New york times

David Brooks, the center-right Cassandra of the New York Times, reckons that a GOP apocalypse is coming. The data predicted as much in 2016, when all the smart pollsters predicted a Clinton landslide, and I predicted as much when mourning the fact that Trump was the new Republican standard-bearer. But tinsel didn’t rain forth from Hillary’s near-anointing at the Jacob Javits Center. The end of the world is deferred, yet again. Trump is not conservative in the strict sense of the word; he’s a libertarian and a libertine. So you could plausibly argue that despite Trump’s victory, conservatism did not win in 2016. You could even argue that conservatism didn’t really compete at all in 2016, or, if it did, that it lost.

Sometimes it’s worth addressing what didn’t happen. For one exasperating aspect of appearing on television news is leaving the studio kicking yourself for what you failed to say. Heading home from Broadcasting House, I’ll often impotently mutter all those killer arguments that fled my head when they might have counted for something. Yet during my last panel on Newsnight, the trouble wasn’t the usual deer-in-the-headlights stupor, but the fact that the lovely Emily Maitlis wouldn’t let me in. So let’s run back the tape. Alastair Campbell is allowed a long riff on (surprise) Brexit. According to him, ‘Brexit’ means all things to all people.

I reckon that editors at our former paper of record have been thinking wistfully of the Mikado’s song, in particular this bit about the fate of the billiard sharp who’s ‘made to dwell/ In a dungeon cell/ On a spot that’s always barred.’ And there he plays extravagant matches In fitless finger-stalls On a cloth untrue With a twisted cue And elliptical billiard balls!

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.

The first micro-scandal of the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign has already erupted, and he hasn’t even formally declared he’s running yet. Appearing on CNN last week, Sanders was asked about a report in the New York Times that chronicled the ways in which the 2016 version of his campaign allegedly failed to respond to sexist discomforts experienced by female staffers. Pressed if he had been aware of these apparent issues, Sanders reacted curtly: ‘I was a little bit busy.’ One of the allegations detailed in the NYT article was a staff member complaining that she had been saddled with suboptimal lodging arrangements ahead of the Illinois primary.

The FBI’s additional background check on Brett Kavanaugh isn’t the only document regarding President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee being presented to the Senate today. On Wednesday night, the New York Times published online a letter headlined ‘The Senate Should Not Confirm Kavanaugh, Signed, 650 Law Professors.’ By Thursday, the number of signatories had jumped to more than 1,700. The letter comes as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell set in motion events that will likely result in a final vote on Kavanaugh’s appointment early Saturday evening. Word had it that the FBI hadn’t found any additional evidence to corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when they were high school students.