Will Indictment Harm Donald Trump?

There is a running debate over whether a criminal indictment of Donald Trump helps or hurts his political situation, with many in the GOP saying it is a plus for his prospects.  Yes, an indictment keeps Trump in the news cycles - something his sick ego loves - and it will rally his most devoted followers in the MAGA base who will view an indictment that Trump and by extension themselves are being persecuted. How it plays out with a majority of voters, however, may prove to be different, especially as it reminds voters of Trump's sleaziness and the constant chaos he thrives on.  His calls for "protests" - translation, violence and riots - further underscores to such voters why they want Trump to simply disappear forever.  Add to this the rejection of Trump endorsed candidatesand election deniers in the 2022 mid-term elections and an indictment highlights Trump's toxiciuty of Trump to moral, sentient voters (a group that excludes Trump's evangelical and white supremacist base). A piece in The Atlantic looks at the ongoing debate.  Here are excerpts:

Prominent Republicans disagree about a lot these days, but on one point they have found consensus: Getting charged with a crime would be great news for Donald Trump.

After the former president predicted that he will be arrested in Manhattan tomorrow—a forecast that seems questionable, though an indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg does seem to be imminent—conventional wisdom quickly developed on the right that Trump would be the big winner.

At National Review, Rich Lowry announced, “It’s going to be very bad for the country and good politically—at least in the short term and perhaps for the duration—for Donald J. Trump.” (Lowry didn’t bother to offer any basis for this claim.)

The former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich, now running a pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc., said in a statement that an indictment “will not only serve to coalesce President Trump’s support, but it will become the single largest in-kind contribution to a federal campaign in political history.”

Other Republican contenders for president didn’t make predictions quite so firm, but they either hastened to criticize Bragg or kept their mouth shut, both indications that they see this as a moment of strength for Trump, rather than a good opening to bury their own daggers in a weakened rival’s back.

“You are about to increase the odds that Donald Trump will win another four years in the White House,” he wrote in italics on his Substack. “You could in fact be increasing his chances of winning dramatically, maybe even decisively.”

But don’t dismiss Halperin’s prediction because he’s a washed-up source of conventional wisdom who’s been badly wrong in the past. Dismiss it because it makes so little sense in light of what we know now. Politics is contingent and volatile, which means that any prediction about what will happen is worth the pixels it’s printed on.

But the assumption that Trump will profit seems to spring from hubris (among his allies) and self-protective fear (on the part of his critics and rivals). They are operating on a shared, obsolete conclusion that nothing can ever harm the former president. For a long time, this made sense. . . . Trump won the 2016 presidential election and then embarked on an even more scandal-ridden administration. Yet he seemed to chug away, indifferent to bad press. A narrative of Trumpian invincibility developed as an antidote to callow, wish-casting predictions of walls closing in on Trump.

Caution is understandable, but we know enough now to realize that although Trump is exceptionally resilient, he’s also not invulnerable. In 2018, after he decided to frame the midterm elections as a referendum on him personally, Democrats won big in House and governor elections. In 2020, the House impeached him; when the Senate did not vote to convict, some observers took this as proof that he couldn’t be stopped. But it did damage Trump, and later that year, he lost his reelection bid narrowly but decisively, losing the popular vote for the second time. After his extended attempt to overturn the 2020 election, voters once again punished candidates flying his banner and rallying around his causes in the 2022 midterms.

What charges against Trump are certain to do is inflame his most devoted supporters. They will be furious that anyone would dare try to hold Trump accountable, view it as an act of political persecution, and make a great deal of noise about it. But no one should mistake the vociferousness of this group for size. They’ve always been noisy. They’ve always been a minority: As I wrote in November, we now have multiple demonstrations that an anti-MAGA majority exists among American voters.

[A] consensus has developed among legal analysts that the Manhattan case is the weakest and strangest of the several criminal investigations into Trump. . . . .  A case would appear to hinge on some tenuous legal theories, and Trump might well beat the rap. But any suggestion that he’s delighted by this fight is belied not only by his irate response but by common sense. Trump doesn’t want to discuss the underlying facts of this case—there’s a reason, after all, that Cohen paid Daniels six figures to buy her silence in the first place. Beyond that, several other probes—which look from the outside to be more perilous to Trump—are still on deck, regardless of the outcome in Manhattan.          

   “Look, at the end, being indicted never helps anybody,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a lonely dissident from the GOP consensus, said on ABC News yesterday. Trump could be the Republican nominee in 2024, or even win the White House back, but if so, it will probably be despite any criminal case against him, not because of it. 

