High farce, shenanigans and treason

The breathless revelations that Michael “not a consigliere” Cohen recorded his phone call(s) to Trump to discuss buying the rights to a Playmate’s tell all about the Donald were trumped by the rumour that Mueller was going to subpoena testimony from a famous New York Madame who was tied up in the Elliot Spitzer scandal and once worked for the very creepy Roger Stone. Special Counsel Mueller, unable to find any connection between Trump and Russians, has opted for the endless delights of exposing the seamy underbelly of the Big Apple. He’ll be busy for years with the “gotcha” just around another New York City corner. Some curmudgeons are complaining about the cost of Mueller’s Special Counsel sitcom. Not this one, I think the American People are getting great value for money. Entire television series have had less plot and fewer doubtful characters than the Mueller show and I, for one, am very grateful.

The serious minded, front of the room, kids do have a point that Mueller is serving as a distraction from the investigation of the previous administration’s abuse of the Intelligence Community, the DOJ and the FBI in the small matter of the assorted FISA Court applications for surveillance on minor Trump operatives. Which is true; but it is also largely irrelevant. Unlike the “Trump colluded with the Russians” farce, there are facts of the matter in the FISA case and general abuse of process by the last administration and those facts have been committed to paper. That exposing those facts is taking a very long time is frustrating but it is not fatal to the enterprise of exposing who did what. The FISA application and renewals were on paper and signed by identifiable people. The White House and UN Ambassador “unmaskings” of US persons left a paper trail. The use of the Steele dossier (and its very interesting manner of compilation) to obtain the FISA warrants are all ripe for exposure. The critical fact being that Trump, as the head of the Executive Branch, can declassify all of these documents. Why he has not done so until now is a bit of a mystery but, on a bet, I would say he is keeping his powder dry as the Mueller farce plays out.

But now we roll around to treason. The lengthy report of the DOJ Inspector General confirmed – as if confirmation were needed – that the “investigation” into Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a personal server for government business was pro forma at best and a politically motivated whitewash at worst. The FBI’s finest reduced themselves to Keystone Kops in their zeal to protect Hilly (and her henchpeople) from the consequences of her choice to run her own, private, communications setup. It ignored the fact that this server and the classified information which went through it, was almost certainly compromised by multiple enemies and potential enemies of the American State.

There is simply no room for doubt left: Clinton, for her own purposes, created a private communications network which was then compromised by foreign state actors. Now, was this treason per the US Constitution. Probably not.

“Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

Treason requires that an individual actively give support to America’s enemies and while Clinton and her people were grossly negligent, it appears that they were simply too stupid to think through the consequences of the Secretary of State running an insecure server. (Or, as seems more likely, too arrogant to care about those consequences.)

However, despite the learned “Judge” Comely rewriting the standard of proof for the Espionage Act, no requirement of intent to give aid and comfort to America’s enemies is to be found in that Act. In fact, no intent at all is required for an action to attract the effects of that Act. Simply being careless with classified information is enough to attract charges.

If the FBI, at the conclusion of a good faith investigation had recommended charges against Clinton and her staffers, it would have discharged its duty and left the decision to prosecute where it belonged, at the DOJ. Instead, Comely and a number of other FBI staffers conducted a sloppy, irregular investigation and then Comely arrogated the charging authority from the DOJ on the basis of then AG Lynch’s ill advised tarmac meeting with Hilly’s husband Bill. This was entirely improper. The charging decision is the DOJ’s not the FBI’s and if Lynch believed herself compromised, she could easily have recused herself and allowed a deputy to make the call.

It might have gone the same way, but the DOJ exercises a supervisory role with respect to the FBI and an honest DOJ official would have wanted to review the investigation before reaching the odd legal conclusion that the Act required “intent” when it expressly does not.

The farce, shenanigans and near treason all go back to a common origin story: the cack-handed decision to let Hillary walk away from her actions in creating an illegal, private, communications network when she was Secretary of State. Once that decision was made the Intelligence Community, the FBI, the DOJ and the White House had to pray that Hillary would win the election and that these decisions would stay safely swept under the carpet. Some members of those communities did more than pray leading to the FISA applications, the Steele dossier, the unmaskings and the questionable surveillance of the Trump campaign.

