As Robert Frost famously wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Does Donald Trump agree? Is Trump really about to make a deal with Democrats to preserve the right of undocumented Dreamer adults who were brought to this country as children to remain here under DACA? It sure seemed so at Tuesday’s White […]
ON TAP
Posted inTAP
California’s Thin Red Line
California’s thin red line—so thin that in much of the state, it’s barely discernable—crumbled a little more yesterday with the announcement from Orange County Republican Representative Ed Royce that he wouldn’t seek re-election. Royce, who has served in Congress since 1992 without anyone really noticing, holds one of the four Orange County seats that Hillary […]
Posted inTAP
When the other memoirs come out—and they will—Michael Wolff’s book will feel tame
Just imagine how serious people around Donald Trump, like General H.R. McMaster, or General John Kelly, or former Goldman chief Gary Cohn, or even Jeff Sessions feel about the idiocy of Trump, and the stories they have to tell? The great disgrace of the Republican Party is to deny the appalling reality (or unreality) that […]
Posted inTAP
If a liberal strategist or screenwriter had scripted the Bannon-Trump crack-up…
… it would be hard to improve on events now unfolding. Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, is only a more detailed version of what the world knows all too well. Donald Trump is an undisciplined mess, unfit to govern. His cabinet knows all too well what a total idiot he is, and says so. […]
Posted inTAP
Does Donald Trump want his voters to move someplace else?
This past summer, when asked about the dearth of jobs in regions like upstate New York, he opined that “Americans are going to have to start moving” to places where the jobs are. That, of course, would decimate his political base, but, as Washington Post reporter Heather Long noted in Wednesday’s paper, a number of […]
Posted inTAP
It sure looks as if an impeachment proceeding is inevitable…
…and that the issue of impeachment will dominate the 2018 elections, especially in the House. There is already enough on the public record, beginning with Trump’s obstruction of justice in his firing of FBI Director James Comey, to justify impeachment, and you can be sure that Robert Mueller’s report will provide a lot more details. […]
Posted inTAP
On the first day of 2018, The New York Times reported on a technological breakthrough
Google Street View’s images of America’s neighborhoods, a Stanford University study concludes, can now be interpreted by artificial intelligence to predict a neighborhood’s—or a street’s or a block’s—politics. “Image recognition technology, much of it developed by major technology companies, has improved greatly in recent years,” the Times reported, noting that the primary data on which […]
Posted inTAP
The latest CNN poll has Democrats up 18 points in the voter choice for members of the House
There is an increasing chance that in a Democratic wave election, gerrymandering could backfire on the Republicans, and lead to a massive Democratic sweep, with a pickup of 75 seats or even more. (It takes only 24 for Dems to take back the House.) Here’s how that works. Let’s say you are the Republican architects […]
Posted inTAP
One distinctive feature of Republicanism in the Age of Trump
… is the destruction of government agencies by appointment. Time and again, the president has appointed and the Senate confirmed directors committed to the destruction of the agency they’re directing and the inversion of its values. Think Scott Pruitt at the EPA, or Betsy DeVos at Education, or Ben Carson at HUD—the list, as you […]
Posted inTAP
I keep having arguments with friends and colleagues…
… about the importance of electing a Democrat in 2020. Some say, let’s just find a Democrat who can be elected. Others say that it matters what kind of Democrat. I’m emphatically with the second group. The road to Trumpism was paved by Democrats who really didn’t care about working-class Americans, who thought social issues […]
