Justin Amash

Dolphins returned to the canals of Venice during the COVID-19 lockdown, and neoconservatives are returning to the Democratic party. Bill Kristol and his colleagues at the Bulwark support Joe Biden for president, even though an anti-Trump Republican of sorts briefly jumped into the race. Michigan congressman Justin Amash earned the esteem of the Kristol crew when he collaborated with Democrats to impeach Donald Trump last year. But the Bulwark feared that if Amash was on the ballot as the Libertarian party’s presidential nominee, he’d take votes away from Biden.

Three weeks after announcing his bid for the Libertarian party presidential nomination, Justin Amash has called it off. What went wrong? His brief campaign was a media success, if nothing else — and spreading the libertarian gospel to a wider audience by getting on shows like Meet the Press is all that a Libertarian nominee can reasonably ask for. Amash couldn’t have had any illusions about that: he’s self-indulgently idealistic, but he’s not stupid. Was he in danger of failing to get the nomination? If history is any guide, he should have been a shoo-in. The Libertarian party nominated less qualified and capable ex-Republicans in each of its last three presidential contests. Amash had a small-l libertarian voting record in Congress.

Justin Amash has announced that he's running for president as a Libertarian. The sitting five-term congressman from Michigan quit the Republican party on July 4 last year and was the sole non-Democratic vote to impeach Donald Trump in December. Amash won't win in the fall, but like Gov. Gary Johnson, the LP’s 2016 candidate who earned 4.5 million votes, his presence could easily throw the election to either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.Far more important, especially to the plurality of Americans who consider themselves politically independent, the 40-year-old son of Middle Eastern immigrants from Palestine and Syria has the potential to radically change what Americans expect — or demand — from their national politicians.

Sometimes in politics you win without actually winning. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, two candidates who lost in blow-out landslides to Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, are the obvious examples. Johnson won in 1964, but it was Goldwater’s campaign that indicated where American politics was heading in the next 20 years. McGovern lost in 1972, but the 'acid, amnesty, and abortion' ideology that held him back at the time became, in only slightly diluted form, the regnant social orientation of the Democratic party from his day to our own.More recently, Ron Paul lost his two campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination — in 2008 and 2012 — but won anyway.

It looks more and more like a foregone conclusion that impeachment proceedings will be initiated against Donald Trump in the near future. Bernie Sanders became the latest Democratic presidential candidate to call for this on Thursday, joining a cast of characters that includes Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Seth Moulton, and Wayne Messam. Bernie’s quandary is a particularly fraught one. He had equivocated for months on impeachment, lagging behind his chief ‘progressive’ competitor Warren, who was first to call for proceedings after the Mueller report’s release. You may not agree with Warren’s analysis, but at least she read the report and formed an independent conclusion.

Inquiring minds want to know, what will Justin Amash — wait, who? JUSTIN AMASH, you know, he’s the US Representative from Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. He’s a bona-fide Trump-hating Republican. Waaaay back in 2016, he joined the lemming list of Republicans who opposed the nomination of Donald Trump. Some individuals who had signed onto that list — Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example — have had second thoughts and now support the President. But not Justin Amash. No siree Bob. His motto is ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ In case you doubt this, consider his recent Twitter emission, which is a series of variations on a theme announced at the beginning of his Twitter thread. 1.