Politics

While we all ponder the mysteries of the Notre-Dame fire, let me say a word or two about a golden nugget of domestic news. Donald Trump, in the first quarter of 2019, raised over $30 million for his re-election campaign, more than the top two Democratic candidates combined. According to the AP news story, the overwhelming majority of donations were $200 or less, with an average donation of $34.26. You can look that up under ‘Populism, 21st-century American.’ All told, the Trump campaign has almost $41 million on hand (in addition to the $45 million brought in by the Republican National Committee). As a point of comparison, the Obama campaign at this point in the 2012 election cycle had about $2 million stashed away.

Last week Barack Obama, grayer, wearier and older in every way, was in Berlin at one of his foundation’s conferences for ‘emerging leaders’ in Berlin. After wheeling out a few cringe-inducing platitudes like ‘I don’t have a regular meditation practice’ Obama did say something genuinely interesting about where the Democrats are heading going into 2020. He warned that elements of the party were becoming a ‘circular firing squad’ who targeted those ‘straying from purity’ on a variety of issues.

Let’s be honest – the best part of primary season is seeing just how wild some of the fringe candidates are. Every election cycle throws up a few quixotic single-issue mavericks without a hope in hell of actually securing the nomination. Such campaigns are usually admirable attempts to force concessions from more viable contenders or shift the debate on some key issue or another – standard politicking. Somewhat more unorthodox is the campaign of Mike Gravel – the ex-politician who doesn’t want anyone to vote for him at all. Mike Gravel, former congressman and senator from Alaska has been politically reincarnated by David Oks, a high-school senior who is now serving as his campaign manager.

Here’s an intense irony for you. The journalistic activity for which Julian Assange has been indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia led to the exposure of blatant American war crimes and official deceit in Iraq: the very war Donald J. Trump vociferously decried during his successful presidential campaign. Over and over again in 2016, Trump lamented ‘Iraqi kids blown to pieces’ and pilloried Hillary Clinton for backing the invasion. And yet now, by seeking the extradition and prosecution of Assange on charges that stem directly from the revelation of those crimes, Trump has chosen to shunt all this aside and do the bidding of his besmirched GOP predecessor, George W. Bush.

Undisclosed location, Florida In January, when heavily armed FBI agents swarmed my south Florida home in the predawn hours to arrest me for a series of process crimes, it changed my life far more than I ever imagined. The judge in my case has issued a gag order so I am not permitted to discuss the case, the prosecution, the court or the specific charges against me and will not do so here. As the judge said, the place for talking is in court — and that time will come. *** A vast American television audience was allowed to view the spectacle
 of my arrest, because CNN arrived
 15 minutes before the FBI swat team. CNN denies it was tipped off, instead chalking its good fortune up to a ‘hunch’. President Trump asked in a tweet 
‘Who alerted CNN?

William Barr flinched for a nanosecond, then plunged into the murky waters of the deep state. There was ‘spying,’ he ventured, in 2016 – against the Trump campaign. There was no ‘specific evidence,’ but he’s persuaded it happened. In that moment before the Senate, Barr betrothed himself to Donald Trump. Only moments earlier Trump had gone on a prolonged tirade about the malefactions of ‘dirty cops’ who had engaged in ‘treasonous’ activities against him and his aides. Trump, you could say, is on a roll these days. His chum Benjamin Netanyahu just won re-election, partly thanks to a series of boosts from Trump. He may be heading towards a trade deal with China.

Until now Donald Trump has proceeded with relative impunity in foreign affairs. But his imposition of a terrorist designation on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which numbers some 1.1 million strong, could change that. Iran is promising to respond by labeling the American military as a terrorist organization. These moves could lead, willy-nilly, to a fresh conflict in the Middle East, the very thing, incidentally, that Trump promised to avoid when campaigning for the presidency in 2016. But then again Trump made a lot of promises. A wall would be built and the border secured. Obamacare would be nuked. Coal would make a big comeback. America would experience a Great Leap Forward. And so on. The contradictions of his presidency are now catching up to him.

There are some furrowed brows (as well as some furtive giggles) over Tucker Carlson’s recent hypothetical musings about what the president might do should he decide he wanted to lose his 2020 reelection campaign. Maybe he would cut funds for E-Verify, gratifying businesses that profit from exploiting the low-wage labor of illegal immigrants (that’s ‘undocumented workers’ in weeny-speak), but hurting American workers. Maybe he would make cuts to Medicare. Maybe — most deadly — he would raise taxes on gasoline, something that would matter hardly at all to those East coast elites who don’t drive much but that would have an immediate effect on those in the heartland who tend to drive more and are on a tight budget.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘charisma’ as ‘compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others’ – how fortunate then that the Democrats have been blessed with two exceptionally charismatic 2020 candidates in Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Yang. The candidacies of Beto and Yang are especially intriguing as they represent a pitch to the American people delivered from two opposing ends of the charisma spectrum. Beto is the hyper-sanitized, telegenic, photogenic, focus-group optimized old-money Texan who, as he says himself, was born to be in it. He’s also physically attractive, which counts in politics. This was true for John F.

Speak the names ‘George and Kellyanne Conway’ and you are sure to get anyone in Washington, D.C. talking. She shattered the glass ceiling as the first woman to manage a successful presidential campaign and he is a respected lawyer who graduated from Harvard and argued before the Supreme Court. Perhaps their most impressive accomplishment, however, has nothing to do with their careers. In a town that often prizes power and position over family and faithfulness, the Conways are raising four children and will soon celebrate an 18th wedding anniversary. That is an accomplishment anywhere. For a high profile couple in Washington, D.C. in 2019 under the glow of a harsh spotlight, it deserves a medal.

Conservative pundits and Republican politicians are joining the Democratic outcry against former vice president Joe Biden, accusing him of inappropriately touching females. They are making a serious mistake. Conferring legitimacy on this latest and craziest flare-up of #MeToo hysteria will further weaponize females to take out any man of their choosing, based simply on their feelings. More consequentially, it will make society impossibly fraught and brittle, intolerant of the ordinary messiness of human interactions and unaccepting of generational differences. The crusade against Biden began last week when a left-wing Democratic operative and social justice advocate accused Biden of having inappropriately kissed her in 2014.

Do Democrats want to win the 2020 election? Do they understand why they lost in 2016? I’m increasingly unsure. It seems like every time a relatively reasonable candidate or undeclared candidate gets a little buzz, the Democratic base tries to derail any possible momentum. It happened with Amy Klobuchar who is apparently a hardworking hard-ass. So what? I want a president who is tough enough to run the country. Being nice isn’t a qualification for the job. Neither is being in tune with the most recent sensitivities of the tribe of the politically correct. Throughout his many years in public service, we’ve all seen the myriad photos and videos: Joe Biden is touchy. Very touchy. Sometimes bizarrely so.

We hear lots of chatter about the possible appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate how the Obama administration may have abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Yet little has been said about the secret court system itself and how easy it is for corrupt government officials to spy on Americans. A court system which works on closed proceedings, classified decisions and only a government attorney present, is ripe for just the sort of misuse that’s alleged to have occurred in the Russia investigation.