This Is Our Final Warning

As the United States struggles to contain the spread of Covid-19, the calls to refrain from politicizing the crisis are as understandable as they are impossible. Understandable, because playing politics with a catastrophic public health crisis can only cause harm. In order to slow the spread of the virus, all citizens and institutions must be persuaded to alter their behavior in drastic and often self-sacrificing ways. To win their compliance with these measures, it is vital that they can trust the information coming from the government, and they will neither trust nor comply if they have any suspicion that government pronouncements are motivated by politics rather than the public interest. The President was thus absolutely correct in declaring, in his Oval Office address of March 11, that "[w]e must put politics aside."

It is impossible to put politics aside, however, precisely because Donald J. Trump is President of the United States. Only five hours ago, the President tweeted that his own health agency, the CDC, was unprepared to respond to a pandemic, and that this incapacity was (in part) the fault of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Undermining the public's confidence in the CDC can only make matters worse, by weakening its already anemic leadership of the national response to the pandemic, but the President is concerned with his own re-election and the political impact of Covid-19 in the short term.

This is an example of "Trumpism" in a nutshell. If the worldview of operatives like Karl Rove could be encapsulated as "Politics First," Trumpism is its hyper-steroidal evil twin: "Politics Only." There is no such thing as a durable or inviolate long-term policy imperative in the Trump presidency. Everything is subordinated to the President's perceived political needs of the moment.

The Covid-19 crisis and the tangled web of lies, contradictions, and non sequiturs that have flowed from the White House in response are only the latest and most egregious example of this principle. The full litany of mechanisms by which Trump reduces all policy to politics, from "fake news" to "the Ukraine hoax," to "Build that Wall!", is too long and complex to possibly document here. But the sheer weight of empirical evidence puts this basic aspect of Trumpism beyond the shadow of a doubt. The voluminous flow of luridly irresponsible statements from the President's rallies, interviews, or Twitter account generates endless speculation about his state of mental health or ideological nefariousness (this very speculation is, by the President's own admission, one of the key political advantages bought by his rhetorical strategy), but all such speculation is rendered moot by the clear fact that Trumpism, whatever else it might be or express, boils down to one thing: "Politics Only."

The liabilities inherent in such a state of affairs have never been more evident than what is transpiring in the face of the threat posed by Covid-19. Is the lack of testing capacity a product of routine government incompetence, or does it embody the President's obvious belief that "low numbers" of reported cases benefits him politically? Is the exception given to travelers from the U.K. done in the public interest, or out of consideration for the profitability of the President's golf courses in that country? There is no way to determine answers to these questions, and this very opacity hamstrings the federal government's power to lead in this crisis.

Despite paralysis at the federal level, a robust social response has begun to emerge. Colleges and universities are beginning to shut down, major sports franchises have cancelled season play, civic organizations are moving to cancel conferences and other large social gatherings. Why? Because despite the lack of coordinated federal leadership, the free flow of information has made the scale of the crisis apparent, and responsible leaders at multiple levels of government and civil society have spontaneously acted on the reported facts of the emergency. We are still a free society, and the members of a free society are empowered to mobilize for one-another's protection and welfare.

Quick action at the state and local level may yet save us from the worst case scenario. If Donald Trump is re-elected, however, such a robust social response to the next crisis will not be possible. During a second Trump term the free flow of information that facilitated the emergence of the current campaign against Covid-19 will slow and then stop.

Why? One does not have to imagine that Donald Trump is mad or that he leads a diabolically authoritarian conspiracy to understand the reasons for this future outcome. If, like President Trump, you are committed to a governance built around the principle of "Politics Only," then the minimal functionality of government requires you to control perceptions, and the only way to control perceptions is to stop the free flow of information. We can already see this mechanism at work in the dynamics of the Trump administration, from its blanket refusal to comply with Congressional and judiciary oversight, its vehement concealment of the President's tax returns, and its constant efforts to expand the scope of executive secrecy into otherwise routine affairs. In a second Trump term the administration will move in ways small (restricting press passes to friendly news outlets) and large (using the AG office to sue unfriendly media figures), ordinary (propaganda) and unpredictable ("emergency" laws), to restrict the free expression of inconvenient facts and opinions.

The certainty of this happening can be inferred not merely from the administration's past behavior, but from the clear logic of their situation. They will not survive four more years of challenges half as vexing as those they have already encountered, if they continue under current conditions. Something will have to give. If the Covid-19 pandemic provides one clear object lesson, it is this: should we continue to entrust Donald Trump with the stewardship of our system, the system itself is doomed. This is our final warning.

An Open Letter to Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

       I write you as a concerned Democrat and American. Like you, I recognize the urgency of defeating Donald Trump this coming November. Our nation faces an existential crisis. If Trump is re-elected, he will complete the job of undermining the rule of law and subverting our governing institutions that he has worked at so assiduously for more than three years. A second Trump term will spell the end of the American experiment in democracy. In that light, like you I would like to see the Democratic Party nominate a candidate that has as strong a chance of  defeating Donald Trump as possible.
        I know that you have put yourself forward for the Democratic nomination in the belief that you are well equipped to win in the fall, and I would not contradict you. But you are not alone in that regard. Any of the current Democratic candidates could do so with an energetic and strategic campaign. The only question facing us as voters now is to assess who would possess the greatest advantages and who labor under the most severe liabilities in the general election.  
        On this question I likewise agree with you on one point: of all the candidates now running, Senator Bernie Sanders would be most vulnerable in a campaign against Donald Trump. I do not feel this way because I share your assessment of Senator Sanders's politics or the appeal of his policy proposals.
        Rather, I worry that his past will provide too much fodder for Republican spin doctors during a general election campaign. Too much video and audio exists of Bernie Sanders saying and doing things that were tolerably provocative for a local Vermont politician back in the 1980's, but would be shocking in a national campaign today. The foundation of Bernie's appeal to voters is that he has been so consistent in his values and message for the past decade, in which he has been much more careful about the tone of his rhetoric on the national stage. When the images of his firebrand past hit the airwaves, voters may feel they have been deceived in his true character, and turn on him out of a sense of betrayal.
           Taking that into consideration, the question that faces us now is not "who can beat Donald Trump," but "who can win the Democratic nomination other than Bernie Sanders"? The answer to that question, I would propose, is not you or any of the other "moderate" candidates in the Democratic field. Coming into this election the momentum was always with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The party fielded a moderate candidate in 2016 and lost. Meanwhile, the Republicans fielded a morbidly unfit, malignantly sexist and racist extremist, and met with electoral success. It is no wonder a critical mass of Democrats take from this debacle the lesson that "playing to the center" is a fool's game, and that the party would be well advised to focus on motivating its base voters over any attempt to "win over" the opposition. 
           If the progressive wing of the party has the advantage in choosing the nominee (and for the reasons I outlined above, it does), then the candidate furthest to the right who has any chance of winning the nomination has always been Elizabeth Warren. In both her rhetoric (past and present) and policy proposals Senator Warren appeals to progressive Democrats but is slightly more moderate than Bernie Sanders. Even if they find her too liberal, Warren is the best compromise candidate for whom moderate Democrats may hope.
            I have been a strong supporter of Senator Warren's from the very beginning of this campaign. I am convinced that she will be an optimally powerful opponent against Donald Trump and an excellent president when elected. Your assessment of her may differ, but I think you must agree that she is less vulnerable than Bernie Sanders in the general election. If you are persuaded that she is the most moderate candidate who stands any chance of winning the nomination, I hope that you will consider giving her your endorsement.
            Given the trend in the voting and the polls, Senator Sanders seems well poised to lock up the nomination within the next month at the latest. Unless something is done to change the trajectory of the race, he will be the one on whom all of our hopes to save the nation from Donald Trump will be riding. If you would prevent that contingency, your best option would be to drop out of the race now and throw your support behind Senator Warren. Such a move would bring the moderate and progressive wings of the party together, and forge a broad coalition in preparation for the contest in the fall. 
            I realize that this would be far from what you originally planned when you set out to run for the presidency, but I appeal to your obvious sense of civic duty. Giving your endorsement to Senator Warren would be an inspiring act of selfless patriotism, especially given the constant displays of narcissism, duplicity, and partisan chauvinism by the current President and his Republican enablers. I hope that you will give it some consideration.

                                    Sincerely,


                                     Andrew Meyer

The "Vision for Peace" is a Vision for a One-State Solution

I was at an event yesterday in which a Jewish-American who had lived for many years in Israel was discussing the Trump "Vision for Peace." He presented it as the "best deal" the Palestinian leadership or people are likely to get. That may well be true at this point, but doesn't make the plan anything more than naked political theater. 

 After the presentation was over I went up and asked the speaker how many new Arab-Israeli citizens the plan would create. He wasn't sure, but he agreed that, looking at the map, the number would have to fall somewhere between 500,000-1,000,000. So one must ask, if the plan was carried out, would Bibi ever get re-elected again? No. But it is easy to make promises that you know you will never have to keep, just like it is easy for Jared Kushner to shake his head about how much money the Palestinian leaders are forgoing when you will never have to pony up. 

After asking my shifting demographics question I said to the speaker, "You know, there is a very easy one state solution." "Yes" he said, "but you know what that would mean for Israel." "I know it," I replied, "and Mahmoud Abbas knows it- that is why this 'best deal' is DOA- and Bibi and Trump knew that from the start." 

The easy, fair thing to do would be to make everyone from the Jordan River to the sea (including those in Gaza) an Israeli citizen. That would immediately make Israel a 49% Jewish/51% Palestinian nation. Thus, the creation of a separate Palestinian state is a non-negotiable necessity if Israel wants to persist as a democratic Jewish state along the lines envisioned by Theodore Herzl and David Ben-Gurion. 

