It’s been awhile. Our esteemed POTUS is back in the country, after zipping across various oceans, to the Middle East and Europe, where he hectored our closest allies about NATO ‘dues’ they don’t in fact actually owe, shoved the President of Montenegro, offended the Pope, and grabbed hold of a palantir orb with some of his Arab pals, in an apparent attempt to communicate with Sauron. (He does seem to like back channel communications). Meanwhile, the various investigations into the Trump/Russian connections keep trudging onward. Let’s catch up.

Have you had this experience? You’re talking to a Trump supporter, and you mention the Russian connection, and they look at you smugly and say ‘can you show me any evidence of actual collusion?’ And you can’t. And we still can’t; not quite yet. But we’re getting closer.

For example: this. In case you don’t want to click on the link, here’s the gist: the Wall Street Journal reported that, last summer, a Florida GOP operative named Aaron Nevins was in communication with a Russian hacker who goes by Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer had hacked into the DCCC computers, and provided Nevins with all kinds of information useful to the Trump campaign. Memos with self-oppo research (where you hire someone to look for dirt on your candidates, so they can be prepared for ads). Databases of voters in key districts. Nevins called it ‘a map to where all the troops were deployed.’ Also, internal details about congressional districts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia, which were eventually used to create attack ads in those states. I’ll grant you that Nevins wasn’t involved in the national Trump campaign. But he shared his link to Guccifer 2.0 with Roger Stone, who was a highly placed advisor to the Trump campaign. Stone piously insists that he didn’t share that link with anyone else. We’ll see.

So, yes, there is absolutely evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia: Guccifer to Nevins to Stone. Of course, the Russians are offering pro-forma denials that Guccifer worked for them, but US intelligence sources know better. And there’s no evidence, so far, that Stone shared Nevins’ information with anyone else in the Trump national campaign. Still, this is collusion. This is what it looks like.

And here’s why it’s significant. Remember the second Obama Presidential campaign? Remember 2012? Well, the Democrats created what the Washington Post called “a high-tech political start-up whose main purpose was to put more people on the streets, armed with more information about the voters they were contacting, than any campaign had ever attempted.” They created a nonpareil voter database, allowing volunteers to contact undecided voters with better information than anyone had had before.

That database still exists, and has expanded. And in the waning days of the 2016 campaign, one of the advantages Hillary Clinton seemed to have was what pundits called ‘a strong ground game.’ She had more volunteers than Trump did, and they had this database to guide their efforts. So if polling showed a race as tied, it seemed likely that Hillary would outperform expectations, because she would working with better information.

But if that database was in the hands of the Republicans, that advantage could be lessened, or even eliminated. And look at what Nevins said he got from Guccifer: “sensitive information on voters in key Florida districts, breaking down how many people were considered dependable Democratic voters, undecided Democrats, Republican voters and the like.” Maybe not the entire database, but clearly at least some of it.

So, yes, there was collusion, and yes, it could easily have made a difference in the election.

What was the other major turning point in the election? Surely, it has to have been the Hillary Clinton email scandal, and the various twists and turns in that whole story. And a key moment in the election came when James Comey, the FBI director, announced that the FBI was not pursuing a criminal investigation into Hillary’s emails. He could have just let it go at that. But he didn’t. He chose to use that opportunity to give Secretary Clinton a real scolding. Remember?  “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Why did he do that? Well, we know a lot more about it now. As Business Insider describes it, Comey received a document regarding the Clinton investigation, a purported memo between Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the DNC, to a staffer for George Soros, saying that she had been assured by Loretta Lynch (Obama’s Attorney-General), that the Justice Department planned to go easy on Hillary. This memo is a fake. US intelligence has confirmed that its a  Russian creation. It’s not genuine. And Comey immediately mistrusted it. But it informed his decision-making nonetheless.