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Why White Christian Nationalists Are In a Panic

For years now I have argued that right wing evangelical Christians and Christofascists will be the death of Christianity in America.  A new PPRI Census on American Religion appears to bear this out as the number of "Nones" surge while white evangelicals dwindle in numbers. They have turned a religion that is allegedly based on love of god and love of neighbor into one defined by hatred of others, division and increasingly turn to violence to stem their dwindling numbers rather than looking in the mirror to see that they are making their beliefs and "world view" toxic to more and more Americans, especially the younger generations which are swelling the ranks of the "Nones" - those with no religious affiliation. A religion defined by hate and condemnation of others is a hard sell in the market place of ideas and lifestyles and as evangelicals and Christofascists double down, they are only serving to accelerate the exodus no matter what short term successes they may achieve - e.g., the banning of abortion thanks to six zealts on the U.S. Supreme Court, book bannings in schools and the proliferation of "don't say gay" laws in Republican controled states. A column in the Washington Post looks at the losing battle of these people in the face of changing demographics and their refusal to repackage their beliefs to be more palitable to the larger population.  Here are highlights:

You might find it strange that a large segment of the Republican base thinks Whites are the true victims of racism and that Christians are under attack. After all, America’s biggest racial group is still Whites; the most common religious affiliation remains Christianity. Whites and Christians dominate elected office at all levels, the judiciary and corporate America. What’s the problem?

Well, there is a straightforward reason for the freak-out, and an explanation for why former president Donald Trump developed such a close bond with white Christian nationalists.

This group feels besieged because they are losing ground. “The newly-released 2022 supplement to the PRRI Census of American Religion — based on over 40,000 interviews conducted last year — confirms that the decline of white Christians (Americans who identify as white, non-Hispanic and Christian of any kind) as a proportion of the population continues unabated,” . . . As recently as 2008, when our first Black president was elected, the U.S. was a majority (54%) white Christian country.” By 2014 the number had dropped to 47 percent, and in 2022 it stood at 42 percent.

The group that has declined the most is at the core of the MAGA movement, the group most devoted to Christian nationalism. “White evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. . . . Jones explains. “Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans.”

And that decline may yet accelerate, because they skew older than the population as a whole. Put differently, there are far more baby boomers in this group than Generation Z members. White evangelicals are “losing” people with each successive generation. . . . . If your business had lost half its market share, you would be panicking, too.

With those kind of numbers, the responsible thing to do would be to think about “fixing” what’s wrong by adapting to a changing market. Instead, many in this cohort have doubled down, becoming the foot soldiers in the red-hatted MAGA movement. The decline isn’t going to be reversed by angry, gray-haired folks demanding abortion bans and “don’t say gay” bills.

Instead, White evangelicals might look at former “customers” who are abandoning organized religion in droves. “Nearly four in ten Americans ages 18-29 (38%) are religiously unaffiliated, an increase from 34% in 2021," . . . the growth in religiously unaffiliated Americans has started to show up more in the 30-49 age category, which is up to 32% unaffiliated from 26% in 2016.”

White evangelicals’ desperate efforts to cling to political power and demand adherence to a set of outdated cultural norms only make the problem worse. Not many 20-year-olds (part of the most diverse, inclusive generation in history, one steeped in climate science and tech) would leap at the prospect of living in a state where abortion is unattainable, gays are ostracized and secularism is bashed.

If Christian evangelicals really want to slow their decline, they might consider getting out of the unpopular political ideas market (e.g., abortion bans) and stressing values that could win back alienated young people (e.g., reverence for conserving the planet, ministering to the poor and the weak). That might put more seats in the pews, although it likely wouldn’t do much for the aging, mostly White, reactionary GOP.

The reality is that the convergence of the declining population of White Christians with the rise of Trump has been bad for both evangelicalism and American politics. Trump came along, telling the shrinking band of white Christian nationalists that they are victims. . . . They were the group most susceptible to a message that reinforces their feeling they have “lost” something or something has been “taken away.”

That “something” they felt had been stolen may have been as concrete as the 2020 election, or as all-encompassing as white Christian supremacy. However they define that sense of loss, it fuels their anger and binds them to Trump.

But the demographic clock cannot be turned back. No one can claim to be patriotic defenders of democracy when they decide their declining numbers justify anti-democratic voter suppression or even violence. In short, MAGA White Christians have painted themselves into a corner where the majority rejects their outlook and anti-majoritarian tactics cannot keep them in power forever.

A dramatic transformation would need to happen for this movement to return to pluralistic politics. The MAGA crowd would have to recognize America’s complete history, reflecting our full experience, not just the story of people like them. And most important, they would need to rediscover the principles on which the United States was founded. (“All men are created equal...”)

