Eric The Blue

Lying in state

Watching the ceremony honoring McCain today, I heard one of the commentators mention that he is the thirtieth American to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, and I got curious about the prior 29.  A list is here.  To make McCain no. 30, it seems you have to not count caskets of unknown soldiers who have lain in state in the Rotunda, and you have to count as one the two Capitol policemen who were honored after they were killed in the line of duty in 1998.  I'll reproduce the list with an identifying comment for those who might be less known.

• Henry Clay (Speaker of the House, US senator from Kentucky, Secretary of State in the Administration of John Quincy Adams)
• Abraham Lincoln
• Thaddeus Stevens (member of US House from Pennsylvania known for his fierce opposition to slavery)
• Charles Sumner (US senator from Massachusetts from 1851 until his death in 1874; like Stevens, a member of the so-called Radical Republican coalition stridently opposed to slavery)
• Henry Wilson (another senator from Massachusetts, and vice president under Grant from 1873 until his death in 1875)
• James Garfield
• John Logan (member of US House from Illinois until 1862, when he resigned to serve in the Union Army; served as senator from Illinois after the Civil War)
• William McKinley
• Pierre L'Enfant (planner of the city of Washington, D.C.; he died in 1820, but was honored in 1909 when his remains were re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery)
• George Dewey (only person to have achieved the rank of Admiral of the Navy and the hero of the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War)
• Warren Harding
• William Howard Taft
• John Pershing
• Robert Taft (US senator from Ohio from 1939 until his death in 1953, at which time he was Majority Leader; son of President William Howard Taft)
• John Kennedy
• Douglas MacArthur
• Herbert Hoover
• Dwight Eisenhower
• Everett Dirksen (Republican of Illinois, served in both the House and Senate, where he was Minority Leader from 1959 until his death in 1969; a strong supporter of the Vietnam War, he also voted in favor of significant portions of President Johnson's Great Society agenda, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965)
• J. Edgar Hoover 
• Lyndon Johnson
• Hubert Humphrey
• Claude Pepper (Democrat of Florida, served in the Senate from 1936 to 1951 and represented the Miami area in the House from 1963 until his death in 1989--a total of more than 40 years in the Congress)
• Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson (the policemen killed in a shooting at the Capitol on July 24, 1998)
• Ronald Reagan
• Rosa Parks
• Gerald Ford
• Daniel Inouye (Medal of Honor recipient for service in World War II, first US Representative from Hawaii when it became a state in 1959, and US senator from Hawaii from 1963 until his death in 2012)
• Billy Graham
• John McCain

Somewhat of an idiosyncratic list, no?  The honor requires either a congressional resolution or the approval of congressional leadership when permission is granted by survivors, so there is both a political aspect and a "family wishes" aspect.  It's a kind of nerdy recreation to consider who is on the list, considering who isn't.  Daniel Inouye, the second longest serving senator, at almost 50 years, but not Robert Byrd, the longest serving senator.  Douglas MacArthur, but not Harry Truman, the president who fired him.  Neither of the Presidents Roosevelt.  In the early days, the honor appears to have been extended most readily to elected politicians from the North known for their opposition to slavery, which makes one suspect that President (and General) Grant, who heroically completed his Personal Memoirs while dying of cancer, likely directed that he not be so honored.  Is it an unwritten rule, in service perhaps of their supposed independence, that no justice of the Supreme Court lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda?  Come to think of it, I did not see Chief Justice Roberts or any of his colleagues in attendance at McCain's event today.

The gerrymandering beat

News on the gerrymandering beat from yesterday: a federal appeals panel ruled that North Carolina's congressional boundary lines violate the Constitution, in particular the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the 14th.  The court is openly entertaining the option of forcing the boundaries to be redrawn before the approaching midterm election.  Under one proposal, the boundaries would be redrawn now and November's election converted to a primary, with a special general election to follow in January before the new Congress is seated.  Such an arrangement would bring into view the possibility that, on election night in November, the Democrats come up just shy of the 23 pickups they need to win a majority.  Control of the House of Representatives would then hinge on the outcome of 13 races waged in freshly drawn districts in North Carolina's January special election.  Can you imagine the windfall to North Carolina media outlets from the sale of advertising spots?  PBS and NPR would benefit from thousands seeking refuge.

Republicans will argue in court that any scheme requiring new district boundaries before the next election will result in chaos.  That's a sensible argument for them to make, considering the difficulties involved in defending the fairness of the current map.  Politically, North Carolina is the very lightest hue of pink.  Obama won it in 2008, but since then it's voted for Romney and Trump--by less than 3 per cent each time.  It has two Republican US senators and a Democratic governor.  Republicans control the state's General Assembly, which draws the congressional map.  Maybe it's not a fifty-fifty state.  Call it Republican by 51-49.  Yet of the 13 congressional districts in the state, 10 are represented by Republicans.  This is no accident. Republican Representative David Lewis, who chaired the redistricting committee, has said that he wanted to create a 10-3 Republican map, because it would be impossible to draw an 11-2 map--too many Democrats living too far apart!  

The general situation in North Carolina parallels the case of Pennsylvania, another roughly fifty-fifty state that, on account of a congressional map drawn by its Republican state legislature, had locked in a 13-5 Republican majority in the state's delegation to the House of Representatives.  Earlier this year, however, a court threw out the obviously rigged map, and under the new one everyone expects Democrats this fall to gain at least three seats, and maybe as many as five or six.  A congressional election in North Carolina, if conducted under a fair map, would likely result in at least two Democratic pickups--more likely three or, if it's a good year, four.  Since the magic number is just 23 in the whole country, Republicans will be trying mightily to preserve their partisan map in North Carolina for one more election. 

