Cagle World

White racism was at the root of Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, and so it will be again in 2020. Either we decisively reject it at the ballot box, and thus begin to salvage our pluralistic values, or we can acquiesce in the slow death of the American dream.

The only thing that’s shocking about his racist tweets – demanding that four congresswomen of color, four U.S. citizens, “go back” to the countries they came from – is that anyone in America still has the capacity to be shocked. This racist has been operating in plain sight ever since he relentlessly lied, year after year, that the first black president wasn’t really an American. Ever since the early 1970s, when he was nailed by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black people. Heck, he’s still refusing to apologize for demanding that five black kids (the so-called “Central Park Five”) be executed for raping a white jogger, even though they were exonerated nearly two decades ago.

Trump has drawn a firm line in the sand: Are we racists or are we not? Fundamentally, the 2020 campaign may be our last chance to decide what kind of people we want to be. We already know what Trump’s base wants. We already know what the elected Republicans want, as their predictably contemptible silence made clear.

But that leaves the rest of us. Trump, by impulse or design, is daring us to prove that we are better than our most despicable instincts.

His attitude isn’t new, of course. Granted, the rant directed at the four congresswomen (“you can’t leave fast enough”) was perhaps his most virulent; Douglas A. Blackmon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on race says that Trump “is now invoking the white supremacist mentality of the early 1900s, when anyone who looked ‘not white’ could be labeled as unwelcome in America.” But consider this critique of Trump, written on a previous occasion:

“His ascent was fueled at its core by racism that was at worst endorsed, or at minimum tolerated by a plurality of Republican primary voters. They greased his path to power. They share the responsibility for his trashing of our highest values, for the toxic poison he has injected into the body politic.”

I wrote that – 18 months ago – when Trump trashed immigrants of color by saying, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” If you’re not too numb, you may remember that. Trump hasn’t changed a whit since, except for the worse. Character is destiny, his was forged long ago, and not even the decisive loss of the House in the 2018 midterms has shaken his resolve that bigotry should be big on the ballot in 2020. Are we sufficiently stoked to prove him wrong? Will Democrats be sufficiently enlightened to set aside their usual ideological squabbles and unite to reject racism?

The fundamental challenge we face next year is to live up to this American ideal:

“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people – our strength – from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation … Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier… It is bold men and women, yearning for freedom and opportunity, who leave their homelands and come to a new country to start their lives over. They believe in the American dream. And over and over they make it come true for themselves, for their children, and for others.”

President Ronald Reagan doesn’t resonate anymore within the Trumpist GOP, and any contemporary Republican who’d dare talk that way would probably be trounced in a primary. But for the rest of us, may his words be a lantern in the darkness on the pitted road to 2020.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

Is it possible to pluck one newsworthy moment from Wednesday night’s cacophonous 10-contestant Democratic quiz show? You bet. Here we go:

Moderator Lester Holt asked, “Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan? Just a show of hands.”

Elizabeth Warren raised hers.

Uh oh. Warren is a solidly top-tier candidate, with a decent shot at winning the nomination, but, politically speaking, I seriously question whether someone who wants to abolish the private health care of 180 million Americans can actually win a general election.

Warren was the sole candidate on stage who’s polling in double digits, crowding Bernie Sanders for second place behind Joe Biden. Her words counted the most. She was also the sole person on stage (except for one-percent candidate Bill de Blasio) who called for the abolition of private health insurance – a stance she hadn’t articulated on the campaign trail.

“Look at the business model of an insurance company. It’s to bring in as many dollars as they can in premiums and to pay out as few dollars as possible for your health care. That leaves families with rising premiums, rising co-pays, and fighting with insurance companies to try to get the health care that their doctors say that they and their children need. ‘Medicare for all’ solves that problem,” Warren said.

Her stance may enhance her nomination prospects,within a party that has moved leftward since 2016. Most grassroots Democrats likely won’t fault her critique of the private insurance companies, and lots of centrist swing voters with private coverage have their own complaints about the status quo system.

But in politics, you don’t necessarily win awards for great intentions, or for articulating the most rational arguments. Warren conceded that there are “political reasons” for not supporting government health care, but she didn’t say what they are.

So I will.

