Tag Archives: 2016 Election

07.27.16
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Tim Kaine and President Barack Obama Liveblogging

 

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Kind of neat.

9:04 Softball tonight kept me away from some of the convention. I heard Biden bring the house down on the radio, though. He sounds really good on the radio. He’s got that ol’ timey confidentiality, even when he’s shouting. He pulls you in. And there is no one who sounds more sincere than he does when saying he can’t believe that Donald Trump has a shot at being the next President.  Man, I love Joe Biden. I’m glad he didn’t run, though. He deserved to go out beloved, not losing to Hillary.

Kaine’s here. More after jump.

Continue reading →

07.27.16
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Julian Assange Casts His Vote

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His vote will ultimately be worth more than yours.

When you’re thinking free and open society, you’re thinking Donald Trump, right?

Six weeks before the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks published an archive of hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of the Democratic convention, the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, foreshadowed the release — and made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency.

(The Times immortally invaluable Charlie Savage put this all together)

So, one could have initially, if one ignored the Russian angle cast this as an attempt to throw a corrupt and evil “democracy”, the world’s great evil and enemy of freedom, into a state of real higgedly-piggedly. But that’s clearly not the case.

Mr. Assange replied that what Mr. Trump would do as president was “completely unpredictable.” By contrast, he thought it was predictable that Mrs. Clinton would wield power in two ways he found problematic.

First, citing his “personal perspective,” Mr. Assange accused Mrs. Clinton of having been among those pushing to indict him after WikiLeaks disseminated a quarter of a million diplomatic cables during her tenure as secretary of state.

“We do see her as a bit of a problem for freedom of the press more generally,” Mr. Assange said.

I’m going to ignore the middle part, where he is mad at Mrs. Clinton for moving to indict him after, you know, breaking the law. I get why he sees her as an enemy, but did that really come as a surprise? Regardless of what you think of the justice or efficacy of the Wikileaks diplomatic dump (and I think they are a different type than Snowden’s heroism), it stands to reason that the US government would be miffed. I get why Assange sees her as an enemy, but really, shouldn’t take it so personally.

It’s the first and third bits that are either idiotically naive or completely sinister, depending on where you stand on Assange. Seeing Clinton as “a bit of a problem for freedom of the press” is fair: the Obama Administration has a terrible track record on press freedom, and Hillary has never been known for her openness, exactly. I think being peeved at the cable dumping, in which legitimate diplomatic communication was exposed and lives were put in danger, doesn’t in and of itself mark her as an enemy. But I get it.

However, the contrast is, and was known at the time Assange made these statements (about six weeks ago) Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. He’s made it…very clear where he stance on the media, the role of antagonistic journalism, and the role of the press in a free society, which is: fuck the press. If they aren’t subservient to him, they are useless. He’s shown it in his willingness to excommunicate anyone who is “unfair” (by which we mean fair) to him.  He’s shown it on his ravaging Twitter feed, where he demonstrates that trying to keep the media in line is a bigger goal than talking about policy or anything else. This tweet— “I was at and met Juan Williams in passing. He asked if he could have pictures taken with me. I said fine. He then trashes on air!”– is a perfect example of his childish authoritarianism.

Not all his authoritarianism is childish and petulant (though really, aren’t those the emotions at the heart of tyranny?). He has made it very clear that he intends to, or at least wants to, “open up libel laws” so that he can sue unfriendly press out of existence. He’s been trying to do that for decades. One could argue the pursuit of this power is one of the driving goals of his Presidency. So even he won’t be able to open up libel laws, as that wouldn’t come close to holding up in court, he’s clearly a man who wants to quash press freedom, either de facto or de jure, in order to burnish his own heroic image. Not exactly an ally of an open society.

So when Assange says Trump is “completely unpredictable”, he’s lying, or else he’s not paying any attention, which doesn’t strike me as plausible. Trump has made it very clear he’s a huge fan of waterboarding, and of even more torture. He’s been clear about that his entire run. That Assange chooses to ignore that, and, worse, accommodate it, raises a few questions about motivations.

