Impeachment, a DMV warning, and the Iowa caucuses

Impeachment. 

The sausage isn't pretty, and Democrats are the party of government solutions. 

Government at work

We are seeing a confluence of bad government and wishful thinking.

First, the impeachment trial: 

It is slow, boring, and repetitious. We see Capitol Pages hand cards to people who hand cards to people who hand cards to the Chief Justice. We wait. He reads it, then hands a card to someone, who hands it to someone, who hands it to a person who writes something then hands it to someone.

It is an image of tradition and pageantry. It is also an image of delay and waste. It is important stuff, but bad TV and flagrant inefficiency.

Worse, the subject matter of what we are watching is corruption and misrule, covered up by hypocrisy, involving all three branches of government. For Republicans, this was a witch hunt, an expensive and divisive waste, distracting the executive. For Democrats, this was executive branch corruption, combined with dereliction of duty by a Republican Senate. Both sides said that some element of Article Three adjudication would take far too long to be used. 

What is the takeaway for a viewer of the impeachment trial? Government is slow, wasteful, corrupt, run by hypocrites, and it doesn't care and won't change.

Next, the DMV:

Click: Willamette Week

Oregon failed to update its systems for verifying identity, so Oregon drivers licenses are non compliant with federal rules for getting onto airplanes. Oregon has a temporary waiver but it ends on October 1, 2020. Oregon has known about this for years. However, Oregon will not start issuing FAA compliant Oregon drivers licenses until July 6, 2020. Why? They are still working on their computers. Can't get to it. Sorry.

The Oregon Secretary of State sent a warning: 

  "There could be epically long lines at the DMV come July. We really want people not to experience that."

The DMV warns that to "fulfill the demand of nearly one million Oregonians who will want the Real ID option, DMV would have to issue 32 licenses a minute every business day from July to October." That, of course, is impossible.  

Oops. Go get a US Passport, they suggest, if you want to get on an airplane. You better plan ahead. We didn't.

There is a big message here. Government is incompetent.

Next, the Democrats in Iowa:

One theme of the surviving candidates is government corruption, primarily through capture by the special interests. Officeholders are beholden to donors, not people, most say, with Sanders, Warren, and Steyer saying it as central themes of their campaigns. The result, all the candidates say, is unaffordable, expensive health care, student debt, too big to fail banks, and wealth concentrating at the top, at the expense of the 90% or 99%. Wealth is not reaching working people.

Joe Biden, the most moderate of the Democratic field, is now positioned to the left of Obama. What was barely thinkable in 2010 is standard Democratic policy now. The solution is greater government involvement, either directly or through regulations, especially on health care. The Democratic Party is not yet the party of Bernie Sanders, but his message has resonated. Sanders leads in Iowa. Sanders calls for Democratic Socialism. 

Combining the three observations:

If the problem is government failure, people may be skeptical of government solutions. 

Michael Pence, in Iowa, said, "The truth is the Democratic Party today has been taken over by radical leftists. They want higher taxes, open borders, late-term abortions and socialist policies that will literally crush this economy."

Government is not symbolized by Hoover Dam anymore. Government's reputation has changed. Traditional Republicans call it a menace, Libertarians want to drown it in a bathtub. Democrats who see it as a solution call it thoroughly corrupted by big money. Yet it is the go-to solution for Democrats.

The flawed rollout of the ACA is a conspicuous problem for Democrats. Oregon had its own disastrous rollout of the ACA. The experience of most people with Social Security and Medicare is very positive, but they are not the cliche vision of "government bureaucracy." The cliche is the state Department of Motor Vehicles, with long slow lines, the image, even if not the actual experience. In Oregon, it will be the actual experience.

Bad experiences with government make Democratic Socialism harder to sell. It makes more potent the Trump warning that Democrats want to take away health care and give it to government, who will surely screw it up.

Coverup.

"Unless there’s a witness that’s going to change the outcome, I can’t imagine why we’d want to stretch this out."
GOP Senator Roy Blunt

Democrats win by losing.

Trump won't be removed. The endgame message is "Coverup." 

Of course Trump will try to sell this as a win. Vindication! Democrats lost! Democrats will grit their teeth. Republicans will say they feel great.

Republican senators are on TV saying that nothing they could possibly hear would change their minds. They don't need to hear from witnesses.  "It doesn't rise to an impeachable offense."

"For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case wold fall well below the standards to remove a president from office," Lindsay Graham said in a statement.