It was the mainspring of what FBI man Peter Stzrok described as an “insurance policy”, a means of defeating Trump even if he actually managed to win the election. Because the IC, FBI, DOJ and ex-Obama Whitehouse operatives knew that if Trump won, they all were in huge jeopardy of prosecution for their roles in exonerating Hilly and spying on Trump.

Can’t wait.

Endgame

At the beginning of last week, before the State of the Union and before the release of the Nunes memo, the Democrats could still hold out hope that, somehow the not very Presidential Trump would be taken out either by a rather vigorous reading of the 25th Amendment or by Special Counsel Mueller finally finding proof of Russian collusion and then proof that President Trump covered up that collusion in a manner which would attract an indictment for obstruction of justice. These were pretty implausible to begin with, but after a brilliant performance at the SOTU and the confirmation that the FBI/DOJ played silly buggers with the FISA process I think it is safe to say Trump will be serving out his term.

Which is not to say that the FBI/DOJ follies will now be buried. Quite the opposite. The Nunes memo raises more questions than it answers. And other Committees of both the House and the Senate are investigating the FBI/DOJ as well as the State Department. The behaviour of the top echelons of the FBI/DOJ revealed in the Nunes memo and factually uncontradicted suggests that there was a pattern of partisan behaviour which should never exist in a police force or a Department of State responsible for prosecuting the law. And that pattern of behaviour goes well beyond the (Trump) Russian collusion fable. In the first instance, it raises the question of the Clinton Russian collusion. After all, the DNC and the Clinton campaign financed the efforts of a foreign national to obtain information from, well, Russians to compromise an American Presidential candidate. Those Russian individuals were closely tied to the Russian state. And the Clinton campaign and DNC made it their business to push the dossier into the hands of the FBI/DOJ. How all that happened and how to prevent it from happening again is an obvious matter of national interest.

Then we have the emerging, and very queer tale, of the Clinton emails on the Weiner computer and the bizarre spectacle of FBI Director Comey announcing, ten days before the election, that the Clinton email investigation was being re-opened. It appears that now “retired” Assistant FBI Director McCabe had known about the Clinton emails for a month before it occurred to him to tell the Director that there might be a tiny problem. Comey must have been furious but realized that he had no choice but to re-open the investigation. Particularly as FBI agents in New York, as well as NYPD personnel, were aware of the emails. This might appear to be small potatoes however many political observers suggest that the re-opening of the investigation re-enforced the doubts many people had about Clinton and caused more than a few to stay home rather than vote for the likely criminal Clinton. It may not have added any votes to the Trump tally, but Comey’s announcement certainly took a few away from Mrs. Clinton. Figuring out how that happened and trying to make sure it does not happen again is another, obvious matter of national interest.

We are looking forward to the Inspector General’s Report on the Department of Justice which is likely to focus on the overall behaviour of the department with respect to the Clinton emails and, perhaps, with the decisions surrounding the investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups. While the Nunes memo has been attacked as “partisan”, the IG’s report will not be vulnerable to such attack. It should be very interesting and should open up many avenues for Congressional Investigation.

My own view is that the “original sin” of the FBI/DOJ was the decision to ignore the clear wording of the law and find that there was a requirement for “intent” in the law regarding the handling of classified materials. This novel interpretation – apparently worked out by the FBI before it had actually done interviews with the principals involved in the Clinton email disaster – of the law allowed Mrs. Clinton and her people to avoid prosecution. In hindsight that corrupted the FBI in a profound way. The FBI should not interpret the law in any case, that is the DOJ’s responsibility. (The recusal of Mrs. Lynch after her tete a tete with Hilly’s husband needs to be looked into as well.) But if the FBI is stuck interpreting the law it needs to stick to the letter of the law rather than inventing requirements which the law does not contain. While it might have been shocking to see Mrs. Clinton charged it would have been less shocking than seeing the Director of the FBI contort the plain words of a law he is pledged to uphold. (I note that had Clinton and her aides been charged the matter would likely have been pled down to a misdemeanor level and life would carry on. Even with a guilty plea to a minor charge, Hilly would have been in better shape to explain her conduct to an electorate which would likely have forgiven it.)