More of USA

 

I've just finished 1919, the second installment in the USA trilogy by John Dos Passos, whose unusual family story I described here.  The novels are long--the whole trilogy is printed in this Modern Library volume I picked up somewhere, and it comes in at 1,453 pages.  The work is divided into sections, like chapters, headed by the name of the main character whose story is featured in that segment.  Then you get to another section, a different character, the story seemingly unconnected to that of the preceding section.  And then another, and another.  In time, over the sprawl of the book, some of the stories get linked: characters meet, become involved in each others' lives for awhile, separate, may or may not be heard from again.  The reader thus has the occasional experience of observing someone known intimately from another section performing as an extra in a different character's story.  These longer sections of prose narrative are separated by pastiches of newspaper headlines and articles, under the heading of "Newsreel," as well as sections called "The Camera Eye" and mini biographies of famous Americans who lived during the period of time--first couple decades of the last century-- in which the action is set. The word "kaleidoscopic" inevitably recurs in descriptions of the effect, though if you are less favorably impressed you might incline toward, say, "disjointed."  In his later years Dos Passos turned to painting, and one senses that USA is to some considerable degree a novelistic version of certain then-recent developments in the visual arts, such as impressionism and cubism.  

To me, these intervening sections of newsreels, etc., are often annoying or even incomprehensible: The Camera Eye sections, for instance, are told in a stream-of consciousness flow that's either hard or impossible to comprehend--so eager have I been to press ahead in order to get to the "regular stories" that I couldn't render an opinion about what a more careful reader might discover about The Camera Eye.  Just the phrase itself, which suggests a rotating lens taking in impressions without any intelligent selection principle, indicates what the reader is up against.  I suspect the object is to deliver an indelible "impression" of the USA but the impression I often have is of an arch author showing off as he moves from the pummel horse to the rings to the high bar in the gymnasium of modernistic exercises.  Occasionally, however, as in a portion of Newsreel XLI from near the conclusion to 1919, his aim is realized:

his reply was an order to his followers to hang these two lads on the spot.  They were placed on chairs under trees, halters fastened on the boughs were placed around their necks, and then they were maltreated until they pushed the chair away from them with their feet in order to finish their torments.

 

John McCain campaigns in Lakeville

 

Taking in all the McCain tributes today, I noticed how many of them feature his response to the red-sweatered woman in the above clip from the 2008 presidential campaign.  This occurred at a "town hall" just a piece down I-35 from where I live, and I distinctly remember not being favorably impressed at the time.  Asked a question by a manifest crackpot who, after stumbling around a bit, settles finally on the epithet "Ay-rab" to describe Obama, McCain says, "No ma'am, he's a decent family man and citizen with whom I just happen to disagree"--the apparent implication being that the Venn diagrams of "Arabs" and "decent family men who are also American citizens" do not overlap.

If you wanted to cut McCain some slack--and I do--you might want to consider, besides the more famous interaction with the woman, the one from the same town hall that begins the above clip.  The man says he's "scared" of Obama, and McCain replies that there is no cause for that, Obama is a decent man.  The crowd expresses its disappointment--with McCain's answer.  Then later, same forum, the woman in the red sweater says something similar, and McCain, probably getting sick of this crap, repeats the line about Obama's decency, which isn't now right on point considering exactly what the woman said.  But, really, notwithstanding her assurances that she'd read up on Obama, she didn't have anything to say except a sort of generalized complaint that, at a high level, amounted to Obama being--she stammered and paused before settling on "Ay-rab" because she didn't know how to put it--different, not one of us, a scary other, (a colored guy).  Same general complaint as the fellow who said "cohorts" when he meant "cavorts," and she got the same general rebuke.

This time, McCain's answer elicited some tepid applause.  It's as if the attendees had given up on their candidate being an asshole.  They'd have to wait eight years for that.

Updates

 

Regarding the Florida shooting in which the local sheriff declined to file charges against the man who killed a father of three young children after an argument over a handicap parking spot: local prosecutors overturned the sheriff's decision, and Michael Djeka, who has a history of quarreling with African-Americans over parking places, has been charged with manslaughter.  This was the case in which a surveillance camera captured the deadly encounter that, in the sheriff's opinion, could not be prosecuted on account of Florida's stand-your-ground law.  Even if Djeka is convicted, which is far from certain, I don't think the Florida law will have been in any way vindicated.  The video shows the victim, who was black, backing away from Djeka when he was shot, but of course usually there is no video with which to refute a claim of having been in fear for one's life--or a history of picking fights with black people.

Chris Collins, the congressman charged earlier this month with insider trading, has changed his mind about seeking reelection.  He will instead retire, presumably so that he can devote all his time to concocting, with the aid of some high-priced legal talent, a plausible defense against charges that appear amply supported by evidence.  Collins was the first congressman to have endorsed Trump for president, and his district in upstate New York, which now will have no incumbent running, has a "partisan lean" of Republican +11.  

And then there is Duncan Hunter, the second congressman to have endorsed Trump. He was recently indicted for using campaign funds to pay for vacations, clothes, golf outings, oral surgery, private school tuition, restaurant meals, groceries, video games, liquor, big bar tabs at bachelor parties--pretty much everything a family man spends money on, sans hookers, which Hunter didn't need: he appears to have had  lobbyists and staffers for that.  The latest development in his case concerns his defense, which, with the modifying words elided, is:  It's my wife's fault, she did the finances!  To be fair, his wife and co-defendant does appear to have been an active collaborator.  For example, when he needed a pair of shorts for a Hawaii vacation, she pointed out (according to prosecutors) that, if he bought them at a golf pro shop, it would be easy to claim the expense was related to a golf tournament for Wounded Warriors.  Of course, the Hawaii vacation itself was another campaign expense.  Hunter represents one of California's most conservative districts and is, notwithstanding the indictment, a strong favorite to win reelection.  The prospects for his marriage are probably dimmer than for his continued service in the House of Representatives.