According to Business Insider, Comey “feared the document would be leaked and cast doubt on the credibility and independence of the FBI’s email-server probe — part of why he decided to bypass the Justice Department and announce the findings of the investigation in his impromptu press conference in July. CNN reported that sources close to Comey said he “felt it didn’t matter if the information was accurate, because his big fear was that if the Russians released the information publicly, there would be no way for law enforcement and intelligence officials to discredit it without burning intelligence sources and methods.”

So there we have it. The Russians hacked into DCCC computers, and got enough information to negate the Clinton campaign’s ‘ground game’ advantage. And perhaps the biggest turning point in the campaign, Comey’s press conference chiding of Hillary Clinton over the email scandal was driven by the FBI’s possession of a fake document they didn’t think they could properly or effectively expose.

Would Hillary Clinton have won without Trump having these improper advantages? Did the Russians really win the election for the Donald?  I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. Was there collusion? Absolutely, but who know who high it went. These news stories are highly significant, but they don’t constitute proof of anything. Still, the investigation needs to continue. We need to know. A hostile foreign power may well have put their favored candidate in the White House. That’s got to concern every patriotic American.

Jane Krakowski was on Colbert’s show last night, and as is obligatory when actresses appear on late night talk shows, Colbert complimented her on her appearance. “Thanks,” she said, and added that she was trying to lose her ‘Trump ten pounds.’ Everyone she knew was in the same fix: weight gain caused by binge eating, caused by Trump-caused anxiety.

This week has been especially bad, and it’s only Tuesday. Last night, the Washington Post dropped this bomb: Trump had provided two high ranking Russian officials with highly classified information, apparently just to brag. “I get great intel,” boasted Trump. “I have people brief me on great intel every day.” And then, to prove his point, he revealed code-word level information. And White House staff, panicked, began calling intelligence agencies to limit the damage.  At the same time, various Trump surrogates denounced the Post story as ‘fake news,’ with carefully parsed statements (Gen. McMaster’s was a gem) in which they take issue with things the Post story did not, in fact, say. Then, this morning, Trump cut them off at the knees, using Twitter to assert that he had the perfect right to share information with Russia. As a friend of mine put it on Facebook:

“[Media reports] Trump does staggeringly stupid thing

[Trump surrogates] he absolutely did not do the stupid thing

[Trump, tweeting the next day] I did the stupid thing

[Surrogates] …and that is why stupid thing is actually brilliant, and

[Trump, tweeting] I did it for the stupidest reason imaginable

[Surrogates] … the thing is now United States policy despite dishonest media reports on its stupidity, and also

(loop to beginning)”

As President of the United States, Donald Trump can declassify information any time he believes it to be in the national interest. He didn’t do anything illegal. I thought the best story on this was this one, on the Lawfare blog. Lawfare points to two crucial issues: first, that it matters why Trump did it: “what Trump thought he was doing might well inflect whether we should see this as an act of carelessness, an act of carelessness bordering on treachery, or an act of judgment (even if misjudgment) of the sort we elect presidents to make.” And second, that an act need not be criminal or illegal to be an impeachable offense:

Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law–just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office.

This analogy gets to the heart of my main concern about Trump’s Presidency. I do not believe that Donald Trump takes his oath of office seriously. For the first time in US history, we cannot trust this President to set aside his own emotional predispositions and act in the best interests of the nation.

There have been Presidents in the past that I didn’t think were particularly effective Presidents. This is because I disagreed with them on matters of policy. I thought their political philosophy was likely to prove ineffectual; I thought they were wrong. But I never questioned their patriotism. I never questioned their commitment to the job. I never questioned that serving the nation was their highest and only priority. Of course, people make mistakes, and some policy choices work better than others; of course, we’re all only human. But the men (only men so far, alas) who have served in the White House have always understood that they are doing the most important and difficult job in the world. Early in the first season of The West Wing, John Spencer, playing White House Chief of Staff, talking to his wife, tells her “this is the most important thing I will ever do in my life.” And she responds, understandably hurt, “it’s not more important than your marriage.” “Right now,” says Leo, “it is more important than my marriage.” And he was just Chief of Staff.