Digging down to that “original sin” and the circumstances which surrounded will take some time. Time which will only be available if the Republicans can manage to hold at least the Senate and, ideally, the House. In the fevered imaginations of Democratic partisans, the Democratic party will win the House in November and begin impeachment proceedings as soon as a new House of Representatives has been seated. Which is why the SOTU speech and Trump’s overall performance is so important.

To get to the bottom of the Obama administration’s corruption of the justice system in the United States there needs to be a Republican House and Senate. Otherwise, the committees will be chaired by Democrats and all this will be swept thoroughly under the carpet. And for the Republicans to win they need a leader for their party. For better or worse, Trump is that leader and how he does and how he perceived to be doing is critically important. While Trump will never be treated fairly by the American mainstream media, he seems willing to end-run that media. Events like the SOTU give Trump the opportunity to be the President for all Americans. It also gives him the opportunity to underline what a partisan, sour and rather nasty bunch the Democrats actually are. He has nine months to close the sale with the American people. The Democratic Party is broke and in a state of civil war as the “woke” shoot up the “business Democrats” and Mrs. Clinton remains like a bad smell. The Trump tax cuts are about to kick in and the Atlanta Federal Reserve is forecasting 5.5% growth in Q1. American companies are bringing home their offshore billions and showing willing to hire Americans. The Democrats have locked their ankle to the DACA anchor and are seen as putting America last when it comes to immigration. And so on.

To win, Trump and the Republicans do not have to be brilliant, they simply have to be less stupid than the Democrats. Fortunately for Trump this is not difficult.

What the US needs right now

Mark Steyn is soooooo mean. He is pointing out that the “independent counsel” and his minions are not independent at all.

“My sweetly naïve understanding of an “independent counsel” is that he should be “independent”. For example, even in the presently desiccated condition of the Commonwealth, it’s generally understood that, when you’ve got a problem and you want someone independent to investigate it, “independent” means outsider.” mark steyn (go read the whole thing, tons of fun)

The Daily Caller is just one of the outlets bringing out the fact that the Mueller investigation is very deep in the swamp:

“A series of new revelations about the FBI under James Comey has provided more evidence that partisan agents may have abused their agency positions for political purposes during the Hillary Clinton email investigation and 2016 presidential campaign.

Top FBI agent Peter Strzok, the public now knows, was removed from the Mueller investigation after a Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (IG) investigation revealed damning text messages between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.” daily caller

The American mess is deep and sordid and, frankly, needs to be cleaned up. But by who?

The fact is that virtually any special counsel appointed by the DOJ will be tainted one way or another. And so, apparently, will investigators drawn from the FBI. It is a mess but it also needs to be resolved.

So, a friendly suggestion from Canada.

Our deeply respected, longest serving, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is retiring at the end of the year. Beverly McLaughlin, while I disagree with some of her opinions, is tough, fair-minded and very, very, smart. By the nature of her position, she is “read in” on intelligence and security cleared.  She’ll be bombarded with job offers but, if asked nicely, might be willing to lead an investigation into the whole ball of wax which the 2016 American election created. Russians, Hilly’s server and how it was dealt with by the FBI, Lynch on the tarmac with Bill, Mueller, Comely: the whole thing.

But Bev is not enough. Sending a small detachment of the RCMP – white collar and intelligence – with her, with really serious investigative powers, would get the whole mess cleared up in six months. (The scarlet tunics would be optional but would make great tv as they raided offices and homes of the swamp creatures.) McLaughlin would not proffer charges, rather she would write a report and recommend such charges as arise.

Better still, the Chief Justice and the Horsemen would be paid for – independently – by the Canadian government with a bill to be presented to our American cousins at the end of the investigation.

Sometimes the mess is so big you need an independent professional to clean it up. This is one of those times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Plenary Power

A conversation:

Aide: They are charging Mr. X with obstruction of justice.

The President: What did he do?

Aide: He had a conversation with a Russian. Then he lied about it to a guy who turned out to be your Veep.

The President: The dirty dog. Tell him to plead guilty and I’ll pardon him that day.

Aide: But you can’t do that.

The President: Just watch me.

Aide: But that might be obstruction of justice right there.

The President: Counsel, what’s a plenary power?

White House Counsel (shaking slightly): It is an absolute, unqualified, power.