A landslide majority of Americans like their private health coverage, and they don’t want it taken away. Indeed, voters in general don’t like it when politicians try to take something away.

Granted, most Americans reportedly support the nebulous concept of “Medicare for all,” but as soon as they’re confronted with caveats, it’s a different story. According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Tracking Poll, “Medicare for all” gets a thumbs-up rating, 56 to 42 percent. But when Americans are told that the program could eliminate private health insurance – as Bernie Sanders’ agenda envisions, phasing out private coverage within four years – most people run for the hills. The numbers are suddenly reversed: 37 percent yes, 58 percent no.

Imagine what Trump and the Republicans would do with that, if Warren or Sanders were nominated. And on this issue, they wouldn’t even need to lie. Warren is confident about her powers of persuasion, but it’s hard to foresee her winning the argument for government health care. Fairly or not, “socialism” is a word that’s easy to demagogue, and Americans (especially those 45 and older, the most reliable voters) simply don’t like the word. They may be blind to the socialistic initiatives that they’ve long enjoyed (from Social Security to the interstate highway system), but that’s just political reality. Which is why candidate Kamala Harris has walked back her early support for abolishing private health insurance.

Amy Klobuchar, who has gotten little traction in the race thus far, said on stage Wednesday night: “I am just simply concerned about kicking half of America off of their health insurance in four years.”

For the Trump campaign and the GOP, that’s the perfect video clip – an acknowledgment, from a Democrat, that Warren would imperil “half of America.” And Joe Biden’s campaign is drawing a sharp contrast with Warren, endorsing the more incremental approach to health reform. In a statement, it said: “The Biden administration will give every American the right to choose a public option like Medicare.” (Clever use of “right to choose.”)

So we did get some clarity last night, at least on the top-tier issue of health care: government coverage versus incremental reform. Should the Democrats go boldly leftward, or practice prudent moderation?

Elizabeth Warren wowed the liberal base, but she may have teed up the GOP’s top attack ad and rendered herself less electable.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

In a normal universe, a vivid allegation of rape, leveled at a serially misogynist president, would be a news story worthy of 24/7 coverage. Heck, it would even be bigger than the recent feeding frenzy about Joe Biden touching some women’s shoulders.

But naturally, the details offered on Friday by New York writer E. Jean Carroll – that Donald Trump, in his previous incarnation as a real estate hustler, banged her head against a wall and forcibly penetrated her in a department store dressing room – sputtered in the news cycle. It was barely mentioned on the Sunday morning TV shows. It didn’t make the front page of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune. On Saturday, 164 stories were featured on the New York Times’ online home page, but there were none about Carroll, a well-regarded advice columnist for Elle magazine, who is now the 22nd woman to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct.

That latter fact is crucial. Many Americans – or, more precisely, many in the media – are so benumbed by Trump, so fatigued by the daily evidence of his amorality, that even the freshest, most sickening accusation is treated as “old” news.

But Carroll’s allegation, featured in a new book (confirmed by two Carroll friends who were told of the incident at the time) – and, most importantly, Trump’s response to her allegation – warrants major coverage, because this story, when placed in its proper context, tells the tragic truth about the numbing of America.

Here’s context: Jill Harth, Kristin Anderson, Lisa Boyne, Temple Taggart, Mariah Billado, Cathy Heller, Karina Virginia, Natasha Stoynoff, Rachel Crooks, Mindy McGillivray, Jennifer Murphy, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Cassandra Searles, Alva Johnson, Juliet Huddy, Jessica Leeds. Those are just some of the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. That list does not include the beauty pageant women who said that Trump barged into their dressing rooms. He has assailed all these women as liars. In 2016, he threatened to retaliate by suing them, but never did. He claimed that some were getting paid to smear him, but never tried to prove it.

This context makes Carroll’s story more important, not less. It’s arguably the most serious accusation of all, because it’s about rape, not groping. Conservative attorney George Conway (husband of Kellyanne) points out: “Carroll’s account is supported by the sheer number of claims that have now surfaced against Trump – claims in which women have accused Trump of engaging in unwelcome or forcible sexual conduct or assault against them.” Indeed, Conway writes, “what Trump described in the (Hollywood Access) video is exactly what Carroll says he did to her.”

Fortunately, Trump has done his best to feed the sputtering news cycle by lying anew. When he denied the rape allegation, he said: “I’ve never met this person in my life…I have no idea who this woman is.” Which was amusing to hear, because Carroll’s article, posted on the New York magazine’s website, includes a photo that shows Trump talking with Carroll at a party.

He also resurrected one of his golden oldies: “There were numerous cases where women were paid money to say bad things about me. You can’t do that. You can’t do that, and those women did wrong things, that women were actually paid money to say bad things about me.” He has never offered a scintilla of evidence that any women were paid to say bad things.

He also claimed that Carroll concocted a fiction “to sell a new book.” Actually, that’s what he did, via his ghostwriter, when he concocted the fiction that he was a business genius. That’s his sole frame of reference. He thinks that everyone else is just like him – blatantly lying for the sole purpose of hyping themselves.

Will this rape allegation move the public opinion needle? Of course not.

But that doesn’t mean this story should slide into the void. It’s too important. It shows how numb we’ve become. It exposes anew the hypocrisy of the Republicans and evangelical leaders who have greeted the story with silence – the same people who once championed “character” and “morality” in our highest office. And it shows, once again, that more than 40 percent of the electorate will reject any and all accusations, not matter how serious, because they perceive that Trump alone is the font of truth.

If this story, placed in its broader context, is allowed to fade away, this nation will have forfeited another slice of its soul.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

H. L. Mencken, the famed crusty commentator, said one century ago: “A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears on the ground.”

I thought of that quip the other day when former Vice President Joe Biden magically declared that he supports federal Medicaid funding for poor women seeking abortions. Biden had staunchly opposed such funding for decades – and had restated his opposition as recently as last Wednesday. But then, on Thursday, he suddenly announced his support, because, in his words, “circumstances had changed.”

You bet they had.

Biden is a front-running candidate for president, and even though polls show him beating Donald Trump by margins that exceed those of his Democratic rivals, he still needs to hose down liberals who think he’s too much of an old-school moderate. Most urgently, he needed last week to get himself in sync with a party base that supports abortion access for all women regardless of income – especially now, with Roe v. Wade under attack as never before. So, in response, Biden made the decision to speedily flip-flop on federal Medicaid funding. All Democratic presidential nominees since 1992 have supported that funding.

In recent days, liberal activists and pundits long hostile to Biden have been quick to pounce on the guy, painting his policy reversal as a sign of weakness. But all politicians – indeed, often the most successful ones – are wont to be flexible from time to time, recalibrating their views for reasons of political expediency or exigent circumstances.

Some of our biggest flip-floppers are lionized on monuments. Thomas Jefferson hated public debt so much that he called for a constitutional provision that would strip the government of its power to borrow money. Then, as president, he reversed himself. He bought the Louisiana Territory from France with borrowed money, and justified it by saying, “Is it not better that the opposite land of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family?”

Abraham Lincoln campaigned for president, and marked his 1861 inaugural, by promising that the feds would not force existing slave states to free their chattel. He initially defended “the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively.” We know what happened to that promise.

One of the most notorious flip-floppers was Franklin D. Roosevelt, known back in the day as a chameleon of no particular fixed convictions. He stumped for the White House in 1932 by promising fiscal conservatism and a balanced budget; after he won, he launched the New Deal. He often shifted leftward only when liberal activists (including the First Lady) pressured him to do so. Frances Perkins, one of his Cabinet members, said that FDR was guided by “his feeling that nothing in human judgment is final. One may courageously take the step that seems right today because it can be modified tomorrow.”

More recently, Barack Obama reversed himself on same-sex marriage. He had opposed it as a senatorial and presidential candidate, but as president he endorsed it and explained his change of mind: “Attitudes evolve, including mine.”

In fact, Obama – the only Democrat since FDR to be elected twice with a majority of the vote – had a string of reversals. He vowed as a candidate to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, but as president he kept it open. He vowed as a candidate that he would not appoint lobbyists to help run his administration, but then he did. He campaigned against extending the Bush tax cuts that favored the rich, but then signed legislation extending the cuts. He said early in his tenure that secret campaign donations were “a threat to democracy,” but his 2012 re-election bid was buoyed by Democratic groups that took secret donations.

But John Kenneth Galbraith, the renowned economist who served four presidents, once said that the best chief executives typically made “pragmatic accommodations to whatever needed to be done.” Joe Biden’s Democratic critics are predictably condemning his reversal on federal abortion funding in a bid to lower his poll standing (much to the Trump team’s delight, because they’d love to run against someone else), framing his pragmatism as rank opportunism, but one can easily view this episode as evidence that he’s willing to be flexible, that he’s responsive to the views of his constituents.

And isn’t that what we want from a politician?

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

Justin Amash, a rare Republican congressman who refuses to genuflect at Donald Trump’s feet, has been taking heat lately for daring to speak his mind. But bless his heart, he couldn’t care less.

On Sunday, Trump called him “a loser.” (The “loser” won re-election last year by 10 points, bucking the blue wave.) House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy derided Amash as an attention junkie who has “never supported the president.” (Amash, since January, has voted with Trump 92 percent of the time.) And Trump mouthpiece Lou Dobbs said that Amash should be thrown out of the GOP’s conservative House Freedom Caucus. (Amash, who was elected in the 2010 tea party wave, co-founded the House Freedom Caucus.)

All this, because Amash had the temerity to actually read the entire Mueller report and to publicly state the obvious, that it “reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold of impeachment.”

Granted, Amash is a Republican outlier; the odds are approximately zero that he will inspire his willfully deaf and dumb colleagues to put country over party. Nevertheless, the Michigan congressman is a potential nightmare for Trump in 2020, writing on Twitter over the weekend that Trump “has engaged in impeachable conduct.”

“When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law – the foundation of liberty – crumbles,” Amash wrote. “America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.”

After Trump and his toadies hurled their abuse, Amash didn’t cower like a scalded puppy. Instead, he doubled down, noting that Mueller’s investigation revealed “many crimes” and that obstruction of justice doesn’t require an underlying crime.

“They imply that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ requires charges of a statutory crime or misdemeanor,” Amash wrote of Trump’s defenders. “In fact, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ is not defined in the Constitution and does not require corresponding statutory charges. The context implies conduct that violates the public trust – and that view is echoed by the Framers of the Constitution and early American scholars.”

McCarthy, the GOP House leader, told Fox News on Sunday that Amash should be ignored because “he’s not a criminal attorney.” Nevertheless, Amash’s take on the Mueller report mirrors the view of 916 federal criminal attorneys – from Republican and Democratic administrations – who have signed a bipartisan letter stating that Trump’s actions would “result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice” were he not president.

“The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming,” the letter states.

But what’s arguably most noteworthy about Amash is his potential role as a spoiler in 2020. A committed small-government libertarian, he hasn’t ruled out challenging Trump by running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket. He could provide a home for conservatives who are sickened by Trump’s governmental corruption and protectionist nationalism.

Their numbers may be small, but here’s what matters: Amash is based in Michigan, a state that tilted to Trump in 2016 by a mere 10,704 votes out of 4.5 million cast. His statewide approval rating has reportedly dropped 18 points since he took office, and he can ill afford to lose those 16 electoral votes. If the Democrats were to nominate someone capable of carrying normally blue Michigan (i.e., virtually anyone), then Amash, as a third-party draw for disaffected conservatives, could clinch that win.

All of which explains why House Republicans are hesitant to oust Amash from their ranks, despite his defiant stance on impeachment. As Trump’s protectors, they recognize the political peril of banishment. And as Lyndon B. Johnson used to say, it’s always better to have a dog inside the tent peeing out, than outside the tent peeing in.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

Anyone who still assumes that legal abortion is here to stay, and that Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land, should take a hard look at what’s happening right now in red America.

Indeed, to best understand Alabama’s passage of a bill outlawing virtually all abortions (even in cases of rape and incest), and Georgia’s passage last week of a bill outlawing virtually all abortions at six weeks (before most women even know they’re pregnant), and the recent passage of similar six-week bans in Ohio, Mississippi, and Kentucky (even though Roe says that most abortions are legal up to 24 weeks), we need only reference the words of the current president. The same guy who used to give money to Planned Parenthood.

On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump morphed into an anti-abortion zealot. During a televised event in March of that year, when asked how he would ban abortion, Trump replied: “You’ll go back to a position like they had where people go to illegal places. But you have to ban it. There has to be some form of punishment (for doctors).”

A ban that would force women to “go back” to back-alley illegal abortions? No wonder the religious right got so excited. Trump promised that, if elected, he’d remake the Supreme Court and ensure that Roe was erased. During an autumn debate, he vowed that his conservative appointees would overturn the 1973 ruling that gives women the right to control their bodies. In his words, “it will happen, automatically.”

Duly inspired, the GOP’s evangelical base suppressed its qualms about Trump’s amoral character and forged a marriage of convenience. It delivered landslide support – favoring him over Hillary Clinton by 81 to 16 percent, the widest margin of any 2016 voting constituency.

And today, duly encouraged by the ascent of Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, conservative allies in various red-state legislatures are concocting draconian anti-abortion laws that are blatantly unconstitutional and will likely be tied up in litigation limbo. But that’s precisely what they want, because they’re playing a long game. As one key Alabama sponsor says, “What I’m trying to do here is get this case in front of the Supreme Court so Roe v. Wade can be overturned … This is the way we get where we want to get eventually.”

The days of incrementally undermining Roe at the margins – with state laws that require waiting periods, anti-abortion “counseling,” various costly regulations that are impossible to meet – are decidedly over. Republicans now believe they finally have five high court votes to kill Roe entirely, thanks to Trump, and they’re hoping that their new frontal attacks on abortion will wend their way to the bench for an historic decision.

Their strategy may not necessarily work. Linda Greenhouse, a Yale Law lecturer who covered the court for decades as a journalist, acknowledges that the anti-abortion extremism currently being unleashed in red states is “shockingly aggressive (and) purport to take us back to the pre-Roe regime where abortion was criminal.” But Greenhouse also thinks the new laws in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi and Kentucky are too extreme for John Roberts’ majority coterie, and believes the court will simply continue to whittle away at Roe.

“If Roe finally falls, it’ll fall with a little push of a pinkie, rather than a frontal assault,” Greenhouse said.

Perhaps. But it’s clear that the anti-abortion forces, with Washington winds at their back, have all the momentum – and there’s a lesson in that for pro-Roe liberals and Democrats, a lesson that never seems to be learned.

Republicans and their religious right allies don’t care what the polls say (according to the Pew Research Center, 58 percent of Americans want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, while only 37 percent say otherwise). Instead, they simply act on their convictions. They plan for the long haul and they execute that plan. They forged a transactional pact with Trump because they prioritized the importance of the Supreme Court.

Liberals and Democrats have never prioritized the Supreme Court. One might’ve assumed that the Democratic base would be ginned up about the court’s future composition – given the fact that Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell spent most of 2016 burying President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland – but nope.

So Democrats – and the majority of women who typically vote for Democrats – are now suffering the consequences. The protections for women, enshrined in Roe 46 years ago, now hang in the balance. In Linda Greenhouse’s words, “It’s all about the dignity and agency of the female half of the population. And that’s what’s at stake.”

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

It shouldn’t shock anyone if Donald Trump wins a second term in 2020.

“Now Hiring” signs in local shop windows are potentially more persuasive than abstract phrases like “Constitutional Crisis.” Jobs and wages affect everyone everywhere, and Washington court battles and executive-congressional clashes can be easily dismissed as distant thunder.

I’m not endorsing that scenario. Far from it. But in the wake of the newest Labor Department stats – a 3.6 percent jobless rate (the lowest in nearly 50 years) and a 3.2 percent boost in the GDP during the first quarter of 2019 – we need to acknowledge the reality that presidents typically get re-hired when voters believe the economy is on the upswing.

Granted, this particular president – and I use that honorific advisedly – is a serial liar whose Russian-style authoritarian instincts are damaging our democratic institutions in all the ways that many of us foresaw in 2016. But his defenders may be right when they insist that a strong economy will ultimately trump everything else. Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, says: “People will vote for somebody they don’t like if they think it is good for them.” Former GOP congressman and Trump fan Jason Chaffetz tells Fox News that “when people feel good at home, they’re going to stick with the person who has the White House.”

Maybe that’s just wishful thinking on their part, considering that despite the bullish economy, Trump is saddled with a 42 percent approval rating. But prominent Democrats are nevertheless worried that their party doesn’t have an overarching economic message. They know how important that is. Their mantra in 1992, the last time they defeated a Republican presidential incumbent, was “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Bill Clinton toppled George H.W. Bush in part because, midway through the election season, the jobless rate spiked to 7.8 percent.

At least Democrats aren’t claiming that the jobless stats are fake, something candidate Trump routinely used to do. Whenever President Obama’s Labor Department reported job gains for the economy that was slowly recovering from the Great Recession, Trump would lie that the government had “cooked the books” (October 2015), or released “phony jobs numbers” (January 2016), or perpetrated “one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics” (August 2016). But now that he’s the guy in the White House, he suddenly believes that the bullish numbers are accurate.

What Democrats are trying to do is talk around the stats. The basic Democratic argument – from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and others – is that, yes, the top-line economic stats look good, but that most Americans still feel pinched in their everyday lives. Klobuchar tells ABC News: “A lot of people aren’t sharing this prosperity, because of the costs – the cost of college, the costs of health care, the fact that the president had promised to bring down the prices of their prescription drugs.”

All those things are true; for instance, the number of Americans without health coverage has increased by seven million since Trump took office. The problem is that the Democrats are stuck with a “Yes, but” argument, and that’s not ideal. A new Washington Post-ABC poll asked: “Does Trump’s handling of the economy make you more likely or less likely to support him in 2020?” Forty-two percent said “more likely.” Only 32 percent said less. (Could some of Trump’s voters dump him if they fear that his tariff war with China will undercut the economy by hiking consumer prices? Don’t bet on it. If Trump personally tiki-torched their houses, they’d praise the smell of smoke.)

For Democrats, the most optimistic scenario is that the “Yes, but” argument will suffice, that a good economy will not save a lawless president saddled with unprecedented baggage. In the words of Democratic commentator and ex-policy strategist Ed Kilgore, “Trump’s going to have to campaign on his full record, his full agenda, and the full set of impressions he has made during his first term…And even if things look good [economically], the future will look dim to those who fear what Trump will do in a second term.”

I’ll put it this way: Are bullish jobless stats more important than the relentless assault on America’s soul?

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

The Trump regime has trafficked in self-parody since its inception, so perhaps we’re already numb to the news that it intends to challenge the scientific consensus that climate change is a dire international emergency.

You heard that right. Even though the federal government’s National Climate Assessment officially warned in November that the planet is truly imperiled, and even though a U.N. report in October compared the climate change crisis to “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen,” and even though Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats warned in January that climate change poses a significant national security risk, Donald Trump is nevertheless hiring some flat Earth believers who will likely ratify his belief that climate change is a “hoax” that poses no threat to our national security.

This ad hoc coterie of deniers reportedly will be spearheaded by a National Security Council adviser named William Happer, a guy with no formal training as a climate scientist. Happer, who has taken money from the fossil fuel industry, says the carbon emissions that precipitate climate change are “not a pollutant at all,” that they’re “actually a benefit to the Earth.” Happer has stated in the past that “the demonization” of carbon emissions “is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” which is apparently his way of comparing climate scientists to Nazis.

How did we wind up with quacks who are so blind to reality?

One credentialed climate expert – retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley, former chief operating officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – expressed his disgust: “I never thought I would live to see the day in the United States where our own White House is attacking the very science agencies that can help the president understand and manage the climate risks to security of today and tomorrow. Such attacks are un-American.”

Unfortunately, this day was guaranteed when 46 percent of the electorate chose as its president a flat-Earth crank who tweeted in 2014 that “GLOBAL WARMING bulls- has got to stop!” and has never masked his hostility to science. A pivotal 77,000 swing voters in three Rust Belt states decided that it didn’t matter.

Trump aides told the press that he’s looking for a “mixture of opinions” on whether climate change is a threat to the United States because he “wants people to be able to decide for themselves.” In truth, the American people – echoing the scientific consensus – have already decided for themselves. According to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey, 66 percent say climate change is a “serious problem” that requires action, while only 30 percent say otherwise.

At a time when “we are adding planet-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a rate faster than at any point in human history since the beginning of industrialization” (in the words of David Wallace-Wells, author of the forthcoming book “The Uninhabitable Earth”), we can ill afford a “leader” who mimics the attitude of the 17th-century church when it was confronted with Galileo’s conclusion that the Earth circles the sun. We’re saddled with someone who disses the expertise of the Pentagon – which warned way back in 2003, during the Bush administration, that climate change “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”

When Trump was asked last November whether climate change poses a major threat to America, he replied: “I don’t see it.” Hence his desire for a “mixture of opinions” that would ratify what he doesn’t want to see – even though the Pentagon has repeatedly seen it. In 2008, the Pentagon weighed in on a report that outlined “the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change.” In 2010, it again detailed its concerns in a “defense review.” In 2014, it did so again, writing that “he pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world.”

That Pentagon report was five years ago. Since then, the severity of the crisis has only worsened. If Trump were to stop playing tin soldier on our Mexican border, perhaps he’d be capable of confronting our true national emergency. But that’s a futile hope.

Only a regime change in 2020 would reorient us toward science – if it’s not too late.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

Now that the inevitable moment of truth has finally arrived – with Donald Trump in banana republic mode, concocting a phony national emergency, flouting the will of Congress and trampling its constitutional spending power – we will soon learn whether he has fatally infuriated the Fellowship of the Furrowed Brow.

I am referring, of course, to all those congressional Republicans who have long reacted to Trump’s demagogic lies and abuses by furrowing their brows and mouthing worthless words.

Trump’s four-alarm fakery – declaring an emergency that he admits is not an emergency – has prodded some Senate Republicans to summon their usual adjectives. Over the weekend, they deemed his action “unwise.” Confronted with Trump’s imperial move to fund a fantasy wall even after Congress explicitly refused to do so, they pronounced themselves “concerned.”

But what are they prepared to actually do? They should listen to Matt Latimer, a former George W. Bush aide and lifelong conservative, who wrote, “Shame on any ‘conservatives’ who roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders, and let him take this path…Is there anyone with the courage to stop him?”

By law, an emergency declaration can be challenged by a congressional resolution of disapproval. Nancy Pelosi’s House will pass such a measure and send it to the Senate, where, again by law, it must be brought to the floor and cannot be filibustered into oblivion. Which means that the Fellowship of the Furrowed Brow will soon be forced to choose fealty to His Flagrancy – or to the Founding Fathers.

“Republican legislators face a time for choosing: Support Trump or the rule of law,” is what The Bulwark, a new website founded by sane conservatives who abhor what’s happening in America, said in a weekend editorial. “Who will speak for the non-autocratic wing of the Republican party?”

Who indeed. It certainly won’t be Senate leader Mitch McConnell, the Trump toady who’s selling out the institution he professes to revere. There have been bleats of protest from Republicans who face tough re-election races in 2020, particularly in blue states where Trump’s wall fantasy is loathed (hence Susan Collins of Maine, who said Friday that Trump’s move is a “mistake”), and even some restiveness among 2020 Republicans whose seats are presumably safe (hence John Cornyn of Texas, who warned earlier this month that an emergency declaration would “divide Republicans…It strikes me as not a great strategy”).

But will congressional Republicans join forces with Democrats and stand up when the chips are down? Empty words aside, will they actually vote for a resolution of disapproval in sufficient numbers to demonstrate that they have the guts to fight for democratic norms?

Don’t hold your breath. The typical furrowed-brow Senate Republican won’t say whether he or she would vote to disapprove. Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey said over the weekend: “I made no secret of the fact that I hoped the president would choose to avoid unilateral action and work with Congress on a legislative solution to secure the border.” Beyond that, “My staff and I are reviewing the president’s declaration and its implications very closely.”

And on “Meet the Press,” Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson did a similar dance, saying he was “concerned” about the legislation. But when asked if he will vote for a resolution of disapproval, Johnson said, “I’m going to take a look at it and I’ll decide when I actually have to vote on it.”

I know that Republicans live in terror of the vocal Trumpist minority, but such a vote should be a no-brainer. Trump didn’t campaign on stealing Congress’ constitutionally-mandated spending power or promise to build a wall by taking money that had been legally appropriated for U.S. military housing. And back in 2014, he even tweeted that “Repubs must not allow Pres Obama to subvert the Constitution of the US for his own benefit & because he is unable to negotiate w/ Congress.”