In re some pro-Trump talking points

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2018

 

"Still no evidence of Russian collusion," shout the parishioners in the Amen corner of the Church of Trump.  It's as if a guy, opening a crate of peaches and finding the ones on the top layer all bruised and rotten, were to proclaim that only the condition of the ones underneath matters.  No one does that.  Everyone is disgusted by the rotten fruit he can see, and more ready than before to think that the entire consignment is bad.  

We can stipulate that yesterday's news sheds little or no light on the question of collusion with the Russians.  That is why it was such a terrible day for Trump.  His corruption is thoroughgoing and not limited to matters under investigation by Mueller.

Nor am I at all persuaded that Trump's allegedly illegal machinations to keep old sex partners quiet till after the election didn't have the intended effect of winning for him the presidency.  Yes, everyone knew that he was a big fuck dog and he won anyway.  It doesn't follow that everyone who voted for him was charmed by the Access Hollywood tape and, presented with news of him shagging a porn star while Melania was home with the newborn Barron, would never ever have dusted off the one about the camel's back finally breaking.  Trump himself must have thought there were voters like that or he wouldn't have bothered to conspire with Michael Cohen about buying anyone's silence.

The tweet at the top is interesting.  The president of the United States is praising a convicted felon for having refused to cooperate with federal law enforcement officials.  

GOP congressman indicted for "Christian thing"

I spent most of the day in western Wisconsin trying to enjoy myself while desecrating the game of golf.  Turns out that our president's associates were having bad days not on the golf course but in court: one, Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer and "fixer," stated under oath, in support of his guilty plea, that "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office" he committed a felony by arranging for payments to third parties intended to advance said candidate's electoral prospects. So it wasn't just a bad day for the president's associates, but that's not really my beat.  I wrote here about the legal troubles of Chris Collins, the first US Representative to endorse Trump for president.  It happens that today Duncan Hunter, the second US Representative to endorse Trump for president, was indicted on charges including wire fraud and campaign finance violations. He's flying under the radar, what with the other news of the day, but, since I think he deserves a higher profile, I'm just going to set down a couple of paragraphs in the indictment--the whole thing is here.  As you can tell from the numbers--102 and 172--Hunter and his wife were, according to prosecutors, using campaign funds to cover a wide variety of incidental family expenses.

102. On or about October 22, 2014, in San Diego, California, DUNCAN HUNTER spent $204.34 in Campaign funds for two greens fees, food, and drinks at the Rancho Bernardo Golf Resort, during a personal golf outing with friends, including Individual 1A.  To conceal and disguise his illegal activity, he misled his Chief of Staff by describing his regular golf outing with Individual 1A as "a Christian thing" with a supporter.  

172. On or about March 4, 2016, in Washington, D.C., DUNCAN HUNTER spent $462.46 in Campaign funds for 30 shots of tequila and one steak at El Tamarindo restaurant during Individual 8's bachelor party.

You have to appreciate the detail concerning the lie to his Chief of Staff, who, since he had to be lied to, must probably be an honest person.  Trump would never hire him, but Hunter did, so give credit where credit is due.  

Advice from an outsider

 

The nun in the youtube video I'm embedding above is a public relations success for the Catholic Church at a time when it could badly use one.  Have you ever noticed that it's the conservative old men who are digging holes into which the Church falls while Catholic women, who by the rules made by these men can't advance, tend to lift it up?  A nun about whom it could not be said she throws like a girl isn't that big a deal, I know, but any port in a storm.  Her stereotypical-looking glasses and churchy garb, accessorized with tennis shoes and a jaunty manner, make her a winner.  And it's not like she's a rare instance.  There are networks like Nuns on the Bus, and other women who are clearly overperforming in the jobs the Church permits them to perform.  It was Jennifer Hasselberger, an archdiocesan lawyer, whose disgust with Archbishop John Nienstedt here in the Twin Cities set in motion a sequence of events ending in his tardy resignation.  It's shocking that someone like Nienstedt could be promoted through the ranks; when he got his first promotion, he should have been fired instead.  To anyone who cares to notice, it's pretty clear that the upper reaches of the Church hierarchy are stained by the very worst traits one associates with "good ol' boy network."  When a non-good-ol'-boy gets her foot in the door, the stench is overpowering, and often she swings into action.  The Church needs more of that, not less.

Also, though I'm an outsider, the rule about priestly celibacy should be rescinded, because it's at the root of the problem.  There is no scriptural authority for it, as Paul himself acknowledged when, in I Corinthians, he recommends celibacy even though "I have no command of the Lord" (7:25).  That priests nevertheless can't marry has the practical effect of making the priesthood attractive to men whose sexual predilections must be secret in any event.  Meanwhile, a religious vocation is for the psychologically healthy the advertised sacrifice.  Clergy misconduct is a problem across denominations, but it seems farfetched to think that the Protestants are successfully covering up an epidemic of the sexual abuse of children by those in ministry.

And, returning to the realm of public relations, if priests could marry the world might no longer be subjected to the spectacle of panels of septuagenarian virgins issuing white papers on topics in human sexuality.  It's like they're begging for attention from late-night comedians.  

Jottings, cont.

 

Lest anyone doubt my credentials for geekdom, I have my kids working math problems to warm up for the start of school. 

"But, dad, nine months of learning is more than enough!"  

"Shut up and sharpen your pencil." 

The above is Lydia's most recent homemade worksheet.  By chance, the day after she did it, Omarosa released the tape of Lara Trump trying to buy her silence for 15 grand per month.  In the part of the transcript that got my attention, Lara is speaking:

So, I know you, you were making 179 at the White House.  And I think we can work something out where we keep you right along those lines.  Specifically, let me see, I haven't even added up the numbers.  But we were talking about, like, 15k a month.  Let me see what that adds up to.  Times 12.  Yeah.