The Oath of Office is deceptively simple. “I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But its implications are profound. If you take that oath, then for the four or eight years you serve, it’s your first and only priority.

And I do not believe that that’s how Donald Trump understands his duties as President. I don’t think he considers that serving the nation and its people to be his first and highest obligation. I think he lets stuff get in his way. I do not believe him to be a serious person, taking a serious job seriously. I don’t know if he’s merely a particularly buffoonish clown, or if he’s actively mentally ill. He’s not . . . right.

That’s why his refusal to divest of his business interests is so disheartening. Every previous President has done this. President Carter sold his peanut farm; George W. Bush sold his baseball team. Trump has business interests all over the world. Are those businesses still important to him? Does he weigh their success as he conducts foreign policy; is profitability a factor in his decision-making? We have never asked that before about any former President. We find ourselves obliged to ask it about this one.

Far more important, though, is the raw emotionality with which Trump seems to make decisions. He gets angry, he gets frustrated, he gets his feelings hurt. So does everyone else. But most of us can set those emotions aside when we need to. Most of us can engage productively with that co-worker we dislike. Most of us can take a deep breath, set aside our resentments and fears and make important decisions.

i think it’s likely that Donald Trump is an immensely damaged human being. Of course, even mental health professionals balk at long range diagnoses. But Trump’s constant, incessant braggadocio has to some from somewhere. It’s not just that he seems to be a near-pathological liar. But have you noticed how his lies are pretty much always self-aggrandizing? He had the biggest crowds at his inauguration; he has the best temperment, he’s a phenomenal negotiator. He’s always the best; the smartest, the most aware. He doesn’t just get two scoops of ice cream, he deserves them. He’s such a good boy.

That has to be hiding some deeply seated inferiority complex, doesn’t it? And he can’t set it aside. And we don’t have time for him to work through it.

He gets the best intel, he tells the Russians. And then has to prove it. (Lavrov and Kislyak had to have been astounded. They didn’t think this would be so easy). By off-the-cuff declassifying highly sensitive intelligence, jeopardizing our relations with an ally, and quite possibly putting intel sources at risk. Let’s not forget this: Trump didn’t reveal classify information, he blurted it. To prove to his Russian comrades friends what good intel he gets. (To prove, yet again, once more, that he really is President, that he really did win). And people could die. Who did he compromise? How much at risk is our source?

It’s visceral, instinctive, our fear of him and of what he might do next. We sense it. This guy hasn’t put the nation first. He probably can’t. No wonder we’re all putting on ‘the Trump ten pounds.’ Every second this man spends in the Oval office is a continuing national emergency. Ending it will require impeachment and removal. Not much else matters politically.

 

Whenever a big news political event takes place, especially one that focuses on some peculiarly Republican bit of malfeasance, first, liberals react very strongly and publicly. Some conservatives rely on the officially approved spin. But there are always a few conservative intellectuals, affecting the diction, tone, and high Brahmin style of the late William F. Buckley, who carefully explain how unreasoning and hysterical we’re all being. More-in-sorrow-than-anger, you understanding. Publishing this sort of article is, I think the raison d’etre of the National Review. Think of the British conservative historian, Paul Johnson, saying that no Europeans ever understood why poor Nixon was so badly treated: Watergate was no big deal.

It may have seemed strange to see precisely such an article in Vox.com. I know a lot of people consider Vox a liberal site. It really isn’t though. Their motto is ‘explain the news.’ Not comment on it (though they do sometimes offer a point of view), but inform people, let ’em know what the substance of some prominent news story is. They’re surely seen as an anti-Trump site, but it’s because they don’t pull punches; if someone is lying about something, they’ll point it out. I should say that I’m a big fan. But it isn’t at all out of character for Vox to publish a contrarian article saying ‘here’s what everyone is saying. And here’s why they’re wrong.’

