So the Democrats have rested their case, and it was a powerful comprehensive one. Of course, they had facts, logic, and presidential guilt on their side, making this an unfair fight.
Later today, we have the nonsense defense to look forward to. But remember, Senators are a prickly lot who reserve the right to be offended by anything someone from the House says.
It’s a game.
Jonathan Chait/New York:
Now We Know What Would Have Happened If Joe McCarthy Became President
Trump obviously has no principled opposition to smear tactics or casually accusing his domestic opponents of working on behalf of American enemies. In recent days, he has circulated mocked-up images of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer wearing Muslim garb in front of an Iranian flag, and told rallygoers that he declined to brief Congress on the attack on Qasem Soleimani because Adam Schiff supposedly would have betrayed the government by revealing the plan. Trump baselessly accuses his critics of treason so casually it barely makes news any more, a feat even McCarthy couldn’t manage.
Yet for all the frequency with which his name is invoked, McCarthy’s rise and fall has received surprisingly little attention as a historical Rosetta Stone. McCarthy is surely the closest parallel to Trump that can be found in post-war history. Those who recall the period of social terror he helped unleash would be the least surprised at another right-wing demagogue’s rise to power. Thinking about McCarthy’s era in juxtaposition to Trump’s should change the way we think about both.
Aaron Blake/WaPo:
A sizable chunk of Trump’s base thinks he has broken the law. Many of those people remain in his corner.
But here’s the thing: Even if Democrats did accuse Trump of a crime and perhaps even if they proved it, it probably wouldn’t be good enough.
A new Pew Research Center poll shows the barrier Democrats face in removing Trump from office or even in getting GOP senators to vote with them on new witnesses and evidence. The poll shows 32 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning voters say Trump has “definitely” or “probably” done illegal things since he launched his campaign for president. But even among that smaller group of more Trump-critical voters, they strongly oppose removing him from office. Fully 59 percent of those who believe Trump has probably committed crimes say he should not be removed, while just 38 percent say he should.
Devin Gordon/Atlantic, from August, on a guy currently in the news:
Why Is Joe Rogan So Popular?
He understands men in America better than most people do. The rest of the country should start paying attention.
The bedrock issue, though, is Rogan’s courting of a middle-bro audience that the cultural elite hold in particular contempt—guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw. Joe loves these guys, and his affection has none of the condescension and ironic distance many people fall back on in order to get comfortable with them. He shares their passions and enthusiasms at a moment when the public dialogue has branded them childish or problematic or a slippery slope to Trumpism. Like many of these men, Joe grumbles a lot about “political correctness.” He knows that he is privileged by virtue of his gender and his skin color, but in his heart he is sick of being reminded about it. Like lots of other white men in America, he is grappling with a growing sense that the term white man has become an epithet. And like lots of other men in America, not just the white ones, he’s reckoning out loud with a fear that the word masculinity has become, by definition, toxic.
Most of Rogan’s critics don’t really grasp the breadth and depth of the community he has built, and they act as though trying is pointless. If they decide they want to write off his podcast as a parade of alt-right idiots and incels (as opposed to a handful of cretins out of about 1,400 guests) they will turn up sufficient evidence. And his podcast is a parade of men. So many men. Talking so (so, so, so) much about the things men talk about in 2019 when they think no one’s listening….
Rogan seems like a regular Joe, but he’s not. He is driven, inexhaustible, and an honest-to-goodness autodidact. I used to think of myself as pretty pan-curious—it comes with the job—but my Joe Rogan experience was humbling. His brain is wicked absorbent, like Neo in The Matrix, uploading knowledge through a hot spear jammed into the back of his skull. He’s a freak of nature, and most of his fans cannot, in fact, be just like him.
One of the downsides of total human optimization is that you’re always coming up short, and in the wrong stew of testosterone and serotonin, it can turn into a poison of self-loathing and trigger-cocked rage. And a key thing Joe and his fans tend to have in common is a deficit of empathy. He seems unable to process how his tolerance for monsters like Alex Jones plays a role in the wounding of people who don’t deserve it. Jones’s recent appearance on the podcast came after he was sued by families of children and educators murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre—a mass shooting that Jones falsely claimed was a hoax, which families of the victims say prompted his gang of fans to harass them. (Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook massacre occurred.) So is Joe really nurturing a generation of smarter, healthier, more worldly men, or an army of conspiracy theorists and alt-right super soldiers? At the very least, he shows too much compassion for bad actors, and not enough for people on the receiving end of their attacks.
Ron Brownstein/Atlantic:
A Reckoning Over Iowa
The privileged status of the early-voting states could come under threat if they elevate a candidate next month who ultimately loses to Donald Trump.
Many Democratic activists, especially but not exclusively those from minority communities, are perplexed and frustrated that the candidates of color who were considered most viable when the presidential contest began—Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, former Cabinet Secretary Julían Castro—have been forced from the race before the first votes are cast. While Yang has built a spirited following, it remains limited. And all this when Democrats began the primary with the most diverse field they’ve ever had.
This jarring reality could prompt the most serious revolt in decades against the decisive role that Iowa and New Hampshire, two preponderantly white states, play in winnowing the field and shaping the race. Already Castro and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg—another 2020 contender, who is white—have argued that the lack of diversity should disqualify both states from their favored roles. At the forum itself, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado argued that their status “probably should evolve.”
Politico:
‘On life support’: Buttigieg's struggles with black voters threaten his candidacy
Buttigieg has spent millions without budging in polls of South Carolina Democrats, signaling trouble no matter what happens in Iowa.
When Pete Buttigieg holds “big rally type events” in South Carolina, “it’s mostly white folks showing up,” he acknowledged ruefully Thursday night. And his struggle to fix that problem has become an existential threat to his presidential ambitions.
Buttigieg’s low standing with black voters has been a long-running theme, and as he and his campaign argued that he simply wasn’t well-known enough, it is one he has worked to correct. Over the past month and a half, he has invested more money advertising in South Carolina, where a majority of Democrats are African American, than any of the non-billionaire Democrats running for president.
Ron Klaine and Nicole Lurie/WaPo:
We’re past ‘if’ on the coronavirus. We’re on to ‘how bad will it be?’
With one confirmed case on U.S. soil, more likely already here and 8,000 visitors from China arriving every day, it is already too late to avoid multiple cases of the dangerous new coronavirus in the United States. We are past the “if” question and squarely facing the “how bad will it be” phase of the response.
Long time readers will know I preach pandemic preparedness because you never know.