What does Putin want for the USA?

If I had to guess, Putin wants to sow internal division, discord, and distrust.  If I had to say, Putin is a grandmaster of misinformation and misdirection.  See his non-answer answers to Chris Wallace's probing interview questions.  So, he sees how Trump's presidency sows discord, and Trump's opposition plays right along, probably much to his delight.  (This includes their obsessing for years about Trump/Putin-collusion conspiracy theories.)  He most likely seeded the claims made in the so-called Steele dossier (actually the Clinton/PerkinsCoie/FusionGPS/Simpson/Steele dossier), and the anti-Trump-biased intelligence (sic) community played right along, further sowing distrust of its honor and capabilities.

Now we hear that he might also like to see Sanders be president (consider the ring to that phrase - "President Sanders" - and in light of this) if he can't have Trump; for that, too, would sow much division for obvious reasons.  He sees Sanders' quasi-rabid supporters, and parallels to Trump's True Believers, and figures they'll be adequate to the division-sowing job.  Then again, maybe it's just another piece of misinformation from him that he wants Sanders elected, maybe just to see how Americans react to that notion.

We just don't really know for sure what's a trial balloon from him, and what's for real.  'Reality' for Vladimir Putin seems like a rather fluid notion, in a political context anyway, since the norms of rationality touted (and practiced to varying degrees of imperfection) by philosophers and scientists are not the norms (if they can even be called that) of political discourse (warring by less violent means).  His state-TV apparatus is self-serving propaganda/lies, after all.  He learned it at the KGB, ffs.

Knowing all this, why on earth should anyone pay serious attention to who Putin supposedly wants to win in the USA, or whether he even thinks discord and distrust in the USA serves his own political interests or not, and focus instead on the merits of each candidacy?  It's just a distraction, which for all we know is what he wants.  I mean, does he want more attention/scrutiny focused on him and his fundamentally dishonest and gangsterish nature, or not?

But what should really humble Trump's opponents is the thought that they may very well be willing if not eager dupes of Putin's puppet-mastery.  But I don't expect such a level of thoughtfulness from them, at this point, they are that pathetic and dishonest themselves.  Also, Trump as a matter of basic honesty and accountability/transparency should make clear to Putin that he wants him to stay away from election-meddling efforts.  But Trump likes to troll his domestic opponents too much (and they're pathetic enough to go right along with that, as well), so I don't expect that from him, either.

Did I mention there's an antidote to this shitshow?

Impeachment and philosophy: addenda

Following up the earlier post.

