Democrats have always been the masters of a rather dubious skill: second-guessing themselves. For any idea, proposal, or candidate for office, Democrats are continually seeking the perfect, sometimes (as the saying goes) at the expense of the good. Nowhere is this more evident than in Democratic presidential primaries. In fact, it's actually a general rule for Democrats, and it seems to be playing out once again this time around.

After a record-setting number of candidates has been battling it out for voter support for almost a full year now, some in the Democratic Party have now decided that what the race really needs is a few more candidates. This is pretty insane, obviously. To date, by my count, a whopping 27 Democrats have previously announced a bid for the presidency. These range from the well-known to people who are so obscure that few can even remember their names now, whether they've already dropped out of the race (Richard Ojeda) or are still running (Wayne Messam). Out of this incredibly wide field, 17 are still in the race. And yet this week we've seen the entry of the 28th candidate (Deval Patrick) and serious consideration by a man who would become the 29th Democrat to run (Michael Bloomberg). Maybe Democrats should go for an even 30? At this point, why not? Maybe Hillary will run again!

Read Complete Article »

The first public impeachment hearing was held today, in front of the House Intelligence Committee. It lasted almost five hours, and painted the same picture as all of the closed hearings -- at least, for anyone who has paid attention to them to date. The case was methodically laid out by the Democratic questions and the witnesses' answers that Donald Trump abused the power of his office to leverage both a personal White House meeting with him as well as military aid appropriated by Congress to Ukraine to force the Ukrainian leader to publicly announce an investigation into the 2016 election interference as well as Hunter Biden's work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Both of these were not some sort of broad push to get Ukraine to fight corruption, as Trump has maintained, but rather to dig up dirt on his likely political opponent in next year's election. As such, it is not only unethical and illegal, but also an impeachable offense.

Read Complete Article »

I must admit, I'm a sucker for "what if" storylines, especially when they concern little-used sections of the Constitution or congressional rules. Which is why an interesting article in Politico caught my eye today, because it lays out how a curveball move in the Senate could actually lead to Trump's removal from office (assuming that the House does impeach him, which seems like a pretty safe bet at this point).

Read Complete Article »

Republicans, it seems, are just never satisfied. First, they howled for a full House vote on impeachment. When the Democrats gave them one, they were not happy for some unfathomable reason. Then they demanded the end to "secret hearings" with no public transcripts. This week, Democrats began releasing all the transcripts to the public. When the first two were released, Republicans complained that the transcripts released were "cherry-picked." By week's end, all the major transcripts were released, putting the lie to this notion. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham, in a snit, said that he wouldn't be reading the transcripts, for some unfathomable reason. Next week, public hearings will begin. So of course now Republicans are decrying the very idea of public hearings, for some unfathomable reason (President Trump: "They shouldn't be having public hearings."). It's almost as if Republicans don't care what they're complaining about as long as they get to complain about something. Hey, it's easier than trying to defend the indefensible, we suppose.

Read Complete Article »

I realize that the 2020 election is still almost a full year away, but today I'm going to take an even longer view than that. Because it's worth pondering what a post-Trump world will look like, and from what I see so far many Democrats have completely unrealistic expectations for what that world will look like. I say this because a post-Trump world does not automatically equate to a Trump-free world.

Read Complete Article »

That headline is quite obviously a pun on the phrase "flipping the bird," I will fully admit. But more on bird-flipping in a moment, though. Instead, let's begin with what inspired the pun in the first place: last night's off-off-year election results. The results for the 2019 election cycle are now (mostly) in, and what they show is that the big blue wave which arose in 2018 shows no signs of ebbing. Democrats not only won the governor's race in a state that Donald Trump won by 30 points back in 2016, but they also achieved the "trifecta" in Virginia, flipping both houses of the legislature in a single election (they already held the governor's office, completing the trifecta of one-party control). But the biggest news is how they achieved such gains, and the answer is -- as it also was one year ago -- that they flipped the suburbs that Republicans used to routinely count on as strongholds.

Read Complete Article »

Once again we're going to take another deep dive into the polling for the Democratic presidential field. We were inspired to do so because this weekend we passed a milestone -- we are now less than a full year away from the 2020 general election. And we're only about three months away from when the first voters get to have their say on the frozen tundra of the Iowa plains.

Read Complete Article »

Does President Trump's phone even have a spell-checker? One has to wonder, when he tweets so many idiotic misspellings on such a regular basis. This week's gem came directly after the House voted on impeachment inquiry procedures, which Trump wasn't exactly happy about:

Read Complete Article »

Remember when Republicans were the party that stood squarely for law and order? Or for that matter, remember when they used to be the party of fiscal responsibility, chock full of deficit hawks? Yeah, those were the days....

This week it was announced the annual deficit scraped the trillion-dollar ceiling last year -- figures not seen since the depths of the Great Recession. Republicans' reaction to this news? Sounds of crickets chirping. In the same week, Republicans "stormed" a secure facility, illegally carrying in and using their cell phones, in an attempt to intimidate both the committees conducting an impeachment inquiry and the witness scheduled to appear. Republicans also had to twist their pretzel logic a few more turns to explain why their previous go-to response ("There was no quid pro quo") is now, as Richard Nixon would have said, "no longer operative." Meanwhile, President Trump played the victim card once again, saying the constitutionally-sanctioned impeachment process was nothing short of a "lynching," in addition to referring to a clause in the Constitution as "phony." Trump also took the time this week to hold his very own "Mission Accomplished" moment, announcing that Syria was now a wonderful paradise, and that everyone should thank him personally for this splendiferous outcome. Nobel committee, please take note.

Read Complete Article »

Today was one of those days when the inside-the-Beltway punditry drew way too many conclusions from a single poll. So I thought it be a good time to once again provide a little more context to the state of the Democratic presidential race. Because, generally, one outlier poll does not a trend make.

Read Complete Article »