             5. Call me crazy but I think leaders should lead rather than follow.

                And it’s not as though Pelosi was impeachment agnostic, waiting for more facts to strengthen the case. She was one of the most vociferous OPPONENTS of impeachment right up to the very instant that position became completely unacceptable to her constituents.

             6. Actually, it was right up until the public at large supported impeachment. A perfect political move. She did the right thing, but at the right time. With the biggest election in modern history coming up, she shrewdly played her cards and came up the winner. It was a brilliant play.

             7. Yes BJ, I fully agree with you. As said, I expected Ms Pelosi to start impeachment by the end of the year, but the whistleblower precipitated things. Exactly the thing she was waiting for.

             8. Again, it’s not just that she waited. Pelosi was loudly and vocally strangling all momentum for impeachment until said momentum grew too big for her to kill.

                Then she about-faces because it is the ONLY option available to her and it’s hailed as a brilliant move.

                The strangest thing about Pelosi fanboys is that so much of their praise in contingent upon them thinking that she is lying to their faces all the time. Sure, she spent years saying she was against impeachment. Sure, she let Dubya and gang off the hook entirely. But we true Pelosi-ites know that she was actually lying. She’s been pro-impeachment all along, and damn your lying eyes and ears if you think otherwise just because you’ve been paying attention to what she said and did.

             9. And now, after weeks of proclaiming that a vote to authorize impeachment proceedings was unnecessary, she now buckles under GOP pressure and will hold a vote on Thursday. Republicans are already crowing about how she knew this was an “unauthorized impeachment.” For some unknown reason she thinks a vote will bring the Republicans into line and they’ll start cooperating, complying with subpoenas, etc. Nancy Pelosi is way past her prime.

             10. Pelosi is a wise politician. She knows what she’s doing.

14. Sullivan’s take on impeachment is on the mark, although he is saying nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand times over the last few weeks. Unless something miraculous happens during the Senate trial – enough Republican senators vote to convict and remove Trump – then the only conclusion one can draw is that the Republican Party’s only concern is to keep power, regardless of the degradation of democracy and the rule of law. If the Republicans fail to convict, future presidents will be free of any legislative oversight, meaning goodbye democracy and hello tyranny. However, sales of brown shirts will go up.

15. Well, I think he is wrong in his first bit about Trump where he says the Republicans will never be able to prevent future presidents from abusing their power if they let Trump off the hook. That description does seem sound in principle, but Republicans have not held to such principles for a long time.
    The next Democratic president who even has the vaguest appearance of wrong-doing, even of the most minor sort, will immediately be harassed non-stop for impeachment by the Republicans. Does that seem duplicitous? They won’t care. They will say it’s pay-back.

    1. Yes indeed. Rules are for suckers not Republicans. This is the primary, underlying problem with our way of government. Or any similar form of government. At the highest levels we have to depend on the individuals in those positions to be constrained by their innate sense of ethics because the normal justice system can not protect us from them and what mechanisms do exist to deal with bad players at the highest levels depend almost entirely on politics to function. Individual bad players may still be dealt with, eventually. But when large groups, such as entire major political parties, unite in breaking the established norms, precedents and laws there is no mechanism that can stop them.

       Except voting enough of them out of office and then some serious house cleaning. It feels to me as if we are near a cusp. If we don’t manage to get the Republicans out of power this next election it could be just the beginning of a rather dark time for the US.

16. I don’t think Sullivan grasps the overarching fact that Trump has only one monolithic base, and that base can’t vote twice. There are still Independents on the fence, though the majority favor the impeachment inquiry. Soon, the inquiry will conclude their behind the door investigations and the public hearings will begin (beware what you wish for Republicans); the polls continue to grow in favor of the impeachment inquiry and even impeachment/removal. It is not likely that public hearings will dampen support. Hell, Bolton may bring the whole house of cards down with his testimony (assuming he testifies). This election isn’t about finding a new shiny electable Democrat with all his/her pie-in-the-sky policies that will save America; it’s about vanquishing the most destructive, corrupt and malignant President and administration this country has ever been made to suffer. Sullivan doesn’t seem to understand that the majority of Americans do get what this election is about, now more than ever.