So what if there was quid pro quo.

GOP senators have their justification, from Alan Dershowitz: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, hat cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

Wow. Read that again. It gets GOP senators off the hook. They don't need to confront evidence.

[Update. It gets better. Now, at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Dershowitz is updating and correcting and saying that, actually, there was "nuance" being misunderstood. He didn't actually mean exactly how this seems. This does not reverse or eliminate the controversy. This expands it; it accentuates it; it continues the debate and makes people consider more intently exactly what he meant. As the rule is: when you are explaining, you are losing.]

Republicans overplayed their hand.

Republicans had a pretty good political case going into this. They had the votes to assure Trump would be vindicated. Impeachment fit the GOP and Trump narrative that Democrats were out to get them from day one.  The message resonated with Republican voters. It was simple and clear: the Democrats had it in for Trump.

Better yet, winning meant Democrats lost, a double win. Trump's tweets, insults, exaggerations and policies have the predictable result of infuriating Democrats, and Trump's base loves it when Democratic heads explode. Nothing is more fun for Fox News than showing some college town woke liberal sputtering with rage over something Trump does, or replaying Rachel Maddog tearing up on election night. After all, those snotty elitists think people like us, people who watch Fox and wear MAGA hats, are knuckle dragging deplorable racists with bad taste, so if Trump riles them up, great.

They could have stopped with that. Just say the Democrats hated Trump.

But then, it sours.

No witnesses. Now the message changes to "coverup." Trump is trying to hold back the tide. John Bolton has a story to tell. Lev Parnas has a story to tell. Senators don't want to hear it and aren't going to hear it.

Refusing to hear from witnesses will be a pyrrhic victory, changing the meaning of the big win. They will have won a rigged game that, worse, now looks like an obvious, undeniable rigged game. The big takeaway will be that Trump's obedient, intimidated Senators put their fingers in their ears and shut their eyes. Trump got off with a stacked jury and did it by saying that Trump's cheating is OK.

Then, the aftermath starts. Lev Parnas will seem a mixture of comic and pathetic as he tries to get noticed, and tell his story. Bolton's story will drip out, and then flood out. The public likes secrets being revealed. The revelation will be that it was way, way worse than we thought.

And, in time, the implications of the Dershowitz argument will get out there. It is so outrageous a proposition that it won't go away. Even people who are not very engaged in politics will think about that one, and it won't feel right.

Houston Astros spied on pitches, and got fined, a manager suspended, their victories now tainted. The steroid home runs have asterisks. The New England Patriots deflated footballs and even the beloved Tom Brady got suspended. Cheating is cheating.

GOP senators agreed Trump can do anything he wants as long as he thinks it will help him get elected?  Really?  

It says that the president can cheat. And he escaped being removed because the jury was stacked. That won't age well.

Scorched Earth Attacks

Trump is the anger candidate. The one who insults and mocks. He takes up that space.

It constrains what Democrats--especially Biden--can do.

Presidential politics show an oscillation back and forth, correcting and reversing the previous administration. The most obvious is Republican to Democrat, each getting about eight years before that party wears out its welcome.

Click: 5 minutes Anger translator

But there are other scales for political oscillation. Democrats JFK and LBJ became defined by activism in civil rights. The public tacked back to Nixon with his Southern Strategy. Nixon was defined by corruption, which led to pious Carter.  

Obama was the cool and confident Democratic alternative to the 2008 economic chaos under the GOP watch.

Barrack Obama became defined by the Affordable Care Act, but also by his manner. Obama was noteworthy for his mild tone. It came across as thoughtful and respectful to Democrats. To people inclined to dislike him--Republicans--it became defined as feckless, weak, irresolute.

It was so powerful an image that Obama joked that he needed an "anger translator", someone to say what Obama was saying, only shouting in anger. "I'm a mellow sort of guy," Obama said. It was funny. It revealed a truth. 

America had an anger deficit. Trump filled it. 

Trump is scorched earth. In the campaign and as president he sneers at Democrats, at Mexicans, at immigrants. He calls a black Congresswoman "Low IQ." 

He makes people pay for disagreement. He blasts former cabinet members as "dumb as a rock." He calls people who cross him failures, losers. Right now, he is blasting and insulting former close advisor John Bolton. Read the tweets.