She's pretty obviously punching keys on her calculator, right?  For 15 x 12?  It's 30 more than 15 x 10, girlfriend.  Did you know that 15 x 10 = 150?  So 180.  I give my 10-year-old harder problems than that.  Maybe when you're a Trump, you're used to working with bigger numbers, and the calculator is just a reflex?  

I guess another question might be how do the small donors feel about having all they can afford being offered to Omarosa to stop her from talking smack about the Trumps for, like, a half hour?  A possible word problem for my next worksheet!  Omarosa is paid $15,000 per month hush money out of funds donated by MAGA types.  If Trevor from Tennessee  mails in a check for $60, for how long does his contribution muzzle her?  Consider a month to be 30 days and that she puts in 16-hour days, 7 days a week, keeping her mouth shut about what corrupt, creepy dopes they are.  

I think the saddest lyric in any Replacements song is from "Here Comes a Regular":  I used to live at home/Now I stay at the house.

The Twins have won 18 of their last 23 home games--and 7 of their last 26 on the road.  

Jottings

 

I follow someone on Twitter who follows someone on Twitter who works at Media Matters, "a web-based not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."  In her position, she--name is Madeline Peltz--watches a lot of Fox News, and yesterday she tweeted that she's walking out the door at work and never coming back if they make her watch Tucker Carlson talking about Aretha Franklin.  

I think Peltz was partly being funny, but, as if to justify her snark, Fox last night ran the graphic I'm copying above.  The woman pictured is Patti LaBelle.  Perhaps an instance where a diverse work force could have saved the company from an embarrassing mistake?  To everyone at Fox News, they really do all look alike!

If, as many believe, John Brennan lost his security clearance in order to get Omarosa off page 1, I'd like to suggest that a better diversionary tactic might be for Trump to tweet out links to news articles about the grand-jury investigation into the Catholic Church's standard operating procedure in Pennsylvania.  One headline announces, "Vatican 'condemns unequivocally' Pennsylvania Priest Abuse Scandal."  Yes, after the grand jury investigates and the media reports the sickening conclusions, you know it must be time for the Church's spokesmen--and they are all men--to roll out statements of "unequivocal condemnation." The space in my soul cordoned off for hatred and contempt is the size of six outdoor amphitheaters, but I swear on a catechism, Trump has to assume the fetal position in a corner when I force myself to contemplate the maneuverings of the robed bureaucrats who oversee and abet the psychological wrecks responsible for preaching and pastoral care.  When the frequently promoted aren't shuffling predator priests from parish to parish, they're warning normal people about the horrors of contraception.

As a liberal, would just like to point out that, but for an activist government and a free press, we'd likely know nothing of this and there would be no need for the Church to promulgate its unequivocal condemnation.  

Minnesota's 2018 primary election: reading the tea leaves

Everyone, this day after Minnesota's primary election, is expressing "surprise" over the result of the governor's race on the GOP side of the ballot, where Jeff Johnson defeated--clobbered--the former two-term governor and presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty.  To my mind, though, the big story is the disparity in the vote, by party, in the two gubernatorial primaries.  On the DFL side, where Tim Walz won, there were a total of more than 570,000 votes cast.  Meanwhile Republican candidates for governor received a total of only 320,000 votes.  Sixty-four percent of all ballots cast for a gubernatorial candidate were for a Democrat.  The DFL's advantage in the raw vote exceeded a quarter million. Though Johnson defeated Pawlenty handily, his vote total would have put him in third place on the DFL side, behind both Walz and Erin Murphy.  Pawlenty got fewer votes than the third-place Democrat, Lori Swanson.  

These were both contested primaries with the outcomes in doubt, so it seems fair to compare the total votes on the two sides.  And Republicans were swamped.  Can they catch up in the general election?  Well, according to conventional wisdom, the most reliable voters, the ones who can be counted upon to show up even for a primary, tend to be older and whiter and more Republican than the general population, and Democrats therefore lean on more occasional voters to pull through in the fall.  Another way to put it: people who made it to their polling place for the primary election aren't very likely to stay home for the general, in which case, statewide, it appears Republicans will in the fall have to carry nonprimary voters by something like 250,000 ballots. 

Moreover, the DFL ticket in Minnesota will now be headlined by Walz and Amy Klobuchar.  Their counterparts on the Republican side are Johnson, who lost the governor's race four years ago to Mark Dayton, and the virtually anonymous sacrificial lamb opposing Klobuchar.  Republicans should be worrying about the down ballot effect of such a lackluster ticket, especially since in Minnesota this year there are, besides statewide races for governor and both US Senate seats, four competitive races for US House, including two in which Republicans are hoping to win formerly Democratic seats.  These are in the first congressional district, which Walz vacated in order to run for governor, and the eighth, where the retirement of Rick Nolan gave Republicans a shot at another open seat.  Trump carried both districts by fifteen percentage points, and the Democratic retirements should probably be attributed to pessimism about the direction of the local political winds.  The other two hot House races are in the second and third districts, where Republican incumbents Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen will be trying to hold on in suburban territory that's trending Democratic.  After last night, you'd have to say that Lewis and Paulsen look more vulnerable than before, while the Democrats' chances of prevailing in the incumbent-free first and eighth district races likewise ticked upward.  

