Prognostications I’m going to call it early: Trump will be re-elected in 2020. And if he is, very likely Pence will follow in 2024. It doesn’t matter if the Democrats re-take the House and Senate – either or both – in the midterms in November. In fact, even if they do, we can expect nothing from them. Their efforts at investigations will come to little or nothing. If they persue impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh, it will come to nothing. There are too many Democrats who don’t vote with their party or who would fear a Trump-aligned challenge in the next election cycle. They might protect the Affordable Care Act, what’s left of it, but they’ll never get through the reforms it needs to bring about universal health care. They’ll never get through gun control. They’ll be treading water for two years and with the re-election of Trump will be back in the outer darkness. The Republicans have broken the country. The appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seals their grip on power for a generation. Worse, Ruth Bader Ginsberg will soon retire, and that’s going to leave Trump another seat and a 6-3 majority in the Court. Breyer’s 80, so he’ll go, too, and that’s 7-2. Forget dissent. There won’t be anything meaningful. What brought this about? Is it the state of the nation, the income inequality, the institutional racism, the backlash movements these and toxic masculinity have brought, leading to knee-jerk reactions? Is it purely political? If it’s just politics, when did it start? Maybe you could say it started with Nixon, and the resignation of a President before he could be impeached, and the Republican revenge enacted against Clinton that didn’t see his downfall. (Yes, he was bad, in many ways, including his sexual abuse of his power, his financial “reforms” that gave us 2008, chief among them.) Maybe it only started with Obama, and the Republican leaderships’ distaste at having an African American lead the nation. What are the Democrats going to do about 2020? Put up Cory Booker, another black man? Kristin Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren, another woman? Doesn’t matter. The fact is that Trump goes from strength to strength, whether he accomplishes anything or not. North Korea? Doesn’t matter, his base love the noise he brings. Same with the destruction of civil liberties the Supreme Court will oversee. More black lives lost? Trumpets are fine with it, even Kanye West. More families destroyed in detentions and deportations. You know they want the wall, right? Climate change? That’s not real. LGBTI rights stripped away just when things were looking up? They weren’t, they won’t be, get back in the closet. Abortion? You know that’s gone. Welcome to the Handmaid’s Tale. I miss Howard Dean’s 50-State strategy. The only way America can ever hope to return to any measure of progressivism is to work its way back up all the way from the bottom. States have to turn blue, not just purple. Court-based activism is going to be a long struggle, so gerrymandering has to be eliminated as an option, voter registration is going to have to be opened up, and the greater care in each of these is going to be required that the current state governments will need for where they’ll be going on abortion, LGBTI rights, etc., because the court challenges will mount up and they will reach the Supreme Court and they will get knocked back. America, you’re fucked. Sorry, but you did it to yourselves, as usual, and now you’re going to live with it for a very long time.

Omnibus Obamacare repeal down again, but don’t be fooled. The Senate Republicans will keep trying, because if they can’t undo everything Obama ever did, their donors will reckon them as failures and give the money to someone else. Until then, the House will continue to prioritize legislating against women’s health, because they’re already proven what losers they are, notably in regard to over 200 failed votes to repeal the ACA. Trump’s bankrupt golf course in Puerto Rico leads him to revenge himself on the island by pretending it’s so remote as to make even the US Navy helpless, plus of course he would: Puerto Ricans aren’t white enough are they even part of America? Build a wall! Watch for a Ten Commandments monument on the Washington Mall, now that we have one more crazed religious zealot in the Senate. Seriously, how does this man keep going? Fuelled on hate like Trump, but couldn’t even get Comrade Oompa-Loompa’s endorsement. Just because you don’t like what someone says, Jeff, doesn’t mean it isn’t legitimate or anything less than the same free speech you’d be applauding if you agreed with it. And if you really want to stand up for freedom of speech, you might want to try facing up to it, instead of hiding in your own echo chamber. Animal cruelty isn’t art. You want to comment on animal cruelty, o.k., or whatever your statement is intended to be, but being cruel yourself just makes you a monster, not an artist. If no prosecutions arise from the actions of Equifax executives in the lead-up to the revelation they’d been massively hacked, the system isn’t working. Yes, Comrade President, your fight with the NFL is over race alone. Australians will bet on anything. We are a gambling-crazy nation. Meanwhile, there is no valid argument against allowing same-sex couples to marry. Freedom of speech? No, shut up. I mean, no, you can say what you want, but you cannot deny someone the same rights you have because you don’t have the same sexual preference. Family and children? What about older couples, infertile couples, couples who choose not to have children, or to adopt? Would you legislate against them marrying? Then you can’t legislate against same-sex couples marrying. “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”? That’s not an argument; it’s a slogan. Tradition? Tradition used to involve marrying children. We’re not doing that anymore. Tradition changes. But their sex is yucky? All sex is yucky. Grow up. Enough. Whew.\

