Politics

The low turnout at last weekend’s Women’s March suggest that it’s a busted flush. Not for its founders who, moving from the long march to big merch, are trademarking the name and turning a decentralized popular movement into a political program and commercial opportunity. But for the hundreds of thousands of women who, having taken part for the best of reasons, are now being exploited for the worst of motives. A movement ostensibly dedicated to equality turns out to have been founded and led by bigots. Some women are willing to excuse racism, especially if they are guilty liberals and the racism is veiled in Linda Sarsour’s kind of anti-Zionism, which advances political profanities in the language of human rights.

If Kamala Harris, who announced her candidacy on Martin Luther King Day, wins the presidency, she would not only be the first black woman to ascend to the Oval Office but also the first Democrat from California to accomplish that feat. The last two politicians to emerge from the Golden State and prove that they had the right stuff were both Republicans, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Reagan personified the optimism of California Dreamin’; Nixon, a kind of grapes of wrath resentment that he reverse engineered to condemn liberal elites. Like Nixon, a red hunter par excellence, Harris has tried to play the Russia card to rise to prominence. Today it is Democrats who decry Moscow gold, while Republicans play kissy face with the Kremlin.

I have bad news for you. Somewhere in the this country, right now, teenage boys are acting like jerks. Yes, it’s true. Some are taunting their little sisters. Others are picking on a funny looking kid in their class. Still others are grandstanding for the benefit of the cute girl who happens to be part of their clique. It’s not new. Mitt Romney, the Grecian-formula candidate, was bullied by The New York Times and other subsidiaries of the Democratic party for bullying a kid in high school who, the Times reported, later turned out to be gay. Fine doubled, Mr Romney: you should have known. The episode might have sunk Romney’s Presidential bid but, with the customary bureaucratic efficiency of the 53 percent, he saw to that himself.

Nancy Pelosi made a major move this week when she rescinded her State of the Union invitation to President Trump as long as the government remains shut down. In all likelihood, Pelosi thought this would provide Democrats with a strategic advantage in future negotiations over border wall funding. In response, President Trump canceled Pelosi’s government-funded overseas trip.The petty political blows can continue back and forth, but there is an actual strategic play President Trump can make that will be much more powerful – he needs to address the nation, as scheduled, on January 29, 2019.With Pelosi considered a political tactician within the Democratic party, it is no surprise to see her cancel the State of the Union address.

Is Rudy Giuliani becoming a bigger problem for Donald Trump than Nancy Pelosi? Pelosi is bad enough: she is tying Trump in knots with her refusal to budge on the shutdown, which Trump had assumed she should assist him in shutting down weeks ago. Now she’s dissed him with her acidic letter explaining that it would be best to defer the State of the Union speech, which Trump had counted on using to bludgeon the Democrats, until safety issues related to the shutdown have been resolved.But on Wednesday night, Giuliani may have delivered an even bigger hammer blow. He explained to CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he ‘never said there was no collusion’ between President Trump and Russia.

1. Barr will be confirmed Republicans hold a 53-seat majority in the US Senate. Nothing that emerged in William Barr’s Senate hearing came close to losing him the four GOP votes that would put his confirmation in jeopardy. Remember, all but one Republican senator voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for a lifetime position on the Supreme Court despite a credible allegation of sexual assault and serious charges that Kavanaugh had lied in his responses. 2. Don’t believe a word Barr said I am only being half facetious here. Of course, we can learn something from nominees’ testimony in confirmation hearings.

INT – APARTMENT – AFTERNOON JESSICA (Harvard ’09, JP Morgan ’10 to ’12, Obama White House Staffer ’13 to ’16) is returning to her Georgetown apartment after her morning Tibetan throat singing class. There is a yoga mat under her arm. She shares the apartment, and a lovingly open relationship with ZAK (Columbia ’10, Senior Green Urban Planning Correspondent at Vox.com, Fellow of the Aspen Institute for Ideas ’14 to ’17), who is blogging at their Hygge-influenced open-plan kitchen. JESSICA looks visibly disturbed. ZAKHoney, what is it, is everything OK?JESSICAIt’s… It’s…ZAKDon’t worry about the Whole Foods delivery. It came just after you left.

Government shutdown stories aren’t sexy, everyone can see that. Nevertheless, it is curious that the journalists who most loathe Trump are so willing to distract their audiences from a political crisis which polls show is hurting the President, in order to focus again on the exhausting Russia conspiracy, which isn’t. This weekend, we saw another flurry of noisy Trump-Russia scoops. These latest feel thinner than usual. Still, they dominated the airwaves and Twitter feeds of media VIPs. On Friday, the New York Times related that the FBI ‘became so concerned’ about Trump’s firing of FBI director James B. Comey that they began investigating whether the President was indeed working for Russia.

When the new class of Congress officially began this month, the Democrats dominated the airwaves — perhaps for the first time in the Trump era. The Democratic rainbow coalition of women were front and center of the public conversation. Many of these freshman congresswomen are young and come from diverse backgrounds. Some of these women support wildly erratic forms of leftism, including socialism. But, despite the silly and dangerous ideas of incoming congresswomen such as Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, they are adored by the media. Such naked identity politics might annoy conservatives, but there is no denying the logic: when the electorate is so diverse, having diverse politicians is effective.

Europeans generally do a poor job of understanding how the US Constitutional system works. Just how poor was evident in the coverage of the new Democrat-controlled regime in the US House of Representatives, and all the related stories about Democrats taking over Washington, or taking over ‘the government’. The British Guardian, for instance, reported the momentous news of something approaching regime change: ‘Democrats reclaim power as Nancy Pelosi elected House speaker;’ ‘This is the Nancy Pelosi moment.’ To read such papers, you’d think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the new Prime Minister. Or perhaps it is Nancy Pelosi. Patiently, one must explain to foreign friends that it’s totally different here.

Kamala Harris’s memoir, published this week, has reignited speculation that the senator has her eyes on a Presidential run. Harris – a self-made public servant with a solid record on progressive causes – should be a strong candidate for the Democratic ticket. Somehow, however, she isn’t. The former California Attorney General’s biggest problem is that the left has changed: rather than organizing around unions or the party itself, a large chunk of the Democratic base now mobilizes around identity issues. Some of these pet causes make a lot of sense; others less so. Either way, Harris breaches two of the big ones. First of all, she’s a career prosecutor – or as the new left like to put it, ‘a cop’.

In his late essay ‘Perpetual Peace,’ Immanuel Kant lauded the ideal of ‘universal hospitality.’ In his first Oval Office speech Tuesday night, President Donald Trump took issue with Kant (though not by name), noting that the porous Southern border of the United States represented a serious humanitarian and security crisis. Everyone who can spell ‘Google’ knows that the Democrats, until November 7, 2016, supported robust border security and, indeed, a physical barrier — otherwise known as a wall — to retard the flow of illegal immigrants into this country.