    I didn’t read Sullivan’s entire piece, but I doubt he mentioned that Trump’s only chance of winning doesn’t lay at the feet of a venerated and ‘electable’ Democratic candidate. Trump’s only chance is that what worked in 2016 will work again. In other words, he’s banking that his demagoguery and propaganda, the GOP’s efforts to cheat at every turn, and the unhindered efforts of the Russians et al. to manipulate and deceive the electorate will once again nudge him into an electoral college victory. If 2018 has any predictable relevance, (and I believe it does) Trump and the GOP will lose big in 2020. The enthusiasm to rid the nation of Trump and his minions hasn’t waned, indeed, since the impeachment inquiry, it has only gained in strength. I can’t see that flood gate closing any time soon, and I most definitely can’t see any of the Democratic candidates losing Americans’ support in favor of Trump. Even if that candidate has that quintessential perfume of smug, well-meaning, mediocre doom that Democrats simply cannot resist.

    1. “In other words, he’s banking that his demagoguery and propaganda, the GOP’s efforts to cheat at every turn, and the unhindered efforts of the Russians et al. to manipulate and deceive the electorate will once again nudge him into an electoral college victory.”

       No offense, Mark, but it’s precisely this kind of thinking—that Trump didn’t win fair and square because a significant portion of the country was tired of being ignored and marginalized—that’s going to blindside the Dems yet again. The time they might have spent figuring out why they lost and doing something internally to correct it they spent instead whining and investigating. And now, with the impeachment process prolonging that pattern, I fear it’s too late to turn things around. Just my opinion.

       1. Where you see “whining and investigating” I see courage and a search for truth. Your “whining and investigating” was epitomized by the 9 Benghazi investigations (nothing there) and Clinton’s email/server investigations (nothing there). Sorry to say, with Trump there is a whole hell of a lot there; after all, he is the unindicted co-conspirator #1. Not that this fact has anything to do with the current impeachment inquiry. Either way, the corruption of Trump and his associates demands justice for this democracy to function properly. The impeachment process is trucking along just fine, thank you. And it would be going a lot quicker if Trump et al actually cooperated. You know, like Clinton did. That’s the difference between one who is guilty and one who is innocent. Actions tell the tale.

       2. Jeez, Gary, let’s put a completely unfit lunatic in charge of the nuclear football for another four years — anything to avoid the chance we could wind up with universal healthcare coverage and a higher marginal tax rate for the ultra rich! 🙂

       3. Sounds like a irresponsible position.

    2. I agree with your punditry. We’ll see if we’re right. If we are not, nobody will remember our errors. Trump’s hope rests on that, as in 2016, he can thread the needle and squeak through victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I don’t think he will be able to do this because he will not be able to expand his base (cult) while the Democrats will be able to increase their turnout as was the case in the 2018 mid-terms. The FiveThirtyEight site’s aggregation of polls shows that 54.6% disapprove of Trump while only 40.7% approve. For almost all of his term the difference stayed steady at around 10%, now it is almost 14%, probably due to the impeachment inquiry. This aggregation is on the national level, so we can’t be sure what is going in the battleground states. Still, if Trump has lost support in the range of 2% to 3% in these states, he is doomed. Of course, things can change, but, for the moment at least, Democrats have reason for cautious optimism, regardless who the ultimate candidate it.

17. I am afraid Bill Maher is right: all the leading Democratic candidates are self-destructing – including, alas, my favorite, Warren. So right now I see the best bet for electability [and yes, electability is still relevant] is Klobuchar or Yang. Not real fond of either of the two, but right now they at least don’t seem to be intent on committing presidential political suicide. As Maher says, what you have to do to beat Trump is be less crazy than him, and the leading Democrats seem to be intent on out-crazying him.

18. Would that all conservatives (if, indeed, a conservative though he still may be) were as clear-eyed and thoughtful as Andrew Sullivan, we’d’ve been rid of the incompetent, unstable thug in the Oval Office by now.