2020 Foresight It is a serious mistake to underestimate either the likelihood that Trump will run or his chances for re-election, as we learned to our cost in the last election. Making fun of him or his supporters is entertaining, but it will not get a more reasonable person in the White House or a different political distribution in the House or Senate. Opposition to Trump must assume he will complete his term of office and that he will run for re-election. Opposition to the Republicans must assume that Republican governors and legislatures around the country will do whatever they can to suppress voting and shape electoral districts to their advantage. If we want to take back the White House and Congress, we have to start locally and build. We have to take back municipalities, and the states. We have to have not just viable candidates, but compelling candidates.

The American Oligarchy I’ve just finished an article about Putin’s oligarchs, and I’ve got to say the correlation to Trump is patently obvious. Reading this article explained why Trump wanted to be President and his admiration of Putin. Sure, he’s a cheeto-faced fascist, as corrupt as the day is long, but being President gives him everything he needs to enrich himself in ways he’s never been able to use before. Whereas in the past Trump’s various businesses were subject to lawsuits and bankruptcy and profitable on the basis of stiffing his contractors and reneging on debts, now he makes money hand over fist, profiting from everyone who wants to do business with the US. Putin’s oligarchs operate outside of government, it’s true, but profit from it, and if Putin isn’t salting away his dictator’s portion of the proceeds, it would only be with the expectation of the payoff when he has to step aside. Trump is his own oligarch, along with many of his Cabinet of conmen, and the Republicans in Congress are more than happy to have it that way. They and their friends benefit, too, if less directly. Even if the current lawsuit against Trump based on the emoluments clause is successful, he is likely to continue his self-enrichment, but more in line with the Putin oligarchic model. Unless at some point even the Republicans have to acknowledge his corruption, based on some final act so egregious it cannot be ignored – like shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue – he will serve his full term, possibly – even probably – be re-elected, and drag the US into an unethical morass it may not be able to recover from, all to benefit himself and the monstrous children he’s engendered.

Covfefe Stroke.

Emoluments Trump has been here before (and failed) and may try again, through Joo Kim Tiah, a Malaysia developer, with two hotels in Australia already – neither of which is planned to be branded with the Cheeto-faced fascist’s name in the immediate future. But if Mr Tiah wants to “know the sentiment of the Australian people or their mood”, I’d say there are no small number of them who would gleefully welcome the Pumpkin Fuhrer having a larger orange profile here, and many more who would take the opportunity to protest, boycott, and otherwise ensure it became an opportunity to deride and denigrate the Swamp Thing currently occupying the White House. In regard to whether pressuring foreign leaders to open their countries to Trump businesses constitutes corruption or not, yes, it very well may be, as it amounts to Trump being enriched and open then to influence by those same foreign governments, whether they hire prostitutes to urinate on him or not. And now that I know Trump and his fellow swamp-dweller Rex Tillerson are involved in BHP Billiton, I’m out, and hope others follow. Their pledges “to divest” aren’t worth the noxious fumes expelled from their lungs to make the statement.

More Elliott Richardson's Congratulations Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General of the United States, for standing against Donald Trump's white supremacy, anti-establishment clause executive order.

Death and Disability Of course Monster-in-Chief-elect Donald Trump wants a review of vaccination, he doesn’t believe in vaccines. But there’s more to it: who will go unvaccinated? Children of the rich who can afford to keep their children away from those of the dirty poor as well as the increased cost of health care if they do fall ill, and the children of the poor and ill-informed sufficiently frightened away from vaccination as a result of the lies people like Trump peddle – and these latter are the ones most likely to end up most adversely affected, disabled or dead. Never forget: Donald Trump and the Republicans think being poor, sick, or elderly is a moral failing, deserving only the wrath of God, never any compassion from fellow humans. Vaccinations, especially anything paid for or subsidised by the government, is not something poor people should have, and Trump and his GOP majority flunkies will do everything they can to legitimise taking it away.

Time for Change Time magazine has continued it’s “person of the year tradition”, a practice that may need review, given the selection this year - yes, an obvious choice, as was their selection in 1938.