[Addendum 2/2: NOTE that my treatment both of the facts of Trump's case and of the Dershowitz Argument is provisional - I am fallible af especially on matters such as legal theory that are outside my area of expertise - and I'm still taking in the for-and-against arguments [e.g.] as they keep emerging.   I will likely have more to say on this in coming posts.  I'm wary about exactly how much leeway, short of the "committing a crime like Nixon did" standard, the Dershowitz Argument gives to a president who - of course? - believes his political interests are aligned with the nation's.  So this Argument and other facets of this case don't altogether sit well with me.  (Note that the just-linked argument links to this pro-impeachment letter signed by over 800 legal scholars.  Now, this passage doesn't sit well with me: "[Trump acted] for his personal and political benefit, at the direct expense of national security interests as determined by Congress."  Except that there's a separation of powers in which Congress and the President can differ about what is in the national security interests.  My (fallible) ring-of-truth detector tells me that this passage isn't worthy of politically impartial legal scholars and I'm pretty sure a Dershowitz would also pick right up on this point immediately.)  I'd like to add that one of my favorite moments of the Senate proceedings was when John Rawls was mentioned in connection with Dershowitz's "shoe on the other foot" test.  Would that there were a lot more such moments in politics.  (Why only Rawls, and not also Plato, Aristotle, et al?  In a Fox interview in the last day or so, Sen. Cruz mentions one of his classes at Harvard taught by Dershowitz, someone else [not Michael Sandel, though (surprisingly?)], and "world famous philosopher" Robert Nozick.  I liked that moment, as well.)  The Rawls & shoe-test point was about (justice-as-)fairness, and the complaints from both sides about the unfair processes in the houses the other party controlled, speaks volumes.  Let's say that the House Democrats were to say to the House Republicans, "Okay, put your fairness demands on a list, we'll make every effort to meet them, and when we do, you sign your names to the list so that you have no complaints about process going forward."  And then imagine the same scenario with the opposing Senate parties.  The thing is, the demands of "fairness" would mean - in both cases - a more long, drawn-out process that in this political context both parties seem to want to avoid.  (Elections are fast approaching, see.  An avowed socialist candidate leading in the nomination betting markets, whom the DNC would rather not see nominated and (conversely) the GOP would probably prefer to see nominated, has had to sit through these proceedings in D.C. as the Iowa caucus approaches, see.  [Don't think for a second that Nancy Peloser's motivations for the month-long delay in sending the impeachment articles to the Senate, or the Senate 'rats demands for prolonged process notwithstanding a very predictable outcome, have nothing to do with this.  BTW, Peloser & Co. showed their unserious hand when she used and gave out many souvenir pens at the signing ceremony.])  Hence the "rushed" process in both instances.  Applying a fairness test, do they really have a basis for complaint for what the other side was doing in the respective houses they controlled?  Will they come clean that maybe the proclaimed fairness considerations and the political considerations can't be reconciled here?]

[Addendum 2/12: Note that the second impeachment article - "obstruction of Congress" - is so obviously bullshit that even Mitt Romney dismissed it while voting to convict on the first one (which is what anyone really cares about).]

[Addendum #2, 2/12: Good discussion going on here, in the linked argument signed by legal scholars, and in the comments section, coming from both Trump's opponents and defenders.  One thing I think is for sure: the vast majority of the American people just aren't in an epistemic position to understand with full and clear finality that Trump should be removed from office for his Ukraine-related actions.  I still don't know how Dershowitz's example of Lincoln is answered, by the signed letter or elsewhere.  I still don't see how his actions are in a fundamentally different category than a number of other things other presidents have done without raising an impeachment stink.  I do know that the Demo-rats spent 3 years squandering all credibility and good will, for which they arguably deserved, as a political matter, to lose the impeachment case.  I'm still not clear on whether just any verifiable abuse of power is impeachable, or if it is best left for the most obvious and severe abuses and that this should be left up to the (obviously partisan, obviously politically-motivated) discretion of the members of Congress.  Anyway, the lesson Demo-rats should but won't learn from all this is that their best shot at beating Trump is not to be so loathsome, dishonest, etc. themselves; their sense of desperation and panic in the current primary nominating process is palpable, but they and their allies/enablers/ilk in academia, media, and elsewhere brought this on themselves through years upon years of dishonesty and hubris.  Had they ever shown the remotest amount of decency and good will in their attacks on Rand, I might feel the least bit sorry for them.  Their complaints related to lack of justice, fairness, honesty, etc. of Trump and his defenders ring all too hollow and hypocritical.  BTW, this year's census should help to highlight further that the Demo-rats' efforts to benefit politically from illegal immigration need not happen through the ballot box directly such as by getting these immigrants registered and voting, but through population-based apportionment of House seats.  (They also hope to capitalize on illegal immigration, not just by refusing to create much if anything in the way of disincentives against it - if anything, it's just the opposite - but by smearing people who oppose it, like Trump, as racists. That includes Peloser crying that the border wall - which would only prevent illegal border crossings, mind you - is "an immorality" and is "about making America white again."  You might get a sense from this alone about what I mean by 'rats spending years squandering credibility and good will.)  Not that this House-seat-stealing scheme - also an electoral-vote-stealing scheme - helps them with the Senate, thank goodness.]

A 79-year-old, heart-attack-having socialist...