    I thought Trump entered the Valley of Impeachment the moment he fired FBI director James Comey (while initially trying to gaslight the nation into believing he’d done it because of Comey’s maltreatment of Hillary Clinton). And I’ve felt his impeachment by the House was a fait acompli since the Dems gained control of that chamber on election night of the 2018 midterms.

    Nevertheless, despite the mounting, irrefutable evidence against him, I think Trump is still a long-shot to be removed from office. (The 4 to 1 odds I’ve heard lately sound about right to me.) But I think there’s an even-money chance the Dems can shake loose the four or five Republican votes (depending upon what conservative Democratic W.Va. senator Joe Manchin does) it would take to win a majority vote in the senate to remove Trump from office. That alone, I think, would be a huge moral victory and enough to cripple Trump’s reelection chances.

    And if, after a full public airing of all the evidence, the Dems can peel off a just a couple more — if, that is, they can peel off some Republicans who aren’t either retiring, or running for reelection in purple states, or named “Mitt Romney” — then the dam may yet burst and flush Donald Trump from office.

    1. You do realize, don’t you, that conviction in the Senate for an impeachment requires not half but TWO THIRDS of the vote? That means that they’d have to shake loose a lot more Republican senators (I think about 20) to get that 67% majority to convict.

       1. Sure, I do. That’s why I put Trump at a 4 to 1 favorite to beat the rap in the Senate, but only even money to carry a majority of senators in doing so.

          Way I see it, there are four or five Republican senators who might be ready vote to convict Trump right now — Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Cory Gardner (both of whom are facing tough reelection bids in states that are trending blue), possibly Lisa Murkoswki of Alaska, and maybe one or two of the four who are retiring (Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and Mike Enzi of Wyoming). After all, the only thing holding ANY of the Republican senators in line behind Trump is fear of electoral retaliation by his hardcore, dead-end base, especially for those fearing a potential primary challenge from their Right.

          My point above is that if ANY Republicans other than those mentioned above breaks off from Trump, a whole group will probably do so en masse, quite possibly the 20 needed to remove Trump from office. It’s a long shot, I know. Still, I’d keep an eye on someone like Richard Burr of North Carolina (who’s done a pretty square job of investigating l’affaire ruse from his position as chairman of the senate intelligence committee). If he waivers, a whole lotta Republican senators might just follow suit.

19. Regarding Brexit, I heard one piece that explained that about 1/2 of the vote to leave were for a hard-Brexit, and 1/2 were for a soft-Brexit. That is why Nigel and Boris wouldn’t commit to whether they were going to have a hard or soft Brexit, as they wouldn’t get the votes otherwise. By keeping it vague, they were able to call on both sets of voters, but now that they are trying to work out a deal, they don’t have support for a hard-Brexit from the stay/soft Brexit voters, and don’t have support for a soft-Brexit from the stay/hard Brexit voters.

    If that is the case, and especially if the voters were lied to or mislead by Nigel and Boris during the original referendum, then in my opinion that would be grounds for a new referendum, otherwise about 25% of the voters are going to get their way over the other 75%.

20. Sullivan is wrong about not having another vote to fix the idiotic Brexit; my views about that were perfectly explained by Jeremy Pereira.

    I have no use for Beto (sorry, Beto–my AR-15 will stay right where it is, unloaded and locked in my safe), but Sullivan is wrong about him too. Is there anyone who seriously believes that the U.S. is NOT a white-supremacist society? And about taxing churches, Alex Kleine is right–they should ALL be taxed, because why were they ever treated differently than any other business in the first place?

    But this: “She has that quintessential perfume of smug, well-meaning, mediocre doom that Democrats simply cannot resist.” Sullivan is right. I was so convinced that Clinton was a disaster in ’16 that I switched my reg to Dem ONLY to vote for Bernie in the primaries. But sometimes you just can’t fix stupid. Warren is a high-risk, high-reward candidate. You get lucky and you get more of the Lefties’ wish list. You don’t and you get four more years of the Mango Mussolini. The smart money here says nominate someone REALLY electable, and then lobby for all of the others to be nominated to Cabinet positions. Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary of Defense…

    1. Tulsi Gabbard? I hope that was sarcasm, or do you really want to just officially turn the military over to Putin?

       1. Only half in jest. The alternative would seem to be the Forever War actuality, where John Bolton is running things–bomb everybody, always.