Pawlenty's loss points up the dilemma that Republicans face, in Minnesota and elsewhere.  I don't agree with him about anything, but, in the political talent department, TPaw is miles ahead of Johnson, a straightforward and unexceptional ideologue.  It's now the party of Trump, however, so when Republicans choose between two candidates the Trumpier one always wins.  Of the various available explanations for Pawlenty's sorry showing, the best must be that he was punished last night for having said, during the 2016 campaign, that Donald Trump was "unsound, uninformed, unhinged, and unfit."  (I shouldn't have said that I don't agree with him about anything.)  You can't say that and win a Republican primary, but half the population knows it's true, and the prospect of saying so at a polling place functions on us like a jolt of norepinephrine.

 

Election Day!

 

It's primary election day in Minnesota.  I always feel, walking out of the polling place, like the Norman Rockwell figure shown here, probably a result of having picked up a lot of schmaltzy ideas in my days as a Cub Scout.  While proceeding down the DFL side of the ballot, like all my neighbors here in the People's Republic of South Minneapolis, it occurred to me that I wasn't choosing many of the DFL-endorsed candidates.  I think the reason is that they're chosen by the party's most activist members, who in my humble opinion are susceptible to infatuations with what I consider to be "boutique candidates"--defined, roughly, as someone whose appeal rests largely on the number of demographic check boxes they can fill.  Okay, fine, admitted, point granted, white guys are responsible for the current sorry state of affairs.  That's because the Republican party, largely a kind of white grievance party, is in power despite having gone completely 'round the bend, and the thing is to beat all their candidates by running against them Democrats who will win.  I'm all about "electability." In our governor's race, my views--on gun laws, for sure--are probably closest to those of Erin Murphy, the endorsed candidate.  But I'm afraid that a female St. Paul liberal who touts her F-rating from the NRA would get beat up outside of Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, so I voted for Tim Walz.  He's fine and more apt to win.

I just read over that paragraph and feel that "female St. Paul liberal" is a bad phrase, but I'm not striking it.  The other side routinely refers to Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five whose voting record is that of a standard-issue Democrat, as "a San Francisco liberal," and it works: they know what they're doing. (Among other things, appealing to anti-gay bigotry.)  Let's be realistic about how the game is being played, what works, what wins, and, in the meantime, push for ranked choice voting, so that we don't have to make these miserable calculations.

How about Trump and Omarosa?  The easy observation would be that they deserve each other.  Maybe Trump finally found someone less credible than himself to fight with!  Although so far, with her tapes, she seems to be getting the better of it.  Everyone is talking about Trump's tweet this morning in which he calls her a "dog."  Yes, it's vulgar and in a former time beneath presidential dignity, but, to me, it also sounds false and unnatural, inasmuch as calling a woman a "dog" is generally done to indicate she's ugly, which Omarosa is not: the Trump administration wouldn't be paying an ugly African-American woman with only reality-TV qualifications 180 k per year to advise the president.  (Plus, I trust my own eyes.)  I suspect his impulse was to call her a "bitch," but he realized that would be bad, so he settled on "dog" as a substitute.  If I'm right, it's an instance of self-editing on the part of Donald Trump.  Praise the Lord for gently raining down his tender mercies!

 

The 2018 Senate outlook

 

In "What's in a Wave," I set out an admittedly arbitrary marker for what would count as a "blue wave" in the midterm elections: Democrats gain at least 40 seats in the House of Representatives (17 more than needed for a majority and about 10 more than the out party usually picks up in an off year election) while gaining at least two seats in the Senate, which would give them a majority in that body, too.  The Senate map is so stacked in favor of Republicans that the latter is pretty plainly the higher hurdle, and it should probably count as a wave if, for example, the Democrats gain 50 House seats without losing any ground in the Senate.  But let's just stick with the plus-40, plus-2 formula.  The prospect of gaining 40 House seats is well within the Democrats' reach.  What about netting two seats and a majority in the Senate?

When people talk about a favorable map for Republicans, they only mean that every two years about a third of the Senate seats are up for election, and this year's roll of 35 happens to give a considerable advantage to the party of Trump.  For one thing, Democrats currently hold 26 out of the 35 seats, so they start out with almost three times the exposure as Republicans.  Of course they aren't in any real danger of losing many of those 26 races:  Elizabeth Warren will be reelected in Massachusetts, as will Bernie Sanders in Vermont, Angus King in Maine, Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island, Tim Kaine in Virginia, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Dianne Feinstein in California--enough others to make compiling a list sort of tedious.  The problem arises from the fact that, of those 26 seats Democrats are defending, 10 are in states carried by Trump.  Let's list them and at the same time place them in two categories: five that Trump won by a single-digit margin (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida) and five others he won by a double-digit margin (West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, and Montana).

It's easy to see why, in the immediate aftermath of Trump's election, Senate prognosticators thought the Democrats in 2018 would be looking up the south end of a north-bound horse.  Back then, Republicans held 52 Senate seats, and there was a very real prospect they could this year attain a filibuster-proof majority of 60--just hold the seats they already had, sweep the five states Trump won in landslides, and win three of the five in the other Trump states.  But since then their position has deteriorated substantially.  They went from 52 to 51 seats when Democrat Doug Jones won a special election in Alabama [sic], so it's already too late for them to hold the seats they already had.  In the five single-digit Trump states, four Democratic incumbents appear to be safely ahead--only Florida looks close.  Meanwhile, in the five Trump landslide states, two Democratic incumbents--Jon Tester in Montana and Joe Manchin in West Virginia--are looking like strong favorites to win reelection.  It's not too much to say that, while Americans have taken the measure of Trump in office, the number of Republican-held seats in the Senate has declined from 52 to 51, and the number of ripe prospects for Republican Senate pickups in 2018 has declined from "about 10" to "maybe 4."  Consider that if you're asked the right-track, wrong-track question!