The President: And is that the Pardon Power I have per ” Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution which states that the President “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment“. I looked it up on Wiki.

White House Counsel: Well, in a manner of speaking, Sir.

The President: Good to know. And Counsel, would you tell Mueller that any more chickenshit charges are going to be pardoned. And do that with a public letter. He’s going to have to do way better than this to get something to stick. And how are you coming on the “dirty” dossier to the FISA Court and the FBI dropping the Uranium One investigation about Bill and Hilly. I don’t want to waste my time dealing with chickenshit when there are real crimes to look into.

Aide: Thank you Mr. President.

 

 

Did Trump Close the Deal?

The frenzy of last minute polling in the US Presidential race is suggesting that Trump is even or pulling ahead in several key states. Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Ohio are all in play.

“In play” is not, of course, “in the bag” and the fabled Democratic Party ground operation and saturation advertising may very well deny Trump some or all of these states and many more. Hilly is awful but the Democratic Party may have the organizational capacity – and enough cheating capacity – to, in Obama’s words today in Detroit “carry her”. So it is a reasonable bet that Clinton should be able to win tomorrow.

Unless…Well the polls could very well be wrong. The polling models may well under represent Trump support and over represent Hilly’s. There is no doubt at all that Trump sees more people at his rallies. But does that mean anything?

Hillary’s message throughout the campaign has been that Trump is unfit, racist and not the sort of person America would be safe with. She has cited her own experience and what she seems to think is her better temperment. She has a mountain of detailed policy as one would expect from a front of the class sort of girl.

Trump’s message has been a bit broader – yes, Hilly is a crook; but the whole damned system is rigged. He offers some simple solutions to fairly complex problems. Build the Wall, drop taxes, super vet immigrants from know terrorist areas. But none of that is actually what Trump is selling.

“Make America Great Again” is not so much a policy as a point of view. If you think America has been diminished – economically, geo-politically, culturally – in the last eight years then Trump is offering a direction change. Hillary is not.

Trump’s pitch has two parts: you have to buy into the idea that America is not doing well and you have to believe that Trump somehow represents a useful change of direction. For Trump to close the deal he has to find enough people who believe both parts and those people have to show up and vote.

America is in roughish shape after eight years of Obama. Geo-politically Obama, and his two Secretaries of State, Clinton and Kerry, are leaving America with significantly diminish stature and authority in many parts of the world. Economically, the echos of the 2008 crash are still with us. However, rough shape is not a total disaster. This is not America in 1932:

By inauguration day—March 4, 1933—most banks had shut down, industrial production had fallen to just 56 percent of its 1929 level, at least 13 million wage earners were unemployed, and farmers were in desperate straits. britannica

So are things bad enough for the first part of the #MAGA message to resonate. As with most things, it depends on where you are and who you are. If you are black and living in a city you are certainly no better off than you were eight years ago. If you are white and live in a flyover state you have not had a great eight years (said Bill Clinton at a 2015 closed fundraiser – thank you WikiLeaks). Small businesses have more regulation to deal with and large busineses are finding it more efficient to keep their international profits offshore. A lot of jobs have disappeared and they are not coming back.

Is that enough? I think it may just be. If this is a “change” election there have to be enough people who are miserable enough to actually get out and vote for change. People who remember when they and their kids had jobs and America won the wars it fought.

For Trump to close the deal he has to begin with that miserable base and  then add to it. There are plenty of people who, while they are gainfully employed and still have healthcare, are worried about the deficit, the inability of America to gain good international outcomes, the seemingly endless “nod and wink” corruption in Washington. Socially these are people who would be embarassed to say they were voting for Trump. They may not even say it out loud to themselves. But they are out there – or at least Trump has to hope they are. These are the people who can tip battleground states Trump’s way.

Tomorrow we find out. The left media are predicting a Clinton victory and some of the loonier publications are suggesting a landslide for Hilly. I don’t think there is any landslide potential for the Clinton camp. They might, if everything breaks just right, be able to claim a lopsided Electoral College victory but they don’t seem to have the raw numbers for a landslide.