    2. What do you mean that the United States is white supremacist society?

       Is Mexico a Mexican supremacist society? And so on…….

       (keep in mind that it’s asian males who have the highest avg salaries in the United States.)

       1. Yeah–not talking about Asians. Talking about blacks, Hispanics, Amerinds. Spend ten minutes on the arraignment calendar of any courthouse in the U.S., and see what I mean.

          And yes, México (where I spend a lot of time) is absolutely a “Mexican supremacist society,” if by that you mean the supremacy of light-skinned, narrow-nosed, Spanish-speaking citizens, over the flat-nosed, Mixteco-speaking, dark-skinned, indigenous people.

          1. People of Asian descent are Americans too. So when you speak of the United States as being “white-supremacists” they too are in the mix.

             In terms of arraignment calendars, you may want to check if the individuals on that calendar did anything to be on that calendar.

             Stop cherry picking.

             1. dd: “…if the individuals on that calendar did anything to be on that calendar.”

                Facts: blacks and whites use marijuana at about the same rate. Blacks get prosecuted at about four times the rate of whites. And do you think that “driving while black” is just a matter of someone’s overactive imagination? Or look at school suspension rates for equivalent behaviors.

21. Andrew Sulivan does not write for The New Yorker, but for New York magazine. Very different magazines.

    1. Yes, I know this, and have given the correct venue many times. This was a typo, which I’ve just corrected, thanks.

22. Instead of worrying about the democrats and what they want to do, the democratic candidate, whoever it is should try this. The deficit has grown nearly 50 percent in the Trump era. This past year it grew by $205 billion or 26 percent. It now stands at $984 billion as of 30 Sept. 2019. Interest on the debt is more than $380 billion just last year alone, almost as much as Medicare spending for that period. And the national debt is now at $22 trillion. And we worry about the democrats putting taxes on people??

    1. And I should say, what are we getting for all this wild spending. Not a damn thing. Just a lot of richer one percent at the top. So I say to Bernie or Warren, medicare for all, bring it. At least will will be accomplishing something.

23. Since the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two terms was ratified (in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s four-election run), six men have won consecutive elections to the US presidency — Obama, Bush the Younger, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, and Eisenhower (to take them in reverse-chronological order).

    Of those six, all but one won reelection with over 50% of the popular vote. The only exception was Bill Clinton, who missed by only .76 of a percentage point, and only because third-party candidate Ross Perot got 8.4% of the vote.

    While I’m at it, let me toss out another factoid: after elections where the size of the third-party vote has been enough to swing the US presidential outcome, in the very next election, far fewer voters toss away their ballots on third-party candidates. That was certainly true in 2004 (after Dubya won the election with a minority of the vote in 2000) and in 1996 (when Perot’s share of the vote dropped to 8.4 from the nearly 19% he got in 1992).

    Simply put, Donald Trump has ZERO chance of winning over 50% of the popular vote (the standard benchmark for reelection to the US presidency) in 2020. (I will bet anyone right now any amount they can count that Trump will not get 50%+ of the vote in 2020.)

    As such, Trump also has almost no chance of prevailing in the popular vote. He “won” in 2016 with just 46.1% of the popular vote (1.1% less than Mitt Romney got in losing the 2012 election). And Trump’s popularity has never been that high again. Since the first month of his presidency, his approval rating has essentially flat-lined at 40-43%, and his disapproval rating has essentially remained steady at between 51 and 55%. Over half of US voters say they will not vote for Trump under ANY circumstances. (Trump is the only incumbent since such polling has been done to never once top a 50% approval rating.)

    Moreover, in early head-to-head polling, Trump gets only 40% of the vote against every potential opponent he’s matched up with — Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, you name it, any swinging dick or swinging dickless the Democrats might nominate. (I doubt that Trump and Pence could poll over 40% right now against a Democratic ticket of Leopold and Loeb.)