Still, 51 is more than 49, and 4 is greater than zero.  Even if Democrats suffered nothing even resembling an upset, and went 4-for-4 in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, they'd still need to win two seats currently held by Republicans.  Recall that only 9 Republican seats are on anyone's ballot.  Alas, these 9 include Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, and, on account of a retirement, both seats in Mississippi.  Forget about those five.  Let's list the other four in order of ripeness with an appropriate handicapping descriptor:

Arizona (Democrat favored)
Nevada (Democrat more likely than not to win)
Tennessee (knife's edge)
Texas (this would be a Democratic upset)

Maybe the first thing to be said about this list is geographical.  It's true that Democratic fortunes have ebbed in the older, whiter Midwest.  But they are rising in the sunny and growing Southwest.  New Mexico has completed the transition from red to blue, Arizona and Nevada are en route, and Texas is next in line.  In Tennessee, a crimson state, the Democrats have a very strong candidate, Phil Bredeson, who, when running for reelection for governor in 2006, won two-thirds of the statewide vote and all 95 counties.  

The sum of it all is that, right now, it looks like a Senate majority hinges on the outcomes across eight states--four seats that the Democrats are trying to defend (in Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, and Florida) and four where Democrats are on offense (in Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, and Texas).  For a majority, Democrats need to win most of them--probably six of the eight.  That sounds like a tall order, and it is, but here's something: the likelihood of winning six isn't much less than the likelihood of winning four.  Today, it looks like Republicans have at least a two-thirds chance of retaining their majority.  But suppose we could know today that, say, Democrat Claire McCaskill was going to win reelection in Missouri.  The Democrats' chances of flipping the Senate would then jump from less than a third to better than fifty-fifty--on the principle that if the tide rolls in, the tide rolls in.  The converse would be that if we knew McCaskill was going down, we could be reasonably sure that Republicans would win most of these tight races and add to their Senate majority--because if the crest of the wave doesn't bring McCaskill to shore, it likely will fail also in Texas, Indiana, North Dakota, and Tennessee.  

If you're similarly obsessed with this kind of stuff, click on the youtube video above to get the assessment of the Cook Political Report.

The case of Chris Collins

 

The charging documents in the case of Chris Collins, the Republican congressman from upstate New York accused of insider trading and lying to the FBI, are pretty amazing.  I guess, in my innocence, I don't expect multimillionaire congressmen to be so stupid.  Corruption doesn't surprise me, in fact I expect it, but I also expect a basic level of criminal competence, of adult sophistication, from people who've been alive for over sixty years and wormed their way to the top tier of American life.

Here is a summary of the government's case.  Rep. Collins was on the board of a pharmaceutical company that was testing a drug that it believed would benefit people suffering from multiple sclerosis.  He owned a ton of stock in the firm and, on his recommendation, his son Cameron, Cameron's girlfriend, the girlfriend's parents, and friends of the girlfriend's family had also purchased a substantial number of shares--well over half a million dollars worth, between them, not counting the congressman, who owned a lot more than that.  Then, in June of 2017, the company learned that its drug had miserably failed the testing regimen: it had no therapeutic value.  While attending a congressional picnic on the grounds of the White House, Collins received an email from the CEO spelling out the bad news.  He replied to the email at 7:10 p.m.: "Wow.  Makes no sense.  How are these results even possible???"  Within the next five minutes, he placed six calls from his cell phone to his son, Cameron.  The first five were not picked up.  The sixth was, and the conversation lasted six minutes, eight seconds.  When trading opened the next morning, Cameron began selling off his stock. In the few days before the results of the failed test became public, so did the girlfriend, the girlfriend's parents, and the family friends.  The company really had nothing going except this one drug, so when news of the failed test became public, its stock lost more than 90 percent of its value--went from about a half buck a share to less than a nickel a share.  The representative's son, the son's girlfriend, and the girlfriend's family and family friends avoided losing, by their timely sell orders,  upwards of three-quarters of a million dollars.

Collins gave a statement this evening in which he emphasized that he did not himself sell any stock. Of course he didn't.  The charging documents explain the many reasons he couldn't.  The one I like best is that he had already attracted the attention of ethics milksops who are suspicious of congressmen who sit on the boards of pharmaceutical companies while making laws that affect . . . pharmaceutical companies.  He had too high a profile to unload his stock right before it collapsed.  

The sense of entitlement that these people have exceeds by miles that of any brown-skinned immigrant or someone receiving supplemental assistance to buy groceries.  I love the congressman's reaction to the bad news: "How is this even possible?"  Some people, by the time they're 68, are not surprised by disappointment.  Anyway, he starts placing calls with his own cell phone, and his family members begin selling their stock.  He might as well have sent an email to the FBI telling them what he was up to.  (I imagine that occasionally the FBI is confronted with criminals who use burner phones when discussing their crimes, and yet they figure it out.)  It seems like maybe Collins &c failed to comprehend that they were performing blatantly criminal acts--things everyone knows are against the law.  I attributed their actions to incompetence and stupidity but maybe the explanatory concept is something more like impunity.  People like us can't be criminals, so let's help ourselves!  Side details give off the same odor.  Here is item 33 of the criminal complaint, concerning the girlfriend's text messaging when dollar signs were dancing before her eyes:

33. The year before, Cameron Collins's girlfriend's parents also invested in Innate after she told her mother by text message in August 2016: "I think we all need to consider investing in innate therapeutics. I might put in $15k and that has a greater than 50% chance of going up to $250k...…..that is actually unheard of and cams dad almost guarantees it within the next 1 to 2 years...."  The next day she added, "And we'll always keep in touch with cams dad who I'm guessing would know how things are looking as we get closer to the end of the trial."  A few days later, she told her mother,  "I'll make sure cams dad keeps us in the loop."

He kept them in the loop.

In his statement today, Rep. Collins, who was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president, announced that the criminal charges would not deter him from seeking another term.    Good god I hope he doesn't campaign on draining the swamp.