The charitable interpretation here is that Trump is an agent of chaos, will rattle America, will end the neoliberal agreement that is underpinning much of the world’s immorality. He’s ignorant about who Trump actually is, and underestimates the racism and nativism that undergirds the campaign, focusing on globalization and isolationism.

That’s actually dovetailed with the uncharitable interpretation, which is that Assange sees the US/EU as the real enemies, and any of their enemies– including the ruthless and literal-press-murdering Putin regime– as his friends. That’s pretty sinister, but when someone sets himself against one party, in this case the war-mongering, trade-hawking, and press-stifling US (and all these are legitimate charges!), he tends to cling to any port in the storm.

You are free to question if he is pro-freedom, merely anti-West and pro-Russia, pro-authoritarianism if it’s the right person, or anywhere in between. I don’t think there is a cut-and-dry answer, though I lean toward him being a bit of an authoritarian creep with libertarian clothes. All I know for sure is that with friends like these, freedom doesn’t need the many enemies it already has.

07.26.16
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Talking DNC Blues: Dems Walk Fine Line Between Optimism and Anger

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And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won’t never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home.

So, the Democrats were in a weird position last night. After the gotterdammerung of the RNC last week, with it’s “last night in a Pompeii whorehouse” vibe, they were eager to make them the Republicans look like panicky chumps, those who saw a mouse in the corner and imagined Godzilla. It was a strange turnabout for the party of Reagan: Dems were basically saying, you guys hate Springsteen, and now you’re singing his songs?

Of course, to do so ignored that the driving energy in the Democratic Party this year was the anger of Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown and others, especially Bernie Sanders, against the rigged system, the idea that the most powerful controlled the system and shut everyone else out. This idea is correct, and they’ve been beating that drum for decades, only to be derided as leftist jobkilling goons. So it must have been particularly galling to hear their language appropriated by Trump and the rest of the Republican Party, for whom words like “inequality” and “rigged system” sounded as foreign and distasteful as, well, I guess any actual foreign words would be.

So that was the trick yesterday, and that tension was a parallel track to the Bernie/Hillary debate. After all, saying “everything is fine and we’re great” ignored the driving force behind the Sanders campaign. To pretend that the newfound GOP distaste for the rich and powerful (which, we have to be reminded, is not sincere) was somehow incorrect or misdiagnosed would not just be wrong, but it would be politically idiotic. That’s why an uplifting speech like Cory Booker’s fell flat.

I feel that no matter what had happened, of course, there would have been a very small portion of Bernie supporters who would have been livid, and rightfully so. They would have booed and chanted regardless. That chanting “We trusted you” at Elizabeth Warren shows a complete disconnect from reality almost doesn’t matter: they had the energy, and that energy had to be recognized.

And, I think, by the end of the night it was. Sarah Silverman, of all people, broke the ice and said what a lot of people were thinking. She elegantly pointed out the stakes here, and used her brilliant with and reputation as a serious thinker to perfect advantage. It was a beautifully honest moment, an unscripted bit of theater that helped bring the convention back to script. I say “of all people” not because I am surprised she had the chops, but because if you had “Sarah Silverman” in the “who’ll save the party” pool, then my hat is off to you.

But there was still some tension, and still some Hillary hate. Then Michelle came on, and gave a stirring speech– really, one of the best most of us have ever heard. She sliced and diced the Trump campaign, but also the childishness of #BernieorBust. There are real stakes here. Her optimism, and her story of America’s arc, brought the night in focus. The White House was built by slaves. But now her daughters (“two beautiful, intelligent black young women”, in the proudest and most touching line of the night) played on it. It was a great way of showing that things can be truly and genuinely awful, but that the people can make a difference.

