Both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Abdullahi Omar mouthing controversial concepts presumably to get as much publicity for them as possible. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

But it’s faulty logic and they better stop spouting that nonsense out. They like the sound of their voices and they like to create stirs, none of which will do the Democratic effort any good. It will be harmful when the real players rise to the spotlight, players she won’t be a part of. AOC is a figurehead for the reaction against everything Trump stands for but it’s an overreaction and those that rise to the top for the Democratic nod for 2020 will not buy into any of it.

Mueller. The reality is that (it seems) Mueller’s findings didn’t rise to the level of being criminal. Well, OK. Fair enough. But as numerous pundits have observed, there is a lot of space between criminal and unethical, immoral, amoral, unprincipled, unscrupulous and dishonorable. Things that Trump is famous for. So Mueller said he didn’t did anything criminal but he also said things in the space might be there. Presumably he laid out things that might be there (which I’m sure Barr neglected to point out).

Therefore, the congress and the public have an absolute right to have a look at the pure essence of Mueller. What they (we) got was an “interpretation” by a very loyal Trump flunkie with a history of dissing anything Mueller came up with before he came up with it. I would trust the current Attorney General about as far as I’d trust Charlie Manson. Let’s see it all and let’s explore the space just under “criminal”. If the Republicans like to shout that it’s just politics, that’s fine. Now let’s have a look at all the 400 pages. Particularly the parts about what was in Cohen’s office when they raided it.

No, Trump’s base doesn’t care but it needs to come out anyway. A lot of other people care.  Mueller’s revelations may not make a seismic blast, but they will be noticed. And the more reasonable voters that can be convinced that despite the good economy, Trump is a very, very, very bad person at every level and a totally incompetent leader, the better. Chipping away at his base, the ones that voted for him for reasons they would come to regret, is the best chance of getting rid of him in 2020. Yes, his base has a molten core that applauds all of it and listens only to what comes out the end of his phone. But there are also a lot of voters that voted for him specifically because they thought he could “drain the swamp” as an outsider (very faulty logic indeed) and they hated Hillary more. But since 2016, Trump continues to act out in a fashion that alienates him from more and more potential voters. And Hillary isn’t running anymore.

Remember also that the Republicans have NOTHING resembling a health care plan and they will not be able to construct anything workable by the time primaries roll around. You can definitely take that to the bank and a sniff of the 2018 mid-terms was about health care. You can bet ALL of the primaries for 2020 will be about health care. Republicans moving to kill the ACA, putting over 20 million out of health care and nothing to replace it? Really?

So the combination of Trump acting out, the Republicans continuing to insist of a wall that will be expensive out of proportion to benefit among many other atrocities AND the lack of a health care plan will at least make it a possibility that he will be un-electable. Economists also saying that the bull market won’t last indefinitely. The Democrats have a huge advantage simply by extending Medicare and Medicaid to everyone. Very, very expensive but a game winner since the opposition has nothing.

All the Dems have to do now is come up with a credible candidate that can, unlike all the Republican candidates of 2016, stand up to the withering personal TV blows of Trump. Can Biden do that? Maybe. But Biden has luggage and a lot of it. Plus he’s what they now say is an old white man, no longer much credible in todays world of emerging young women. As an old white man myself, I know exactly how that works.

I think in the end, Biden will fizzle as will Bernie as he did in 2016. What’s going to float to the top is one of those females. Pete Buttigieg is a very smart guy with a lot of interesting things to say. I saw Charlie Rose interview him for a full hour years ago and I was incredibly impressed with him then. Speaks multiple languages, Rhodes Scholar, military history. In another world, he would be a strong candidate but in this world, I doubt a gay candidate can win.

It’s gonna be a female that rises to the top. An anti-Hillary, maybe, and it will be pretty quick. Many of those would-be candidates will disappear very quickly when the money gets tight.

Ha!  Big deal meeting between Sec. Nielsen and Trump April 7 in which virtually every pundit predicted she was out, probably unceremoniously. Terse Twitter thanking her for her service. Unclear whether she was formally fired or allowed to resign.

I remember her for her June explanation of the nastiness involving separation of families at the border and kids in cages. The shit-for-brains press secretary who usually defends shit-for-brains Trump with a perfectly straight face wasn’t having any of that shit and informed the press that Sec. Nielsen was making a special trip by air to explain the shit and she (as press secretary) wasn’t having any part of it. She then walked off the podium as Nielsen took the microphone with a smarmy smile to blame the victims. If they hadn’t shown up at the border, they wouldn’t be separated.

So the experts are saying several things. That Trump is actively searching for yes-men, with emphasis on “men” and the job of homeland security is an impossible one for a human to do. So yes-man will follow yes-man, all with sycophantic bullshit to delay the inevitable. And in the immortal words of sub-human activist Stephen Miller, trump needs “tougher” administrators. Miller is perfect for any trump job. Completely heartless and cruel.

The same pundits, almost without exception exclaimed absolutely no sympathy for her. She tried to be a “yes girl” for Trump but in a job that couldn’t be done by a human. She smiled nervously as he routinely publicly embarrassed her, demanded she do impossible jobs then blamed her when it couldn’t be done. I wonder if she’ll write a letter explaining how she couldn’t meet the requirements of the President and so had to resign.

I’ll give Nielsen the benefit of a small doubt that Trump fired her because she had a molecule of integrity. More likely she was a fawning sycophant that ran to the length of her usefulness to Trump.

4.8.2019

DWC