What's in a wave?

 

Political talkers who refer to a "wave," as in "a blue wave is coming," never define the term.  Sometimes, listening to them, it seems to mean nothing more than that the Democrats are poised to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives.  But in that case it seems the term is just more generic hyperventilating.  After all, the "out party" picks up, on average, about 30 House seats in a midterm election, and the Democrats only need to gain 23 to win the majority.

Wave signifies wipe-out, right?  Like what President Obama called "a thumping" after Republicans gained 63 seats in the 2010 congressional election.  That was a "wave," or a "tsunami."  Just for purposes of having some kind of concrete marker, let's say that Democrats will have ridden a wave if they gain more than 40 seats in the House and, despite a very unfavorable map, win a majority of seats in the Senate as well.  What is the prospect of that happening?

Since there is today a special election for the twelfth congressional seat in Ohio, let's leave the Senate side of it for another day.  Ohio's twelfth district is, to trot out another cliché, rock-ribbed Republican.  Trump carried it by 11 percentage points, which was not a particularly strong performance by a Republican.  The district has been represented in Congress by a Republican for more than 30 years.  Today's special election was triggered by the retirement of Republican Pat Tiberi, who was first elected in 2000.  He was then re-elected eight times, with an average of more than 55% of the vote.  In three re-elections since the district was rearranged into its current configuration after the 2010 census, he has averaged 66% of the vote.  According to the "partisan-lean" index of the FiveThirtyEight website, Ohio-12 is 14 points more Republican than the country as a whole.

As can be seen in the above maps, the district is shaped like a sideways J, with the city of Columbus rubbing against the outside of the curve.  The part of the district in northern Franklin County, home to Columbus, is strongly Democratic--Hillary carried the county, 56-38.  A third of the district's voters live in Franklin County.  Since Trump carried the district by 11 points, you can see what happened in the other two-thirds.  

Yet everyone is expecting a close outcome tonight.  The candidates are unexceptional, more or less generic representatives of their party, and the Republican, Troy Balderson, began with a double-digit lead in sporadic polling, which, considering the district, seemed unexceptional, too.  But his position seems to have steadily eroded as the election drew near, until, in a poll conducted by Monmouth University in the last week of July, his lead stood at a statistically insignificant 47-45.  The last poll there will be, before the final one tonight, is the only one showing the Democrat, Danny O'Connor, the 31-year-old county recorder of Franklin County, with a lead: 47-46.  That was an Emerson College poll conducted August 2-4.  

Perhaps the dramatic narrowing of this race in a Republican district is not that surprising.  Trump easily carried Ohio, but his approval rating in the state has slipped from +14 when his term began to -4 in May of this year, the most current data point I can find.  Many observers think Balderson was likely hurt more than helped by Trump's rally in the district last week.  FiveThirtyEight observes that, in federal special elections conducted this year and last, Democrats have outperformed their partisan-lean index for the election venue by an average of 16 points.  Recall that the partisan-lean index for Ohio-12 is Republican +14, not quite enough to sustain a 16-point erosion.

Circling back to the original question concerning the prospect of a "blue wave," it hardly matters whether the Republican is upset or hangs on to win by a point or two.  If O'Connor wins, the Democrats' "magic number" will slide from 23 to 22.  But for crystal ball purposes, the alarming figure for Republicans must be the number of congressional districts that have a Republican representative despite being less Republican than Ohio-12, which in 2018 appears to qualify as a "swing district."  I heard on the news this morning that, according to the Cook Political Report, that number is not less than 60.  Of course there are the normal caveats: special elections are "special," there's no incumbent, the actual election is two months off, the national mood could change, etc., etc.  If, however, we set a gain of 40 seats as the mark for a Democratic wave in the House, it's now easy to see from shore something that looks . . . wave-like.  

Notes on retirement

1. Personal hygiene may have taken a hit.

2. Definitely more apt to have a beer with lunch.

3. Golf more, as badly as ever.

4. Eyeglasses always dirty, the bathroom at work being perfectly equipped for their cleaning. (Not to mention, except parenthetically, that I was rarely averse to extending my stay for the time needed to render them spotless). 

5. Developing solid relationships with the neighborhood's stay-at-home moms.

6. Which reminds me: the woman next door, currently laid off, sent her 6-year-old over to play with Claire, who's 7, so that she (the mom) could run somewhere the other day.  I overheard the girls playing a game, the object of which was apparently to utter the most outrageous speech act possible.  First one would go, then the other.  Claire surrendered after neighbor girl said, "I'm gonna cut off my brother's wiener, paste it on your eyebrow, and then you will get pee in your eye."  

7. At the grocery store, find that my way is blocked by pallets and shelf-stockers instead of by other shoppers.  I guess that's the difference between Tuesday at 10 a.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.  But the shelf-stockers aren't squatting next to their carts to read labels on bottom-shelf items, so, as with my lunch beverage, an improvement.

Brief obituaries of unhideous men

 

With apologies to David Foster Wallace, author of a collection of short stories entitled Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.  I haven't read it, but assume it features a lot of hideous men.  There are exceptions, and, alas, they too are mortal.

My sister told me today that Bob Gelle, a former colleague of hers at St. Olaf College and a friend of my parents, died yesterday.  His obituary is here.  More than two notable things, but here's two.

One, I know it was a different time, but--holy crap!--what a great athlete he must have been.  After growing up in Osakis, Minnesota, all-state in football and state champion in the shot put, he gets a football scholarship to the University of Minnesota, and is starting at linebacker his sophomore season, 1950.  He decides he prefers basketball, however, and becomes a three-year starter for the basketball team, captain and MVP his senior season.  He also played baseball for the Gophers.  Oh, and threw the shot and discus for the track team.  Four sports at the U of M!  How good was he at basketball?  Good enough to be drafted by the Lakers after his senior year.  I knew this history, vaguely, I think mainly from my dad, but my sister, who knew him better, was shocked.  He wasn't a big talker, especially about himself.