    All of which is to say, Donald Trump — mired as he is in numerous scandals and an impeachment proceeding — is the weakest incumbent president ever to face reelection in our lifetimes. His only path to victory in 2020 is through the electoral college — and, then, likely only with the aid of massive foreign fuckery designed to keep members of core Democratic constituencies home in key swing states on election day (or, possibly, even designed to change the actual ballot tabulations in those states), or through the emergence of a third-party candidate who can siphon off sufficient Democratic votes in those states, such that Donald Trump can prevail with a percentage of the vote in the low 40s.

    1. If they impeach his butt and throw him out, what happens to your bets? I think right now, over 50% want to impeach him. Think what it might be after they educate the public with open hearings.

       1. Were Trump to be convicted in the senate and removed from office, you’ll see a bunch of Republicans jump in the race for a king hell battle against Mike Pence for the GOP nomination.

          I’m pretty sure that’s the the last shot Mitt Romney sees for fulfilling his life-long goal of being US president. (In 2024, he’ll be 77, up there where Bernie and Biden are right now.)

          1. Trump knows that the second the Republican Senate figures out he is going down, the rats will desert ship in droves. That is why he will do everything in his power to prevent any potential “human scum” from thinking he will fall. If they think otherwise, it will be over very quickly.

             1. Yeah, it’s to dissuade them from doing so that Trump has come down with both feet on anyone (like Mitt Romney, or like conservative Michigan congressman Jordan Amash) who’s wavered in their support of him.

                And it’s why if Republicans (other than the handful who essentially already have nothing to lose that I mentioned in my reply to Jerry in #18 above) decide to abandon ship, they’ll abandon ship en masse, rather than trickle off one-by-one.

    2. And let’s not forget one of the main pillars of the GOP–voter suppression. In 2016, 14 states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election. Since then, 15 states have put new voting restrictions in place, from strict photo ID requirements to making it more difficult to vote early or absentee. Republican state legislatures, when they’re not busy gerrymandering, have a field day denying people the right to vote.

       1. Yeah, I should have made that “massive foreign and domestic fuckery” designed to keep core Democratic constituencies home on election day. Republicans have been having a field day with voter suppression since the Roberts Court gutted the pre-clearance provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).

    3. This is correct. Also, he can’t win without taking 1 of MI/PA/WI.

       If all 3 of those very liberal states that have voted blue since the 80s/90s are blue again in 2020 (as I suspect they will be) then Trump loses 278 to 260.

       Personally I think he’ll lose FL in addition to MI/PA/WI. Very tough path to victory imo.

       1. edit: And if Trump loses FL as I suspect he will in 2020.

          Then the only way Trump can win will be by taking 2 of the 3 very liberal states known as MI, PA, and WI which are impossible odds to overcome.

          It is just a very unlikely scenario.

          There are 2 guaranteed ways to win for *any Democrat* :

          1) Easiest way is to win PA/MI (very easy) + WI (pretty easy). It was a total massacre in the gubernatorial races in favor of Dems in 2018 in the governors races (+400K votes in Michigan and +856K votes in PA).

          2) Lose 1 of the 3 states above (WI) but win FL. This guarantees Democrats win as well.

          Either of these very likely scenarios will happen but I suspect FL, PA, MI, WI will all go blue.

    4. I believe that Trump will lose and, if I was forced to place a bet now on which party would win, I wouldn’t hesitate in choosing the Democrats. But I have seen you say again and again that Trump simply doesn’t have a chance of winning, and it scares me that I know so many people who think this way. We all thought that was exactly the case in 2016 and we were all wrong. We should never underestimate an opponent, especially one as mendacious, dangerous, and vile as Trump.

       Also, remember that, in 2016, the polls were confounded in a manner similar to that in Great Britain’s 2015 elections with the “shy Tories.”

       Again, I don’t think Trump will win — not by a long shot — but I am not in any way discounting the possibility and not sitting back and assuming he’ll lose. Not only is he Trump and not only did I watch in horror as the 2016 election slipped away, but I’m also well-acquainted with the Dems’ almost preternatural ability to rip defeat from the jaws of victory. We and the Dems need to do every single little thing in our power to make sure electability is the number one concern because getting rid of Trump is the number one concern.

