A Crazy Election Year

Shall we start this political posting with something we saw coming for months? Billionaire David Koch has pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to help bankroll the campaign of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

Of course this is exactly as predicted.  They want to boost the Libertarian Party for many reasons, foremost to get NeverTrump Republicans to the polls, And thus possibly save (some) down-ticket republicans. Losing control over red state legislatures is the real Koch nightmare, because one such loss will end gerrymandering and other cheats in that state. Perhaps forever.

They'll have to spend plenty on leaflets asking goppers to vote "Gary Johnson for president plus republican for all other offices." Flyers that will prove their hypocrisy. And of course they'll target millions of Sandersites, appealing for them to go to the LIbertarian Party, hoping to shatter the Democrats' coalition. They are already setting up Chinese-style social media boiler rooms filled with guys feigning identities in order to rave "Never Hillary!"

The ultimate goal? Complete transforming of the libertarian movement into a front for oligarchic propertarianism. (See my earlier posting: Libertarians and Conservatives must choose: Competitive Enterprise or Idolatry of Property.)  And that whirring sound will be coming from Adam Smith's grave. 

By the way. Does it concern you that Donald Trump has had extensively documented interactions with organized crime figures and a raft of “coincidental” benefits from mob-related construction companies and unions? Are you able to convince yourself that running a casino is just like operating any hotel? Or is it actually rather encouraging that he has been smart enough (very smart) to use sealed settlements to leave (so far) no indictable smoking guns? (Encouraging because if he were president – and awful – at least he’d likely be clever.) What’s clear is that the stunning hypocrisy of accusing Hillary Clinton of “corruption” is as delirious as an openly-bragging philandering, twice-divorced gambling lord attacking the morals of Bill Clinton.

Guys, seriously? Some proportion? This is why they wage war on science.  

== Bernites: swerve to the races that matter ==

How to unleash and make best use of the  political energy sparked by Bernie Sanders? It's one thing to ask his zealous supporters to hold their noses and fight for Hillary Clinton. They'll do that, thinking of the Supreme Court and 10,000 honest appointees instead of Trump-Bush clan ripoff artistes... and because Bernie will ask them to, hugging Hillary in Philadelphia,  

But the real deal?

Unleash the Sanders army on down-ticket races! After all, the thing that hampered Obama from "yes we can fix stuff!" down to "yes we can administer well and tweak a bit," has been the worst U.S. Congress in 100 years.  The laziest, most stubbornly unambitious, dogmatic, (Dennia) Hastert-rule-following, never-negotiating, wretched and utterly accomplishment-free Congress in living memory.

Even more important? At risk of repeating myself - but it bears repeating! State Assembly races.  

If Bernie fans cinched their belts and dug into *those,* then each activist could do real good for America.  Have no doubt, that is why the republicans are starting to make nice to DT (Delirium Tremens) or else pouring money into the Libertarians or even a 4th party run.  They are giving up on the White House and desperate to draw Republican voters into polling booths on any excuse, in order to clutch those legislatures, knowing if they lose them - and cheats like gerrymandering go away - they may never ever get them back.

"No other losing presidential candidate since at least the 1960s has galvanized his followers for this kind of down-ballot movement."  See this article. And there are drawbacks if they become just a lefty Tea Party. Just remember guys, even if you got Bernie in the White H ouse it would have done no good without a Congress.  So give him one.

Give Hillary such a Congress and watch... the middle class will return and the poor will rise and science will be heeded again.

Fight for change!  But do it as grownups.  We have enough childishness over on the confederate side. Those lower-rung races are where ... after Bernie hugs Hillary onstage... you can do some real good.

== Want more reasons? ==

Meanwhile.... House Republicans yesterday released a plan to slash the Federal Communications Commission's budget by $69 million and prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules, "rate regulation," and its plan to boost competition in the set-top box market. Jiminy, will someone speak up with ONE example of this congressional majority ever doing even a single thing the interests of 21st Century US citizens? Come on. Down in comments.  Name one.  Even one.