David French, a conservative attorney writing in the conservative National Review, has a message for those who are still loath to confront our true national emergency:

“Congratulations, partisans. You claim you’re saving our country. In reality, you’re wrecking our Constitution.”

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].

As I soldiered through Chris Christie’s spin-memoir “Let Me Finish,” I found myself flashing back to September 2011, when he was being widely touted as the GOP’s “Next Big Thing.” One particular ego-stroking incident at the Reagan Presidential Library must surely be one of his personal favorites.

With the 2012 White House race on the horizon, guest speaker Christie was serenaded by a woman in the audience who tearfully begged him to run for president. When he said he had no plans for 2012, his listeners groaned. They wanted him so badly, they actually groaned.

That incident is not recounted in Christie’s book, but in a way it permeates every page of a book that could easily have been subtitled with the closing of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley: “I was once Ozymandias, King of Kings / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Translation: This is a guy who cratered his second gubernatorial term with a 15 percent approval rating, who crashed and burned as a 2016 presidential candidate, who then signed on as toadying manservant to the most notorious con artist in presidential history…and whose new book is basically a desperate plea for any future slice of the action.

You may have noticed last week that Christie touted himself in a whirlwind media tour, damning Trump with faint praise and praising Trump with faint damns. It was obvious what he was doing. I agree with Christie biographer Matt Katz of WNYC, who tells me:

“He did Hannity, Colbert, Morning Joe, Daily Show and NPR… He gave different Christies to everyone, depending on the audience,” said Christie biographer Matt Katz of WNYC. “He’s trying to look like the adult in the room, and remain a known entity to everyone – the MAGA crowd and MSNBC baby boomers – for yet another attempted comeback in 2020 (if Trump is out) or 2024.”

Maybe it’s shrewd to defend Trump while selectively knocking Trump, but his naked calculations strike me as mostly pathetic. Christie’s book basically argues that Trump is held back from greatness by the grifters, schemers, and charlatans who surround and ill-serve him, and contends that if only Trump had better people in his employ, his “deal-making prowess” would shine through.

The glaring flaw in Christie’s argument – the one he never manages to address – is that Trump is surrounded by grifters, schemers and charlatans because they are his hires. Christie never invokes Trump’s boastful promise to hire “the best people,” and never measures the chasm that separates promise from the performance. He lauds Trump for running the 2016 campaign (“he always made the decisions himself”), but he absolves Trump of all decision-making in the White House, blaming everything on the underlings. In Christie’s telling, the buck stops everywhere – with the exception of the Oval Office.

Supposedly, the original sin was committed shortly after the 2016 election, when Christie was fired from his job running the Trump transition. According to the book, Christie had assembled “a first-class lineup” of prospective Cabinet nominees and stellar personnel. But at the apparent behest of princeling Jared Kushner (avenging his dad, whom Christie had prosecuted as a U.S. attorney), all of Christie’s transition work went into the trash.

Yet Christie willfully fails to connect the most obvious dots: Trump is surrounded by idiots because he is an inept executive who condones and excuses ineptitude. Christie somehow refuses to blame the guy he still calls “my friend Donald.” In fact, Trump has “many of the qualities that have defined America’s leaders,” even though he fails to enumerate what they are. He describes the Trump administration as a “tragedy,” but refuses to blame the tragedian-in-chief.

In truth, the original sin in the Christie saga is that he attached himself to Trump in the first place. Christie writes virtually nothing about candidate Trump’s serial lies and demagoguery, and even though he says that Trump “knowingly” lied about him on the trail, he was oh so flattered when Trump phoned him, on the night of the New Hampshire primary, and said, “I so admire and respect you.” Within weeks, Christie was out of the race in toady mode, standing mute behind Trump on a stage in Florida: “Standing all alone, it’s very difficult to know what to do…I should have known better, and I should have just walked off that stage.”

But he still wants to be on that stage, and he’ll abase himself in a book if that’s what it takes. To borrow an image from “Citizen Kane,” that begging woman at the Reagan Presidential Library was his Rosebud sled. He dearly hopes it hasn’t gone up the chimney.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at WHYY in Philadelphia and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at [email protected].