And so, a couple of days ago, Vox published an article by Richard A. Epstein, entitled “Attention, liberals: Comey deserved to be fired, and the Constitution is just fine.” It’s a well-reasoned and thoughtful article, though, again, infused with that Buckley/George Will/Paul Johnson tone of injured intellectual superiority. Here it is.

Epstein begins by agreeing that the decision by Trump to fire James Comey was poorly timed, and a political miscalculation. He goes on: “There are of course many reasons why one might oppose Trump’s decision to fire Comey, but none of them remotely deserve the hyperbolic responses that Comey’s termination has elicited. There are two sides to every story, and in this case the other side has, at least for the moment, the better of the argument.”

Epstein argues, first, that Comey should have been fired long before, because of his mishandling of the Clinton email case. He treated her with kid gloves, says Epstein. He didn’t issue subpeonas to any Clinton aides, he allowed Cheryl Mills to represent herself, and he didn’t conduct any of the ambush interviews that are usual in criminal cases. He took it easy on her, kowtowing to his superiors in the Obama White House.

Second, Epstein says, “criticisms of Comey’s conduct in the Clinton investigation had nothing to do with the president’s decision, which was made, we are confidently told (on the basis of no firm evidence), because Comey was hot on the trail of information about possible ties between Trump, his supporters, and the Russians during the campaign.” Trump was, in Epstein’s view, perfectly justified in firing Comey over the mishandled Clinton email case, and there’s no reason to think Comey was fired for any more sinister reasons.

Finally, since Comey could legally be fired at any time by Trump, and given the ample reasons for dismissal detailed in the Rosenstein memo, it “requires contortions to convert an action that has independent justification into one that prompts talk of obstruction of justice and impeachment. In effect, one difficulty with that extravagant assertion is that it makes Comey de facto immovable from office so long as he continues to conduct this investigation.” Oh, and appointing a special prosecutor is also problematic. To whom would he report? Jeff Sessions? When there’s no smoke, there can’t be fire, says Epstein. And there’s no smoke.

Epstein also pushed back against the ‘Trump as incipient despot’ meme.

Nor is there anything to the claim that Trump has acted as a despot. Despots remove people in order to take over all the organs of government themselves. Cassidy seems to think the president has it within his power to appoint a successor to Comey entirely on his own, when the position requires confirmation by the Senate.

Allow me to respond.

First, Epstein seems to think that the case against Hillary Clinton ought to have been far more aggressively prosecuted, treated as the criminal investigation it was. But surely Epstein must acknowledge the political complexities of any case involving a major party Presidential candidate. I’m not saying that running for President is an excuse for all manner of criminal conduct. But at worst, Hillary Clinton was guilty of carelessness, possibly born of arrogance, and possibly reflecting her own discomfort with technology. And she was running for President; very likely to be elected President. (Sigh). Comey said, in a recent interview, that the difficulties of the Clinton case made him nauseous. I can well imagine it. Like it or not, the FBI is, if not a political organization, one that must of necessity sail on troubled political waters. Comey’s first loyalty had to be to the Constitution, of course (and no one has suggested he acted otherwise). But he had to think of protecting the Bureau itself, as an institution. I may disagree with some of the decisions he made. Some of those decisions do seem to have violated basic law enforcement protocols. But I don’t doubt that navigated those waters thoughtfully and carefully. He was in an impossible position.

And, while it’s not fair to call Epstein to account for actions that took place subsequent to the publication of his article, it really is true that the ‘Comey was fired because of his mishandling of the Clinton case’ narrative has been conclusively disproved. He really did fire Comey because, as Epstein puts it, “Comey was hot on the trail of information about possible ties between Trump, his supporters, and the Russians during the campaign.” Trump confirmed it Thursday night, in his interview with Lester Holt, when he didn’t so much admit as brag that he’d fired Comey because of his pursuit of the ‘fake news’ story about Trump campaign Russian collusion. That interview was an amazing piece of candor, not least because it threw so many members of his own communications staff under the bus, people who had been doggedly defending the Clinton email narrative, even when they sounded ridiculous doing so. Holt didn’t even seem to work very hard for it, considering that, in his interview, he got the President of the United States to admit to obstructing justice, an impeachable offense. Smoke enough for you, Mr. Epstein?