Bibi and Trump are in no position to tell the Palestinians what counts as a "best deal," because the Palestinians don't require that their nation contain a majority of any particular religion or even ethnicity- they just want the rights of citizens of a sovereign nation on the land they call home. Since what they are bargaining for is radically simpler, their latitude to make demands has always been much higher. This "Vision for Peace" was never meant as a serious proposal- Bibi and Trump deliberately played politics with an issue that is vitally important to Israelis, Palestinians, and Jews throughout the world. In order to please some religious voters in Israel and evangelical voters in the US they have mortgaged the credibility of the US as a fair broker and that of the Israeli government as a good-faith negotiator. In the long term, they have ensured that a peaceful "one-state solution" is almost certainly the best outcome for which anyone can hope.

Abuse of Power is a Crime

Listening to the opening arguments of lawyers defending Donald Trump in the ongoing impeachment trial, it became clear that much of the president's attorneys' defense hinges on semantics. Alan Dershowitz, for example, citing precedents from the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, argued that a president could only be impeached for "crime-like behavior," and since "abuse of power" is not a statutory crime, it does not meet the constitutional criteria for removal of a duly elected president. This arguments fails for the simple reason that, by any reasonable understanding, abuse of power is a crime. Indeed, it is the most basic crime that might justify the impeachment of a president, if we follow the clear logic of the constitution itself.

While the constitution does demand that the president be removed only on commission of "high crimes," the claim that, in the case of the president, such infractions can only be recognized by consulting the current federal criminal code is absurd. It remains a point of controversy, 222 years after the adoption of the US constitution, whether the president is subject to criminal indictment at all (current Justice Department directives say "no"). Since the criminal code does not regularly apply to the president, it is foolish to expect that it would outline every infraction of which the office was capable. Why would Congress pass a law that cannot be adjudicated?

This reality is acknowledged by the impeachment process itself. If the crimes for which impeachment was legitimate could be found in the criminal code, the power of impeachment would be invested in the courts. Because the crimes for which impeachment is warranted constitute a special class of infraction, the process is entrusted to the legislature.

If the crimes for which the president can be impeached are not violations of the criminal code, what body of law regulates such infractions? The answer is quite simple: the Constitution of the United States itself. The constitution is, by its own account, "the supreme law of the land." When a president is impeached, he is fundamentally being accused of crimes against the constitution. Since all of the President's power is invested in him by the constitution (as Article II, Section 1 declares: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America")  and the oath he took to uphold the same, "abuse of power" is the most basic crime for which he may be impeached.

How then, does what Donald Trump has been accused of constitute an abuse of power? The most basic dimension of the infraction lies in the simple act of asking for a political favor from the government of the Ukraine (a transgression that he then repeated and amplified on camera, adding China to the foreign powers from which he solicited such gifts). The constitution binds all officials of the government, but especially the president, to act in "the common defense," not out of a concern for their personal political fortunes. Nothing about the favor requested by the president enhanced the security or well-being of the people of the United States. It was pursued exclusively for the purpose of enhancing the President's electoral chances in November.

This constituted an "abuse of power" because it was a maneuver of which the President, alone among officials of the US government, was capable by virtue of his office as "chief diplomat." The constitution makes the President the prime point of contact between the US and foreign powers, but places discrete constraints on the legitimate exercise of that special access, because it explicitly acknowledges the danger of abuse. All officials are forbidden to accept "gifts, emoluments, offices or titles of nobility from foreign states and monarchies" and the president is made particularly impeachable on the charge of "bribery" because the constitution recognizes the potential for foreign affairs to undermine the democratic processes of our governance. The key check on impropriety by  US government officials is the scrutiny of the American citizenry: any action by an elected official may result in loss of power at next vote. Foreign kings and leaders face no such checks on their actions as regards the US. In their dealings with the US, they are accountable to only one American: the president, and their actions might never be made available for the US voting public to investigate.

If a president were sufficiently free to do so, therefore, he could "outsource" all manner of tasks that would be politically advantageous if their motives and true conditions could be obscured from the voting public. Fabricating a murder scene in a hotel room to discredit a political opponent, for example, carries huge risk for a US official because freedom of the press, independence of the judiciary, and other checks on government power stand as powerful deterrents. But those deterrents do not constrain the actions of a foreign government acting on the president's behalf (this would of course be true in an autocratic government like North Korea, but might even apply in the case of a democratic country whose people were sufficiently hostile to the United States). From any angle that one examines the question, solicitation of political favors from foreign leaders is a violation of the office of the presidency severe enough to constitute a "high crime" in and of itself.

Donald Trump's alleged transgression in the particular case of Ukraine, moreover, is compounded by the fact that he not only solicited a political favor, but is accused of trying to extort it from Ukraine's president using his powers as conductor of foreign policy. The founders were focused on "bribery" as an impeachable offense because they viewed the nascent US as a weak nation vulnerable to the sway of foreign potentates, thus the abuse of power that they most easily imagined a president committing entailed capitulation to foreign pressure. But now that the US is among the world's chief superpowers, the president is able to pressure foreign governments into aiding his undermining of the democratic process. If the president had threatened Ukraine with a military strike unless they announced an investigation of Joe Biden, for example, that would not violate any criminal statutes, yet under those circumstances the president's lawyers could not plausibly argue against such an action being an abuse of power worthy of impeachment. To argue that the withholding of military aid from an embattled ally facing an existential threat is not an impeachable abuse of power similarly violates common sense. In both cases, the president's abuse of otherwise legitimate powers for personal political ends are a crime against the constitution.

As the supreme law of the land, the constitution guarantees us the right to live in a Republic. The basic embodiment of that entitlement is the assurance that our government contains no official with the arbitrary and unchecked powers of a king. The constitution acknowledges that foreign affairs are a realm in which the democratic checks and balances of government are most vulnerable to subversion. That is why proscriptions and sanctions constraining officials' dealings with foreign powers were built into the constitution, and why the powers for the conduct of foreign affairs were shared out between the president and the Congress. Lawyers may argue about the facts of the case involving Donald Trump and the government of Ukraine, but there can be no question that what the president is accused of is an impeachable offense. If the President attempted to extort a personal political favor from the government of Ukraine, against the will of Congress and to the potential detriment of an ally's security, he abused his power as chief diplomat and executor of US foreign policy. Such an act is a crime against the constitution, and would warrant removal from office.

Imagining an Iranian Spring

The recent brush with war between the US and Iran underscores the persistent question of US-Iranian relations: will the two countries ever reach a point of mutual toleration ever again? In my past two posts I suggested ways in which the US would have to change in order to facilitate such a development. But one perspective would suggest that no amount of adjustment in US attitudes or foreign policy would make a difference. The Iranian theocracy is so incompatible with American values, so goes this view, its ruling ideology so antithetical to American interests, that detente will remain forever out of reach unless and until regime change transpires in Iran

Thus here I would like to take a moment to explore whether or not there is any plausible future in which a changed Iran might find common ground with the US. My aim here is not to ponder the ways that Iran must change, but to think through the possibilities of how it might change. Is there any reason to believe that Iran and the US could grow toward one-another, given world enough and time?

The first reality one must confront in answering such a question is that the system of theocracy and the institutional leadership of an ayatollah as "Supreme Leader" is not likely to disappear from Iranian politics, even in the long term. The durability of these structures in the face of extraordinary diplomatic, economic, and military pressure shows that they have deep-rooted support in Iranian society that cuts across lines of class, education, region, ethnicity, and gender. This fact engenders the most vehement pessimism among outside observers of Iran. "A theocracy," so goes this line of reasoning, "is hopelessly behind the times. So long as the Iranian people accept the leadership of the mullahs, they can never truly be part of the modern world."

The latter perspective, however, overlooks several important realities. The first of these is the reason for the resilience of theocracy in Iran. Outside observers might be inclined to believe that Iranians follow the mullahs because, as a society, they are more devout or awestruck by religious authority. This might be true for parts of Iranian society (as it is true for some evangelical Christians in American society that would like to see our government become more theocratic), but it does not statistically explain the persistence of the current system in Iran.

On the whole, the mullahs enjoy the broad support they do because of Iranian nationalism, not religious devotion. Pious Muslim farmers and cynically atheistic university students can be counted among the mullahs' supporters (to varying degrees), because all respect the clerical authorities as successful stewards of Iranian independence. The Shah was widely perceived to be an American puppet, and elected politicians like Mohammed Mossadegh had proven vulnerable to the combined machinations of the US and Soviet Union. Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in establishing Iran as a neutral party in the Cold War, an achievement that few nations as small as Iran had been able to accomplish.

His legates have profited from the lingering credit for that achievement. Moreover, the theocracy is a source of pride among Iranians because it is a system uniquely their own. Because it is built upon the peculiar foundations of the Shi'ite clerical establishment, it distinguishes majority Farsi-speaking Iranians not only from "the West," but from their Arab-speaking neighbors, who (with the exceptions of Bahrain and Iraq) generally adhere to Sunni Islam.

The institutions of the Islamic Republic thus do not mark Iran as any more captive to "superstitious religiosity" than any other nation in the region. A belief in the irredeemable stasis of the Iranian system is more a product of European and American bias, grounded in the prejudices of the Enlightenment, than of empirical fact or observation. The role that the mullahs play in the construction of Iranian national identity is comparable to that of the Queen in Britain or the Emperor in Japan. If the latter countries could evolve to claim a place in the modern world, so can Iran.