       Plus, I’m an eternal pessimist 🙂

       By the way, I just saw Midsommar. I won’t say I hated it, but I very much disliked it. I really, really enjoyed Hereditary, so I was looking forward to this, but I found it pretentious, I found the message slightly muddled and rather troubling, and it had one thing I always hate in movies: characters who act like idiots. There were so many points where the characters should have said, “OK, this place is fucked up. Let’s get out of here.” It’s not like they were being held against their wills.

       The thing that troubled me most about the message was that the director said the movie was an “allegory for a [difficult] breakup.” This got me thinking: toward the end (spoilers for anyone who cares!), the boyfriend sleeps with someone because he’s under the influence of severe psychoactive drugs. I assume that, in the allegory, this is the “cheating” part in their relationship. His girlfriend then decides to burn him alive — a man she’s known for ages — rather than some villager she doesn’t know. I assume this is supposed to be her finally “breaking up” and being released from a bad relationship. I can’t stop imagining what the reaction of people and critics would have been if the gender roles were reversed. Was he cheating if he was under the influence of extreme drugs, or was he being raped? If it’s the latter, he’s being punished for being raped. If it was a woman, would people have considered that rape instead, and found the boyfriend choosing to burn his girlfriend alive a horrifying and misogynistic message?

       I also thought some of the acting was pretty poor, and some of the direction seemed flashy for no particular reason.

       1. Oh, regarding the movie and, especially, the end, this is always a question I’ve struggled with: at what point does something cross over from homage to rip-off? I’m obviously referencing The Wicker Man here. I don’t think this quite crossed over, but, when I can’t stop thinking about another movie during a movie’s run-time, that’s not a good sign for me.

       2. His only path which is difficult/unlikely is for the map to remain the same and the fluke “MI/PA/WI” he would only have to take 1 of them.

          The issue is these are very reliable states for Democrats. They are not even considered swing states. They are considered a guarantee for Democrats.

          1. That’s the same thing said in 2016. About those states.

24. Sub

25. The problem – in my humble opinion! – is that the 2016 Brexit referendum was invalidated by two catastrophic problems, a total lack of impartial information and a massive disinformation campaign.

    (1) Because the Brexit vote was a wheeze on the part of David Cameron to resolve the Tory party’s Eurosceptic problem, with absolutely no consideration of the possibility of losing – after all, he, indeed most Unionists, had lied their way to winning the Scottish independence referendum just two years earlier – his government gave no thought to providing impartial and unbiased information on the merits and problems of EU membership, presenting both sides of the issue with candour and without hysteria. This left an information vacuum in the public space. And we all know what nature abhors …

    (2) This vacuum from a disinterested government led to a massive disinformation campaign. The various Leavers organisations realised – no doubt benefitting from the Trump campaign’s experience and advice – the boundless opportunities Facebook advertising provided to bypass the Electoral Commission’s oversight and embarked on an unprecedented campaign of lying, deceit and scaring the sh*t out of a vulnerable population ravaged by years of Cameron’s bogus austerity, desperate to pin the blame on Johnny Foreigner, or the hapless immigrants. These poor souls gulped the bait hook, line and sinker. The Remain campaign was no less malign, simply more bumbling and less organised. Their killer blow was a series of dire warnings – including from the Saintly Barack Obama – of the risks to life and limb outside the European coccoon (ironically dubbed Project Fear by the Leavers).

    Thus the referendum result was no more reliable and to be trusted than a blind man carrying out your cataract surgery. The result would have been declared invalid if it had been an election to the parish council; but to the UK’s most significant trading partner with multifarious constitutional implications? No problem, move along please, nothing to see here. Utter. Fu**ing. Shambles. And we’ve not even started on the Brexit negotiations yet.

    While an invalid result might have suited David Cameron very well, and given him some ‘wriggle-room’ to contest the result, he was so stunned at losing he simply walked away from his job and his responsibilities in a daze. What a loser.

    So to return to Andrew Sullivan’s column, he is wrong to state the Brexit referendum was legitimate. There was fraud on both sides, if mainly the Leave campaign. An impartial adjudicator should have declared the contest null and void and prescribed a re-run after a suitable period of voter education, possibly copying the Irish pattern of Citizen Assemblies.

