The View from Right Field

“A Trump win would change the world” – and Not for the Better.

Martin Wolf wrote in Wednesday’s Financial Times about his concerns, both for U.S. domestic policy and for the world as a whole, with respect to a second Donald Trump administration.¹  For example:

“[E]mbrace by the US of a man … that [has] repudiated the central norm of liberal democracy would dishearten those who believe in it and encourage despots and their lackeys everywhere. …

The mixture of this despair with Trumps’s avowedly transactional approach would weaken, if not destroy, the trust on which current US alliances are based.”

 I understand Mr. Wolf’s concerns.²  He is right that, in his first term, former President Trump initially picked traditional Republicans as advisers for foreign policy and defense, which slowed former President Trump down.  A Trump 2.0 administration would start with Trumpian true-believers, a scary thought.

Hamas Leaders “Surprised” at U.S. Response – And What That Tells Us

The Financial Times reports:

“Hamas has admitted surprise that its attack on  Israel this month promoted such a muscular response, with Washington deploying two carrier strike groups, air defense systems and thousands of troops to the region.

Ali Barakeh, a senior member of Hamas’s political leadership in exile, said the groupv ‘didn’t expect this much if a response from America.

The Circular Firing Squad That Is the House Republicans Has Fired – And I Am Not Sure Why I Should Care

A group of eight House Republicans, uniting with the House Democratic party, has voted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of office.  And I am wondering why I should care.  Mr. McCarthy gave them the right to do this as part of his deal with them back in January in order to become speaker.  It was probably just a matter of time until they did it.  And now they have.  So what?

Until the House figures out a way to elect a new speaker, it cannot do anything.  That may not be a minus, at least for a while.  After all, as Gideon John Tucker said in 1866, while serving as a judge in New York County (i.e., Manhattan), “No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”  So if Congress isn’t able to do anything for a while, maybe it’s not so bad.

People Thought Trump Couldn’t Win in 2016. I’m Afraid They Are Thinking It Again.

In May of 2016, I wrote a post I titled “One Reason It Would Almost Be Fun If Donald Trump Won in November”.  I wrote about a conversation I had with a Democrat who wasn’t concerned about then-candidate Trump becoming the Republican nominee:

“[Trump] might win the Republican nomination, they thought, but he wouldn’t win in November because then Democrats would be voting, too.  People who vote in Republican primaries might be vote for Donald Trump, but Democrats would never do that.” 

Trump Being Bad Doesn’t Make Biden Good

As with my last post, this is something I have said before that needs to be said again: Just because Donald Trump was not a good president (how’s that for understatement) and would be even worse in a second term (see, inter alia, here and here), that does not mean Joe Biden is doing a good job.  He’s not.  In President Biden’s case, I am not talking about his character (though some have done so).  I am talking about his policies.  Here is a short list of some of them (there are more):

• While supply chain disruptions from Vladimir Putin’s renewed invasion of Ukraine may have added to inflation, our inflation started long before Putin’s invasion.  It was a result of the huge Covid stimulus package in 2021 that we did not need.  The stimulus package in 2020 was necessary.  The one in 2021 was not.  All that money had a big role in the inflation that followed.  Some may say that people needed the money, but people always want free money from the government.

If Trump Supporters Won’t Change Their Minds, Just Talk Slower and Louder

It is amazing to a lot of people that Donald Trump actually has a pretty good chance of getting re-elected President in November 2024.  If you haven’t been paying attention, and there are a lot more enjoyable things to think about than politics, you may not realize former President Trump is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination next year.  With Joe Biden’s approval ratings so low and the possibility of a recession later this year or early next year being relatively high, former President Trump’s chances of winning the election next year may be even higher than the one in three that, per The Economist, the betting markets are giving for a Trump victory. 

How can this be, some people will ask.  Large numbers of Americans can’t imagine how former President Trump could be re-elected or how anybody could even vote for him.  Which is exactly the problem.  Because, in order to convince people who would otherwise vote for Trump to not vote for him, you have to understand why they would vote for him in the first place.  If you literally¹ cannot imagine how people could vote for him, you probably can’t convince people not to.

Biden Announces for Reelection; Trump Is Already Running. Sigh.

Joe Biden announced his reelection bid in a video released on Tuesday¹, saying “It’s time to finish the job.”  The snarky response would be: Well, it makes sense that you need more time.  Things take longer when you get old.  

Others have already announced their campaign for 2024.  Former President Trump may have been the first, announcing in November of last year, though I am not sure whether he is running for election in November, 2024 or he is still trying to get the “stolen” election of November of 2020 “corrected” so he can take over right now. 

Secret Documents. First Trump. Then Biden and Pence. Who’s Next?

Donald Trump kept confidential/secret documents from when he was president.  Joe Biden kept the same kind of documents from when he was vice president.  And so did Mike Pence.  (Not surprisingly, former President Trump was the most obstreperous about it, but that is true for pretty much everything.)

What I’m wondering is when we’re going to check on Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale.  For that matter, why should the fact that George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, and Spiro Agnew are dead make a difference?  Shouldn’t their papers/libraries/museums be checked, too?  (Well, I don’t suppose former Vice President Agnew has a library or museum.)

Other than obstreperousness and sloppiness, it might be interesting to figure out just how different former President Trump is on this issue.

The Great January 6 “What-If”

The House of Representatives’ January 6 Committee¹ has issued its report.  I’m not going to go into its conclusions.  What Donald Trump did on January 6, and what he did not do that he should have done,  was appalling, but then I knew that on January 6.  As I have said before,² the only question after January 6 was: what was the best way to make sure then-President, now former President, Trump went away and never came back again.  But that is not the question for this post. 

Rather, the “what-if” question for this post is this: What if the Capitol had had better security on January 6?  What if there had been enough police officers, and national guard personnel, etc., so that the protestors, aka rioters (aka insurrectionists or whatever you want to call them), had not been able to break into the U.S. Capitol building that day?  In one way, things would have been the same.  Then-President Trump would have still tried to convince Mike Pence to put off the counting of the electoral votes (or whatever other cockamamie scheme then-President Trump was pushing).  Some idiot Republicans would have objected to the counting of the electoral votes.³  And Vice President Pence would have told them all to, in effect, “pound sand.” 

On the Special Counsel for Donald Trump

I let out a big sigh when I read that Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate whether Donald Trump should be indicted with respect to the events of January 6 and with respect to confidential documents he took to Mar-a-Lago.  I sighed because, at least to me, the appointment means former President Trump will likely be indicted, and I can’t see that as a good thing.

I don’t know whether former President Trump broke any laws with respect to January 6 or the Mar-a-Lago documents.  I don’t know all the facts, and I don’t know the specifics of the laws.  But, ultimately, I don’t think former President Trump should be indicted because I don’t think it will help the country.  I want former President Trump gone.  And I think the best way to get him gone is to just ignore him.  Don’t talk about him.  Stop giving him the respect of attention.