Epstein suggests that despots act despotically according to a plan. If Trump’s firing of Comey is in fact an egregious act of tyranny, well, what’s the next step? Replace Comey with Chris Christie? (Or Rudy Giuliani?) What reason do we have to assume the Senate will confirm someone like that?

But Trump isn’t that kind of tyrant. He seems to be more of an instinctual authoritarian, a guy who doesn’t so much act as react. News reports describe Trump as watching cable news incessantly, raging furiously whenever they focused on the ‘fake news’ of Trump’s Russian connections, and ignoring the (to him) much more consequential story of Obama’s bugging of Trump Tower. Never mind that that never happened. Trump seems to have convinced himself that it did happen, just as he convinced himself that his inaugural crowd was the biggest ever, or any of the other ludicrous things he apparently believes.

Trump isn’t the kind of incipient dictator who carefully plans every step of his way to the top. He’s not Frank Underwood (from House of Cards). He gets angry. No, he becomes incensed. And sometimes he’s able to blow off steam on Twitter. But sometimes, his choler leads him to act. And often enough, he gets away with it, frankly because it just never seems to have occurred to anyone to make certain Presidential actions illegal. Every previous President has been constrained by norms, by protocols, by traditions. But Trump isn’t constrained by anything. Except the Constitution. Which also infuriates him.

He fired Comey impulsively, unreasoningly, because he hates the Russia investigation (fake news!), and also, apparently, because Comey wouldn’t pledge loyalty to him, to Trump. And how will he deal with the aftermath? By bluffing, by lying, by counter-attacking. And by relying on the cowardice and hypocrisy and lack of patriotism of the Republican leadership.

So, yes, Mr. Epstein. There’s plenty of smoke. We’re not over-reacting; the ship of state really is on fire. What there isn’t, yet, is a fire department.

The Economist is one of the most respected popular journals in the world. It is, as one might expect, particularly informative and interesting on questions of economics. It recently published an interview with President Donald Trump. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, chair of the National Economic Council, sat in. As New York Magazine put it, “Donald Trump tries to explain economics to The Economist. Hilarity ensues.”

Because businessmen participate in economic activities, buying and selling, there’s a presumption that they know something about economics. I think it’s safe to say that Donald Trump knows quite a bit about the Manhattan real estate market, and perhaps a bit about marketing and branding. He doesn’t know anything about macroeconomics, despite graduating from the Wharton School of Finance. This is, I think, less surprising than you might suppose. In my experience, a lot of guys who graduate in Finance loathed their required economics classes. Too theoretical, too abstract, and quite often, post-Keynes, counter-intuitive.

Anyway, Trump gets off to a splendid start.

What is Trumponomics and how does it differ from standard Republican economics?
Well it’s an interesting question. I don’t think it’s ever been asked quite that way. But it really has to do with self-respect as a nation. It has to do with trade deals that have to be fair, and somewhat reciprocal, if not fully reciprocal. And I think that’s a word that you’re going to see a lot of, because we need reciprocality in terms of our trade deals. We have nations where… they’ll get as much as 100% of a tax or a tariff for a certain product and for the same product we get nothing, OK? It’s very unfair.

A few points. Reciprocality is not a word. Also, no, the United States has no trade deals in which our goods have a 100% tariff with a 0% tariff for their goods coming to the US. That’s just silly; hyperbolic posturing. Also “National Self Respect” is not an economic principle. Reciprocity is.