And Republicans controlling the Senate passed legislation Tuesday to block new Obama administration rules that require financial professionals to put their client’s best interest first when giving advice on retirement investments like individual retirement accounts.  Truly nothing more needs to be said than the simple and factual headline. Read it over again! No “spin” is possible. Rationalize your way out if it, if you can. 

From the Washington Post: Republicans' hopes for an Obama scandal crash and burn. While the obsessively repeated fox-narrative asserts democratic corruption, in fact, the record shows exactly the opposite. “The Obama administration has been remarkably scandal-free,” David Brooks, a conservative New York Times columnist, wrote this year. 

Oh, there have, no doubt, been screw-ups: failures of policy, misbehavior and cases of poor management. "But Obama’s accusers have yet to document high-level malfeasance or corruption, and in the case of Benghazi, even some investigations led by Republicans have discredited the allegation."  

In fact, the Obama administration is about to be only the second eight-year presidency in well over a century ever to end without a single high official convicted, or even indicted, for any substantial malfeasance of office. Any at all, despite relentless witch hunts by the like of my own representative, Darrell Issa (R-CA). Efforts to find a ‘smoking gun’ that have taken up the greater part of the laziest Congress in U.S. history. 

Oh, what’s the other 8-year administration that came out clean as a whistle, despite desperate opposition efforts to find something corrupt or criminal?  The tenure of Bill Clinton.

Alternative electoral rules? 

Many of the alternative electoral rules suggested by science fiction are tempting, like using the Australian Preferential Ballot system that would solve most of our problems with plurality of first-past-the-post rules.

Others are more ambitious. One is reminded of Heinlein's criterion for citizenship in Starship Troopers... service first, then voting. A far better pattern was suggested in his novel Double Star, wherein computers let us bypass the insane unfairness of electoral representation based on where you live.  District based voting ensures that 40% of Americans will never elect a representative -- and congressfolk blithely ignore that 40% in their district.  A treason made worse by gerrymandering. (Which one party has refined to an art and a reflex.)

Far better for a modern era? Imagine saying that any 750,000 citizens can unite to "buy" or to "elect" a representative, unanimously. All the other reps must find 750,000... say among single university women or all the truck drivers in the midwest.  If your constituency shrinks below 700K you better recruit more citizens or you are out of office and those 600,000 need to fish around and build alliances to get over the mark.

This way, no one is disenfranchised, ever! And yes, it means that large cults, even hate groups, might pool to get a representative or two. So? By the same token, those fanatics would thereupon have ZERO residual impact on ANY other representative. Ponder that.

Gaming the election

It's not too soon to start building our nation's immune systems against electoral cheating. And yes, I will get around to poking at both parties.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have each issued a list of reform priorities that would go a long way to making voting easier. Both include universal automatic registration at the DMV (already done on California), longer early voting periods, and a renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Sanders would also make Election Day a national holiday, so people who have to work would have more time to vote.  

There’s a simple difference of philosophy and goals at work, which is that Democrats want to make it easier to vote and Republicans want to make it as difficult as possible.  The interesting thing is that they are actually… actually… able to concoct incantation rationalizations for the latter position. Cheaters do that.

See elsewhere how to tell whether a state's Voter ID law is sincere, or just a tool to rob poor people of their rights. The telltale is not the requiring of gradual increases in ID at the polls! (You dems are wrong about that.) No, it is the hypocrisy of demanding an onerous new regulation without providing what's called compliance assistance.  In every case, there's been not one penny of CA, laying bare that these are monstrous traitors and thieves.

Oh, but watch as the Trump Effect alters the styles of cheating! Already, Super Pacs lavishly funded by the Koch-Saudi axis have learned from the failure of their anti-Trump blitz that TV ad-buys have lost effectiveness, this year. 

They are shifting tsunamis of cash over to "social media consulting firms" that hire agents provocateurs to rile up passions on Facebook, Twitter etc... 