Unimaginable? Maybe so, but what other choice is there? To thrive in the future, they eventually must appeal to America as it is, not as they imagine it was in the past.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

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Russia Is Becoming China's Vassal

One of the ironies of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that the war was supposed to be a first step in Vladimir Putin's fantasy of restoring the Russian Empire - not so much the Soviet Union as Russia under the tsars with Putin seeing himself as the new tsar.  Putin's delusions have lead to a far different result: a unified and enlarged NATO and Russia's military being put on display as anything but the formidible force many had thought it to be.  Worse yet, between sanctions and growing isolation from Europe, Russia is fast on the road to becoming a vassal to China rather than reasserting itself as a great power.  Putin's war of choice continues to parallel Nicholas II's disastrous Russo-Japanese War that showed Russia to be far weaker than the world assumed and set in motion the march toward revolution. A further irony is Ukraine's suggestion that it would rename Russia and call it Muscovy - a reference perhaps to the time in history when the princes of Moscow were vassals to the Mongols.   A piece in The Economist which looks at Russia's slide to vassal status vis-a-vis China.  Here are excerpts:

WHEN XI JINPING arrives in Moscow on March 20th for a state visit, the Kremlin ceremonies will be focused on showing not only respect to the most important foreign guest Russia has hosted since the beginning of its war against Ukraine, but also equality between the Chinese leader and his host, President Vladimir Putin. Yet elaborate court protocols will not be able to mask the growing power asymmetry between the two countries.

Mr Putin likes to frame his assault on Ukraine as an act of rebellion against American global dominance and a leap towards full Russian sovereignty. The reality is very different. Thirteen months into the war, Russia is increasingly dependent on China as a market for its commodities, as a source of critical imports, and as its most important diplomatic partner amid its growing global isolation. In 2022 China accounted for nearly 30% of Russian exports and 40% of its imports. A growing share of that trade is settled in Chinese yuan, since the West sanctions Russia’s access to the dollar and euro. With the West quickly dismantling its reliance on Russian natural resources, this dependency is set to grow.

Indeed, Russia may soon be more dependent on China than it ever was on Europe. It launched its pivot to China in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, in order to diversify away from Europe. Now that ties with the West are broken beyond repair, Russia has no long-term options other than China.

For now, China is content simply to monetise its growing geoeconomic leverage over Russia by securing discounts on its hydrocarbon exports and conquering its consumer market. But it is probably only a matter of time before China demands more political loyalty for its help in keeping Mr Putin’s regime afloat.

As Russia’s reliance on China reduces the Kremlin’s leverage, China could demand more political concessions. It could ask Russia to share sensitive military technologies, accept its naval presence in the Russian Arctic, or greenlight more People’s Liberation Army installations in Central Asia. China may also want a say on Russia’s ties to Asian countries that have their own troubles with Mr Xi’s regime. China could ask Russia not to service the military equipment that it has been selling to India for decades, for example. The Kremlin may not be able to refuse some of these offers.

Why, if the Kremlin was so obsessed about supposed American dominance in its relationship with the West, would it lock the country into deepening deference to China? The reason is that the war against Ukraine and, by extension, its Western allies, has emerged as the organising principle of Russian politics, economics and foreign policy. Mr Putin and his entourage have staked so much on this campaign that the war has become existential. Losing it, in the dark minds of the hard men in the Kremlin, means losing power, the country, and maybe even their own freedom and lives.

As censorship and repression become the norm in Russia, and the economy is increasingly put on a war footing, the Kremlin is reassessing every diplomatic relationship through the lens of its potential support for the war effort. China emerges as the most consequential partner, for three reasons.

First, its increased purchases of Russian commodities fill Mr Putin’s war chest. Second, China is an irreplaceable source of supplies for Mr Putin’s war machine, whether components for Russian weapons or microchips for industrial machines. Finally, although the Kremlin has been looking for ways to punish the West—above all America—for its support for Ukraine, so far the tools it has deployed, such as cyberweapons or energy blackmail, have not proved very effective.

What sweetens the pill of subservience to China is not only Schadenfreude about the upcoming demise of American hegemony, but China’s remarkable ability to massage the Russian ego and give Mr Putin public face, including through Mr Xi’s state visit. Another comforting reality is that China could not care less about repression and corruption inside Russia, so long as Chinese interests are served.

Russia’s new attitude towards China is in stark contrast to even a year ago. Before February 24th many voices in the Russian power system cautioned against a blind rush into China’s embrace, advocating a more balanced foreign policy. These voices are now silent, subordinated to Mr Putin’s tunnel vision of Russian national interests: destroying Ukraine and taking revenge on the West. The tragedy for Russia is that even after Mr Putin’s exit from the political scene, the new setup of a giant Eurasian dictatorship subservient to Chinese overlords will probably survive.