That set the stage for Warren and Sanders. They didn’t shy away from the problems of America, and didn’t build a sunny backdrop. They weren’t triumphant. They were fighters, and most importantly, they were partisans. They were saying, listen, sometimes the Dems can be be bad, but the Republican basically always are. If you care about this, you’ll kick the Democrats in the ass by pushing them to to left, but fighting and agitating, and by voting so that the Republican will lose. That’s the only way to continue any progress. That’s the way to make the marches and the energy and the tears and the hopes and frustrations mean something. It was a Woody Guthrie song. It was angry and determined, and it was what I think the majority of the holdouts needed.

It is sad that the Bernie Sanders campaign is over. The America ad, which they cannily played, reminded me of why I voted for him. He had a vision for America. What’s amazing is that his vision is winning. It is in a flawed vessel, but think of what he accomplished. Almost no one was at his announcement last year. He moved from that to controlling the platform, moving the party, and getting a 5-minute standing ovation at the DNC. The fighter may be done, but the fight continues.

They’ll have one last shot at catharsis today with the roll call. And I think they’ll be fine. The blade is sharpened, and the real enemy is known. Hillary might not be inspiring, but the cause is. I think through the final three speakers, they accomplished the difficult task of showing that they weren’t rose-tinted, but saw the problems clearly, and unlike the lipservice blowdried phonies in Cleveland, they actually have a plan to fight it.

07.26.16
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Grasping Toward a Cohesive 21st-Century Trump and Russia Story

 

The man playing the real high-stakes game

 

I’ve spent a long time arguing on the blog that Trump’s campaign is not a grift, but a con— that is, it has defined goals (the Presidency), but is getting there by pretending to be a campaign. I think the slapdash family affair that was the RNC showed that to be pretty true, but what I didn’t realize is that he is also a mark. He’s being played by Vladimir Putin, who is playing a much bigger game.

Franklin Foer, Josh Marshall, and Max Boot (among others) have done a great job of laying out in detail the ties between Trump Tower and the Kremlin, a sentence I can’t believe I even wrote.  The problem is that it is hard to really tell what certain motivations are, and which horse is leading which cart. Let’s lay out some facts/suppositions. (Info from these links, and from other sources like The Times and Foreign Policy)

  1. The Trump campaign is deeply in bed with Putin’s Russia. Paul Manafort worked for Putin’s Ukranian proxy, Paul Flynn is a close friend of Putin and has advocated for Russia’s regional rights, his top FP advisor, Carter Page, has ties to Gazprom, and has given speeches in Russia advocating for the US to back off.
  2. Trump himself relies on Russian banks and Russian money to do business, since a lot of American banks won’t touch him anymore, on account of him being a disastrously bad businessman and a terrible bet.
  3. It is pretty clear by now that Russia has had direct involvement in the American election to try to sow more chaos in the DNC. They have more emails, and more hacks, and everyone is waiting with a nauseous fear to see what Russia, with its useful stooge Wikileaks, will do next. That a couple of neckbeards booed Elizabeth Warren is the big story rather than Russian interference on behalf of a candidate says quite a bit.
  4. The Trump campaign let social conservatives run wild over the party platform, including lunatic things like gay conversion therapy (which I guarantee you Trump doesn’t care about), but interfered to water down language about supporting Ukranian opposition to the Russian invasion/annexation of Crimea.
  5. In addition to Crimea, his most coherent FP statement is that, more or less, every country should fend for itself. He couches it in the language of business– we’ll help them if they pay us– but if there is anything in the ballpark of a coherent foreign policy it is that no one is in this together. Needless to say, that means that larger countries will dominate the smaller ones.

#5, by the way, happens to be Russia’s main foreign policy: dominating their “sphere of influence” (think a colder Monroe Doctrine for the 21st-century). For Putin, anyplace that was a Soviet state, or was at least under the Soviet thumb, should be gravitationally attracted toward Russia. Russia should be able to dictate their fates, who they buy oil and gas from, what their foreign policy will be, and more. That’s why they are so livid at the Baltics joining NATO, or the Ukraine or Georgia looking west. Our putting out thumbs on the scale is seen as tantamount to war. That’s their FP: control the near abroad.