...e.g. "Sanders supporters" who - against Bernie's clearly-state wishes, stir Limbaugh-style hatred of Hillary. (Hint: ask for their real ID.) See more on this, below.

But the ground is shifting. Some cheats, like gerrymandering - a foul, indefensible travesty - will go away if a democrat appoints three more Supreme justices. But one has become essential to the oligarchy... rigged voting machines.  If the Trump Debacle truly does hit the GOP hard, in November, then Republicans could lose many of the state legislatures and governorships that are the true locus of their power. At which point their only hope is to alter vote counts, something that cannot happen much in blue states, because their voting machines generally keep paper audit trails, allowing random precincts to be double checked -- a safeguard that is conveniently absent in most places where republicans control the process of selecting and purchasing voting apparatus. 

See: How Republicans are gaming the voting system to tip the 2016 election in their favor.

There is a way to stymie this almost-certain cheat.  Some rich person can and must offer a whistleblower prize for any employees at the companies or bureaucracies that engage in vote-rigging, rewarding any henchman who steps up with clear evidence of this foul and treasonous crime.

== What Hath Bernie Wrought ==

I have long maintained that – were he alive today – Adam Smith would be a vociferous democrat.  Smith knew what today’s most vociferous proclaimers of capitalism have forgotten – or strive to conceal – that flat-fair-open-creative enterprise is one of the chief victims of an incestuously conniving aristocratic class, which Smith deemed the great enemy of competitive capitalism, across 6000 years.

One way that special interests destroy flat-fair markets is through regulatory “capture. Professor George Stigler, the Nobel Laureate (1982), in “Theory of Economic Regulation” (1972), explained that regulation, which is presumably put in place to protect the public, will eventually be acquired, or “captured,” by the very companies, industries, or their trade unions that are supposed to be regulated.

It’s not hopeless. Our institutions and competitive arenas need perpetual refresh and re-tuning and – across the last couple of centuries – it has happened, often enough to keep us free and creative. “Captured” agencies like the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) were dissolved and competition in rails and airlines restored. (Democratic Congresses did that, and deregulated telecom, GPS and the Internet, go figure.)

So where does Bernie Sanders fit in?  This article shows that he has pushed the argument to where we can clearly see how U.S. Capitalism is in trouble, threatened by a foe Adam Smith would recognize: 
“…over time, most capitalist democracies develop “distributional coalitions,” aka special interest groups, which organize to get the government to provide them with special subsidies, laws, and protection from competition. The dispersed public, be it taxpayers or consumers that are footing the bill, will fail to overcome the free rider problem and lose in the democratic battle with those coalitions.”  
The author then goes on to show how Sanders crystalizes this problem, in both his rhetoric and his actions. 

== Provocateurs, really? ==

Janell Ross, in the Washington Post’s “The Fix,” assails what she deems to be an undercurrent of “unprogressive” attitudes among some of the more shrill supporters of Bernie Sanders.  Alas, what she most clearly reveals is her own inability to see the obvious.  

Are some Berners getting carried away with over-wrought emotion? Sure. Do some of them too-readily imitate the hate-reflexes that volcanically typify the Republican side? You bet.  Will Bernie himself come down hard on those over-reactors, chiding them to grow-up?  He already has, many times, and he will.

No, what amazes me is that Ms. Ross and so many others look at vitriolic comment-section postings and interprets them as… real! 

OMG what decade are you living in, Ma’am? You call yourself a pundit, yet ignore the obvious? Let's return to our first topic.

In this U.S. election cycle, we’ve just seen a collapse of the power of well-funded PACs to affect electoral outcomes through traditional means such as television and other media buys. Jeb Bush spent $100 million for nothing. What’s an oligarch to do?

Why, emulate China, of course.  The Chinese government now pays up to half a million young web-junkies to spend all their working hours posting disinformation via social media, sabotaging non-compliant sites, denouncing flickers of dissent and praising patriotic tendencies. You can bet that right wing Political Action Committees are investing in social media operations, big-time, as we speak. And that their absolute top priority will be to demolish any chance of unity among democrats in the fall.