...is apparently who the Demo-rats would most prefer as the candidate to end up in the White House come 2021, based on betting markets.  (He's about 18 or 19 percentage points ahead of the next candidate as of today.)  That's: (1) 79 years old; (2) an avowed socialist; (3) who recently had a heart attack.  This combination should tell you something about just how off-the-rails this party has become.  They don't appear interested much these days in listening to reason.

He and the party don't seem all that interested in a serious discussion about how globalization - the greater spreading out of capital flows from the first-world to the poorer world - is a key driver of greater economic inequality in the USA (the capital goes, the returns come to those still in residence); instead, increasingly, they (e.g., AOC) prefer to attribute this trend to some inherent dynamic in capitalism toward greater inequality (universally or globally, full-stop).

He says that no one really knows how much his bigger-govt schemes might cost, so he won't even bother to provide projections.  He recently tweeted, "Abortion is healthcare."  Anyone who listened carefully to the last 2020 Demo-ratic debate could notice that his proposals and style are pie-in-the-sky; how do he and his supporters expect his pretty-transformative proposals to get past a GOP-majority Senate, for one thing?

As a piece yesterday in the WSJ points out, Sanders was in favor of nationalization of industry in the 1970s, and defended Ortega and Cuba in the 1980s.  He's now more of a staunchly "progressive" 'New Dealer' and/or Scandinavian welfarist type with an agenda of generous economic 'rights' (education, housing, healthcare, etc.) and lessening the influence of money in politics.  But if the one not-bullshitty piece of evidence of racism on Trump's part - his company's housing policies from nearly 50 years ago (for which it/he didn't admit wrongdoing, etc.) - can be held against him today, so can Bernie's hardcore-socialist politics from 40 years ago.  If.  Right?

But even take out the socialism part, however one defines 'socialism,' as though that's not troubling enough.  There's still the heart-attack-having 79-year-old part.  What are these people thinking?  They want to get rid of the "corrupt, racist, trillion-dollar-deficit-making, etc." president so badly that they can't accept any other outcome with a semblance of equanimity or proportion, and yet this is the alternative they most prefer to present to the swing voters of PA, MI, and WI?

And why can't they come up with a seriously viable candidate who isn't over 70 or under 40?  (I think Plato might have something to say about putting people under 40 in charge of things political; do these politically-oriented lightweights care?)

[Addendum: to get some idea of how clueless these people can be, lefty Robert Reich asks why America is so divided now, and then proceeds to explain: "Part of the answer is Trump himself. The Great Divider knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos...".  Can it be that part of the division is attributable to people like Reich insisting on dubiously, one-sidedly framing things this way, without any sense of irony, and that those on the right are sick and tired of it?]

[Addendum 2/21: I'm somewhat amazed that, all my attention-paying so far notwithstanding, I've not seen Bernie being called to explain his supposed ideological transition from hardcore communist to 'Denmawk'-style social democracy.  How lazy/incompetent do his debate opponents and the media have to be for this not to have happened yet?  You'd think we'd all like to have an explanation, lest we possibly end up handing over the nuclear codes to a crypto-commie or something?  Am I the crazy one here?]

[Addendum 2/22: It should be noted that from polling averages the definitely-leftist Sanders + Warren numbers come to about 40%, while the more moderate Biden + Pete + Klobuchar + Bloomberg numbers come to about 50%.  This raises the good question as to why on earth a not-very-convincing plurality of support should vault someone into a nomination - not altogether dissimilar from how Trump managed to get the '16 GOP nomination in the face of quality competition from at least 5 other candidates.  IIRC he didn't poll much above 35% until all but a few other candidates dropped out.  Still, he did win the general election by appealing to enough swing voters, and there is much talk of a contested '20 Demo-rat convention.  The betting markets (now putting Sanders at nearly 50% and about 30 points above the next candidate) don't seem too deterred.]

The latest '20 nomination betting odds

Past experience shows time and time again that polls about candidates at this point of the election cycle are next to meaningless as predictors of the outcome.  What do the people who are putting their money on the line think are the chances that a candidate will be nominated?  Such people may have better information or insight on how the nominating process might play out.

The smart-money front-runner

Sen. Warren is now the clear front-runner in the betting markets for the Dem nomination (with a 37% chance, to Biden's 23% and Bernie's 12%).  I'm not surprised by this at all; indeed, I probably should have gone on record earlier as saying that Warren seems to be the "best" fit for the '20 Dem party.  [Edit: well, I did make this point in person to at least one individual several months back; the response was: "she's an idiot."  Well, this is the '20 Dem Party we're talking about here, so the bar is lower than ever, with lots of Kool-Aid being consumed.  Nonetheless, I don't agree that she is an idiot, exactly....]  The party is lunging well to the left, and her rhetoric is a good match.  She demagogues pretty well about all those "fairness"-values.  She's a woman, and sexism favoring women is acceptable to many of today's Demo rats.  She has a "likeability" factor many of the other candidates don't have as much of.  Her "Pocahantas" baggage is not all that serious by today's standards.  (I mean, after all, the sitting president has personality/temperament baggage that leads to calling people names, such as "Pocahontas.")  Anyone not drinking right-wing Kool-Aid can tell the difference between her wrongly thinking she had Amerind ancestry and her knowingly lying that she did.

Warren hasn't embraced that toxic word "socialism" (and outside of leftist Kool-Aid-drinking districts, it is toxic); in fact she has said that she is a "capitalist to the core" but says the D.C. crony structure needs to be reformed in the direction of "fairness."  She has a life story indicating lots of grit and persistence.  (Yes, "she persisted.")

Warren's shameful/disgraceful Brett Kavanaugh baggage (Swetnick was a credible accuser, eh? let's hear more about that...) doesn't set her apart from the other leading '20 candidates, since they, too, got in on the shameful/disgraceful act (as demonstrated at the preceding link) and the Demo rat primary voters probably find the smearing of Kavanaugh to be normal, acceptable, imperative, etc.  So while this may affect her general-election electability, it wouldn't have any affect on her chances of getting the nomination.

Given the pathological identity-politics ethos of today's Dems, Warren has an edge over Biden and Sanders, the old white men.  (Well, they're older than she is by a few years.)  With two otherwise equally qualified candidates, they'll go with the woman or the person of color over the white guy.  Biden is facing fitness questions, for good reason.  Sanders has the "socialism" toxicity even though he and Warren are probably not far apart policy-wise.  Again, such a high degree of similarity works in the favor of the woman.  Plus, many Dem primary voters will look at general-election electability and find Sanders a poor choice (given the Warren alternative) to put against Trump.  Scumbag Harris would face electability issues as well, not the least of which would be her predictable phoniness.  (She's a rather distant fourth in the betting markets now, with a 7% chance of nomination.  This is noteworthy for a party that has pathological identity-politics issues; she must be really objectionable even to many Dems.  Maybe they didn't like how she recklessly smeared Biden over race.)

Yang (5%) and Buttigieg (4%) are not known-enough (whether to me, to the general public, or to the betting market participants) for anyone to assign all that high a probability of either one of them being nominated.  For all anyone knows, they are in fact the strongest of the remaining candidates on the merits - hence their non-negligible betting market chances - but there's simply too much uncertainty there.  Warren is well-known and her policy positions pretty well worked out.  As probabilities go, it just makes sense that she is far out ahead of these two.

After Yang and Buttigieg the betting markets are putting money on Crooked Hillary (3.5%), as though (there is a small chance that) Dem voters would try her again against Trump (a matchup I wrote about at length shortly before the '16 election) and expect a different outcome.  And HRC hasn't even declared intentions to run.  And barring some disaster for Warren, why would Dems go with HRC over Warren?  The candidates after HRC have pretty small percentages in the betting markets; the only other candidate with at least 2% is Booker.  I wouldn't dismiss Booker, and it makes sense to ask why Dem voters aren't enthusiastic about him.  Perhaps another element I've yet to mention comes into play: age or accumulated life experience.  For a younger candidate to overcome such obstacles, things like exceptional smarts (for sifting and integrating information) or charisma would have to compensate.  And with Obama the Dems already got their president fitting this description.  Booker just doesn't seem to compare all that strongly here.  But I wouldn't be surprised to see him surge in the polls in the coming months as primary voters "try out" the options available (before usually tiring of this or that option).  The betting market participants have already taken this probable surge or mini-surge into account, of course.

Of course, all this is about the best fit for the nomination, not for a general election win.  Warren appears to have the best combination of leftist policy and chances of winning against Trump, both being the key considerations for primary voters.

Minimum wage increases & recessions

One more-or-less obvious crock of shit the Democrats peddle to the American people is that they are morally superior on the subject of the minimum wage.  They don't care that most economists think minimum wage increases are not a good idea if employment opportunities for less-skilled workers is the goal.  They are more interested in being (seen as) morally correct irrespective of whether they are precisely, factually and semantically correct.

The Dem-majority House just passed a hike in the federal minimum wage to $15/hr.  This is not at all surprising given the Dems' antipathy toward the free market and the fact that the economy is in the stage of the business cycle it is in.  Given the history of these things, this does not bode well for the economy in the coming years.  If Dems want a recession in '20 - surely their best shot of winning back the White House - they would do well to have a minimum wage hike signed into law.

Here is the history of the federal minimum wage (the dark blue is the nominal rate, the light blue the inflation-adjusted one):

[Note: the highest the inflation-adjusted federal minimum wage has ever been is just shy of $12 in today's dollars.  And the Dems want to jack it up to $15?  I don't think they're nearly as intellectually superior as they think they are.  While they're at it, why stop at $15 ffs?]

Now, everyone who's been paying attention knows that before ca. 1973 the U.S. and world economy were structurally different enough that the pre-1973 economy could withstand the more "progressive" policies such as marginal tax rates north of 70%.  Globalization since the 1970s has put increased pressure on the U.S. labor market, making more sense at the margins for businesses and finance capital to offshore or outsource.  (The result has been close to a miracle for the rest of the world (mostly China...), in terms of living standards.  See all the relevant numbers at ourworldindata.org.)

And since the 1970s, increases in the minimum wage have usually (with one exception) been associated with recessions.  As any economist worth anything will tell you, an increase in wages (ceteris paribus, of course) in recessionary conditions can only make the recession more protracted.  Sizable inflation-adjusted increases in the federal minimum wage happened in 1974, 1990-1991, 1996-97, and 2007-09.  Except for 1996-97, these increases happened at the peak of the business cycle - when the politicians have the most leeway for doing so - and recessions followed.

Now, this is not to imply that the minimum wage increases were the sole cause of the recessions (it didn't cause a recession in 1996-7, after all; and the main cause of the Great Recession starting in '08 was a financial crisis), but they almost certainly made it harder for the economy to recover from recession.  If you doubt this, ask whether the politicians would raise minimum wages during a recession or early in the expansion phase when unemployment is still high.  Is this the sort of thing we want to take a chance on, business-cycle-effects-wise?

(Not that anyone cares about, oh, freedom of contract in this context.  We're talking vulnerable exploitable workers and greedy predatory businesses, after all.  A superior moral compass dictates a govt role here, right?  [AOC, exemplar of altruist morality as Rand defines it, declares as an incontestable axiom that the right to things like a $15/hr wage takes precedence over the privilege of earning a profit(, Comrade).]  Meanwhile, the most vulnerable workers are indeed the most vulnerable in a recession when the greedy businesses are trying to stay afloat and deal with all the challenges and/or bullshit involved in running a business.)

Now, what is a good sign that we are currently at or near a peak point of the business cycle?  The treasury yield curve and/or spread between short and long term rates has historically been a very accurate predictor of recessions (the shaded areas):

An inverted yield curve is a situation where short term rates are higher than long term rates, and recessions have reliably followed such situations.  The yield curve at present is U-shaped (which I don't recall seeing before).

So is it any wonder that Democrats are licking their chops at raising the minimum wage in the current state of things?  Or maybe their intentions aren't wicked and they're just ignorant of the history and economic logic of these things.  It's hard to tell these days.

But one thing's for damn sure: The Dems who cry "racism!" so much that they've lost all credibility even were a legitimate example to arise, are promoting - in action - a policy with racially disparate effects, i.e., the very sort of thing they say is racist.  It goes hand in hand with an entire menu of destructive policies the Dems have inflicted upon the black community in the name of helping it.  No, the minimum wage doesn't make the targeted worker more productive or increase the worker's earning power.  It only makes it more difficult, at the margins, for the worker to be employable.

President Trump is already decrying the Federal Reserve's short-term interest rate policies, and he has data to back him up.  If the minimum wage hike somehow makes it to his desk (meaning the Republican-majority Senate would have to pass it), he has as much reason to veto it as he has to oppose an inverted yield curve.  But with this president, it's hard to know who he might pander to at a given time on a given issue.  His tariff policies can't be helping his reelection chances (just ask any economist how protectionism affects economic growth) even if they might yield a more favorable trade situation long-term.

(On a related note: commonly cited GDP growth numbers don't adjust for population growth.  Since population is growing about 1% per year, a 2% GDP growth rate means about 1% per-capita growth.  This means that a 3% GDP growth rate means a doubling of the per-capita growth rate over the 2% commonly-cited growth rate.  This means that the economy under Trump so far is growing at roughly twice the rate it was under his predecessor, although he's expanding the deficit to fuel this growth; this fiscal year - at a peak phase of the business cycle no less, when this isn't supposed to occur - the federal deficit is expected to reach 5% of GDP, more or less an unsustainable figure where nominal GDP is growing at any less than than 5%.  These would be points the Democrats might capitalize on effectively if they weren't so intellectually bankrupt and credibility-squandering.)

[Addendum: I take it that in addition to such wonderful ideas as open borders combined with a generous welfare state - is it that, and not an Aristotelian ethos (say), that is their conception of the end of history, and if so, how pathetic is that? - the Dems, were they in charge of what AOC termed "all three chambers [sic] of government - the House, the Senate, and the White House," would indeed push through a $15/hr minimum wage as signs of economic slowdown loom?  (Keep in mind, using the GDP math I just mentioned, that any GDP growth rate below about 1% means a contraction in per-capita terms, meaning pretty likely an increase in the unemployment rate, the #1 main-street indicator of recession.)  Would a president in the new Democrat mold be that fucking stupid when all is said and done?  Or is the $15/hr idea more of a virtue-signaling thing?  Do we really want to find out?  Given the laws of supply and demand, how would that $15/hr interact with that whole open borders plus generous welfare state idea?  What happens to the marginal productivity of labor if tons of laborers flood over the border?  If it turns out that they can't find work at the otherwise attractive $15/hr, do they go on the dole?  Then what?  Will the Dems find yet another way to cry racism and demand immediate agreement, and double down with more of the same policies?  Again, do we want to find out, given the nature of today's Democrat Party?]

Reminder: Leading '20 Dems smeared Kavanaugh

In the polling (not as much the betting markets) the leading 2020 Democratic candidates are: Biden, Harris, Warren and Sanders.

All four of them got in on the act of recklessly smearing Brett Kavanaugh, when the chips were down, when a man's career and reputation were on the line.  It reveals not just an intellectual bankruptcy in the Democrat Party, but also a moral bankruptcy.

I've commented in detail on this before. (the context)  A brief recap:

(1) Biden is quoted by AP (9/28/18) as saying that Dr. Ford, Kavanaugh's accuser, gave credible testimony (9/27/18) and that both he and the country believed her.