Trump tweets on Bolton today

This morning he is warning GOP Senators. Don't you dare prolong this trial:

     "No matter how many witnesses you give the Democrats, no matter how much information is given, like the quickly produced Transcripts, it will NEVER be enough for them. They will always scream UNFAIR. The Impeachment Hoax is just another political CON JOB!" 

Republicans understand the consequences of displeasing Trump.

What does this mean for Democrats?

Trump owns the space for anger and insults. Any Democrat who attempted to treat Trump in kind would look like a weak me-too. We saw Marco Rubio try it. It flopped. Trump calls Michael Bloomberg "Little Mike," Biden "Sleepy Joe," Buttigieg "Alfred E. Newman" and each are responding the right way, swatting it away, but not responding in kind.  

This causes a problem for Joe Biden, as regards Hunter Biden. He looks like he is hiding, which makes him look embarrassed and guilty. One way out of the political bleed for Joe Biden would be for Joe to try the anger route. Perhaps:

     "Trump, you miserable hypocrite. 

     You point to Hunter getting a job sitting on a board while your daughter Ivanka is getting multimillion trademark protection from China, what a sweetheart deal, while you are supposedly negotiating with them. Trademark protection for sunglasses, wedding dresses, brokerage firms, child care centers, multi billion dollar industries. And get this, she gets trademark protection for charities. Her brothers and you steal from your own charity money raised for veterans, get caught red handed using it for your campaign, and the state of New York has to discipline you and three of your children for misbehavior, makes you shut down your sham charity, makes them take mandatory training to teach them it's wrong to steal from charities--really!--and makes you pay back the money they stole. Shameful.

And you lecture me about Hunter?

     Meanwhile, Don Junior and Eric are supposedly independent and running your DC hotel, that was specifically not to be leased to you, but is, and they have foreign delegations making a big show of putting $2,000 a night into their pockets, and yours, night after night. For a room for one night! Ka-ching.

     And you put your son son in law in charge of Middle East affiairs--what are his qualifications?--and meanwhile he is desperate to salvage a gigantic failed real estate investment--get this, at 666 Fifth Avenue--and the sovereign fund of Qatar steps in to bail it out paying a price no one else in the world would pay. Bails him out. Really, really convenient, the family sure has to be grateful for that, and meanwhile he's trying to represent American interest there. Yeah, right.

Click: How the Trump children profit

     My son Hunter did nothing wrong on that board, but you say it looks bad. 

     What your children are doing looks bad and is bad.  I have nothing to be ashamed of. You do."

    

It might work, but I wouldn't go that way if I were Biden. It isn't Biden's brand. Biden is the affable one, selling the end of hostility, not a continuation of it. I think, in the long run, it would look desperate and weak, coming from Joe Biden. Still, Democrats are desperate for a fighter and would like seeing someone saying it. It might get him through the Iowa and New Hampshire votes. 

Better if someone else does it. It needs to be said, it can be said, and Democrats would love whoever says it. George Conway, perhaps, the Trump critic and husband of Kelly Anne Conway.  A former Justice Department lawyer, perhaps; Sally Yates, the fired Acting Attorney General comes to mind. 

Kamala Harris could do it.

If Kamala Harris does it her campaign might rise from the dead. Democrats would love her for it. If Biden survives because of it she would sure be a plausible VP. Or it might make her president right away.

Democrats need a warrior.

Biden: "The sentimental fool don't see. . . "

"What a fool believes, he sees

No wise man has the power to reason away

What seems to be"

     Lyrics, from What a Fool Believes, Doobie Brothers, 1978

Joe Biden in Iowa in August

Prediction: The news we are seeing right now is looking at the wrong thing.

 

The big news is not Bolton. It's Biden.

The establishment news people--NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC--plus all the conservative news--Fox, Breitbart, Daily Caller--are spending most of their energy looking at the John Bolton revelation.

(My local newspaper, the Medford Mail Tribune, too. The top political story on page one is headlined: "Bolton book roils GOP, adds pressure to testify.")

Bolton is the "bombshell" news.

The news and political commentary look at whether Bolton totally blows a hole in the Trump story of "perfect phone call," whether this will require a Trump defense shift, how GOP officeholders will negotiate the news, whether there will be impeachment witnesses, what Romney thinks. The Trump media allies, too. Fox opinion hosts are now blasting Bolton-the-snake, saying they always knew their eleven-year colleague had bad character, isn't to be believed, and besides, he is just doing it to sell books.

None of it matters. Trump won't be removed from office. At the end of the day, Trump will say he was vindicated. Bolton doesn't change much. 

The Trump attack on Hunter Biden is the news. It is slower than a helicopter crash, but it is just as certain. Biden is in a death spiral.. 

The New Yorker

Biden did this to himself. He is the sentimental fool. He loved not wisely, but too well.

This feature story in the NY Times Magazine says what this blog reported months ago, that the key to understanding Joe Biden appeal--and vulnerability--is his deeply felt, sentimental empathy with working class families, and most especially the duty of a father to support his children. 

I have seen him multiple times. He doesn't have a set stump speech, but he does have a singular general message, which is more a statement of values than a clear policy. He says we all have to take care of each other, that America is better than Trump, that we need to make sure that good, hard-working families can get by and we need a government that understands that.

His talks ramble. They are irritatingly disorganized as he goes from incident to incident of human pain and struggle, reflecting respect for institutions, for neighbors, for hard work, for families. 

I have criticized him in this blog. He is unfocused, smarmy, endless. But Biden is absolutely genuine. A moderate liberal. An urban Catholic. A union guy. 

Click: NY Times Magazine

That is what blinded Joe Biden to Hunter Biden's work at Burisma Holdings. It looks swampy because it is swampy and can be described by critics as swampy. It provides a fig leaf cover story for Trump to use as justification for the pressure on Ukraine. It doesn't need to be true. Bolton's book and testimony will reveal Trump's selfish real motivation but it won't matter. The cover story doesn't need to be true, just arguable.

Pam Bondi, Trump's attorney said it: "You've heard from the House Managers. They do not believe that there was any concern to raise here, that all of this was baseless. And all that we are saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue. And that was enough."

I like Joe Biden. But he screwed up, big time. He was blind to the danger his son put him in, how it looked, and how it undermines his ability to contrast with Trump. He didn't want to stand in his way of the troubled son. Good dad. Sentimental fool.

The right wing media is starting up on this, with photos like the one here, and in time it will bleed into the mainstream media that sticks to the House story that the Burisma charge was found groundless. Maybe most of it is, but that won't matter either.  It looks swampy, like a sweet deal for the undeserving Hunter Biden, and people resent that. That is enough.

It won't go away. It will weigh on Joe Biden in Iowa, and then it will get worse. The big news today isn't Bolton. 

The big news is that Joe Biden is finished.  Like the news with Kobe, it saddens me.

Live Update: Hunter Biden

It was as hard on Hunter Biden as I had predicted.

Hunter Biden got a cushy job.  It looks “swampy.”  It is the basis for a president to look into things.  It was a cover story for Trump.  Hunter Biden gave Trump a basis for saying it was all innocent.

Joe Biden loves his son. He acted like a father, not like Caesar’s wife, above criticism.

It is a problem. 

A Democrat can win in 2020

Any Democrat could win this.

Democrats have a simple story to tell: "I am better than Trump."

Democratic victory starts with the fact that a lot of people dislike Trump.

Remember, Republicans usually vote for Republicans and Democrats usually vote for Democrats. 

Trump won most Republican votes, about the same ones Romney got, and in about the same places. The problem for Democrats is that Hillary didn't get the votes that Obama did. Why? Lower black turnout in Democratic areas and low Democratic performance by non-college whites, especially non-college men. 

Democrats generally, and especially Sanders, bet they can expand the electorate to get those "missing" Democrats to vote, for them.

Democrats dislike Trump. Trump created a solid block of anti-Trump voters everywhere, including swing states. 

Every Democrat has essentially the same description of Trump: that he is a corrupt, self-serving con man, whose behavior with tweets and insults are toxic to American politics. He is in cahoots with corporations to give them tax breaks and other advantages at the expense of working people, women, people of color, and the environment. That's Trump. 

What is the alternative?

The Sanders narrative: An authentic ideologically driven progressive vs. the con man.  Bernie Sanders presents himself as the earnest, indomitable spokesman for progressive change, and that Americans want another New Deal. He has a message of ideology, demonstrated in the name of his campaign stump speech:  "How Democratic Socialism Is the Only Way to Defeat Oligarchy and Authoritarianism."  He stands as the real deal, an ideologically consistent spokesman for struggling workers.

The Warren narrative: A woman who "gets it" progressive vs. the con man. If Warren wins the nomination she will come out of that struggle as the candidate who approximately agrees with Sanders, but does it from an empathetic and experiential base, not an ideological one. I was a struggling mom, she says. I made it because college and law school were cheap, she says. We need change and I will deliver it because I understand the need for it and will fight to get it.