I would bet my house that we are already seeing this, in the vituperative shrillness of some Sanders “supporters” online.  Look up the term “agent provocateur.”  All your European friends will be happy to explain it to you.

And no, I do not dismiss all passionate Bernites as agents provocateurs, plotting to prevent another Clinton presidency!  Most, probably are simply devoted to a very smart and good candidate who’d make at-minimum a pretty good president and whom I’d support, if you guys earn him the nomination, fair and square. There are two ways to tell the difference between over-wrought sincerity and a spy-provocateur: 

First, true Bernites will listen, when Sanders himself chides them to remember the Supreme Court and Donald Trump… and work for the democrat in the fall. And if they can't stomach working for Hillary, they will find some local, state assmbly race where their passion could make a real difference.

Second, check for identity clues. Ask the loudest and most outraged to identify themselves. To email you from their home addresses.

Compile a list of the most vituperative comment postings and tuck them away, in case the Democratic Party hires a team to investigate collusive, PAC paid comments-sabotage. (And the DP should be hiring those investigators now.) The ravings that repeat endlessly under a variety of names are surely canned.

They have realized we're no longer passively glued to TV and manipulative ads no longer work well.  But they think we're still morons. Moreover, that billion dollars from Koch and Saudi and Macau manipulators will be spent, desperately clinging to the power they have used to harm America.  Ultimately, the immune system that will overcome this fever must be us.

Issues of note in an election year

I have some perplexities about Bernie Sanders, and especially the way some of his fiercest adherents are getting overly emotional, when the blue Union needs to wage this phase of the Civil War with icy reason.  

Still, in several topics Bern is the only guy talking about core problems.  Like the concentration of economic power into pools and piles so immense they are "too big to fail."  

Have a look here: How 37 banks become four megabanks over the last two decades.  This is not a sign of a healthy economy.  A few bad choices by half a dozen secretive moguls -- and the rest of us will be left, holding a huge (yuge!) bailout check. Even if Bern doesn't get the nom, he's roused our attention and determination.

And my estimation of him just went up one more notch: Sanders would instigate a 0.5% tax on stock trades - to reduce speculation and high frequency stock trading. If Congress whittled it in half, that’d be just right. See elsewhere my own riffs on why such a transaction tax is utterly essential… including a sci fi reason that Bernie won’t mention. I’m still not sure he is my first choice to be president. But boy am I glad he is out there raising lots and lots of policy boldness to our political attention and horizon. 

On the transparency front...

John Kavanagh, a Republican member of the Arizona Senate, just introduced a bill stating: “IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO KNOWINGLY MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY.” Thus attempting to yank back from us the most important advance in American Civil Liberties in this century. 

Yep.  They will try. Despite a precedent in federal courts and declarations by the Obama Administration stating clearly that it is “settled law” that citizens have a solid right to record their interactions with police. That made 2013 the most important civl liberties year in decades... all ignored by the press.  Despite the fact that technology has proved to be the great, unheralded impetus behind the Black Lives Matter and other recent movements.

Make no mistake, this is not just one Republican state senator.  It is a movement, a party and a putsch that wants to turn citizens into sheep. 

Meanwhile. .. Breaking a decades-long trend, the world gets more violent.  See this study from the Conflict Data Program charting yearly fatalities. Okay, I've been touting causes for hope.  But there are plenty of reasons for wariness!

While we're at it. An interesting breakdown of who owns the U.S. national debt.  

Oh, at the Evonomics site: read about a real life and macroscopic experiment of Ayn Rand’s philosophy put into practice, when the CEO of Sears decided to sic his sub-units and corporate sections into internal “competition” with each other.  The result?  Sears has tanked.   Foir example: the appliance division found it could make more profit from selling Samsung appliances than from selling Sears’ Kenmore brand, so they gave more and better floor space to Samsung. 

And now... Walmart will hike wages for more than 1.2 million of its United States workers.  All very well and good.  But the company is fretting about lawsuits over the fact that its workers are so poor and many get so few benefits, that the public is left with huge welfare support and Medicaid bills. 