How might this occur? By the same process in Iran as occurred in many of the most exemplary democracies of the current era. In both Britain and Japan, for example, democratic (the Parliament and the Diet) and anti-democratic (the royal thrones) institutions shared power in dynamic tension with one-another over decades and centuries. Each of those nations became the "constitutional monarchies" that we see today through a process by which power bled away from the royal throne and toward the legislatures.

A similar process could occur in Iran, transforming it into a "constitutional theocracy." This would require much less system-building than many people might realize. Iran already possesses relatively robust democratic infrastructure. It has an elected parliament and president, both of which have genuine authority and are substantially accountable to the electorate. These offices are presently rigidly constrained and impeded by the arbitrary fiat of the mullahs, but that admixture of power could shift in Iran over time, as it did in Britain and Japan.

Such a shift is more than a hypothetical fantasy. The Green Movement of 2009-10 and the even more violent spasms of civil unrest that have rocked Iran over the last year show that the government of Iran is under constant pressure to further democratize. As unlikely as it is that the mullahs will be overthrown, it is equally unlikely that they will be able to resist pressure to yield power to the democratically elected leadership indefinitely.

Again, some in Europe and America might protest that religious leaders "will never surrender power that they believe comes to them from God." But this again betrays an Enlightenment bias. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire portrayed "religion" as a uniquely pernicious force because they were preoccupied with their own struggles against the Catholic Church. But to insist that Iran's system is uniquely irredeemable by comparison to that of Britain or Japan is to wildly overstate the difference between an ayatollah and a king or emperor. The Queen is after all, the head of the Church of England, and the Emperor is the Chief Priest of the Shinto faith.

The leaders of Meiji Japan were so sensitive to "modern" contempt for "religious superstition" that they encoded the ludicrous proposition that Shinto was "not a religion" into imperial law, so as to  clear the imperial throne of any charges of "theocracy" even as mass participation in Shinto rituals was made compulsory throughout the empire. This did not prevent democratic reform, however. During the Taisho Era Japan saw a burgeoning of democratic political life, in which the imperial throne gradually yielded control to civilian politicians and the elected representatives of the legislative Diet. Writers like Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948) envisioned a future of constitutional government for Japan like that I am imagining for Iran, one that bears close resemblance to the democracy operative in Tokyo today.

Some might point to the case of Japan as proof that real democratic reform requires regime change. But this is to (at least in part) overlook the lessons of the Taisho Spring. The rising prosperity and robust international diplomacy (the willingness of the industrial powers to enter into the Kellogg-Brian Pact, for example) of the post-WWI era helped foster democratic reform in Japan. The tide was only turned toward militarism and autocracy by the cataclysm of the Great Depression.

Japan's experience suggests that military pressure and the infliction of economic distress through sanctions will not encourage progressive tendencies in Iran. The forces for democratic reform in Iran obviously exist. For them to prevail, they must be empowered to compete with the forces that would retrench religious authoritarianism. If that were to occur, we could see a shift of power from the "Supreme Leader" and his fellow ayatollahs to the elected legislature and president. The role of the clerical establishment would not disappear, but would become progressively more ceremonial and symbolic (like that of the Queen in England or the Emperor in Japan).

Though violent conflict might play a role in that process, historical example would suggest that violence is not the only or necessary means of such a transition. Rather than continuing to pursue its fruitless decades-long policy of military coercion, diplomatic isolation, and economic deprivation, the US could thus more effectively foster an "Iranian Spring" by being open to commerce and diplomacy with Iran. Such a transition might be long in developing and might never lead to complete trust and amity, but it would assuredly yield profound benefits for the people of Iran, the US, and the entire world.

Why Did We Just Risk War?

In Wednesday's speech that (for the moment has) successfully de-escalated the mounting confrontation between the US and Iran, Donald Trump displayed a discipline that is rarely seen from the current president. He stuck closely to his scripted remarks and left the venue swiftly without pausing for extemporaneous questions, suggesting that he was aware (or was made aware) of the danger that an errant phrase might incite more provocations from Tehran (which was under extraordinary pressure from its own people to create at least the impression that the US had "cried uncle") and re-open hostilities. Whether Trump and his advisors were aware of how inflammatory the assassination of Qasem Soleimani would be before taking the step is unclear, but by Wednesday they seem to have understood how high the stakes had become. Given that fact, it is strange that the Trump administration still cannot produce a coherent explanation of the decision-making process leading up to Soleimani's death.

Last night's campaign rally, in which Trump offered the new explanation that Iran was preparing to "blow up" our embassy in Iraq, provides a clue to the White House's dilemma. The story about "blowing up" the embassy is far-fetched. If there was clear intelligence establishing that fact, why would it not have been shared with members of Congress at yesterday's briefing? But the mention of the embassy is telling. The penultimate "move" in the escalating game of chicken that led to Soleimani's death was the assault on our Baghdad embassy by Iranian proxies. Why would this have invited the assassination, and why will the White House not be candid about its reasons?

The assault on the embassy itself was shocking, and deliberately so. The Shi'ite militias that carried it out were almost certainly acting on Qasem Soleimani's orders. They left graffiti bearing his name (news organizations have variously reported graffiti declaring "Soleimani passed through here" or "Soleimani is our commander"). The messages themselves were most likely left at his deliberate instructions. Indeed, Soleimani was killed as he was arriving in Baghdad, where he was met by the commander of the Shi'ite militias that had executed the embassy assault (Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed), so the assault and its aftermath were obviously on his agenda.

The embassy assault was thus almost certainly the provocation that incited Soleimani's assassination. We know that the drone attack against the Iranian general was only the most extreme option of several offered to Trump by his national security team. Why would the embassy assault drive Trump to the riskiest end of that spectrum, and why can he not coherently explain his decision in its aftermath?

There are two explanations for this, which are not mutually exclusive of one-another. The first is that the taunting intent of the embassy assault was so enraging to Donald Trump that he struck out at his tormentor, heedless of the potential consequences. This explanation is persuasive because Trump seems to have been surprised by the violent outpouring of grief and rage unleashed in Iran by Soleimani's death. The president does not seem to have been aware of his target's political profile, suggesting that he might have been focused on the degree to which he had been personally insulted by Soleimani. To the extent that this explanation bears out, it is easy to understand why the administration would be reticent to be fully candid about the decision making process that led to Soleimani's death. It would not be politically advantageous to Donald Trump to admit that he unwittingly risked all-out war with a nation of 80 million people over what was effectively a "pissing contest."

At the same time, however, we know that the assassination of Soleimani was strongly urged by hawkish advisors like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and their reasons for countering the embassy assault with an attack on Soleimani are likely to have been more complex. Though it only penetrated an outer "reception area" of the Baghdad embassy (the largest US foreign mission in the world) and inflicted no casualties, the message of the embassy assault must have been deeply disturbing to the entire diplomatic and national security apparatus of the US government. The embassy itself still sits within a larger fortified area known as the "Green Zone," thus to penetrate into even the low-stakes reception area of the embassy the militia assailants would have needed the complete complicity of the Iraqi government and US-trained Iraqi military. The message that Qasem Soleimani sent was clear: "We can reach you anywhere in Iraq, our influence is all-pervasive. You persist here at our sufferance." The evocations of Benghazi and the 1979 hostage crisis was thunderously blatant.

Given the clarity of that message, the thought process of someone like Mike Pompeo is easy to reconstruct.  The only thing that could buy US diplomats and military personnel any modicum of security in the wake of such a provocation was to ratchet the stakes maximally high. The message had to be sent: "You may be able to reach us anywhere in Iraq, but if you do, the retaliation will be devastating." Soleimani's death was thus conceived as a means of "brushback," done out of the sheer necessity to call Tehran's bluff or fold.

This of course raises the question: if the imperatives for Soleimani's assassination were so clear, why is the Trump administration not being candid about them? Why resort to fables like an uncorroborated bomb plot? Here again an obvious answer suggests itself: if the administration discloses its strongest motives for the death of Soleimani, it admits the extreme vulnerability of the US position in Iraq. The embassy assault demonstrated that after almost seventeen years of military engagement and trillions of dollars spent, America continues to skate on very thin ice in Iraq. Throwing a spotlight on that fact can only invite both strategic and political mayhem.

American administrations have had the opportunity to kill Soleimani since he became the leader of the Quds Force in 1998. The recent crisis demonstrated why no prior president seized upon such opportunities: the act was the last possible step before (and unavoidably risked) all-out war. The invasion of Iraq taught us what such a war would mean. Though US forces would destroy the combat capabilities of the Iranian military very quickly, in a nation that has almost 3X as many people as Iraq, the aftermath of a full-blown war would be long, painful, tragic, and unpredictable- for Iran, the US, and the entire world.

In opting to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and initiating its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, the Trump Administration set off a slowly escalating chain of provocations and counter-provocations leading to the point at which the assassination of Qasem Soleimani became appealing. Having broken the glass, pulled that lever, and assumed all of the risks it entails, they are left with very little to show for it. Iran is no less likely to develop a nuclear weapon. The regime in Tehran is no less secure, either at home or abroad.

We have been presented with an empirical lesson in the limits of confrontation with Iran. The Trump administration does not seem disposed to learn from that lesson, and even if it did, there is little time between now and November for them to develop an alternative policy, given the complexity of the situation they helped create.  If the "maximum pressure" campaign has taught us anything, it is that the regime can survive the worst economic and diplomatic punishment that we can inflict, and that we are not willing to resort to the degree of military force necessary to redeem the failure of such sanctions. The Obama administration had admittedly only explored the nearest edges of the frontier of diplomacy, but Trump has taken us to the very end of the path of coercion, and proven that it leads nowhere. It is time to tack back and try the other path again. Hopefully the next election will give us an administration possessed of the skill, imagination, and patience to forge a new path forward, in both Iran and the Middle East at large.