Several years from now, the West will have eliminated its economic dependency on anything Russian. Russia’s economy will adjust—with enormous Chinese help—to a new model: poorer and technologically backward, but sustainable. China will consume the bulk of Russian exports and provide its only modern technology; the Russian financial system will be fully yuanised. The sanctioned leaders of the Russian security services and the military will become the country’s new elite: mostly veterans of the Ukrainian campaign, with no experience of travelling to the West since 2014, and many with children in top Chinese universities.

To restore ties with the West and crawl out from under this Chinese dominance, Russia will have to meet Ukraine’s demands of accountability for war criminals, reparations and the return of all annexed territories, with the promise of a partial lifting of sanctions as an elusive reward. That will be a tall order even in the unlikely scenario of a democratic government in post-Putin Russia, and next to impossible to the team that will probably run the Kremlin after Mr Putin finally leaves. Vassalage to China will look more familiar, predictable and beneficial.

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Some in the GOP Have Lost Their Moral Compass on Ukraine

In my view, a political party that remains beholden to a morally bankrupt, malignant narcissist like Donald Trump has lost its moral compass (this is particularly true of Trump loving evangelicals).  Yet some in the Republican Party - namely possible presidential primary contenders - and their propagandists at Fox News are signalling that their moral bankruptcy goes even further by seeking to limit America's aid to Ukraine or, worse yet, favoring Vladimair Putin, a man against an arrest warrant for war crimes has been issued by the International Criminal Court.  There truly is a reason some conservatives are calling the GOP nomination contest the "Moscow Primary."  Thankfully, not all Republicans are embracing this betrayal of freedom and approach that would only embolden Russia and China to launch conquests against neighbors and weaken America's position in the world.  A column in the Washington Post lays out the moral failings of the pro-Putin Republicans and how they would weaken the nation in the face of aggressors.  Here are excerpts:

“America First” does not mean “America Only.” It means putting our interests first — and that’s what opposing Russia in Ukraine does.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a “territorial dispute,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described it this month. Russia is engaged in a war against an innocent people, and it must be condemned. The United States of America is the greatest country on Earth, and we must stand with our allies around the globe to fight aggressive and dangerous regimes that threaten freedom wherever they are.

Simply opposing aid to Ukraine because President Biden supports it is not a viable foreign policy. To abandon Ukraine would set off a negative chain of events for U.S. interests domestically and abroad. Vladimir Putin is knocking at NATO’s doorstep, and without our support — and the support of our European allies — Ukraine will fall, resulting in far graver problems for the United States: conflict across Europe.

For generations, oppressive authoritarian rule has quashed religious freedom and limited individual opportunities across the globe. The United States should stand with freedom-loving people and help support emerging democracies wherever they are. The days of being coy on foreign policy are over.

History has taught us that complacency and appeasement benefit our enemies much more than they benefit the United States. Some in the Republican Party have lost their moral compass on foreign policy, as evidenced by former president Donald Trump, who once called Putin’s invasion “genius” and “savvy.” As Republicans, we should support freedom, not abandon it. We must not equivocate, but rather lead with strength and courage in the mold of Ronald Reagan.

There should never be blank checks when it comes to government funding, and all tax dollars must be spent and accounted for wisely. Yet the price the United States is paying in Ukraine today is far less than the price we will face if Putin continues his westward march, threatening the sovereignty and security of NATO.

[T]he United States has a duty to limit authoritarian and tyrannical aggression, whether it’s Russia in Ukraine or China in Taiwan. If we were to abandon Ukraine, the United States would send an unmistakable signal to dictators that the United States does not stand with its allies, nor for the expansion of freedom. Allied countries such as Japan and Australia would be left to wonder if the United States would tolerate Chinese aggression in the Pacific.

U.S. resolve is being tested, and Xi Jinping is watching. It is easy to see what happens next: Russia and China get stronger; the United States gets weaker. China, emboldened, sees an opening in Taiwan, conflict cascades, and the United States faces an existential threat.

The idea that our support of Ukraine is creating a partnership between China and Russia is a straw man. China and Russia have colluded against U.S. interests for over a decade, and this war has weakened Russia.

Unfortunately, Putin is now hearing future leaders of the United States speak with a lack of commitment against such aggression.

As Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Today, our commitment to freedom’s legacy is being tested. My hope for the Republican Party — and for the United States — is that we continue to stand with freedom for generations to come.

Resolve is the United States’ most powerful tool in worldwide conflicts. We need to show it. Our hopeful vision for the world must be aspirational and ambitious, not apathetic and indifferent.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty