2020 election

Who would you like to see better represented in the already-crowded Democratic primary? Septuagenarians? Centrists? Or billionaires? For those of you who answered 'all three', you may be in luck, as the New York Times reports that former New York mayor and current 17th richest person in the world Michael Bloomberg is set to file paperwork in Alabama designating himself a presidential candidate. Bloomberg has sat on the sidelines over the past few months. He has watched once-respected politicians address near-empty tents in New Hampshire and seen Tom Steyer splurge his own cash on TV and internet ads to distort the proportion of his popularity. It takes real guts to observe that and think 'I too would like to get 3 percent in a poll — how much of my money would you like?

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Donald Trump will probably be reelected in 2020 – not because he is a good president, smart, or has good policies. He will win, I believe, because the Democrats are awful. The party that is meant to be ‘for the people’ has completely lost touch with the people. Rather than address real issues, the Democrats have resorted to virtue signaling. Take, for instance, the recent LGBTQ Democratic presidential town hall hosted by CNN. Candidate after candidate stood up and repeated the words ‘transwomen of color’ as many times as they could manage, hoping that this would win over voters. Have they learned nothing from the last election?

Politics, said Bismarck, is the art of the possible. Among other things, that apothegm pays homage to the pressure of the impossible, since deployment of the possible tacitly acknowledges the alternative. Invocation of 'the possible' is what makes Bismarck’s mot memorable; but what gives it teeth (not to mention logical coherence) is the appeal to 'art'. The statesman displays his skill by dancing gracefully among alternatives while avoiding the potholes of mere possibility that would topple him. In this sense, Bismarck’s observation is at odds with Jesus’s claim that 'With God all things are possible' (Matthew 19:26).

American intelligence is warning of a concerted effort overseen by Russian president Vladimir Putin to swing next year’s presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Reports prepared by the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency are unequivocal, detailing a two-pronged Russian strategy: sow dissension inside America by manipulating social media and attack the voting process itself. There is also concern that a new front could be opened in this battle by the use of deepfakes, videos generated using artificial intelligence that recreate the image and voice of anyone, who can be made to say and do anything. The leading Democratic candidate, for example, could be seen to suggest pardoning Patrick Crusius, the man who killed 22 people in El Paso in August.

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. How did Elizabeth Warren, a left-wing populist, become the candidate of Democrats who dislike left-wing populism? Why is it fine for Warren to menace the rich — but not for Bernie Sanders? With some polls placing her ahead of the former vice president Joe Biden, the Massachusetts senator is suddenly basking in praise from mainstream newspapers as well as ‘progressives’ like Emily Tisch Sussman, a ‘Democratic strategist’ who appears regularly on MSNBC. Led by its star hosts, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, MSNBC functions as the mouthpiece of an official Democratic party still dominated by the Clintons and Barack Obama.

Andrew Yang claimed to be surprised that the media dubbed Tulsi Gabbard the first Asian American to run for the Democratic nomination. Of course Gabbard snagged this prize of the higher tokenism, first claimed by Patsy Mink in 1972. Yang may be doing better in the single-figure freakshow of the nomination race, but Gabbard looks better when encasing her policies in a tight wetsuit or engaging in Lycra-clad iron-pumping. https://twitter.com/tulsigabbard/status/1173605168841203712?lang=en This is not all the Gabbard candidacy has set a-pumping. No Democrat so quickens the blood of the red-meat, male-voice choir of Buchananites and Bannonites.

It was never especially plausible that Tulsi Gabbard would follow through on her threat to boycott last night’s presidential debate. Too much campaign energy and resources have flowed into ensuring that she secured a spot on the corporate TV stage, which is a sordid but unavoidable aspect of the modern primary process. But in her first comments, she spelled out the reasons why such a boycott would in theory have been absolutely warranted. The two media co-sponsors, CNN and the New York Times, had just spent the past several days attacking her with a level of brazenness that was shocking even to those well-accustomed to the regularity with which she is smeared by journalistic antagonists.

The most important thing to know about Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is this: it is not about removing President Trump now; it is about damaging him now so he can be defeated next year. Impeachment normally seeks to remove the president (or a federal judge) from office. A successful House vote is only the first step. The Senate needs strong evidence to convict, and House leaders try to provide it with their investigation and public hearings. That’s what we learned in seventh-grade civics. But Nancy Pelosi is not in middle school. She is teaching postgraduate courses, and she knows a Republican Senate is very unlikely to convict Donald Trump without a lot more evidence than has been brought to light along with a groundswell of public support.

Every so often, a political candidate rises to the fore fueled by the grievances of people who are seriously annoyed. Donald Trump, for example, stoked the fires of an America in perceived decline. Ron Paul in 2008 capitalized on the backlash to the costly military interventions of the Bush era. In 2016, Bernie Sanders drew together a coalition of the young, the far-left, and the people who didn’t want to cast a vote for a Clinton ever again.