To be fair, it is hypocritical to say that they have “no right” to do so, since America certainly tries to, and tries to control the far abroad as well. But in terms of competing sectors of influence, it isn’t unfair to say that we encourage countries to fall into the US/EU/NATO sector. If Russia thinks power politics are the main game, they have to know that losing is an option.

Ah, but what if it doesn’t have to be an option? What if America had a President like this:

  • Who was essentially incurious about the world?
  • Who, insofar as he was interested, leaned toward strongmen and bullies?
  • Whose native instincts were to pull back and not help anyone else except in the absolute narrowest definition of self-interest?
  • Whose native instincts were inherently racist, and so hated any projects (the EU, immigration) that might foster integration?
  • Who had a lifelong admiration for people who felt the same way?
  • Who was incredibly susceptible to flattery by the powerful?
  • Who felt that business and political power should be inherently intertwined?
  • Who could be swayed by the riches of Russia?

That’s um…well, not to put my thumbs on the scales, but I think we have something here. Hint: it isn’t Hillary Clinton.

I don’t think Putin is funding Trump’s campaign, nor do I think the two are strategizing. Trump isn’t the Manchurian candidate. However, he is the perfect candidate for Russia’s vision of the world: a world of spheres, of dividing the near enemy in Europe, of making as many countries as possible reliant on Russian resources. It’s a world of walls and of anti-immigrant posters rattling by torchlight. It’s a world where international organizations are nonentities, so for any protection, countries have to do the bidding of the near and strong.

This is a world were thuggish psuedodemocrats (like Putin and Orban and Trump) form teams where they get rich through the rawest of power politics. This is what Trump believes, and he’s surrounded himself with people who feel the same way. I doubt this is by design. It is probably partly by temperament, but more by suggestions from people like Paul Manafort, who knows how the game is played.

This reveals a far more dangerous side of Trump. Everything he does is a threat to the Constitutional order, but it took me a while to realize that he himself was being played by far darker forces. Trump has the idea that whatever he does is genius. People like Manafort, who have actual goals, will ride this fearmongering and racism and hatred and blithering incoherence as far as it will go, telling him he’s brilliant, and steering him in a pro-Putin direction. They know they have the perfect idiot who believes his own clippings (indeed, that’s all he reads).

This isn’t to say that he isn’t an American fascist. He is. His melding of the personal and the political into a garish abattoir, a reality freak show, is the perfect expression of the 21st-century, and exactly how fascism would form in the here and now. His ideas of the world are a 21st-century reaction to the ills of modernity, of the dislocation, mixed with a lifetime of racism and self-aggrandizement. He’s extremely dangerous on his own. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t also being played, being manipulated by people with a larger game, who recognize that he can be a useful clown. Trump, with his snarling ridiculousness, is the perfect American counterpart for the growing anti-Europe axis: the fool who thinks he is the king.

 

07.25.16
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Booing Bernie, Self-Inflicted Wounds, And the End of Revolution

 

‘Indict the DNC.’

Image from the Guardian

 

First Story: The DNC is, if not corrupt, certainly skewed toward boring centrism, and staffed with hacks and dopes who send idiotic, if ineffective, emails to each other plotting against Bernie Sanders and any real progressive change. Their little plots might not have come to fruition, but it was symbolic of the attempt to stifle a move toward the left. At the worst, the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders, and given to a warmongering neoliberal. Undemocratic superdelegates were just part of that.

Second Story: Hillary would have won anyway. She had the support of Hispanics, blacks, women, and other important parts of the Democratic Coalition. She beat Bernie Sanders by more votes, and more pledged delegates, than Obama beat her by in 2008. The dopes at the DNC didn’t matter. They could have supported Bernie, and he still would have lost.