The Biden narrative: The end to this national nightmare vs. the disruptive, chaotic con man.  Biden is saying, in a quiet, pleading tone, It's really simple, folks, let's work together to make safe, bi-partisan steps toward making things easier for regular people to get by. Yeah, the progressives in my party are impatient and unhappy with me, but that just shows how safe and moderate I am.

The Buttigieg narrative: The smart, emotionally mature moderate vs. the con man. The Buttigieg story is no longer generational, young being better. Instead, oddly, it is one of maturity and moderation and Buttigieg is the grown up in the contest. Buttigieg presents himself as a sensible low-drama moderate vs. Trump. Buttigieg is sort of like Biden but without the frailty, the mixed history, the gaffes. Buttigieg is the new, improved Obama. 

The Bloomberg narrative: The better billionaire vs. the clownish tabloid fake billionaire. Bloomberg, if the nominee, would have emerged out of the ashes of a Democratic party nomination mess and would prove what Democrats fear is true and oppose, that the system is dominated by big money. Bloomberg would be the reasonable, moderate, anti-gun, billionaire alternative to Trump. Possibly, with Julian Castro, Kamala Harris or Cory Booker as VP, he would demonstrate political connection to working people. But mostly it would be realization that big money dominates politics, and voters can choose the better, well behaved billionaire.

The Klobuchar narrative: The sensible, moderate Democrat vs. the con man. Recent polls show that Klobuchar has a chance of meeting the 15% threshold for votes in Iowa, so I will include her. Her frame is simple: she is the generic, reasonable Democrat. She won because she wasn't old and frail like Biden, not a socialist like Bernie, not socialist-lite like Warren, not inexperienced and gay like Buttigieg. There is nothing wrong with her, so she is a simple up-or-down vote on Trump. Do you want Trump or a perfectly good Democratic alternative?

The Yang narrative: The new ideas guy vs. the con man who doesn't comprehend the future. I include Yang because he now qualifies for the next debate in New Hampshire. If Yang were to win the nomination it would come out of substantial disruption in the Democratic nomination process, in which Democrats came to agreement that we have a profound technological and employment problem and need entirely new political alignment. Yang would be the new guy, the clean guy, the emotionally mature guy, versus the corrupt politics as usual guy.

Each of these are plausible approaches. Each could win. 

Electability. Who Can Beat Trump?

Don't overthink this. Political matchups come down to simple narratives.

Democrats vote for Democrats. Republicans vote for Republicans. 

That explains most of it. But not all.

There are, in fact, swing voters. Some are people have little partisan affiliation and switch back and forth. There are far more people who don't vote, but might if they saw a choice that mattered to them. This is who decides elections. They are trying to intuit who is really the good guy in the story.

More people dislike Trump than like him. He would lose a referendum, but the November 2020 election is a choice, not a referendum. Trump is positioning himself and his opponent, right now, Trump vs. the Democrat.

Potential Matchup #1.  Biden is the nominee.

Trump started with Trump the Change Agent vs.Tired, Old, Establishment Insider. He began by calling Biden "Sleepy Joe." It emphasized Biden's 40+ years in politics. He had all that time to do something meaningful and good so why would we expect change or improvement if Joe Biden were president? 

Trump changed that story, making Biden not just sleepy but dirty. That explains Trump's Ukraine investigation. Trump wants to define Biden as a corrupt villain, not just a fool. By November the matchup would be: Trump, the Change Agent Swamp Cleaner vs. Tired, Corrupt Establishment Insider.  Many Democrats already define Biden this way, a mixture of shopworn and swampy, so much of this work is already done. Trump's message: Biden is a dangerously corrupt insider.

Potential Matchup #2. Sanders is the nominee.

Here the narrative is Trump, Jobs, and a Strong Economy vs. Socialist Misery.  Sanders will be easy to caricature as a Soviet kook. He honeymooned in the Soviet Union. He wants to smash capitalism. He is Eugene Debs. He wants to raise taxes. He wants to take away your health care and give it to people here illegally. He will wreck the economy because he is an ideologue who wants class war. Do you really love the DMV? Trump'a message: Sanders is dangerous for his ideology.

Potential Matchup #3. Warren is the nominee.