And the very interesting thing about that is that, if I said I’m going to put a tax on of 10%, the free-traders, they’ll say “Oh, he’s not a free-trader”, which I am, I’m absolutely a free-trader. I’m for open trade, free trade, but I also want smart trade and fair trade. But they’ll say, “He’s not a free-trader,” at 10%. But if I say we’re putting a reciprocal tax on, it may be 62% or it may be 47%, I mean massive numbers, and nobody can complain about it. It’s really sort of an amazing thing.

Yes, as wholly imaginary scenarios go, it is quite amazing. I love the idea of reciprocal taxes of 62% passing some fantasy muster with free-traders. Trump based his entire campaign on protectionism, on tariffs, on ‘making America great’ by engaging in trade wars with everyone. If he’s a free trader, I’m a sword-swallower.

We have so many bad trade deals. To a point where I’m not sure that we have any good trade deals. I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur [Ross, the secretary of commerce] will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose. But we’re not going to lose any more. And so it’s very, very unfair.

I think he’s talking about NAFTA Investor/State Arbitrations. And no, Canada doesn’t always win and America doesn’t always lose. That’s nonsense. Sometimes American companies win, sometimes Canadian tariffs win.

Time for an anecdote:

Now at the same time I have a very good relationship with Justin [Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister] and a very good relationship with the president of Mexico. And I was going to terminate NAFTA last week, I was all set, meaning the six-month termination. But the word got out, they called and they said, we would really love to… they called separately but it was an amazing thing. They called separately ten minutes apart. I just put down the phone with the president of Mexico when the prime minister of Canada called. And they both asked almost identical questions. “We would like to know if it would be possible to negotiate as opposed to a termination.” And I said, “Yes, it is. Absolutely.” So, so we did that and we’ll start.

Ah, the big-hearted sentimental lug! What a wunnerful guy. See, the United States is getting royally screwed by NAFTA (we’re not), and he was going to pull us out of NAFTA, but a tearful (implied) appeal by his good pals Justin and that Mexican guy (the President of Mexico is Enrique Nieto) led him to change his mind.

What does this story really say? That Trump is desperate to be liked. That he didn’t act in the national interest (as he conceives it) because two world leaders weepingly (extrapolating) begged him not to. In short, that Trump can be manipulated. He ran, remember, on his skills as a negotiator. We’ve seen no sign of any such skill set. And, you know: good. NAFTA’s a good deal. Hey, Justin and Enrique. Keep it up guys.

The Economist asks him four separate times what a fair NAFTA would look like, and all Trump can do is recite various synonyms for ‘big.’ It would be ‘huge,’ ‘Massive.’ He clearly doesn’t have any idea.

He thinks our trade deficit with Mexico is 70 billion dollars. It’s not. He thinks our trade deficit with Canada is 15 billion. It’s not. Also, who cares? My economist son likes to point out that he, personally, has a trade deficit with his local grocery store. He does in there all the time and buys food. They give him food, he gives them money. Never once has he so much as offered them a single avocado. And yet the Republic prospers.

Later, he invents a narrative in which he denounces Chinese currency manipulation on the campaign trail, and immediately after he wins, China stops doing it. He is right about one thing; China did stop currency manipulation. In 2014.

Now comes my favorite exchange of the entire interview:

Another part of your overall plan, the tax reform plan. Is it OK if that tax plan increases the deficit?
It’s called priming the pump. You know, if you don’t do that, you’re never going to bring your taxes down. Now, if we get the health-care [bill through Congress], this is why, you know a lot of people said, “Why isn’t he going with taxes first, that’s his wheelhouse?” Well, hey look, I convinced many people over the last two weeks, believe me, many Congressmen, to go with it. And they’re great people, but one of the great things about getting health care is that we will be saving, I mean anywhere from $400bn to $900bn.

Mr Mnuchin: Correct.

President Trump: That all goes into tax reduction. Tremendous savings.

But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll… you understand the expression “prime the pump”?

Yes.
We have to prime the pump.

It’s very Keynesian.
We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?

Priming the pump?
Yeah, have you heard it?