Third Story: Regardless of DNC perfidy and juvenile grabassery, Bernie supporters have to come around. And the polls say most of them are. Like, 90%. It’s not even close. But the optics are terrible. The media is salivating for a “both sides in disarray!” story. Getting rid of the unexplainable Debbie Wasserman Schultz should be good. Having the most progressive platform in Democratic history should be a huge win. You’ve pushed the DNC as far to the left as can possibly be expected. Even Bernie Sanders is saying that booing is going to be terrible optics, and the stakes are too high. (a Bernie text, via Digby)

And yet, he was booed by some of his own supporters.

Let’s be clear: this is a minority of a minority, and in a very real sense, they are being crazily selfish, hoping for an impossible purity rather than accepting that they have, in a real sense won. The party has moved in their direction, and not even incrementally. If they raise a panic, stomp out, and think that the revolution can only be won by getting everything all at once or nothing at all, then nothing will win. Every amazing thing Sanders accomplished would be ruined.

And yet…they have every right to be angry. What happened at the DNC is not surprising, but it is still maddening and terrible, probably more so for all that. It was a self-inflicted wound by the DNC, in an election that should not be close, that cannot be close.

So the DNC hurt themselves, in an inexcusable way. The lesson for Bernie Sanders supporters is to not do the same fucking thing. Chanting “lock her up”, militating against Hillary, working actively for Trump is a betrayal to everything that every one of us who voted for Bernie voted for. It’s a betrayal of hope. It’s more than a self-inflicted wound. It’s progressive suicide.

So yes, it sucks that you are being asked to be “silent”. I get it. But you’ve already accomplished so much, and the stakes are too high. There is a legitimate honest-to-god fascist running. Your feelings are literally the least important thing here.

07.25.16
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RIP DWS. DNC? GFY.

 

“How many times have I failed at this job?” 

 

Well, it took catastrophic stupidity to finally end the DNC tenure of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, but since that’s what it clearly took to appoint her, and to keep her in after 2014, I suppose that’s fitting.  A few quick thoughts.

  • The main take from the emails– that the DNC was pulling for and maneuvering in favor of Hillary– is not surprising. Not surprising in the sense that we already knew this, but also not surprising in tone. Political people think like political people and talk like them. There wasn’t going to be any neutrality. Remember this when you see people talking about the rigged Democratic leadership who were wondering when the Republican leadership was going to step up to stop Trump. It’s always ok when Republicans do it.
  • That said, this is terrible. It’s another example of DWS’s disastrous “leadership”, in which we managed to lose the Senate, virtually every possible statehouse, and fall backward in the House. It’s like she saw Rahm ignoring the successful lessons of Howard Dean, and saying “I think we should do more of this.” The organization followed. Were in not for the once-in-the-lifetime skills of Barack Obama, and the energy of the resurgent left giving new life to the party, it would be total disarray.
  • I’m not worried about this electorally. Bernie will still be speaking tonight, calling for unity. There will be protests, and a lot of #neverhillary people yelping on TV, but these people weren’t going to vote for her anyway. This is cover, not a reason.
  • That they are right– the system was set up against Bernie– should, in theory, give them even more resolve to push the party to the left. Look at what they accomplished with (admittedly incompetent) enemies. And now DWS is gone! This is a great chance to keep pushing one of the only two viable parties more toward their goals. I know that’s what I am hoping for: an actually progressive in the DNC chairperson role. Why not bring back Howard Dean under whom we were, remember, wildly successful. In the short, medium, and long run, this idiocy could be hepful. (It’s Donna Brazille, at least through the election, which is fine.)
  • A lot depends on the speech tonight, and how well the convention goes. The press would love to have a “both parties in turmoil” story, based on the equivalence of jumped-up fundraisers and college interns at the DNC acting like their venal boss and the rise of American fascism. It’s going to take a hell of a convention to turn that tide. If so, and the story is “a week that started in disarray ended with great unity”, that’ll be a rising tide. I think having Bernie and Michelle and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden and Barack Obama speak makes it a decent bet.
  • Really, the big story is the Russian connection. It looks more and more likely that they were officially behind the hack, in whatever way the Russian intelligence services work. Trump and Putin are clearly sympatico, though I don’t think Putin sees it as a gathering of equals. Trump does a lot of business in Russia, and needs Russian money, since American banks don’t trust him. His top advisors are intimately intertwined with Russia, and its goals of using energy to dominate their regional rivals. They are vested in the dissoltuion or Europe, the weakening of NATO, and an isolationist agenda. And hey, those are all Trump stances! This could get really interesting…
07.22.16
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Quick Thoughts on Why Hillary Will Choose Kaine