Neither does Trump. Except. Well I am watching Ted Nuget warming up the crowd in Grand Rapids. Fresh out of deer camp and in camo. It’s about midnight. The room is packed. Ted is rocking it. 4500 people in the room. 51,000 online on YouTube. Lord knows how many on Facebook. Those are actual numbers. Earlier tonight Jon Bon Jovie and Bruce Srpinsteen opened for Hilly. They had 15,ooo in the room and about 10K online. Trump hit a combined You-Tube and Facebook of over 200K.

That’s the landslide. If those actual people show up Trump wins bigly.

I think they will.

Inept

Melting….

Hillary Clinton needed to do only a few things well to beat Donald Trump. She needed to put the email scandal to bed. She needed to motivate black voters to show up and vote. She needed to stay out of Trump’s way as he bumbled and lurched along the campaign trail.

A few days before Election day it is not at all clear that she has succeeded in doing any of these things.

A thoroughly professional political operation would have made it its business to know where Hilly’s emails might be. Not where they probably were, rather where they might possibly be. Weiner’s laptop is an odd place for 650,000 emails to have ended up but it was certainly a machine which should have been considered. It wasn’t.

As importantly, the HRC campaign never really came up with a solid message on the emails. Especially the deleted emails. Blaming Russian hackers never got to the bottom of why Hilly caused so many emails to be deleted when they were subject to a Congressional subpoena. And the campaign had to have realized that some of the erased emails would probably be found on other machines. Given that vulnerability it made no sense at all to break the law by having uncleared lawyers vet the trove. What would have made more sense would have been to turn over all the emails – yoga classes and wedding plans and all. Why was this not done? Realistically, because there are some emails in that trove which are ugly if not actually criminal.

No question that the Comey intervention pretty much destroyed the HRC campaign attempt to move on after Comey’s earlier non- exhoneration. But the campaign itself needed to tell a better, more complete, story from the go and it didn’t. That hurts among the undecided because it gives substance to the “Crooked Hillary” narrative. It also hurts in the ranks of committed Democrats. Not because they will suddenly vote Trump, rather because they lose motivation to vote Hilly.

Black turnout is part of the story. The nice white lady was never going to have black turnout numbers anywhere near America’s first black President’s; but to win Hilly had to see a fairly minimal drop off. Early indications are that black voting numbers are down but it is not clear by how much. And some of the polls are suggesting that the black people who do go to the polls are not universally voting for Hilly. Sample sizes are tiny but I think it fair to say that low black turnout will be a thing to watch on Election Day. Whether, if it occurs, it will be reported by MSM is an interesting question.

It would not take much for Trump to do better than the last two Republican candidates in terms of attracting black support. Roper reported 93% to 6% for Obama in 2012. Hitting 10% would be a big step forward for Trump. The Washington Post (as of October 13) reports Hilly as holding 79% of the black vote. Which leaves 21% up for grabs.

Hillary’s ability to get out of the way while Trump defeats himself was deeply compromised by two things: first, the spotlight swinging back onto her reckless emailing practices, the Clinton Foundation pay for play outrages, and the ongoing revelations of what a nasty bunch of people correspond with her campaign chair John Podesta. Second, Trump has figured out a script he can stick to in his well attended rallies. Somehow he has managed to avoid chasing squirrels and shiney objects and focus on his message.

All of which is beginning to suggest a total absence of any sort of preference cascade in Hilly’s direction. At best whe can hope that claiming that Trump is “literally Hitler, a Nazi, a fascist, a KKK supporter, a woman hater and a groper” will scare enough voters into voting for Hilly. But I doubt it.

The question is whether people who are no longer fightened of Trump will vote for Trump. There are a good 40% of the voters who actually like Trump and want to vote for him. This election was never about those voters any more than it was about college educated suburban mums.

If there is going to be a landslide, and I think there will, it will be because Hilly’s support is soft and Trump’s is growing as more and more voters realize Hilly is a crook and, long before she is in office, will be the subject of an active FBI investigation. Not voting for Hilly is not the same as voting for Trump and that is why his current strategy of repeating a sunny vision of an America, Great Again, at rally after rally makes a lot of sense.

The people at the rallies are true believers. Many of them have already voted for Trump. But, as the rallies are covered and the message re-inforced by paid media, the possibility of voting for a positive vision of a strong America is going to be more and more appealing to the undecided voters. If you are undecided the choice between voting for someone who is pretty certainly a crook and someone who offers a positive vision for the country is not that difficult. Especially as the attempt to demonize Trump hit peak effectiveness a couple of weeks ago.