Here the narrative is Trump, Jobs, and a Strong Economy vs. Hyperactive Meddler Fraud.  Warren will be a mixture of the socialist over-reach argument that would be used on Sanders. Her "I have a plan" will be turned against her as meddling. We will hear endlessly about her claiming minority status, which will put white identity resentment front and center. Trump message: Fraudster Warren is dangerous for what she would attempt.

Potential Matchup #4. Buttigieg is the nominee.

Here the narrative is Proven Trump, for Jobs and a Strong Economy vs. Neophyte Elitist.  Here once again Trump positions himself as the safe choice with a track record, contrasted with the mystery box of a young person. Buttigieg's own generation does not admire Buttigieg; it resents him, as too elite and establishment. Trump would be the "regular guy."  Trump started by calling Buttigieg Alfred E. Neuman, a clownish character from Mad Magazine. That misunderstood Buttigieg as a fool. The public understands him to be a wunderkind, a high achiever. Trump's message would be: Buttigieg is dangerous because he surely looks down on you.

Potential Matchup #5. Bloomberg is the nominee.

Bloomberg is a wild card. We will learn what a billion dollars worth of TV can do. The matchup here is Trump the Man of The People vs. Elitist.  In this matchup Trump makes a virtue out of his spontaneous errors, his informality, his sharing the common prejudices of working people, and contrasts it with the buttoned up rich guy trying to buy public affection.  Bloomberg banned big sodas. He thinks he is too good for Big Gulps. Bloomberg is dangerous because he doesn't understand regular people.

There is a defense and a counter-argument to each of these, but these are the simple matchups Trump wants. 

Candidates need to define themselves and the matchups they want, before they let Trump define them and write the story.

Prediction: Trump defense: Denial and Outrage

The Trump Message: Democrats are liars. Joe Biden is dirty.

Biden had to be stopped.

Biden is familiar. He is moderate. He connects emotionally with working class white voters in swing states. 

Irrelevant. The defense will not be about the case.

Adam Schiff was very skilled. The case was meticulous. It doesn't matter. 

The House case won't be refuted by the Trump defense. Instead, it will be demonized. Mocked. Ignored. 

Trump, they will say, was really truly concerned about ending corruption in Ukraine.

The public portion of the impeachment defense begins today. It will be a wall of sound and fury and voters will have two takeaways when it is all done.  

1.  Outrage. Those lying Democrats hate Trump and they had an unfair witch hunt built on lies. The process was illegitimate from the get go, and Republicans are furious. 

Outrage is a successful tactic. It energizes the base and it lends credibility. There must be something wrong for them to get so riled up.

This message has been going out in fundraising background all along, visible primarily to the Republican base. Ted Cruz sends e-mail solicitations daily:

     "We all know what this is really about. They desperately want to “undo” the last presidential election. They have ZERO evidence to back up their outlandish claims... and they know it!  Adam Schiff and his cronies LOVE the spotlight of this made-for-TV drama. As he said last night, it’s clear that House Democrats view this as an opportunity to continue their hate-fueled partisan attacks on President Trump."

Donald Trump writes a fundraising solicitation e-mail daily: 

     "Little Adam Schiff simply can't stop LYING. He already caught making up a FAKE PHONE call that he said I had with Ukraine. Now he's been caught in yet ANOTHER LIE while trying to push his bogus impeachment SHAM, It seems that he is much more interested in landing more interviews for himself on CNN and MSNBC than he is in making sure the American people know the TRUTH."

This morning's tweet

2. Corrupt Joe Biden. The Trump defense will pivot to Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine. Rudy Giuliani pointed the diretion of the attack. It will be big and mysterious and it will include a notion already familiar to readers of novels and movie goers: mysterious corruption in the world of covert agencies. The FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the Armed Services, the Embassy staff, military contractors, all had an agenda of corrupt intent. There is a lot of secret dirt and bad behavior, and Joe and Hunter Biden are neck deep in it.

Plus China. Plus all the other Democrats. The big takeaway message: Trump is actually the clean hero. He scared all those corrupt people so they are out to get him.

The Trump defense may finish off Biden, and if so, good for Trump. Trump is setting up the matchup that he wanted for 2020, a contest against a person he can characterize as a left wing socialist who will destroy the economy just about the time that it has gotten going again. The socialist will either be an ideologue (Bernie Sanders) or a histrionic fraud elitist (Elizabeth Warren.) Either way is OK for Trump. Joe Biden would have been a harder matchup in the swing states. Biden relates personally to the working class through his biography and sentimentality. He better bridges the gap between the college-educated meritocracy Democrats and the non-college Democrats. Joe isn't elitist. But if Trump could make Joe look dirty, then the matchup looks much better. At its most simple it is Clean Trump vs. Dirty Joe, the successor to Crooked Hillary. That is what is underway now.