 

Sure, why not? 

 

Typing this as we’re waiting on the text announcement, so I’ll probably look like an idiot if something comes through…

I think Hillary will choose Tim Kaine as her Veep, and not out of overcaution, either, or as a sign of which way she’s leaning to govern. I don’t think it is a sellout. I think what is most important to her, sincerely, is ability to step in. Kaine has executive experience, and is uninspiring, but competent, and probably wouldn’t be a disaster. Not to say the other guys would be, but he matches what she looks for.

Electorally…well, he won’t hurt. I don’t think he’ll add too much. Perez, who is my choice, and my favorite among those still in the running, might siphone some votes from white working class uneducated, since he is an amazing Labor Secretary who actually fights for them. He might also keep the Bernie coalition fired up. But I don’t know if it would be enough to make a significant number of them vote for Hillary or against Trump. So the calculation there is probably that he doesn’t add too much, is too unknown, and might face tough questions about ability to handle things outside his area of expertise (fairly or not). That said, the one charge that would normally be levied against him– he’s anti-business and too pro-labor– would ring hollow this year. I still hold out hope, but don’t expect it.

Kaine is a fine pick. There will be stuff we on the left can pick apart, but like Hillary, he governs where the party is. He’ll be more to the left than he would have been otherwise. And I like that the Sherrod-Warren-Sanders-(Feingold???)-et al coalition will be intact to keep their feet to the fire. Kaine isn’t inspiring, but he’s fine, and winning is what matters.

07.22.16
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Trump Did Not Defend The LGBTQ Community

 

Not the roots of a new coalition, ok?

 

In his excellent and lacerating takedown of the inherent un-Americanness of Trump’s acceptance speech, Franklin Foer strikes a strange note.

Aside from his quite striking defense of the LGBTQ community, there was nothing that hinted at expanding freedom to new quarters of the country.

I’ve seen that in a few places, described as “surprising” or “heartwarming” or some other such terms, that seemed to describe his outreach and inclusion to the one community. That was in response to this.

Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted our LGBT community. As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.

(When delivered, Trump added “Q”)

It got applause, and Trump said how glad he was to hear a room full of Republicans applaud that. But come on. It is entirely about pitting that community against the Muslim hordes. To be sure, Islam, especially Wahabbi-influence, are terrible to the LGBTQ community. Murderously so. But this was not a defense of the LGBTQ community at all.

This wasn’t a pledge to overturn the overtly retrograde and dehumanizing GOP platform. He didn’t promise to work to overcome prejudice, hatred, and the staunch opposition to civil rights inherent in the party he took over. He didn’t say that he would fight to make sure that people in the LGBTQ community could lead lives unencumbered by the hatred they face, by the bullying and tormenting. He didn’t call the suicide rate among transgendered people a national tragedy. Remember, he alone can solve all our problems, but these problems are outside his concern.

The tell is obviously “hateful foreign ideology”. That’s all that matters. The yolwing jackals in Cleveland, with their gay conversion therapy fetishes and their emotional inability to recognize any “non-straight” for of love as real don’t have to adjust at all. It was all about recruiting new people in his war against everyone else.