    1. Simply put, Donald Trump has ZERO chance of winning over 50% of the popular vote (the standard benchmark for reelection to the US presidency) in 2020.

       That thought is very encouraging. I may have to open a bottle of Viognier. 😎

       1. Better drink it now, then at least you had your Viognier. (Thanks, A.C.Clarke).

          1. Did A.C.Clarke say that?

    2. “Irish pattern of Citizen Assemblies”

       That is absolutely brilliant! I’d never heard of such a thing. The only thing similar, that I know of, is the North Eastern states use of Town Meetings. This newfangled Irish invention in democracy could spread widely and influence government profoundly. It avoids the interwebs and twitter and facebook and Russian and Chinese meddling beautifully. Why hadn’t I heard of it?

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_(Ireland)

       1. An independent candidate in my riding in the last Canadian election (the one from a few weeks ago) proposed permanent citizens’ assemblies for each riding as standing advisors and push-backs. An interesting idea, but one that I suspect will never happen.

          (Of course, he wasn’t elected.)

          1. Never say never.

26. I think Mayor Pete would be electable in the general but not in the primaries. He would have trouble in the states that wouldn’t vote for him in the general – the Southern and Midwestern states. If he could win Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio in the primaries that would bode well for him. I think he has a good chance for Iowa, but not New Hampshire or South Carolina. Super Tuesday would be the game changer for him.

    Lang is a crackpot – giving everyone $1,000 a month is welfare and won’t work anyway. It would be inflationary.

    1. Earlier, I thought Buttigieg could not be elected. I now think he can. I hope his surge continues.

       The demo grant is not inflationary unless financed by expanding the money supply. Generally, I think it is a good idea, but McGovern ran on it in 1972 and got hammered. So I’d rather not propose it now when defeating Trump is paramount.

27. So far as brexit is concerned, I think it all demonstrates that all cats are secretly British.

    Proof? While making breakfast, its summer here, there are flies so the door is closed. Up comes my cat, meows at the door mournfully, paws it, looks at me with big soulful eyes, meows again.

    I open the door, she pokes her head outside, goes round in a little circle in the doorway for a bit, then heads back inside to her food bowl.

    Classic. British. Behaviour.

28. Here’s an incisive analysis of the hideous situation in Britain — from Nick Cohen.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/27/trust-becoming-principal-casualty-of-britains-raging-political-war?

    >>Brexit may feel endless. But the incendiary tensions in Britain don’t end with Brexit. Labour’s quasi-socialist programme has inspired so much fear among the wealthy that the Tories will be the beneficiaries of what one sympathiser described to me as “a wall of money” for their election campaign. Many British Jews believe a Labour victory would produce the most antisemitic government western Europe has seen since 1945. Large numbers are talking of leaving the country. In turn, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters must suspect that the next election is the radical left’s last chance. If they lose, it will be the end of them and traditional Labour values and politicians will reassert themselves.

    In Scotland, separatists see the election as a step towards a second independence referendum. In Northern Ireland, Johnson first awoke the danger of republican violence by threatening to put a border on the island of Ireland, and then the danger of Protestant violence by putting a border in the Irish Sea. An abysmal achievement even by his low standards.<<

    1. “If [Labour] lose[s], it will be the end of them and traditional Labour values and politicians will reassert themselves.”

       Let’s hope so! I prefer PMs who support unions rather than terrorists.

29. Apropos a second Brexit referendum, the following letter appeared on Friday in The Times:

    Sir, On May 7, 2015 the British people cast 30.8 million votes to elect a parliament for a fixed five-year term, due to last until May 2020. Today, less than four and a half years later, the third Tory prime minister since that vote finds himself unhappy with the results of both the 2015 and the 2017 elections, and wants to force the British people to have a third go at electing a parliament more to his taste. Yet woe betide anyone who suggests the British people might like to have a mere second go at the 2016 EU referendum. That apparently makes you an “enemy of the (17.4 million) people” who voted the way Boris Johnson told them to. So “three times good, two times bad” when it comes to voting on important matters. Funny how democracy works in these troubled times.
    Michael McParland, QC
    London WC1