Throughout this campaign the Clinton campaign has spent a lot of money on advertising, most of it negative, and not much time putting their candidate in front of the public. My suspicion is that the HRC internals are saying that the more people see Hilly the less they like her. But you can’t beat a populist with a “front porch” strategy. Especially if buckets of mud from your own back yard are constantly being hurled at that porch.

Even with the MSM carrying barrels of Hilly’s water she has not managed to shed her scandals or, more importantly, connect with the American people in a positive way. She might win but I doubt it. Far more likely is Trump winning one of the great upsets.

 

650K Emails – The motherlode

WSJ is reporting that there are 650,000 emails on the Abedin/Weiner computer. Apparently, these people have never heard of the delete function.

Now, realistically, you have to think that the vast majority of these will be uninteresting. But the sheer number is intriguing in itself. This is not so much a cache as an archive and from now until Election Day Trump will, legitimately, be asking “An archive of what?”

Will the archive contain all of Hilly’s emails? Perhaps. Or it may simply contain a selection of those damning enough to be Bleachbited. Will it have explicit “pay to play” material showing a nexus of cash between Hilly, the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Huma with Huma acting as the cut-out? What about really classified material? Will Huma’s much speculated about connections to the Muslim Brotherhood be revealed?

Politically the sheer number of emails, dwarfing the 55,000 Hillary maintained were on her server and subject to subpoena – well, those which she decided were work related – is likely to be a story in itself. How did they get on the lap top? Who put them there? Why?

Hilly and her campaign have tried to go after Comey on the basis that it was “inappropriate” for the Director of the FBI to make a statement so close to the election. That line of attack died the instant the 650,000 number came into play.

In fact, as this article in the Daily Mail indicates, Comey realized that he had screwed himself and the FBI when he took his dive in July and failed to indict Hilly. Ignoring 650,000 emails would have led to significant numbers of FBI agents resigning and, realistically, the story would have come out in any event.

The sheer number of emails and the utterly sleazy circumstances surrounding their discovery, would, in any normal election, put Hillary out of the running and off to jail where she belongs. And I think that is where this is going. The polls, a day or two old, showed Trump withing spitting distance of Clinton. This number, 650,000, should be enough to energize Trump supporters and demoralize the poor, college educated, suburban white ladies. And it is a simple enough concept for the low information Hilly supporters to process and understand. I anticipated a low black voter turnout and 650,000 emails should pretty much ensure that happens.

Trump needs to hammer this message for the next nine days and then….landslide.

How does Trump still have supporters?

Andrew Coyne summarizes the state of bien-pensant Canadian opinion in a largely fact-free screed on Trump.  (Here, behind the NPs flimsy paywall. Use incognito mode.)

Having entirely bought into the DNC/MSM account of Trump’s many failing poor Andrew just cannot imagine how anyone could be supporting Trump…but they are. How can that be?

If your information comes from the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as CNN, this is a real question and one which is likely perplexing. After all, through that lens Trump is a loud mouthed, know nothing, groping, nogoodnick. And he is running against a tough, experienced, qualified woman who has tirelessly worked for the good of America at home and abroad. A woman who herself wonders “Why am I not 50 points ahead?”. And a woman who enjoys a commanding lead in the polls.

A decade ago Coyne was smart enough that he would have wondered if this black and white story could possibly be true. Now success and laziness have robbed him of the critical capacity he used to have.

A little rooting around would have given Coyne a more balanced perspective and might actually answer his question.

Part of Trump’s support is actual support. People who, for various reasons, simply like Trump and like his policies. There are a lot of Americans who do not like open borders, have lost their jobs to what they see as ill-conceived trade policy, think that police lives matter just as much as black ones and are leery of America assuming the role of “world policeman”. These are not crazy positions, they are not especially right wing and they are racist only if you are willing to rob that word of any serious meaning. Coyne suggests that 2 in 5 Americans inexplicably support Trump. I would think that his explanation is in those basic positions.