Obama was Right, Trump is Wrong on Iran

Last Thursday's assassination of General Qasem Soleimani again accelerated the spinning wheel of US-Iranian confrontation that has been in motion since 1979. It is a bitter irony that if you told a US state department official in 1975 that the American military would one day target and kill the second-most powerful leader of Iran, that official would scarce believe you. Why would we so violently antagonize one of our closest allies in the Middle East? What could have happened to turn a security partnership almost as close as that between the US and Israel into such a vitriolic conflict?

We know in hindsight what that hypothetical state department official could not: in 1979 a new revolutionary regime in Tehran would condone the capture of 52 American diplomatic personnel and hold them hostage for 444 days. That act was one of the most serious blows to American prestige in the 20th century, and an egregious betrayal of what had been for more than two decades a relationship of mutual trust and cooperation. Though the hostility of the 1979 revolutionaries toward the US was not wholly arbitrary or gratuitous (more on this below), the hostage crisis was a folly of tragically epic proportions, in that it foreclosed the possibility that the US and Iran could ever recover the degree of amity and trust that had once existed between Washington and Tehran.

The legacy of the hostage crisis has predictably engendered a "hard line" wing of the foreign policy establishment in Washington with respect to US-Iranian relations, represented by figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Daniel Perle, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. From their perspective, the current regime in Tehran must be treated as irredeemably hostile and malignant. It can be contained, but it can never truly be engaged. No diplomatic efforts with the regime can aim at developing mutual trust or working toward a modus vivendi- the best that diplomacy can achieve is to win concessions or elicit guarantees of good conduct.

Certainly there is justification for this view. Whatever the sins of the US prior to 1979, the breach of diplomatic inviolability was an act of contempt and an insult to American sovereignty that few nation-states have had to suffer in modern history. It is not a stretch of the imagination to insist that if we cannot trust you not to attack our diplomats, there is little chance we can trust anything you say to them. Moreover, above and beyond having many sins of its own (some against the US, some against its own people or those of its neighbors), the Iranian regime (a constitutional theocracy that oppresses religious minorities such as Sunni Muslims, Jews, Christians, Baha'is, and Zoroastrians) is inimical in principle to US ideals such as those laid out in the First Amendment.

The hard-line view of Iran has dominated American foreign policy for most of the last forty years. Or rather, the spectrum of options pursued by various American administrations has arguably had only "hard-line" dimensions. Aggressive presidents have pursued "regime change," the only "softer" orientation developed outside that ambit has been "containment." No path that might lead to a normalization of relations between US and Iran has ever been seriously described by a US official, much less implemented.

 The closest thing to "engagement" pursued by any American administration was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the Iran nuclear deal) negotiated by the Obama White House as part of the P5+1 coalition. Though this was a very tentative step toward diplomatic interaction, the structural properties of the JCPOA (the fact that it only committed Tehran to a fifteen-year freeze on nuclear enrichment, for example) would have effectively pushed future American administrations toward engagement with Iran. The best hope that the JCPOA could secure peace in the long term was if the 15-year window that the agreement laid out were used to draw the Iranian government into a more productive and stable relationship with the US and its allies.

Was there any reason to believe this might work? Yes there was. In their myopic focus on the very real causes of enmity between the US and Iran, hard liners have overlooked both the deeper context of that animosity and the countervailing forces that drew the US and Iran together before 1979.

With regard to the former context: the antagonism between the US and Iran is a lingering relic of the Cold War. Because Iran bordered the Soviet Union, US leaders felt it necessary to meddle aggressively in the internal politics of Iran by way of cultivating it as a strategic partner. Iran was on a path to becoming one of the most prosperous and vibrantly democratic nations in the Middle East when the US helped launch a coup (toppling the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh) in 1953, ushering in 25 years of despotic rule by the Shah. It was thus not an accident that the 1979 revolutionaries vented their fury on the US. Moreover, much of what transpired in 1979 must be viewed against the backdrop of the Cold War. The institution of a theocracy (a system equally objectionable to the US and the Soviets) and the radical break with the US (a reassurance to the Soviets that Iran would be neutral in the Cold War) were driven (at least in part) by the desire to fortify Iranian society and politics from destabilizing Soviet interference in the chaotic aftermath of the Shah's fall.

But if it was no accident that the 1979 revolution opened up a chasm of animosity between  the US and Iran, it was likewise no accident that the two nations had drawn close to one-another in the first place. In the mid-20th century Iran displayed all of the nascent promise and potential of developing nations such as Japan or South Korea. It had an educated populace, an abundance of resources, and a long history of strong state institutions. The robust democratic traditions that had begun to form in the 1940's and 1950's in Iran never completely disappeared. Even today the National Front founded by Mohammed Mossadegh, though much diminished and subject to various forms of repression by the theocracy, continues to operate and compete in Iranian elections.

All of the Cold War contingencies that drove the US and Iran apart have disappeared, while most of the basic underlying affinities that brought the two nations together remain. It is probably unrealistic to expect that the US and Iran can ever be allied as closely as they once were in the wake of the hostage crisis and everything that has happened since. But it is likewise foolish to insist that the two countries are doomed to eternal mutual hostility. However objectionable Americans may find the Iranians' commitment to theocracy or Tehran's hostility to Israel, such contingencies have not prevented Washington from enjoying warm relations with Saudi Arabia. However malignant and dangerous Iran's sponsorship of groups like Hezbollah or its killing of US soldiers in Iraq have made Tehran to US interests, anyone who insists that this enmity must remain permanent would have a hard time explaining what transpired between the US and Japan in the wake of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.

Barack Obama joined the JCPOA in a gamble that US-Iranian relations could be improved, if not normalized. Donald Trump took US policy in the opposite direction, committing to the proposition that America's "Iran problem" could only be resolved through intensifying opposition and hostility. We were never given much evidence by which to assess the effect of Obama's gambit, but the achievement of the JCPOA itself suggested that the path of engagement could pay out benefits in the long run. By contrast, three years of Trumpian belligerence have produced only an escalating cycle of conflict and liability. With the assassination of Qasem Soleimani Trump's measures have reached maximalist territory- there is little room between the point of confrontation we are at now and outright territorial war.


Moving forward, it appears that the best-case scenarios entail de-escalation, with very little movement on the fundamental questions that brought us to this impasse. That is not progress. As is so often the case, the debate over our current policy is likely to devolve into a shouting-match over whether hostile measures toward Iran are justified. This misses the point. There is no question that US-Iranian relations are unavoidably problematic. The debate worth having is over how that problem might be at least ameliorated, if not resolved.  Restoring US-Iranian relations to some level of functionality is crucial to the peace and prosperity of both nations, the Middle East, and the world. Working toward that end will require leadership that is imaginative, creative, and flexible, and that is equipped to view the problem in its larger historical context.

The Invisible Hand and the Pin Factory

As we enter another presidential election year, shopworn shibboleths are sure to be trotted out on the campaign trail. No matter whom the Democrats nominate, Donald Trump will waste no time in labeling that candidate a "socialist" and portraying himself as the defender of capitalism. It is thus worth pausing to examine capitalism by way of assessing the truth or falsehood of aspersions that will be cast and claims that will be staked.

Two great metaphors lie at the heart of The Wealth of Nations, the great theoretical summa of capitalism by Adam Smith published in 1776. The first and most famous is the "invisible hand." As Smith explained:

“Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to society... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.”

The principle at work here was simple but revolutionary: by freeing all individuals to pursue the highest profits from their use of capital, the greater good of society would be achieved, because (following the laws of supply and demand) the highest profits would ultimately be gained from supplying others with what they most need. This was an essential theoretical bulwark for arguments in favor of inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and property" that had been promoted by Enlightenment philosophers since the days of John Locke (1632-1704). Smith was able to demonstrate that shielding individuals' economic freedom from the arbitrary whims of kings, despots, and aristocrats was not merely right and just in the abstract, but served a practical social imperative.  

The other great allegory at the heart of Wealth of Nations was that of the "pin factory," which Smith used to demonstrate his idea of the advantages to be accrued from the division of labor:

 "To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them ...upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day."

Here Smith was observing and documenting the evolving conditions of a world that was rapidly commercializing.  Trade in goods and materials across long distances was becoming increasingly important to the way the world lived and worked, otherwise the production of 48,000 pins/day in a Scottish village of a few hundred people would have been completely absurd. The huge increases in productivity that could be garnered from an intelligent division of labor was another argument in favor of economic freedom: if kings, despots and nobles could be kept from obstructing the movement of people, goods, and materials, the gains in prosperity for all would be enormous. 

The articulation of these principles in the late eighteenth century was both inspired and inspirational. Smith helped animate political upheavals that rocked the globe and broke up empires in the late 1700's and early 1800's. But as many economists have observed, the two great metaphors at the heart of Smith's work are in profound tension with one-another. 

The conflict can be understood by focusing on the seminal categories of "capital" and "labor." The allegory of the "invisible hand" urges us to understand that, in service of the greatest prosperity, the use of capital must be in service of personal profit. If I have some money, land, or valuable material, I should be free to use it in whatever way will bring the most profit to myself. If the laws and institutions of my society are set up to allow me such freedom, the benefit to everyone will be maximized.

The lessons of The Wealth of Nations with respect to labor are very different, however. In the abstract, Smith advocated that the market for labor should be as free as that for capital (he was an adamant opponent, for example, of slavery). But in practical terms, his pin factory example creates a different and opposing set of imperatives for labor as exist for capital. Where the underlying principle motivating the use of capital is personal profit, that driving the use of labor is productivity. Though investors of capital must be left free to use their resources for their own highest benefit, the division of labor embodied by the pin factory creates a set of conditions in which the profits from labor will necessarily be curtailed.

This consequence of the pin factory example is easily understood. In a day before the commercial revolution sent ships laden with barrels of pins and other sundries for sale to ports around the world, a local shopkeeper might have employed one "master pinmaker" to provide all such wares. That person would have needed to know all eighteen different operations in the making of a pin, and would not be easily replaced. She could thus negotiate a fairly high price for her work. In the pin factory, where the eighteen tasks of pin-making were divided between ten people, any one of them that expressed dissatisfaction would be easily replaced. The price they could command for their labor would thus be radically reduced, despite the fact that the shift from one worker to ten had resulted in a massive increase in productivity.

 The invisible hand and the pin factory thus inevitably work at cross-purposes to one-another. The owners of capital, in seeking their own advantage, persistently promote divisions of labor that will suppress the wages of workers and maximize their returns on investment. In doing so, however, they undermine the mechanisms by which the "invisible hand" forms. The forces of supply and demand can only move goods and services where they are needed if demand remains sufficiently robust, thus purchasing power must be distributed broadly enough to sustain the market. In a society in which most people live on the income from labor, and the price of labor has been pushed as low as it will go, purchasing power becomes too concentrated to optimally incentivize and reward productivity, effectively paralyzing "the invisible hand."

This paradox at the heart of capitalism has created a tension that has been apparent since the days immediately following the publication of Smith's work. Though personal freedom and social prosperity depend on one-another, an excess of one will work to the detriment of the other. Though capital and labor are together essential to the creation of wealth, the predominance of one will undermine the productivity of both. It has always been necessary to mediate these tensions between freedom and prosperity, capital and labor, by government intervention. The "invisible hand" of the market would not have spontaneously created child labor laws, trade union protections, or controls on market speculation. Mechanisms such as these, however, have proven key to generating the kind of prosperity that Smith predicted a market economy could achieve when operating at its full potential.  

It is important to keep these facts in mind while listening to the campaign rhetoric in this electoral cycle. Much of what Donald Trump and the Republican Party will decry as "socialism" (increasing the minimum wage, expanding access to education, making healthcare more affordable, reinforcing the bargaining power of unions) are merely government interventions in the market economy that have always been necessary to redress the tensions between capital and labor. Indeed, if there is any dysfunction in our economy now, it does not arise from limiting personal freedom or constraining the power of capital. Capital is operating at an advantage now that has not been seen since the waning days of the nineteenth century. Income inequality is at an all-time high, and the "tax reform" passed in 2017 has shifted the tax burden so that, for the first time in modern memory, the super-rich are paying a smaller percentage of their disposable income to maintain government services than the working poor.

Donald Trump, a billionaire who has never before held public office, consistently sides with capital over labor and personal profit over shared prosperity. Even his love of trade wars, which on the surface seems "pro-labor," flows from his experience as a rentier (who profits not from production or trade, but from the exclusive control of a piece of capital). Such leadership is dangerously misguided in an age when the power of capital is already distorting markets and eroding productivity (not to mention destroying the planet through climate degradation). Trump and his cohorts will predictably try to distract voters with fears of socialism, but it is the health of capitalism that they should be worried about. If the Democrats are in need of a strategy and in search of a message, they could do worse than this one: "Vote to save capitalism. Vote AGAINST Trump."

The Turley Dilemma

Jonathan Turley, the legal scholar called by Republicans in yesterday's hearing on impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee, gave what was perhaps the best possible defense that the president could have asked for from a credible legal scholar. If we look at the component parts of his argument, we can see the outlines of a dilemma that faces the president, the Republican Party, and by extension the entire country. Broken down, his arguments against impeachment amounted to:

 1)Everyone is angry, including Jonathan Turley's dog. This of course is a classic ad hominem fallacy. The fact that someone is angry does not mean that he or she is wrong. Much of Turley's opening statement dwelt on (what he admitted were) ad hominem irrelevancies, like the fact that he had not voted for Donald Trump. Emotional or ideological bias does not change the state of either the constitution or the facts.

2)The process is rushed. This is a valiant effort at a defense, but is absurd on its face. Much of the appearance of "haste" is generated by the president's unprecedented and clearly unlawful obstruction of Congress. If the White House had honored all of Congress's subpoenas, the investigatory phase of this impeachment might still be underway. The same would be true if Attorney General William Barr had done his duty as an officer of the court in appointing a special prosecutor to pursue this case, rather than acting out of personal allegiance to Donald Trump. Moreover, if (as all of yesterday's scholars affirmed) one of the key purposes of impeachment is to guard the integrity of the electoral process, the time-frame in which impeachment may be effective is necessarily constrained by the electoral calendar. The closer we get to the next election, the more damage a corrupt president may do to the prospects of a free, fair, and valid election. The House thus has every justification to be suspicious of and to forcefully bypass White House efforts at obstruction.

3)More evidence and testimony is needed. This was Turley's strongest argument. Surely everyone would like to hear what John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, and Rudy Giuliani would have to say under oath. But again, de-legitimizing the impeachment inquiry because of White House obstruction is like setting bank robbers free because they would not hand over the money that would prove their guilt. Turley's argument that the courts must be allowed to weigh in on whether or not the White House is obligated to honor Congressional subpoenas on a case-by-case basis (rather than conceding that the White House's blanket refusal is illegitimate on its face- which is clearly the case) would create a precedent effectively robbing the House of its impeachment power. On that basis any president who was impeached in future could demand that every Congressional subpoena be submitted to judicial review, thus ensuring that hearings would "run out the clock" until the next election. The only reasonable position for a legal scholar to take is that the posture of a White House faced with a Congress exercising its highest Article I power (that of impeachment) must be abject compliance and cooperation- the submission of a subpoena to judicial review under those circumstances should be a "once in a blue moon rarity." Any White House (like the current one) that behaves differently de-legitimizes itself, not Congress.

Most distressingly for the president and the Republican Party, on the substantive issues upon which the witnesses had been called to testify yesterday Turley was in virtual lock-step with the other legal scholars bearing witness. None of the professors had been called to assess the facts of the case, but to explain whether the allegations raised by the Intelligence Committee amounted to an impeachable offense. On this point Turley was clear: if the president did what the report issued by the Intelligence Committee accuses him of doing (attempt to coerce the president of the Ukraine into providing dirt on a political rival), he should be impeached and removed from office.

This is where the country is thrown into a dilemma. The president and the Republican Party do not have a legal leg on which to stand- there is no sense in which anyone can argue that "the facts do not matter in this case." The GOP will not be able to find a credible scholar of constitutional law that will testify under oath that what the president is accused of was not an impeachable offense.

Since the facts are essential, if both sides were operating in good faith, an innocent White House would want total transparency- only a complete and honest accounting of the facts would exonerate the president. The White House would thus scrupulously honor every Congressional subpoena, and hasten the testimony of every witness that could verify the exculpatory evidence clearing the president of this offense.

Because that is not happening, there are only two possibilities. The first is that the president is not innocent, and should be removed from office. The second possibility is that the president is innocent, but is evading investigation because he is faced with a vast conspiracy stretching throughout the Democratic Party, the intelligence services, the news media, the professional bureaucracy, and elements of his own party, dedicated to distorting the facts to fabricate his guilt.

As we listen to the speeches by Republican lawmakers during the course of the impeachment inquiry, we see that this latter charge is precisely the defense of the president toward which they have been compelled. In this respect Professor Turley has done the nation a service, in that he has helped clarify what must be the Republican position if impeachment is to be credibly opposed. The clear principles of the constitution in combination with the raw facts of presidential obstruction leave open only one possible Republican defense: the presidents' accusers are liars, conspirators, (and ultimately, given the degree of contempt for the constitution that such behavior would require) rank traitors to the United States of America.

 We have seen too much evidence of Republican dispositions to doubt whether the GOP will double- and triple down on this defense in the weeks and months ahead. As Republican accusations of perfidy and treason become more strident, it will become increasingly disconcerting to watch duly elected Representatives and Senators accuse their fellow Americans of vicious and unpatriotic conspiracies in ever-more vitriolic and hyperbolic terms. I cannot offer "they know not what they do" as consolation, because that would be a lie. But I can say this- the constitution, and their allegiance to Donald Trump, leaves them no choice.

Two Things to Do Between Now and Next November (All the Rest Is Gravy)

Between the impeachment hearings, the Democratic primaries, and the accelerating chaos that has marked our domestic and foreign policy since January of 2017, the task of civic engagement can seem hopelessly complex. Whom to support? What to oppose? Can I fail to become part of the problem?

I have good news. For all people of conscience (whatever your political allegiance, but here I will particularly address my fellow Democrats), there are only two essential tasks. Succeed in these two endeavors, and you need not fear failing to have a positive impact, whatever else you may or may not accomplish. They are:

1) Repudiate Violence

This is not a call for civility. All such protests are meaningless now. When the President of the United States tells Representatives of color to "go back where they came from" and the Reverend Franklin Graham sells a children's picture book, Donald Builds the Wall, in which immigrants who have had their children taken from them on our border are allegorically represented as reptilian swamp creatures, our politics have become so obscene that all calls for civility from the right are hypocrisy, while those from the left cannot possibly be received in good faith.

But no amount of verbal or symbolic obscenity justifies physical violence. The distinction is simple: political attacks with words or ideas may be lewd, offensive, even immoral, but they are not "violent." Whatever a political opponent says, writes, or does (short of physically assaulting someone else), his or her person must be treated as sacrosanct. No invasion of someone's personal space as innocuous as a "glitter bombing" should be lauded or deemed acceptable. In politics as in kindergarten rule #1 must be "keep your hands to yourself."

Repudiating violence means abjuring violent rhetoric. Wishing harm on others may not be as bad as inflicting it, but it keeps the wheel of accelerating tension spinning and contributes to the already catastrophic disintegration of public trust. We may wish our political opponents electoral "annihilation," but not physical injury, much less "destruction." Even jokes, for example, wishing that the president suffer a heart attack exacerbate the climate of suspicion. God forbid something should happen to Donald Trump, there will be millions that refuse to accept he suffered anything but foul play.

Again, this is not about politeness or the tender feelings of the president's supporters. It is about the long-term survival of our institutions, and the short term political success of the opposition to Donald Trump and his enablers. Trump is a fundamentally anti-democratic figure. His political chances rise as the coherence and functionality of our institutions deteriorate. That is why he has sowed discord and animosity within the electorate from his first ride down the golden escalator. Trump thrives as democracy sickens, and violence is the death of democracy.

Some might object that an absolute repudiation of violence leaves Democrats vulnerable to Trump supporters who indulge in threats of "civil war." But such threats are just an extension of the kind of trolling that have become the hallmark of Trump's political brand. Certainly no one should feel the least afraid of such bluster. If Trump's supporters really express their love of the Dear Leader by attacking his opponents, we of course must and can defend ourselves.

But that is not Trump's real game. He talks and acts like a bully, but he is a shade more clever than the average schoolyard thug. Trump would like to see violence in the upcoming electoral cycle, as he welcomed it in 2016. But he would be most pleased by violence instigated by Democrats. He is so clearly corrupt and unscrupulous that his best chance is to discredit or morally compromise his opponents. He will thus try to provoke violence on the part of Democrats throughout the next year, and his provocations will become progressively more lurid and obscene as his political desperation grows. If Democrats can refuse the bait, they win. Those who spread and exemplify the message that violence is anathema thus can take pride in having fulfilled their civic duty and acted to save the Republic.

2)Stay Positive

Democracy thrives on optimism and dies in despair. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt observed, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Trump consistently makes political gains by inducing an atmosphere of anxiety and insecurity. He knows full well that his supporters, however enthusiastic, comprise a minority of the electorate, thus his best hope is to demoralize and deter his political opponents.

This is why he consistently stokes outrage and indulges in gratuitous cruelty. His observation that he could "shoot someone on fifth avenue" without losing the loyalty of his supporters was more than simple vanity, it was the cornerstone of a political strategy. He understands that the unwavering support of his followers in the face of persistent mendacity and vitriol is profoundly disheartening for his political opposition. The ordinary rules of politics seem to have been suspended, and in some sense they have been. Those outside the Trump cult reflexively hope that the next outrage will finally erode Trump's support, and as his approval ratings remain buoyant through successive transgressions against decency and common sense, many become inclined to hopelessness and malaise. This is what Trump and his enablers are depending upon in 2020.

Luckily, such a strategy can be defeated through a simple technique: remain hopeful. This is not a paean to the power of "positive thinking." Thought of course is not enough. Speech and (especially) action are what count. Trump can only win (he only ever won in the first place) by making millions of people cynical and disillusioned- he only becomes sufficiently tolerable (even to his ardent supporters) by creating the impression that the whole world is almost as corrupt and benighted as he is.

Pointing out the obvious falsehood of that lie is simple. However much venality, vulgarity, and corruption there are in the world racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia remain wrong. Murdering journalists is evil, as is taking children away from their parents. Soliciting help from a foreign power to win an election is unpatriotic. Nazis are not fine people. Most of the American people understand these basic truths, and if we stand up for them on election day in November 2020, Donald Trump will be sent home to private life. Neither the fervent obtuseness of Trump's supporters nor the vehement disagreements among his opponents can change that fact. Spreading the news, through word and deed, that Trump can be defeated will make it so, for the simple reason that it is true, and Trump's only hope lies in making people forget it.

Repudiate violence. Stay positive. If you fulfill these two tasks, you may be sure that whatever else you do will produce progress. Contribute to a political campaign. Volunteer to man phone banks or canvas neighborhoods. Raise consciousness about climate change. Rally against discriminatory immigration policies. Fight for better health care or against gun violence. Campaign against student debt. Whether you do all of these things or only one, what will make them land with positive effect are priorities #1 and 2. If we repudiate violence and stay positive, in the long run we (that is to say, the American people) will win.  

There Are Only Two Ways that this Ends

Watching or reading the breathless coverage of the impeachment inquiry playing out in the House of Representatives, one would be forgiven for imagining that it is a drama pulsating with suspense. Will the House impeach? Will the Senate convict? Tune in tomorrow for our next exciting chapter. While both questions obviously spring to mind spontaneously, their answers are almost as spontaneously obvious: Yes, and No.

With regard to the first "Yes," Donald Trump has confessed to impeachable offenses on live television.  Even if the president had not tried to coerce his Ukrainian counterpart (which he clearly did- the famous "quid pro quo" implicit in the phrase "do us a favor"), the use of his Article II powers as chief diplomat to seek help from a foreign government  against a domestic political opponent is a textbook abuse of power. Add to this his transgression of Congressional authority, his resort to bribery, and a myriad other offenses, and anyone who has the least understanding of our constitutional order knows that the House must and will pass a Bill of Impeachment.  A failure to impeach would be a gross dereliction of duty at this juncture, and arguments to the contrary by figures such as Louis Gohmert or Devin Nunes are rooted in grotesque fantasies.

But to expect this impeachment to result in Trump's removal from office would be to indulge in a fantasy just as absurd. The president still enjoys upwards of 80% approval among Republican voters in most polls. He has the power to "primary out" any Republican lawmaker that breaks ranks with him on any question, much less that of his own impeachment. Trump proved this in the case of Mark Sanford, ex-governor of South Carolina, who lost his House seat merely for suggesting that the president should be more polite. Under those conditions, expecting the 20 Republican senators that would have to vote with the Democrats in order for Trump to be removed from office to do so is wishful thinking of a delusional degree.

So if Trump must be impeached by the House but he will not be removed by the Senate, then how does this end?  To arrive at the correct range of possible answers, one must first understand that the impeachment of Donald Trump will not end in the Senate. The impeachment is not a criminal trial, it is a deliberation over Trump's fitness for office. The arguments will be laid out for and against, and they (unfortunately, given the realities of the situation) will be voted on twice: the first time by the Senate, the second time by the electorate at large, in November of 2020. The final outcome of Donald J. Trump's impeachment hinges upon this second vote.

If the electorate deems the president fit to serve despite all of his abuses of power, then we will enter a new phase of our history as a nation. The president is already willing to use his office in the unrestrained pursuit of his own personal political (and financial) interests, even though he knows he is subject to the sanction of the voters in 2020. If he passes that threshold unscathed, he will feel even more liberated and immune to the consequences of official corruption. By the middle of his second term he will be so far on the wrong side of the law that, were the courts and Congress working according to anything that resembles our regular constitutional order,  he would be subject to prosecution as soon as he left office. He will thus have to either find some way to remain president for life or undermine the normal operation of our institutions to protect himself and his family. What that would look like or how it would function could take on a number of forms (for example, disenfranchising voters of color by various means so as to guarantee that his successor would be a cat's paw), but one could be sure that it would entail the end of the Republic as we know it.

Alternatively, the impeachment of Donald Trump could result in his removal from office, only belatedly. If voters send Trump home in 2020, along with several of the Republican senators that voted for his acquittal, the constitutional order will have (eventually) operated as it was originally designed. Whether the administration that replaces Trump's will enjoy more success in managing policy, foreign and domestic, is an open question. But at least such a transition would guarantee the Republic in the abstract a new lease on life.

We have lived through periods like this before: when large groups of Americans gave their support to movements like the KKK or McCarthyism. The voters who are supporting Trump are expressing a similar willingness to trade away constitutional safeguards in pursuit of what they perceive to be urgent political ends (curtailing immigration, banning abortion, cutting taxes, etc.). The previous movements that presaged Trumpism failed, and the constitutional order persisted. But none of those earlier movements had managed to capture the White House.

The stakes of Trump's impeachment are thus very high. If Trump is not ultimately removed from office his subversion of the constitution will be made permanent, and the American experiment in democracy will effectively end. But that outcome does not hinge on what happens in the Senate. It will be decided, once and for all, at the ballot box in November of 2020.

Reading the Democrats

Takeaway from the Democratic Debate:

1)Warren remains the strongest candidate to beat Trump. She has energy, smarts, a clear message and a strong program. She is a living embodiment of what I think of as the Doug Jones principle. Jones got African-American voters (particularly African-American women) to come out and give him a win in Alabama because his life story gave them confidence that he would serve their interests. He had taken political and personal risks in prosecuting the white supremacist terrorists that had murdered young girls in Birmingham. Past actions are the best predictors of future behavior- voters are always looking in a candidate's life story for some sign that this person will fulfill some of the promises that all candidates make to "stand for voters like you." Workers in the industrial Midwest will look at Warren's record fighting against corporate and financial interests and believe that she is on their side. That is precisely the constituency that will make up the deficit that lost Hillary the election in 2016. Forget about Warren's gender- workers aren't that stupid. At least, the ones who are that stupid are going to vote for Trump whomever the Dems nominate, so it makes sense to nominate someone that will appeal to the workers that are reachable.

2)The strongest ticket is a Warren-Harris or Warren-Klobuchar ticket. Putting two women on the ticket will generate "controversy" that will help the Dems draw some media focus away from the constant circus surrounding Trump. But there are lots of strong combinations in the current field. Klobuchar-Harris, Klobuchar-Buttigieg, Klobuchar-Booker, Booker-Buttigieg, yada yada yada.

3)Any Democrat that runs a strong campaign can beat Trump. That said, the two most vulnerable are Sanders and Biden. Sanders has too much baggage from his past- his public image is much too easy to reshape. Maybe I am overestimating the gullibility of the electorate, but if the swift boating of John Kerry is any gauge, the footage of Sanders hugging Castro, trash-talking Israel, etc. is going to sink him if he ever gets the nomination.

4)Biden is a potential train wreck. I love Joe, I was charmed when he had the "no, you're not Putin" moment with Sanders last night, I liked that he called BS on Gabbard's "regime change war." But in his best days he was a semi-articulate gaffe machine, and his best days are long past. He will allow Trump to run EXACTLY the kind of campaign the Troll-in-Chief likes- full of puerile insults and trash talk about verbal flubs. It will be "I voted for the money before I voted against it" X10. He could still pull it off, but only if a)He recovers something that looks a little better than his old "A game"; b)He has a young, dynamic, female running mate (calling VP Klobuchar, Abrams, or Harris).

5)Tulsi Gabbard is a GOP/Russian mole, or might as well be. Almost every word out of her mouth helped Troll last night. The "regime change war" that she kept repeating was the worst but not the only example. "Regime change war"? Iraq yes, Syria- NO! We did not start the Syrian civil war- it began as an authentic grass-roots movement against the Assad regime, which militarized only AFTER Assad's government responded with deadly force to the protests of its own citizens. Calling it a "regime change war" (i.e. implying that the Syrian people rose up against Assad only because we the USA put them up to it) is to parrot Assad regime/Russian propaganda. Gabbard obviously went into that debate determined to throw the apple of discord among her fellow Democrats and bring the whole show down. Whether she was doing it out of her own conviction or at someone else's behest (hello Donald? Vlad? Mr. Koch?) is anybody's guess.

As Hong Kong Goes, So Goes China...and the World

The news that a protester in Hong Kong was shot today during protests set to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China bodes ill for a positive resolution to the crisis that has roiled the city in recent months. Observers around the world should be concerned. Though the government in Beijing portrays the conflict as a domestic affair with only local ramifications, the stakes in Hong Kong are very high for the people of all of China and, by extension, the entire world.

The most obvious indication that this is true is the extraordinary forbearance that Beijing has exercised in its response to the Hong Kong protesters. One need only look at how the Chinese government has responded to protests in Xinjiang and Tibet to know that its policy in Hong Kong falls far outside of the norm. This is not meant to credit Beijing with special virtue in the current case. Rather, it is a sign that Xi Jinping and his government recognize the need to tread carefully in Hong Kong. The behavior of both sides in this crisis, in fact, is conditioned by the same overarching reality: Hong Kong has been both an asset and a liability to the Chinese Communist Party since the former British colony was repatriated to China in 1997.

Hong Kong has been a key asset to the PRC in economic terms. Since the early 20th century, Hong Kong has been one of the freest and most stable capital markets in the world, making it a key financial center for all of East Asia. Billions of investment dollars flow through Hong Kong each year, and the Hong Kong economy itself is a major generator of commercial and industrial wealth. In 1997, Hong Kong's economy made up 17% of the Gross Domestic Product of the entire People's Republic of China, despite the fact that Hong Kong's 6 million people made up only .5% of the PRC's population. Beyond this, because back then the Chinese Renminbi could not be used in international commerce, Hong Kong's financial markets were a key source of vital "hard currency" for the PRC fisc.

It is for this reason that Beijing initially agreed to the "one country, two systems" principle that it set as the terms for Hong Kong being re-integrated into Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Chinese Communist leaders recognized that any attempt to institute new economic and political controls in Hong Kong would injure the fragile financial ecosystem that made the city such a dynamic center of investment and trade. A desire to refrain from "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" has restrained Beijing from meddling aggressively in the internal affairs of Hong Kong.

But though this made Hong Kong a vital economic asset, it also made the city a dangerous political liability. Allowing the city to self-regulate meant assenting to its citizens having freedoms of expression, religious participation, and social association that are enjoyed nowhere else in China.  For example, where the Tiananmen Square democracy movement of 1989 is a taboo subject the mention of which is severely punished in mainland China, in Hong Kong the event is still memorialized by candlelight vigils every year on the June 4 anniversary of the massacre that killed thousands of protesters at the orders of Beijing's leaders. As travel and trade between Hong Kong and mainland China become more frequent and as mainland citizens become exposed to more print, broadcast, and digital media coming out of Hong Kong, the freedoms of expression enjoyed in Hong Kong become an increasingly worrisome source of resentment and potential unrest for Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing.

Thus, though for twenty years Beijing has wanted to conserve the material benefits of Hong Kong's unique economy, it has simultaneously desired to bring Hong Kong's unruly political discourse into line with that of the larger PRC. Moreover, as China's economy has grown relative to that of Hong Kong, the economic constraints on Beijing's actions have grown weaker, and correspondingly its perception of the relative urgency of the political liabilities posed by Hong Kong has intensified. Right now the percentage share  of Hong Kong's GDP has shrunk to  1.5 % that of the entire People's Republic of China. This still makes Hong Kong a very wealthy city relative to its population, but it no longer occupies the dominant position it once did in the Chinese economy as a whole.

It is perhaps for this reason more than any other that the Chinese Communist Party has moved, incrementally but persistently in recent years, to exert progressively greater control over Hong Kong society and political culture. The new extradition law that Beijing tried to impose upon Hong Kong in March, which would have given PRC authorities the power to extradite residents to mainland China for a host of activities that had never previously been criminal offenses in Hong Kong, was the latest in a series of measures aimed at extending Beijing's power and curtailing Hong Kong's autonomy. The explosive response to these incursions (some protest have drawn almost one third of Hong Kong's 7.4 million residents into the street) was driven, in part, by a recognition that Hong Kong's economic clout is waning relative to that of the larger PRC. The current moment may be the last in which Beijing will be more motivated to preserve Hong Kong's wealth and productivity (a motive that has been enhanced by the threat of Donald Trump's trade war to China's overall GDP) than it is to clamp down on dangerous political dissent. The protesters have thus taken enormous risks in what they perceive (most likely correctly) as a last, "do-or-die" effort to secure permanent guarantees of Hong Kong's relative freedom and autonomy.

Though the Hong Kong protesters are no doubt chiefly motivated by the interests of their community, their families, and themselves, Beijing is incorrect in representing this as a conflict with merely local consequences. What the protesters are fighting for in Hong Kong is not only better for Hong Kong, but for the people of China in general. Beijing has been trying to make Hong Kong more like the rest of China, but this overlooks the fact that the very prosperity which has emboldened PRC leaders to take a strong hand against Hong Kong has been fostered by making the rest of the PRC more like Hong Kong. In the years since 1980 the People's Republic has seen a miraculous surge in economic growth through the steady removal of restrictions on work, trade, expression, and communication. For that rising tide of prosperity to continue, the expanding trend of economic, cultural, and political liberalization must likewise progress.

If Beijing moves to violently repress the protests in Hong Kong, the effects will be severe and long-term. Much of the financial wealth in Hong Kong itself, which is underwritten by the city's importance as a finance hub, will disappear overnight. Moreover, without the confidence that Hong Kong and its institutions give international investors as an entry point for China's larger capital markets, much of the recent growth that mainland China has enjoyed will slow or reverse. Finally, violent repression in Hong Kong will create a general climate of fear and pessimism that will infect the entire Chinese economy, crippling entrepreneurial initiative and dampening the confidence necessary for future growth.

We are at a crucial inflection point. The protesters in Hong Kong are lighting the way forward. If they can prevail, the foundations for sustained prosperity in China may be laid that could fully restore the central place China once occupied in the global economy. If the protests are put down, the resulting economic injury will reverse years of progress, creating a receding tide that will lower all boats, not merely in China but throughout East Asia and beyond that, the entire world.

Impeachment vs. Trumpism

The release this week of the formal texts of both the whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump and one of the White House's own memoranda outlining the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy necessitate a Bill of Impeachment against the president of the United States. Those who have or might criticize Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as being too precipitate in launching an impeachment inquiry are clearly in the wrong. If only the whistleblower's complaint (or the rumor of it) were public there might be some substance to the charge that the Democratic caucus is moving too fast or in biased fashion, but in the combination of the two documents we have both a list of very serious allegations against Donald Trump and evidence that he himself has provided to substantiate these charges. There is no doubt that Congress is bound by its Article I constitutional duties to review the president's fitness for office.

The fact that we must even pause to question whether this last statement is true underscores two of the most salient and potently corrosive aspects of the political movement that may be called "Trumpism." Much of Trumpism is deeply contingent and potentially ephemeral, rooted in the cult of personality around Trump himself or in cultural trends such as racism, both of which may wane naturally over time as conditions change.  But two aspects of Trumpism are firmly systemic, and are being progressively more ingrained into the culture and structure of our politics the longer Trump remains in office. Through his capture of the Republican party machinery and his ability to force elected Republican officials to align themselves with him on a day-by-day basis, he is institutionalizing new norms of political engagement that will be difficult to correct even if and when he should leave office, and which in and of themselves argue for the urgency of an impeachment process. Enumerated, these two principles of Trumpism are:

1) All politics are binary, and are zero sum

This principle flows from the foundation of Trumpism in racism and the cult of personality surrounding Trump himself. Trump's message that Latin@s, blacks, "uppity" women, and Muslims were the perpetrators of "American carnage" was appealing to millions of voters who were struggling economically, fearful of "others," and increasingly aware of demographic change.  His willingness to give full voice to those fears in defiance of current standards of decency and common courtesy made him appear courageous and resolute in the eyes of his followers.