Omar Mateen’s swirl of confused insanity, which surely had multiple sources, manifested itself in a hurricane of violence against a community. To Trump, that means that LGBTQ Americans only have one enemy. His exploitation of that is one of his most cnical and hateful maneuvers. I don’t think it is going to persuade anyone though. They are smart enough, and know the long history of oppression against them, to know that his phony compassion is insincere. I’m not worried about the media convincing them. But in looking for a reed to try to grasp onto, to find some sliver of sanity and decency in an outwardly apocolpytic speech, they inadvertnetly grabbed the thinnest one of all.

 

07.21.16
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Cruz Starts The Great Hijacking Myth

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“You’re mad now, but have I told you about my grades?”

So, I didn’t watch last night, but obviously caught up on Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse, and the delicious chaos that followed. Cruz looks bad, and is hated, and his good buddies are turning their back on him. But this was peak Cruz. He knew what would happen, and still did so. Here’s why.

Cruz is betting on a huge Trump loss, and wants to position himself for 2020. That’s pretty obvious. But the way he’s doing it is to lay the groundwork for The Great Hijacking narrative that will be the Republican story after the loss. The nativists and racists in the party will claim betrayal by the elites, of course, and there will be opportunistic politicians who try to attract them, but what’s left of the Party (not much!) will try to rally around the idea that they were hijacked and bamboozled by a New York billionaire, and that conservative ideas weren’t represented.

Cruz is in a perfect position to do this. On immigration, on Muslims, and on the red-meat social issues, he’s no less and often more hideous than Trump. He can appeal to all sides of the party and its fractured remnants. So he takes the heat now, but then seems like the only person who had the sheer balls to stand up to Trump. So when the party is dazed after their drubbing (this is the theory; not a prediction), Cruz can be the one they turn to.

Paul Ryan is trying the same thing. But as much of a piece of work he is, he’s still slightly more responsible and party-oriented. For Cruz, the GOP has always just been the best avenue for his Messianic outlet. He’s a true believer, but only in himself. He’s willing to break the party if he thinks he can collect the shards into his own basket. I think that’s his plan here. He might be overplaying his hand; he is, as we’ve talked about, more clever than actually smart, more of a striker than a strategist. In four years (or two, really) the nativist wing might, in their anger and betrayal, suddenly remember that he’s a goddamn Mexican or whatever, and the what’s left of the Establishment might try to freeze him out.

But don’t count him out. He is still a good politician, and got hundreds of delegates despite being one of the most unlikable men in America. In it’s own way, it was more remarkable than what Trump did.

What’ll be interesting is when he’s up for reelection in 2018. Who knows if this will hurt him or not. But how can he possibly run and even pretend that he has any interest in serving as a Senator? He’ll be running for President the day his second term starts in 2019. He might not even stop in Washington on his way to Iowa. At least Rubio has two years to pretend to be a Senator. Cruz will run for President regardless of if Trump wins or loses. He’s not waiting another eight years. He’ll do what Reagan did to Ford and Teddy Kennedy did to Carter. That’s a prediction.

The last note is that Cruz did the impossible last night. For literally anyone else, not endorsing Donald Trump would be a sign of character and of decency, of principle and, if you are a Republican, of sacrifice. Only Ted Cruz can make doing the right thing self-serving and selfish. He’s a remarkable man.

07.19.16
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Desultory Liveblogging RNC: Day 2

 

Pictured: Chris Christie

 

Ate dinner and watched Vice Principals with the wife right after the Alaska thing, so missed the beginning. Watching Ron Johnson, who has about 5 months left in public life, accidentally forgetting he is speaking on Economy night.

7:56: Chris Cox, of the NRA. Make America Work Again! Seriously, this guy can go jump.

7:58: NRA guy starts with a blood-curdling example of a single mother being preyed upon by a home-invader. It wasn’t a true story, of course. You’d think that he could come up with a non-hypothetical to really bolster his case, but he didn’t even try. It’s more the dumbass “politicians have bodyguards, so they’re hypocrites!” argument. I can’t stand it.

(More after jump)

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