== Rattling sabers at Iran ==

Those who insist we should have made no deal with Iran, but instead should scream and rattle sabers to drive average Iranians into the mullahs’ arms… these voices were the ones who screeched when Henry Kissinger went to Mao’s China, in 1971. In some cases the very same voices. 

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were savvy enough to see how stupid a situation we were in, to abide a triangle that favored the Soviets, with us hating on both the USSR and China and the Sovs getting to hold center position.  Kissinger arranged a judo move in which we became the ones talking to both sides and playing them off each other.

Now? “Feckless” Obama has just pulled a Nixon by opening up better relations with Iran, allowing us to take that favorable position, playing Iran against the Saudis. It is obviously and blatantly the smart thing to do… once we coerced Iran to eliminate 25 tons of enriched uranium and to pour concrete into its plutonium reactor. And accept strong inspections.

But witness the Fox’ism as one commenter decried the comparison:  “We have not exchanged embassies with Iran. Their leaders will not stop calling us the devil. Obama has not gone to Iran. What have we gained the ability to threaten the Saudis with?”

To which I reply that foxisms are drivel. We do not need an embassy if two million Iranian expatriates start investing in their homeland, using economic leverage to help Rouhani and undermine the Guards, who are screaming in terror over that. Just as two million Cuban Americans in Florida are about to flood their homeland with both wealth and communism-toppling memes -- a win-win.

 We are still at the Kissinger phase! And Mao called us devils till the day he died… while working with the US to scare the crap out of the Russkies.

As right now, thanks to both the Iranian detente and low oil prices, Saudi influence (read control) over the U.S. appears to be plummeting to a many-decades low.

== The word of the year, bandied by confederate sloganeers ==

To what I just wrote, the Roger Ailes talking point will be: But “Feckless” Obama “lost Crimea”!  

Only… that happened after he went and stole the entire Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence, the biggest expansion of the West since the end of the Cold War. Russian media and Putin himself lay that “disaster” right at the feet of the man they call "aggressively clever" and anything but “feckless.”

The entire U.S. military is back at 100% readiness, even the reserves, after plummeting to 0% (for major U.S. Army and Marine and Reserve units) at the end of both Bush administrations. While casualty rates among servicemen/women have plummeted and Defense modernization is at its fastest pace ever. And every metric of U.S. national health has gone up -- and almost every such measure plummeted across both Bushes.

And… oh… yeah.  Obama killed Osama bin Laden.  

Did you think we’ll let you forget that?  Never, b******s.

"Feckless" my freckled behind.

Iowa, Inanity, SOTU and political games

In the wake of those frenzied and overblown Iowa Caucuses, a number of interesting thoughts:

1) That Donald Trump should have done a little traditional Expectations Dampening - you know, like politicians do. But that is not in his nature.  Anyone could tell you (as I did) that Iowan conservatives are very religious and that faction turns out - hence Cruz was always the leader there, whatever the polls say. (Weirdly, Iowa democrats turn out to be way more leftist than liberals nationwide.  What a state.) In any event: "The bad news for Ted Cruz: His Iowa win looks very similar to Mike Huckabee’s and Rick Santorum’s."

Only I still maintain Cruz has a cunning plan.

2) The near tie between Clinton and Sanders is actually great news for democrats. Both candidates will benefit from lively and invigorating tension. But this assumes Bernie is able to keep perspective and not get so caught up that he forgets -- you are vying, vigorously, for captaincy of a team you both know must win. Bruise each other... a little... but not too much for genuine hugs and kisses, later.

Oh and Hill? No thumbs on the scale. A cute trick would be to offer Bernie at-minimum the right to pick your Inspector General and your SEC head. No quid pro quo.  Just offer it.

3) NYT Nobelist economist Paul Krugman highlights ‘uplift’ in his analysis of the Iowa returns. 

Yes, he chose that word. His point being that we should choose to be more ambitious -- the one core thought that Bernie Sanders has contributed. Can we ‘uplift’ our society, our civilization? 