    1. A very good point!

30. Brexit. The country voted for it in good faith. The question asked was a simple “in” or “out”, and we know how the vote went. Lies were told by all sides and few showed themselves in a particularly good light. Ever since we’ve been confronted by one side (as in the Scottish independence referendum) who are unable to accept the result. The south east of England including its entire pro-remain media have done their best since to portray “leavers” as morons. The “remainers are given a free pass to block Brexit at every turn with their remain stance seldom mentioned. There has clearly been an attempt to block leaving by any means possible and with the aid of the media congratulating the good sense of staying in the EU and the others, well, they’re just racist idiots who don’t know better.
    We never leave Europe, we “crash out”. These terms are constantly used to undermine the democratic leave voters. I believe that those who voted in all good conscience to leave the EU did so imaging that the details which were really well above the average Joe Public’s pay grade would be worked out by a parliament who would pull together for the sake of the country. Even knowing what petty-minded, axe-grinding, self-aggrandising m.p.’s we have I don’t think anyone could have imagined their behaviour. So here we are in the shit. And it goes on with ever more Brexit extensions until, they hope, it will never happen. Democracy? Don’t make me laff.

    1. Don’t they reserve “crash out” for Brexit without a deal?

    2. @Reggie Cormack

       ”we’ve been confronted by one side (as in the Scottish independence referendum) who are unable to accept the result”

       The result being that after an advisory referendum, about a quarter of the UK population expressed a preference for Leave and slightly less for Remain. Who does not accept this result? Well, for a start, all those who insist that the Referendum was binding, including D Cameron, T May, and ABdP Johnson, even though they all participated in legislating for an advisory referendum. You know the sort: they describe the Referendum result as if it was a mandate, a decision, an instruction, or the will of the people. They seem to think that promises to implement the result override legislation. Had Parliament legislated for a binding referendum, its discussion about whether a supermajority was appropriate would have been different.

       As a Remainer, I accept the result, and I am still waiting for the subsequent proper parliamentary debate on the momentous question of whether the UK should leave the EU (taking into account the Referendum result and other factors such as how EU27 nationals living in the UK would likely have voted, how 16..17-year-olds would likely have voted, and factors not covered by the Referendum campaigns such as how not to violate the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement). I do not consider a debate based on lies as a proper debate.

       ”The “remainers are given a free pass to block Brexit at every turn with their remain stance seldom mentioned.”

       Do you regard Johnson as someone with a remain stance because he has paused the progress of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill? Or perhaps he is secretly a Remainer because he advances such poor arguments for leaving; likewise the ERG group who mostly opposed May’s deal?

       Brexit is not blocked. In fact as I write this, the hardest of all Brexits may still occur on October 31st.

       ”I believe that those who voted in all good conscience to leave the EU did so imaging that the details which were really well above the average Joe Public’s pay grade would be worked out by a parliament who would pull together for the sake of the country.”

       I think you have a point there. When Parliament legislated to allow the Referendum, it should have established that there was a version of ‘leave’ that was possible (for example, in not violating the GFA), and one that was something MPs could support while observing their duty towards the UK as a whole. Measures could also have been taken to minimise the problem of mendatious campaigning (though perhaps that is too much to expect from MPs). Lies (including the lie that the Referendum was binding) are not compatible with the principle of democracy.

       1. +1

31. As much talk about how awesome the EC is from Republicans it really is a sad system. Look at the map. When Michigan/Pennsylvania remain blue (as they have for decades — and where Trump won by a combined vote of less than 55k (10.7k in MI and 44.2k in PA)).

    When (not if) they turn blue the “score” becomes 270 to 268 Trump wins.

    So, the Democrats only need to win WI (has voted with Democrats since 1988!) or FL.

    So the entire election comes down to 2 states.

    Everything west of Illinois has remained the exact same and if you live in a state west of IL there is no point in voting — that’s 25 states.

    With the exception of FL there is no point in voting if you live down south. Same in the northeast.

    For 96% of the states (48) we know exactly which color it will be and how many “points” each party will get.

    Your vote only counts if you live in WI or FL next election. Dems just need to win one of them and Trump loses.

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