Enter, stage left: Joe Biden

     "The reason why I would not make the deal [to be an impeachment witness]— and the bottom line is this is a constitutional issue and we’re not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater. 

     They’re trying to turn it into political theater, but I want no part of being any part of that."

     Joe Biden, in Iowa, yesterday.

Too late, Joe. You are in the play.

Either you make yourself the hero or Trump will make you the villain. Choose now.

Yesterday the House managers spent an hour explaining that the charges against Joe Biden were debunked.

The simple Democratic story is that Ukraine has been fighting political corruption for decades. A prosecutor--Viktor Shokin--was ignoring flagrant corruption and failing to prosecute it, including where it might be found in Burisma Holdings, the largest Ukraine natural gas company, on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Officials in the US, Europe, organizations like the International Monetary Fund, wanted that prosecutor removed to be replaced with a real corruption fighter. Joe Biden was assigned a lead role in communicating this to Ukraine. The prosecutor was removed.

Therefore, the House managers asserted, what Joe Biden did was exactly correct and blameless, and as it regards his son, Hunter, removal of the prosecutor tended toward stronger anti-corruption prosecution, not less, and therefore promoted American interests. Hunter Biden is irrelevant, or in any case, certainly not helped.

See?  Everything is OK. The accusations against the Bidens were "thoroughly debunked."

No.

The problem is two part. One is the simple reality that Hunter Biden was a very well paid Burisma Holdings board member--$50,000 per month--holding the job for no obvious apparent purpose other than to provide a public connection to high US officeholder. It is a payoff. It is some version of "protection." This is real.

The second is how it allows Trump, Giuliani, every Republican senator, the entire GOP media base of Fox, Breitbart, talk radio, and GOP voters to talk about Democratic hypocrisy and corruption that is simpler to understand than the high crimes and misdemeanors charged against Trump. Trump's crimes are complicated. Hunter Biden just sat there and cashed a check. It puts the Biden's in Ukraine. That is enough to raise questions.

Questionable is a very powerful word. It is exactly what Trump wanted to extract from Ukraine, public confirmation of an investigation. Being able to reference an investigation by a third party would be the hook onto which Trump could hang questions, which morph into accusations. Questions, to be addressed with investigations, give credence to accusations.

Here is Rudolph Giuliani showing exactly how this works:

Giuliani: "I was given information about Ukrainian corruption, by two informants, you're going to find out who one of them is, possibly the second, they told me there was a great deal of collusion going on in Ukraine, to fix the 2016 election, in favor of Hillary, that what happened in Russia was a big hoax, that it was actually the Democrats projecting what they had actually done in Ukraine. 

Click: 1:40 seconds

I don't know if it is true or not, they gave me witnesses, the two prosecutor generals, the current one and the last one, I've since interviews ten of them. . . .

The embassy was involved in gathering dirt on Trump, Trump Junior, and Manafort. They were involved in turning over falsified evidence, absolutely completely falsified.. . . I will present evidence of shocking crimes, at the highest levels of governments, while the Senate is listening to a totally phony group of stories about non impeachable offenses, it's like trying somebody for not-a-crime. It's a total waste of money. Its a complete show on the part of the Democrats, and they should be sued for conspiracy to defraud the United States, and they should pay for that hearing."

Isn't this all just a smokescreen of diversion?

Of course. Trump does not want a referendum on his corruption. He wants a comparison of his corruption versus Biden's and the Democrats'.

Giuliani and Trump pounding the table with accusations of conspiracies are more than enough to please a political base, people inclined to believe that Obama was born in Kenya, that Hillary ran a child brothel in a pizza parlor as a side business during her campaign. It gives cover to Senators. It makes impeachment all about Democrats, not Trump.

The unsolvable problem is that Hunter Biden was, in fact, in Ukraine, getting paid a lot, by a company that Democrats say was corrupt, or at least worthy of being investigated for corruption. 

Biden cannot hide, nor say he refuses to be involved, nor call it a farce. He and Hunter need to create a counter story. He is in the play. He needs to be the hero. Otherwise he will be the villain.

 Voters won't just ignore this. Trump won't let them.