(2) Harris appeared on CNN on 9/18/18, two days after Ford's accusation became public, to say she believed Dr. Ford.  This career prosecutor said this before hearing from both sides.  This is in addition to her almost surreal interrogation of Kavanaugh in the main portion of the confirmation hearings (where it turns out Harris wasn't holding any cards).

(3) Warren on her facebook page (9/28/18) referred to "multiple, credible accusations" against Kavanaugh, including the ridiculous Swetnick allegation of serial drugged gang rapes (which not only falls apart on its merits but about which Swetnick herself fell apart under scrutiny).

(It should be noted that all three of the above are career attorneys, charged with the professional duty to assess the credibility of putative evidence with care.)

(4) Sanders, in a 9/27/18 press release on his own Senate website, said he believes Dr. Ford.

Ford couldn't remember details about time or place of the alleged incident.  Not only that, no one else came forward to say where and when this event might have taken place.  Not only that, all of the supposed witnesses to the alleged event, including her friend Leland Keyser, provided sworn statements - statements Biden and Warren, at least, chose unaccountably to disregard - that they have no memory of the alleged event.  Not only that, Kavanaugh supplied what would be exculpatory evidence in the calendar he kept.

All this, while fellow Democrats and their enablers in the media either fed the anti-Kavanaugh hysteria (which exploited and weaponized the otherwise honorable and valuable #MeToo movement) or failed to speak up about the injustice of the smear campaign.  This goes, as far as I can tell, for all the other '20 Democrat candidates.  This goes for the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who withheld Ford's accusation for weeks until leaking them to the press at the last minute.  My sentiments are with Sen. Graham.

Well-placed outrage

Donald Trump hasn't forgotten about any of this, and will do whatever he can in the general election to eat them alive because of it.  As far as I'm concerned, these four leading candidates are caught dead to rights in their epistemic criminality, which they conducted for the sake of power and partisanship.  I have some choice expletives for these creatures which I'll refrain from stating here.

What these Demon Rats would have you believe is that their media-frenzy-fed-and-feeding smear campaign is normal and acceptable.  They might have you believe that this smear campaign was necessary because the man accused wasn't just anybody, but someone who would assume a position of great power and therefore needs extra "scrutiny."  And they would gaslight the rest of us when it comes to standards of evidence and credibility.  They then turn around and give fellow Demon Rats a pass under similar circumstances.  And if they're this bad when it comes to this no-brainer, how bad must they be on matters of ideology and policy, pray tell?  This is the best crop of leading candidates this party can come up with?

The only '20 Dem candidate with much of any prominence in the polling or betting markets, who hasn't morally and intellectually stained himself with this ugliness (except perhaps with his silence about this intended injustice), is Mayor Pete.

"But Trump" or "but Kavanaugh's high school yearbook" (whatever that shows) won't save them from the truth of their own sliminess.

What makes them think they can get away with what they did?

Scumbag Kamala Harris vs. Obama

If Joe Biden has a spotty record on civil rights, why would Obama make him his VP?

Evidently that is a question that didn't occur to Scumbag Kamala Harris as she schemed her bad-faith ambush on Biden.

Terms I've come up with to describe Sen. Harris, descriptors of what people hate in politicians (and it's almost amazing so many observers have failed to notice these in Scumbag Harris): dishonest, phony, opportunistic, panderer, cynical, more clever than wise and not very clever at that, intellectually shallow, race-baiter, malicious, demagogue.

Her role in the Kavanaugh smears when the chips were down says it all; of the Dems getting in on that appalling act, she is surely the most despicable.  How would you feel about having her as prosecutor in a case against you?  Kavanaugh found out the hard way.

And this is the candidate the betting markets are assigning the best chance to win the nomination?

[Addendum 7/6: Others are catching on!]

Dems should nominate a recession for '20

That is far and away their best chance of beating Trump.