A trend toward polarization in American society was already well underway before Trump took office, but the particular rhetoric ("build that wall!"; "send her back!") and policy pursuits (separation of migrant families, crowding of migrants into concentration camps along the southern border) of Trumpism has created a newly radical politics of bifurcation and animosity. The decision to take a child away from her parents, for example, admits to no gray areas: either one "understands" the righteousness of such an action or is taking a stand alongside an enemy so dangerous that they must be contained even in childhood. A person taking such a stand, even if they are a fellow US citizen, must be dangerously deluded. Anyone who cannot see Donald Trump's wisdom and virtue in pursuing his policy is likewise crippled by bias. There can be no "loyal opposition" under such circumstances. Opposition is necessarily treason.We can see this principle at work in the Republican response to the imminent impeachment of Donald Trump.

By contrast to this article of Trumpist faith, the existence of and the necessity to operate with some degree of deference to the perceptions and expectations of the loyal opposition is foundational to any functional democracy. If one proceeds from the assumption that 1)power will be given to the people; and 2)the people will not always agree; then the maintenance of at least some trust between factions in and out of power is essential. What President Trump has admitted to doing in the case of Ukraine is an impeachable offense because it flies in the face of this basic requirement of democratic governance.  He has shattered any chance for trust between his administration and the political opposition.

Why is this so? Firstly, one must understand that in any democracy suspicion of one's political opponents, especially those that hold power, is entirely natural and expected. Every president in US history, from George Washington on, has been subject to intense scrutiny and (sometimes paranoid) suspicion. It is incumbent upon all presidents to operate in a way that constrains suspicion and fosters trust.

This makes foreign policy an especially sensitive area. Foreign governments and citizens come under none of the obligations of elected officials here in the US, their probity and judgment will never be held directly accountable to the voters of the US. Foreign affairs thus provides all US officials, but especially the president (whose special purview is setting foreign policy) with an opportunity to "end run" the restraints of normal domestic politics. Foreign governments are free to attack US citizens (if given permission and the right incentives) with none of the consequences that might be suffered by an official here in the US (or that they might suffer if they aimed the same attack at one of their own citizens).

Enlisting a foreign government to attack one's own political opponents is thus a total abrogation of the duties of the presidency, as it is a complete abandonment of any pretense that the suspicions of the loyal opposition must be respected. It is analogous to bringing a revolver into a boxing ring. No one who saw their opponent waving a pistol at them could possibly expect that the rules of boxing would be respected. By the same logic, no one who sees what Donald Trump himself has admitted to can doubt that the rules of democracy have been abandoned.

If Donald Trump had used domestic channels to press this case against Biden (spreading the story through the press, referring it to his AG for investigation) he would no doubt have come under criticism, but virtually no one would have contemplated impeachment on that account. Outsourcing the smearing of Joe Biden to the government of the Ukraine (irrespective of the truth of any allegations against Biden) is the politics of autocracy. By displacing the scrutiny of Biden into an arena in which he has massive influence (through his control of aid money to Ukraine) and US voters have none, Trump is exercising the prerogatives of a dictator and abandoning the duties of a president.

In the response of Republican politicians to the charges against Trump we can see just how perilously Trumpism eats away at the basic tenets of democracy. Dismissals of the case for impeachment take two basic various forms. Some arguments focus on the substance of the allegations against Joe Biden, or the asserted equivalency between what Trump did and what Biden and/or other Democrats have done. Other arguments seize upon technicalities, such as whether Trump ever offered his Ukrainian president an explicit quid pro quo. None of these arguments acknowledge the fact that from the standpoint of our constitutional order, what Trump did was acutely wrong in absolute and essential terms. The Democrats having done similar things is a case of many wrongs not creating a right. A search for technical excuses is analogous to arguing that a car thief should be excused because they behaved traffic laws very scrupulously.

In the final analysis, all of the Republican defenses of Trump boil down to an embrace of this central tenet of Trumpism: the president does not have to respect and maintain the trust of the loyal opposition because there is no such animal. The government does not contain two parties that disagree vehemently on many key issues but that are united in the service of a common national interest. Rather, it contains two factions, the one aligned with Trump being right, the other being wrong, only one of which may win. Under those circumstances opposition is necessarily treason, thus the aspect of democratic governance that compels Trump's impeachment is negated, and those calling for impeachment become doubly treasonous.


2)Institutions are to be weaponized, and are disposable.

Our constitutional order rests on the principle that the functioning and survival of governing institutions is an end and a good unto itself. The institutions exist in a state of dynamic tension with the principles that they are intended to serve. The courts, for example, exist to pursue justice. But since the courts are staffed by fallible human beings, giving them unlimited power would subvert justice and ultimately destroy the courts themselves. They must thus be constrained by rules and protocols that limit their power and occasionally even inhibit their efficiency in the cause of justice, but which are essential to sustaining their viability in the long term.

The presidency is designed along the same lines, and Trump's actions regarding Ukraine violated this stricture and breached the basic parameters of his office. His solicitation of Ukraine's assistance in smearing Joe Biden was illegitimate on its face, but his determination to use Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to carry out this policy compounded the illegitimacy of his scheme. If Trump had used the State Department and the ambassadorial channel to make these overtures, he would still have been acting like a petty despot, but he would at least have been submitting his actions to official and public scrutiny. His choice to use his Attorney General (a radical subversion of the independence of the Justice Department) and personal lawyer expressed a determination to keep his actions out of the public eye and ensure that his powers could be used in the unimpeded pursuit of his own political interests.

Republicans' refusal to even acknowledge these breaches of constitutional regulation evince the high degree to which they have been corrupted by Trumpism's radical debasement of the value and austerity of our institutions. No institution is worth preserving for its own sake in Trump's world. Everything is about the zero sum contest in which Trump himself is constantly engaged, thus the organs of government are never simply working, they are either "winning" or "losing" on his behalf. Since "winning" is the only acceptable option (the stakes being "winner take all"), any and all means necessary to that end must be employed, even if they entail the subversion or even the destruction of the institution being employed.

This can be seen in the frequency with which Trump is willing to impeach the integrity and the basic governing competence of key institutions: the Federal Reserve, the Attorney General's Office, FBI, the CIA, the Directorate of National Intelligence, etc. Any office that, in the current moment, is working against Trump's perceived interests is condemned as irredeemably corrupt, ineffective, or illegitimate. Republican officials who are determined to remain aligned with the White House are compelled to assent to his views, and throw offices and officials under the bus without regard to any factor but their degree of loyalty to Trump.

This orientation, of course, flows from the same dimensions of Trumpism that negate the legitimacy of any loyal political opposition. Since Trump is "our" champion against an ultimately menacing enemy, the value of any institution at any given moment can only and ever be assessed by reference to the ongoing battle. If "we" lose, the continued existence of the CIA or the Justice Department will not matter in the slightest, thus the rules by which these institutions operate may be bent to any degree, up to and beyond the point that the institutions themselves are destroyed, so long as the final victory is secured.

In the final analysis, the need to impeach Trump flows from the inevitable consequences of Trumpism's influence. The logic of Trumpism can only lead to one of two ends, both of which entail the end of democracy. The first is autocracy and single-party rule. One can only maintain the pretense of a "winner takes all" contest so long before the winner must, finally, take all. Thus constitutional government will eventually be discarded (through mechanisms such as voter suppression and abuse of presidential power) as the GOP is forced to bring the practical operation of government into line with the logic of its ideology. Failing that, even if the Democrats do take the White House once more, unless the hold of Trumpism on the GOP is broken, governance will be impossible. A political field in which the behavior and rhetoric of Donald Trump and those assisting him has been normalized will preclude the pursuit of any policy goals by constitutional means. None of the basic negotiations of democracy can be carried out in a world where total victory is the only legitimate goal and the assumption of good faith on the part of one's opponent is treason. One way or another, as Trumpism thrives the Republic as it was originally designed must fall.

Impeaching Trump is thus not a matter of principle, but an existential imperative. Passing a Bill of Impeachment will almost certainly fail to result in the president's removal from office. Once impeachment is initiated, Trump will be tried in the Senate, and can only be removed by a 2/3 vote of that body. For that threshold to be reached, 20 Republican senators would have to cross party lines. Given the hold that Trump has on the Republican electorate, it is very unlikely that so many senators will exhibit such a high degree of political courage.

But even if an impeachment effort is destined to fail, it is a first indispensable step to countering the toxic influence of Trumpism on our national politics. Trump and his supporters must be held to account institutionally. Let Republican senators vote in defiance of the constitution, and then let them explain to the voters the "logic" behind their actions. If the GOP can be made to pay a political cost for its ideological errors, there is a chance that our national discourse can be steered away from the cliff over which it is poised to tumble.

Even if there is a chance that the GOP will retain congressional control in the wake (or as a result) of an impeachment fight, that does not argue against the wisdom of impeachment. Any election that the Democrats win because, in this moment and under the current conditions, they refrain from impeaching the president, would be a resounding victory for Trumpism. Such an outcome would be a defeat for democracy, and thus ultimately a defeat for all Americans, whatever their party affiliation. If our Republic is to have a chance, someone must fight for the principle that everything is not reducible to politics, that some dimensions of our constitutional order transcend partisan concerns. If no one will defend this proposition then, even if Trump himself is defeated, Trumpism wins.