Yes.
Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.

Everything about this is amazing. First of all, the US is not the highest-taxed nation in the world; we’re just about the lowest-taxed. Second, ‘prime the pump’ is an economic metaphor for a basic Keynesian concept: when unemployment is high, governments borrow money short-term to provide an economic stimulus to increase demand. That metaphor has been around since the early 1930s. The US has very low unemployment right now. A tax cut will have no stimulative value. It won’t ‘prime the pump.’

And Trump did not invent that metaphor. As New York put it:

Telling The Economist you invented the phrase “priming the pump,” to describe a plan that does not prime the pump, is a bit like sitting down with Car and Driver, pointing to the steering wheel on your car and asking if they have ever heard of a little word you just came up with called “hubcap.”

Once again, in full view of the international community, Donald Trump has demonstrated his own unique blend of arrogance and ignorance. He’s the loud-mouth in the bar, sitting on the bar stool next to Bill Belichek’s, haranguing the coach about what the Patriots should do on offense. He should play a guy named Tom Brady.

 

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed The American Health Care Act, by a margin of four votes. No Democrats voted for it, and not all Republicans, though most GOP members did. Enough, at least. Immediately after its passage, a group of Democratic Congresspeople mocked their Republican colleagues by singing “Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye.” We’ll see.

The AHCA was not scored by the non-partisan CBO, a strange, well nigh unprecedented omission for a bill this consequential. The best estimates of its impact, in the exceedingly unlikely event that it becomes law, would be that up to 20 million Americans would lose their health insurance. The Affordable Care Act, (Obamacare), taxed the wealthiest Americans to pay for an expansion of Medicaid benefits; the AHCA would end those taxes. In short, this is a bill that would, in all likelihood, harm many many poor people, and enrich wealthy people. It’s a bill that will kill people.

The mocking chant from Democrats suggests one likely outcome of the debate over the AHCA and yesterday’s vote; it’s going to be a very difficult achievement to run on. The attack ads basically write themselves. Twenty Republican representatives are from districts where Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton. The Daily Kos announced the formation of a website where you can donate money now to whichever Democrat is the nominee in those districts. It’s already the case that many Republican congressmen have been hounded from meet-your-constituents opportunities in their districts. My own treasonous crook estimable Congressman, Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah 3rd) won’t hold town halls anymore, so vitriolic is the response to his appearances. Rachel Maddow managed to fill an entire show with interviews with people who had confronted their Congresspeople. I don’t know when I’ve seen this level of anger with elected officials. People are furious. I sure am. I could barely sleep last night from sheer outrage.

Why did they do it? Why would members of the House of Representatives (who have to face the voters every two years) pass a bill that confirms every cartoonishly evil stereotype people have about Republicans? After the vote, a large contingent gathered at the Rose Garden, to hear President Trump brag about how well he and Paul Ryan had done, and to tell some whoppers about what’s in the bill and what it’s intended to accomplish. Looks like they’re happy with it. Me, I’m trying to figure out the upside. For them. There is no upside for the American people.

I haven’t read the bill. Almost no one has; Speaker Paul Ryan kept its details pretty much secret. Seth Meyers had a lot of fun at Ryan’s expense on his show last night, showing clips from the 2009 debate over the Affordable Care Act, where Ryan condemned Democrats for doing essentially everything he just did times 1000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mtZ60AvDQY

So here’s what I don’t get. Why did they do it? This bill is a travesty. It’s horrific public policy. It’s never going to become law; the Senate won’t vote on it. The House bill is only the first step in a long, long process that may or may not result in a law being passed. So at least some of the righteous anger I’m feeling and my progressive friends are feeling is a trifle displaced. Still, a vote was held and votes were taken. And noted. Why did they pass this piece of garbage?