However, for Trumpogedan (similar to Brexit) to happen, Trump needs another 5-10% of the vote. Here we have the people who may vote for Trump not because they support him or his policies but rather because they do not want to see a criminal and her co-conspirators/enablers anywhere near the White House. (Were I an American voter this is where I would fall.) Alternatively, there are also a lot of voters who see Hilly as the embodiment of the crony/special interest/pay to play politics which have corroded the American Republic for decades. Here a vote for Trump is, in the fat bastard Michael Moore’s memorable phrase, a Molotov cocktail tossed at the Establishment.

When I look at Trump I see many of the flaws Coyne does but I don’t see contempt for the rule of law or a deep sense of entitlement. I don’t see a person who routinely lies to Congress, the FBI and the American people. I don’t see a person surrounded by layers of flunkies for whom any means are justified in protecting her privilege. And I don’t see in Trump a person who, for whatever reason, has converted a supposedly independent media into a Praetorian guard.

What Coyne might see if he managed to get outside the NYT/WP/CNN bubble for a few minutes is that for all the Red Hat Yahoo fervour for Trump, there is also a growing, “no hat”, contingent of Americans who realize just how dangerous Hilly, and what Hillary privately stands for, actually is.

Frustrating as the MSM’s decision to feature every Democratically connected bimbo who was ever within a hundred feet of Trump for the “Grope of the Day” piece, intelligent people are able to find and read the Wikileaks emails for themselves. These are, so far, not about smoking guns, rather they are about a cast of mind, a deep contempt for ordinary people, a field guide to influence peddling and a revelation of a woman, and the group surrounding her, never once asking what was right, merely asking what would fly, what they could get away with, what they could hide.

The Wikileaks emails are unlikely to influence low information voters on either side. And with the full press information suppression job being done by the media, they will probably not reach many of the nice, college educated, ladies supporting Hillary. But they may reach a few.

Andrew Coyne was shocked and appalled by Brexit. The little people, the bigots, the un-educated defeated the sorts of people Coyne is convinced should be running things. If Trump wins, and there is a good chance he will (“weighted” polls notwithstanding), poor Andrew may have to take to his fainting couch. But the hardest thing for Andrew and his ilk to accept is that, for good reasons, Trump will get votes from people who are well educated, intelligent and absolutely convinced that Hilly is a real threat to the Republic.

Update: via Instapundit here is a computer science prof at Yale who has swung round to Trump:

I’ll vote for Mr. Trump—grimly. But there is no alternative, no shadow of a responsible alternative.

Mr. Trump’s candidacy is a message from the voters. He is the empty gin bottle they have chosen to toss through the window. The message begins with the fact that voters hear what the leaders and pundits don’t: the profound contempt for America and Americans that Mrs. Clinton and President Obama share and their frightening lack of emotional connection to this nation and its people.

David Galernter, WSJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

Events, dear boy, events

At the top of my blog I have the possibly apocryphal quotation from Harold Macmillian on what might blow a government off course. “Events, my dear boy, events.” reflects the reality of political life. Nothing stays constant. Stuff comes up.

The American Presidential Election of 2016 has been surprisingly “event” free. Obviously, the nomination of Trump would count as an event but other than that? Well I would count Comely taking the dive on the Clinton emails as game changing but, and it is an important caveat, it is not clear if the “dive” will hold until election day. (The Trump tape and the subsequent parade of outraged damsels is not so much an event as a media mugging skillfully executed. A master class in the time honoured American political tradition of mud slinging.)

At this point, a game changing event has to be simple. Black and white. As long as Hilly can run a grey goo sort of campaign and spend most of her time away from a supine press, she has a good chance of winning. As that is exactly what she seems to be doing, changing the game means that the “event” has to cut Trump’s way bigly.

That valancing rules out a number of events which no one wants to see. A serious international confrontation with the Russians or the Chinese for example. For all of Obama’s cyber sword rattling (and how dumb is that?), a real confrontation would tend to freeze the game and with it the chances of a Trump victory.

Similarly, an international terror attack somewhere not in the US, regardless of casualty numbers, would be a push.  Neither campaign would be affected to any great degree. And I would add things like the fall of Aleppo or Mosul to that category. At this stage, the American political campaign is really about America rather than the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, a domestic terror attack on a significant scale could have a significant impact if it was immediately clear that it was Islamically inspired. Even more so, if the perpetrators were refugees or recent immigrants. No one could wish for such a thing but it would certainly push Trump’s hardline message forward and knock the faux outrage of the ladies brigade off the front page for plenty of news cycles.