Two, he never played for the Lakers, or so far as I know even tried out, opting instead to fulfill "his Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) obligations at Fort Meade in Maryland."  Quaint.  He returned to Minnesota in 1956 to teach social studies and coach at Edina High School.  After one year, he was offered the head basketball coaching job at St. Olaf, a position he held until 1981.  He also coached football and track and field, taught physical education, and was athletic director for seventeen years.

He was the basketball coach at St. Olaf during my student days, and I remember one game, against a team whose coach had a Napoleonic complex, in which I'm about 90 per cent sure Gelle pulled a fast one.  St. Olaf had been locked in a tight game when, sometime in the second half, a close call went the Oles' way, and Coach Napoleon couldn't control himself: he was assessed multiple technical fouls and ejected from the court.  While he was performing his Bob Knight act, Gelle quietly inserted St. Olaf's best foul shooter, who was being spelled on the bench, back into the game.  When order was restored, this kid made about nine free throws in a row, and suddenly the game wasn't very close any more.

The last time I saw Gelle was at my mom's funeral in 2014.  He would have been 83, and was getting around with the aid of a walker--I think the joints in his legs had given out from carrying around the musculature of his upper body for so long.  I remember that he kidded around with my young daughters and wasn't wearing a necktie.  I can't remember him wearing a necktie. He wouldn't have been the type to special order anything, and he probably couldn't buy off the rack dress shirts that he could button at the top--neck too big.

Exhibit A-1 of America's casino economy might be the king's ransom paid to athletic superheroes, with the result that those not quite good enough to make it can seem somewhat pathetic figures.  The syndrome is no doubt abetted by the psychological distress brought on by the way all the public adulation gives way to gray obscurity when the subject has attained the approximate age of 23.  Gelle seems to have been saved from this fate by intelligence and a kind of plodding decency that, having been an occasional listener to "Prairie Home Companion," I associate with the Lutheranism that he evidently practiced his entire life.

 

John Dos Passos: the family background

It seems that Virginia Spencer Carr holds the field in John Dos Passos biographies with her 1984 Dos Passos, favorably reviewed here, in the New York Times, by Kenneth Lynn.  If you know one thing about Dos Passos, it's probably that, as a young man, when he was writing the five books on which his reputation as a major American novelist rests--Three Soldiers, Manhattan Transfer,  and the USA trilogy (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money)--he was a political radical, and that on the other side of midlife he became a reactionary conservative who campaigned for Goldwater and Nixon.  Now that I know just a bit more about him, I'm inclined to think the evident instability might be attributed to a really crazy family story.

His mother, Lucy Sprigg, a Virginian growing up in the years following the Civil War, married at age 16 one Ryland Randolph Madison, a relation of the fourth president as well as an alcoholic slacker.  They had one son (not the writer), whereupon James Madison's relative walked away and wasn't heard from again.  At this point in the story, one may be expecting a tale of heroic Lucy holding things together: what she did, however, was hand off the baby boy to her own mother and move from Petersburg, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., where her father ran a real estate business.  She went to work for her dad and learned, of necessity, that he was not devoted to her mother.  She soon met a Portuguese immigrant and successful lawyer, John R Dos Passos, who had married for money, or social prestige, the daughter of a bank president before becoming a success himself.  The author of the USA trilogy is the offspring of the lawyer and Lucy Sprigg, his mistress of 25 years.  The boy was called Jack Madison by his mother, who told a story about having accepted the responsibility of raising him from a desperate unwed mother in Chicago.  The boy's father found it most convenient to maintain Lucy and young Jack in Europe, away from the up-and-up family in D.C., and the writer later deployed the phrase "hotel life" to describe his boyhood.  His father would visit on his frequent European vacations, and as a teenager Dos Passos began using his name.  He was sent to Choate and Harvard.  The USA books are full of restless wanderers, failed and sham marriages, and people from all classes, none of them particularly admirable but the affluent grasping and scheming and outright repugnant.  

 

Manafort on trial

 

The conventional wisdom promulgated on cable news shows is that the Manafort trial, now underway in northern Virginia, is a "documents case" concerning financial crimes the defendant committed, if he committed them, before ever working on the Trump campaign.  Since the evidence will consist of, for example, columns of numbers and items that should have been checked on tax returns, but weren't, and especially since none of this relates directly to Trump, we are in for a real snooze fest.  And we should believe it inasmuch as, coming from cable news guests, this amounts to a statement against interest, which has high probative value.

But I wonder.  The "financial" crimes Manafort is charged with are not really of the same type.  At first, he seems to have had almost unlimited income, and the object was not to pay tax on it.  Thus all the shell companies and wire transfers from offshore accounts.  Then, later, in the time immediately preceding his hook-up with the Trump campaign, he suddenly had an opposite  problem: no access to cash, which caused him to make out false loan applications, including, on one occasion, enlisting the lies of a relative to help him persuade a bank to give him money.  It's widely believed that his financial downfall is connected to the political downfall of his client, Viktor Yanukovych, who lost the presidency of the Ukraine in 2014.  At the time Manafort was scrambling, and lying, in order to get funds, he was also making overtures to the Trump campaign, offering to render his services for free.  His offer was accepted and he took over the management of Trump's campaign. 

Did Manafort regard his unpaid job as a solution to his cash flow problems?  If so, why?  It seems reasonable to surmise that Team Mueller has investigated these questions and has by now a pretty good idea how they should be answered.  Adam Davidson adds details and texture, here.