Right now, the American public mood is addicted to downer memes, despite almost every statistical metric having improved. While science fiction is filled with many negative stories, often unecessarily so, it remains the one medium where perhaps 10% of the time, we see real optimism and hope. Prof. Krugman knows this, else why would he feature a Michael Whelan sci fi cover to illustrate his essay?

4) Did I mention demmie 'hugs?' Among many young Sanders supporters I have been noting a bit of a shrill tone, even hatred for the Clintonite Democratic 'establishment.' And sure, some degree of complaint about that is valid. And yet, I am from the 1960s, and you kids are pure amateurs at indignation. Seriously? Some persepective is called-for. Especially when some bright-bozos have been proclaiming that "radicalism" is preferable to "well-meaning but too-moderate incrementalism."

The implication is that pragmatic moderate are tepid in desiring reform. But indeed, I warned about the threat of a secret world oligarchy in my novel Earth way back in 1989 -- see my portrayal of the "Helvetian war" -- and no one dissects that trend more often or deeply than I do. Also, that novel was early re Climate Change warnings.

Do I agree with much that Sanders says? Sure. I am glad of some of the radical enthusiasm he's fired up. And note that PAC money is playing a much smaller role in this election. Cool.

Still, the world is ultimately made by pragmatists and incrementalists. Franklin Roosevelt reset capitalism and gave the workers such a big stake that it created the fantastic American middle class. Which oligarchs are busy undermining, sure. So? All that means is another Rooseveltean reset is needed.  Hey, if our parents in the Greatest Generation could achieve that miracle, without diluting the best aspects of creative-competitive capitalism at all -- then we should be able to, as well.

Only dig this well, The New Deal had some radical aspects! But deep down, anyone who knew Franklin Roosevelt also knew that he was above all a politician, a pragmatist, an arm twister, and a moderate. A negotiator! The only way you can reconcile those two facts is by recognizing this: radicals will not accomplish as much in the American context as fierce pragmatists will. 

And we must do our part. Obama or Clinton needed us to give them a Congress. Any failure of their incrementalism was our fault. And "radicals" without a Congress will be even more pathetically ineffective.

== Congress listens -- in sullen crankiness ==

President Obama’s State of the Union address (SOTU) got a lot of attention, including nervy Paul Ryan, who either smirked "knowingly" or else scowled, theatrically-disrespectful through the entire address, then accused Obama of “degrading” the office of president… this from the party that gave us Richard Nixon and both Saudi-Bushes. 

Obama’s content – appealing for a return to the politics of actual-negotiation – was in fact filled with things to which we might all reasonably agree.  But one topic I have long inveighed against… electoral cheating. Especially gerrymandering  --  "the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around."

This article appraises how easy it would be to create fair electoral maps based upon “compactness of districts". In fact though, I do not agree with this solution – though it would be a vast improvement.  Elsewhere I offer a ‘minimum overlap” proposal that would require just three sentences and end the problem in a shot.  

Only here I want to comment less on President Obama’s SOTU address than on South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's official GOP response. The sub-text implications are quite interesting. Haley admitted in an interview on CNN that her speech partly targeted Trump & Cruz and that party leaders reviewed her speech before she delivered it Tuesday.

Choosing her as SOTU responder was one of the few actions that the Republican establishment could take, having completely lost control over the wild presidential nomination race. Earlier, I suggested 1:3 odds that they are setting up Paul Ryan to step in, should the convention be deadlocked after a first or second ballot (see below). (Ryan's scowl, all through the SOTU? A hour of silent-and-free publicity.) But back to Haley...

The GOP establishment knows that Jeb is toast and Rubio - their new boy - is unlikely.  The Ryan Gambit is plausible, but their backup plan...?  

Set up their choice to be the VP running mate.