A full-on financial crisis – similar to 2008 – would certainly be an event. If Trump was smart enough to avoid suspending his campaign while it was going on. At the moment the US stock market is at historic highs and that usually means a sell-off is imminent. But that is not the stuff of financial nightmares. The more likely trigger is the possible collapse of Germany’s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank. The arguments rage in the financial press as to whether Deutsche Bank is “too big to fail” but banking itself is about confidence and when that confidence goes things can go pear-shaped very fast. Given Deutsche’s exposure to a huge portfolio of derivatives, even a solid rumour of its demise could be a huge downward shock to markets worldwide.

The American electorate is still shaking off the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. If there is a full on financial shock between now and Election Day and the parallel to 2008 is drawn, the thought of a President who will extend the Obama economic policies will be pretty unappealing. A financial crisis might not boost voter enthusiasm for Trump but it would reduce any excitement about voting for Hilly. Low Dem turnout is an actual threat to any lead Hilly might have.

The final event is interesting because it requires a decision on the part of only two or three people. But they are specific people. For anyone paying attention, it is pretty clear that the FBI investigation of the Hilly emails and server was fixed from the go. Comely stood up at his press conference and gave a list of particulars which would have served to indict virtually anyone who had done what Hilly and her associates had done. Subsequently, we have learned that along with the violations of the law implicit in running her basement server, Clinton and her associates actively worked to obstruct justice and disobey subpoenas.  But Comely took a dive and the FBI conducted what appears to be a “friends and family” style non-investigation.

At this point, there are plenty of rumours floating around that senior FBI people are very unhappy that Comely took his dive. But to be a game-changing event, to destroy HRC, at least one or two of these people have to come forward and detail their concerns. Rumours don’t create events.

Ultimately, elections are won and lost because one narrative beats another. Trump’s narrative – that Clinton and the political/media elite she both serves and controls is corrupt – has been an easy sell to 35-40% of the electorate. The evidence, in detail, is deeply persuasive if you are paying even a bit of attention. However, so far as I can see, Trump has not been able to close that sale with the 4 or 5% of the electorate he needs to win.

The Clinton campaign is brilliant at providing salacious, decades old, allegations to feed the celebrity-obsessed media and obscure her conduct. Hilly and her people have used every trick in the book to avoid dealing with her lawlessness, her lying and her deep corruption. And because that corruption is complicated it is difficult for ordinary people to really figure out what is going on.

Were an FBI agent or two to step forward with their apparently real concerns as to the conduct of the Hilly investigation and the failure to file charges, the smoke Hilly has been blowing would clear in an instant and the real question in this election would become apparent:

Do Americans want to elect a criminal as their President?

It would be an event.

 

 

Pinch Hitter

Imagine you were advising Hilly. She is sitting on a slim lead but even going full slime on Trump she is not generating much enthusiasm. She can’t really do press conferences because things like her total lack of recall in written answers to questions about her emails will come up. So what do you do?

Well, first off you pull her off the trail. The problem is that when people see Hilly they leave a bit underwhelmed. She is not terrifically likeable. The Clinton campaign knows this and she has nothing public scheduled until the debate on the 19th.

You could send Bill on the road – which the HRC campaign is doing – but the problem is that people keep showing up at his events and calling him a rapist. Not a good look.

But you have to do something.

Between now and the 25 of October Hilly has one scheduled event, the debate.

So, how about putting the very popular, not unattractive, Michelle Obama out there to shill for Hill?

At the moment MO is not scheduled for much but I expect that will change rather quickly as the HRC campaign realizes that the slime just sort of drips off Trump. And realizes that the Wikileaks are just going to keep coming. And realizes that there is every possibility that one or more disgruntled G-Men are going to void their NDAs and rat out the faux FBI “investigation” of Hilly’s server and subsequent obstruction of justice. All of which will hit in the critical last two weeks of October.

Putting Mrs. Obama out on the road might shore up black support – and get African Americans to actually vote. It also might light a fire under all those college educated women Hilly needs to win.

Worth a shot and Michelle can then pretty much have the Dem nomination in 2020 when Hilly is carried out of the White House for the last time.