At least some of the answers are clear enough. President Trump really wanted a win. He doesn’t know anything about what it means to be President, and he doesn’t know anything about public policy. But he does know wins and losses. His Rose Garden speech described the AHCA as doing lots of wonderful things it won’t actually do, followed today by this amazing comment:

Of course the Australians have better health care than we do; everyone does. ObamaCare is dead! But our health care will soon be great!

Uh, Mr. President, you do know that the ACA was a step towards an Australian-type single-payer system? Which is what you just praised? And that the AHCA is a massive step away from it? Oh, also, that ObamaCare is not dead? That’s not what the House vote accomplished; not even close. Next step, a Senate bill, followed by a reconciliation conference, followed by two more votes? With every one of those steps fraught with difficulty?

No. He doesn’t know any of that. He doesn’t know anything. I don’t even think that his praise for the AHCA constitutes lying. It’s just another flamboyant display of incompetent ignorance.

Anyway. Trump wanted a win; now he can claim one. He got a nice party, with people saying nice things about him. Ego boost. And he’s a Republican (nominally) and President of the United States (illegitimately), so the House was motivated to give him what he wanted.

Also, I think, House members do feel some obligation to live up to their campaign promises. These guys pretty much all ran on a platform of ‘repeal and reform.’ Their constituents, their base, all hate Obamacare, largely because they’re all racists they disliked the person and policies of the President whose name was attached to it. Republican Congressman have been promising their voters for years that they would get rid of the Affordable Care Act. I suppose I’ll grant them this: they felt, as a matter of personal integrity, they had to actually do it.

To the extent, of course, that the Republican base is elderly, rural, and struggling economically, they’re exactly the people who the AHCA will hurt the most. Their opposition to Obamacare was at least somewhat irrational. They were (polling data concludes) largely ignorant of its provisions. I remember visiting an elderly woman in my ward, and how astonished, and how flummoxed, and eventually how grateful she was when Obamacare paid for the treatments that saved her daughter’s life. That’s one of the great ironies in this whole health care debate. Democrats are fighting for the ACA, which demonstrably improved the lives of Republican voters.

You’re welcome.

I’ll also grant that Obamacare was flawed legislation, that premiums and deductibles were rising, and that there was a lot of anger about those realities, which is a legitimate reason to dislike the bill. Obamacare is not failing, and its problems were fixable, but I do understand that elections have consequences, and that politicians who promise to kill a piece of legislation should probably work to accomplish that if they subsequently win.

It’s also worth pointing out that the ideological underpinnings of the AHCA are conservative, and that conservatives believe that the ACA insufficiently allowed market forces to lower costs. And the AHCA is meant to correct that. They’re wrong, of course. The ACA’s problems were caused by the invisible hand of market forces; the free market is what was driving costs up.  Still, people believe what they will believe; surely conservatism drove at least some in Congress to vote this way.

Still, there’s one very obvious reason for this vote. Republicans voted for this bill because they don’t think they will face electoral consequences for doing so. That mocking chant from the Democratic side of the aisle–“hey hey, goodbye”–must have seemed, to them, toothless. Republicans are good at winning elections. They can pass the most amazing legislation, incredibly displays of utter villainy, and pay no price for it. Their base will always turn out.

This is not because the Republican base is villainous. Republican voters are not stupid, and they’re not wicked. That’s my neighbors you’re talking about; they’re good folks. But simple policies are easier to understand and support than complicated ones. Republicans are awful at governing, because simple ideas don’t make for good legislation. But they’re good at painting their votes as beneficial, and Democratic bills as sinister. Democrats are much better at legislating, better at governing. Seems to me that people who believe in government are more likely to be good at it than people who don’t believe in it. I’m good at being Mormon; I think I’d be bad at being Presbyterian. Winning is the hard part.

Fingers crossed, but this might do it. Taking away people’s health insurance is easy to understand. And, my gosh, the anger. People really are getting woke.  If we progressives play our cards right, we might indeed be able to sing ‘hey hey, goodbye’ to the Republican House majority. But we have a ton of work to do first. Time to get on with it.