Let's back up a bit. I believe Ted Cruz never intended to win the GOP presidential nod.  He knows how hated he is, by the GOP lords.  (In fact by almost anyone with normal intelligence.) His role model has to be Richard Nixon in 1952. And sure, if Jeb or Rubio or Ryan get the nom, then Cruz would be their shoe-in VP pick -- their envoy to the fundies and tea partiers, to keep them in line.  

What's Cruz's payoff?  Either 4 or 8 years as VP, pulling in IOUs... or else, if the GOP ticket loses this year, becoming the heir apparent to oppose the sitting dem's re-election in 2020.

Only now that plan is dashed!  The rebels - Trump and Cruz - have been too successful! If Trump wins the nomination, he simply can't choose Cruz as his running mate. They'd torch the whole party. Donald would have to find a "moderate" to mollify the Lords and to soothe offended folks in Trump's wild wake. (Unless Trump then intends to dash-for-the-center! In which case Cruz might make sense as veep, after all.)

Moreover, Ted Cruz - if by some chance he wins the main nom - would have to do the same.

And so we arrive in South Carolina, where the most important Republican primary will be held. Nikki Haley will be potent there. Moreover, she is a solid VP choice for many reasons.  A woman and a soother... and somewhat of an ethnic minority... though not Hispanic and not from a state the GOP needs. No matter! How better to reach out to GOP grownups and urge them to stay loyal, while either Cruz or Trump rampage about?

Haley: “It takes everyone to get their egos out of the room and really sit down and say, ‘OK, how are we going to get to a solution? That’s not something we’re seeing in D.C. right now.”  

Further: Haley said that Republicans share the blame with Democrats for the nation’s distrust of Washington and need to “recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in America’s leadership.”

Look, it's possible she's even sincere about wanting to forge a path for American conservatism out of the hellish pit Roger Ailes led them. If so, then her getting a VP stint on a losing zombie-festival could be good news for us all, putting her in position to bring back some version of the party of Eisenhower, in 2020.  It's a scenario.

I'll put no money on it though.  I do know this... actually winning the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2016 was not Ted Cruz's plan. As in The Manchurian Candidate, his scheme was a patient one, and now his prize, the VP slot, is slipping away from his hands, because he's been too successful.  And I can just imagine him murmuring "Oh crap, now what!"

Summary: If Trump or Cruz win the nom - VP goes to Haley or some hispanic GOP pol.
If it's anyone other than those two, then Cruz gets what he really wanted - (though perhaps sugar plum fairies are now dancing in his head) - the VP slot.

== Has Trumpism run its course? ==

Donal's lack of savvy expectations limiting before Iowa means his aura has taken a hit. So, is it over? Of course not.  Still...

The Eight Causes of Trumpism: This stunningly cogent article from The Atlantic fills in the historical trends that - since 1990 - have contributed to turning American politics from being about policy argument and negotiation, to an utterly polarized hate-fest. "The 8 causes of Trumpism" is actually not about Donald Trump, at all, but the forces that made 1/3 of Americans so volcanically (and illogically) furious that only a manipulative outsider-savanarola like Trump or Cruz can be viewed as appealing.

There are factors that Mr. Ornstein leaves out.  Like the role that Saudi investment played in building Fox News into the incendiary fuel behind a New Confederacy.  Or how  those petro-sheiks and our own coal barons created a populist frenzy that (to their chagrin) is now slipping out of their control, much the way Junker-class lords in 1920s Germany thought they could foster another right-wing populism, then lived to regret it. 

Still, Ornstein does feature a crucial moment -- the treasonous know-nothing act when Newt Gingrich's House GOP dissolved its own Office of Technology Assessment, and sent all the techies and boffins and nerds packing, openly declaring that science and facts that conflict with dogma have no place within the Capitol walls..

Now that phase 8 of the American civil war is thoroughly blatant, is it time, at last, to call it what it is? (Start ordering your blue-kepi 1865 caps now, for next Halloween!) Only then might the Blue Union do what it was forced to do, during other phases of this recurring, national fever.  Win.  Overwhelmingly.  Then, "with charity for all," resuming our ambitious role in remaking a better world.