Trumped Up It's going to be a long four years, but I don't think it'll be eight. The danger in 2020 is Pence, a man who believes you can "pray away the gay" and has nothing but contempt for women and minorities. Unlike his boss, Pence can give the appearance of being reasonable, and a lot of people will fall for it. We'll face that hurdle when it comes, however, and I hope we'll have a better candidate then. Meanwhile, farewell Obamacare, it was nice for millions while it lasted, but now you're uninsured again. Time to buy stock in health insurance companies, as their revenues will skyrocket on the increased premiums they'll charge. Farewell any chance of a left-leaning Supreme Court. There's one vacancy already, and Kennedy, Bader Ginsburg, and Breyer are over 80 or getting there. That's going to be a problem for equal rights, voting rights, and campaign funding reform. The House and Senate have, effectively, a rubber stamp in the White House, so we can expect them to try on many bad plans, including tax cuts to increase income and wealth disparity, defunding Planned Parenthood, cutting welfare, gutting Social Security and Medicare, and generally driving the economy into the ground. Would we have done better with Sanders? I doubt it. We might have done better at getting out the vote if the Democrats had put up someone other than Clinton, but her candidacy was pretty much inevitable after 2008. Any who stayed home or went third party because Clinton beat Sanders were foolish, and while you can say that Johnson took votes from Trump, that ignores a lot of one of the things wrong with many liberal voters: they think "libertarian" candidates are more liberal than they actually are. Look at the support Rand Paul gets. A competitive third party wouldn't be a bad thing, but they aren't. They siphon votes and voters we need. I won't be putting my American passport into the post to the State Department. I sure as hell will be supporting the Democrats still in Congress and in the mid-terms in 2018. This fight's just getting started.

You Break It, You Bought It Should the Republican Party stop funding Trump's campaign? Why? They made him, they own him. The Republicans have spent decades on increasing wealth and income disparity, increasing racial tension, and increasing the size and scope of the police militarisation the outcomes of which we see play out nearly daily in our news. They are the party of Trump. Besides, it's not as if they have to spend all that much, as the compliant media give him all the free air he needs to bury himself and his party at the general election, or to gain the White House, for that matter, the latter being an outcome I suspect many in the media would welcome, as it would ensure lots of click-bait and airtime teasers to capture eyeballs.

Mouth Agape So it’s Trump. Wow. Just how batshit crazy are the Republicans? Well, their 17 candidates were a pretty crazy slate to begin with. Another Bush? Sure, why not. Just because the first one was a nonentity voted out after one term and the next was a disaster of economic destruction and illegal war, that doesn’t mean the next one won’t be the good one. “Oops” Perry, “Can’t-Google-Him” Santorum, “Pyramids” Carson, “College-Boy-Ignorance” Paul, “Lucifer” Cruz . . . name one of the candidates for the Republican nomination that wasn’t, at best, a hold-your-nose-and-choose choice. I never thought he’d last past the initial paperwork filing, let alone go the distance. Even though, as of today, it’s still possible the convention could be contested, it’s increasingly unlikely. At this point, all the candidates who haven’t actually withdrawn can still keep garnering delegates and deny Trump the outright majority he needs, but it’s more likely that GOP voters will shrug and pull the lever for The Donald, and he’ll roll into Cleveland unopposed. I never thought enough people could be that stupid, but forgot just how easy it can be for hucksters – political or not – to run their cons. And regardless of how serious Trump takes himself and how gullibly the public takes up his policy proposals, they are cons. Mexico isn’t going to pay for Trump’s wall and he isn’t going to build one. A Republican majority in the House and Senate will present a bill to repeal Obamacare and he will sign it, but the disaster of health care that will precipitate will quickly cause such damage to the economy that the US has only the comfort of knowing Trump’s Presidency will be one-term-only. I certainly thought the Republican Party would pull out all the stops to put an end to his candidacy, but that presumed that they hadn’t created this golum to begin with, which they did, pandering to all the worst impulses of their base. There is some media complicity in Trump’s success. They gave him a lot of free air time. Why not? It was considered endlessly entertaining for such a buffoon to be showing up the mainstream candidates, let alone the behaviour of the buffoons among his supporters (is that all of them? Or only most?). So the only question left is: Does Trump stand a chance against the Democrats in the general election? Everybody said he didn’t stand a chance to go this far, at every stage of the campaign. Everybody says he’ll lose to Clinton or to Sanders in November, and they’ve been saying it, louder and louder, at every stage of the campaign. They say the Electoral College math won’t add up his way, but that’s on the basis that everything’s pretty much the same as it’s been these last few Presidential elections. Trump’s success suggests it may not be so simple anymore. We have to hope the people Trump has marginalised come out strong and the people he frightens – Republicans as well as Democrats and independents or swing voters – do, too, along with the committed Democrats, or we’ll see what happens when America is forced to accept the Trump branding. It won’t be pretty.