Politics

Of all the things candidate Trump said, nothing outraged the Democrats more than his claim that, under him, the GOP would become a workers party. The workers! The Democrats thought they had ownership of that label. And at one time they did. But that was long ago, and by appropriating it Trump was announcing a revolution in American politics. After past economic downturns the American economy always bounced back, but after the Great Recession of 2008-09 we experienced the slowest recovery since the Great Depression, in terms of jobs and wages. That was the new normal, we were told. Those manufacturing jobs were never coming back. We also told pollsters that we no longer thought that our children would have it better than we did.

A few weeks ago in these virtual pages, I wrote that ‘In years to come, no one is going to talk about ‘kavanaughing’ a candidate.’ Boy did I get that wrong. The word deployed may not be the mouthful ‘kavanaughed.’ Maybe it will, à la Lindsey Graham, be pleonastically expressed: ‘the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics’ about fits the case. I am writing on Friday morning. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote this afternoon. Punditry is not prophecy, but I am nevertheless going to predict that Brett Kavanaugh gets an up vote from the committee and that Chuck Grassley will have learned his lesson and bring the matter to a floor vote tomorrow, Saturday, as he said he would.

George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. Donald Trump can’t help telling a lie. At his press conference today Trump suggested that not only wouldn’t Democrats vote to confirm the father of our country to the Supreme Court, but that Washington may not have had a spotless record when it came to his private affairs. ‘He may have had some, I think, accusations made,’ Trump said. ‘Didn’t he have a couple of things in his past?’ Who will Trump exhume next to besmirch? Honest Abe? The Gipper?However outlandish, the presser was no laughing matter.  World leaders didn’t laugh at him, he said, but with him yesterday as he proclaimed that he was the greatest president in American history.

‘BURN IN HELL OLD CRIMINAL!’ responded gem.1120. ‘THE ONE U RUSSIAN SELL OUTS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RUN IS **THE DAY U MEET GOD**!’ What prompted such a tirade at Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Instagram account? The Senate Judiciary Committee chair, an Iowan, had posted lovely, innocent pictures of corn. ‘Wk 19 # cornwatch,’ his account posted. ‘Pic 1- ears of corn to feed the squarrels in the winter Pic 2- evidence of deer feasting.’ https://www.instagram.com/p/BoHuiX4lSOi/ Cockburn harvested the best responses. ‘Wow based on the comments of this photo people are really mad about corn!’ It seems the man charged with shepherding controversial Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination through committee can find no love on the net.

Here we go again. Another Trump administration official bites the dust. This time it was deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein who had supposedly submitted his resignation to White House chief of staff John Kelly, who reportedly is on the same glide path and views Trump, according to Bob Woodward’s new book Fear, as a 'professional liar.' Except that Rosenstein hadn’t. Or he did, but it wasn’t accepted by Kelly. Or something like that. As compensation, Rosenstein, we were told, got to attend an NSC principals committee meeting this afternoon. So it goes in Crazytown where, as the Atlantic’s Steve Clemons points out, things keep getting crazier.

I believe that Christine Blasey Ford is telling the truth when she claims that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a house party in the early 1980s, when she was 15 and he was 17. I believe her husband, Russell Ford, who has told the Washington Post that in 2012 his wife had recounted her experience during a couples’ therapy session, and named Kavanaugh. And I believe the story that Kavanaugh’s friend Amy Chua advised her female students that if they wanted to win a clerkship with him, they should dress like a model. All of which this leads me to conclude that Kavanaugh is not right for a seat on the Supreme Court. As Roger has written, the Democrats are doing everything they can to exploit Ford’s accusation for political ends.

This week in Washington, the big political stories centered on sex — one with an unfortunate lack of specificity, the other offering all too many details. After days of rumours that Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s pick for the open Supreme Court seat, was facing an allegation somehow related to sexual assault, his accuser came forward and told her story to the Washington Post. Christine Blasey Ford shed her anonymity and said Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her when they were high school students. She remembered how the event occurred, she said, but not exactly when or where. These details are important, but it seems we’ll never know what exactly happened at a suburban Washington house party sometime in the summer of 1982.

Is Christine Blasey Ford stealing a page from Trump? She’s just pulled the kind of power move that Trump himself likes to make in dealing with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Told that she must respond by 10 a.m. Friday about whether or not she will show up, Blasey has now declared that she can’t appear to testify on Monday but would like to later in the week. A letter from her attorney to the committee states, ‘As you are aware, she’s been receiving death threats which have been reported to the FBI and she and her family have been forced out of their home. She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.

Donald Trump is not an overly bookish kind of guy, but he keeps getting slammed by ambitious authors, ranging from Michael Wolff to Bob Woodward. The latest entrant in this crowded field is Full Disclosure by Stormy Daniels, a ribald tell-all of her frolics with Trump. In it, she lodges the accusation that she enjoyed the ‘least impressive sex I ever had’ with him. Daniels’s book suggests, among other things, that Sen. Marco Rubio was onto something when he mocked Trump for his small hands. Daniels corroborates Rubio’s suspicions with what the New York Post calls a below-the belt blow.

The difficulty in trying to assess the behaviour of Democrats these days is thinking sufficiently low.  When I wrote about Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in these virtual pages a couple of weeks ago, I predicted grandstanding from Cory ‘Spartacus’ Booker and Kamala Harris. I did not think low enough to suspect that the Democrats would help orchestrate a series of embarrassing outbursts from the NeverKavanaugh Left, but so it happened. Nor did I expect the Democrats to orchestrate a last-minute allegation of sexual abuse dating from 35 years ago when Kavanaugh was 17 and in high school.  As all the world now knows, that happened too.