Political punditry: a couple of mid-April updates

Welcome to the Muellerstrom

Since a redacted version of the Mueller Report finally came out yesterday, I thought I'd check in to see whether my forecast of events to follow that release had any merit:

My half-baked crystal ball on March 25 said...

• The Mueller Report will come out, either in pieces or as a wholesale leak or as part of a US House investigation. After it gets out to the public, the same people trying to spin the Barr memo will continue the same spin about what is in the report itself, counting on the repeatedly demonstrated amnesia of the news media to help.

[Prognostication Grade: A. Pressure to release it in its entirety led to a redacted version being released on Thursday, April 18. Barr's efforts to spin and lie about what the report contains continued right into a press conference just before the report was released in which he made several statements directly contradicted by the words in the report. This is modus operandi for the Trump crowd, who follow their boss's lead by uttering any untruth as long as it helps them win even part of a news cycle. Most of news media seems to have forgotten that fact, though they have generally reported that the report itself was a good deal more troubling and damning in its contents than Barr's summary.

Meanwhile, the deplorables continue to be deplorable, the low-information Fox News viewers continue to watch and believe, and everybody else continues to be appalled by it all.]

• The facts that do come out will be ghastly. We've all become enured to ghastly facts in the 26 months that Trump has been in office.

[Prognostication Grade: A. The facts in it are ghastly. Many of them were already known, but it's still appalling to see them all in one place.]

• My guess that the the Dems in the US House do not open an impeachment hearing, but for the next 22 months we see a half-dozen ongoing hearings into what Mueller found, as well as the rest of the Trump mess of corruption leavened with incompetence. Now that we're more than halfway to the next election, it begins to make more and more sense to let the voters clean this up.

[Prognostication Grade: B. "No impeachment hearings" still seems like the likeliest outcome, but the report makes it extremely clear that Russia engaged in systematic and effective intelligence warfare to interfere with our presidential election, and that the President of the United States then engaged in two years of obstruction of justice in an attempt to cover up the activities of Russian Intelligence Agencies and his own campaign's actions.

Mueller also directly states that the question of whether action should be taken on the massive pile of obstruction-of-justice evidence should be left to Congress.

If committing obstruction of justice to cover up a hostile foreign government's attack on the United States doesn't merit impeachment, what does?]

• And oh yes, the voters will need to clean this up in November 2020.

[Prognostication Grade: A. Oh yes, this sure as hell needs voter intervention in November 2020. We also all need to make sure that our election process is a bit better protected from this sort of thing, and we need to do that fast!]


The Presidential Election Horse Race Update

The Presidential election horse-race update that nobody needed. In Kentucky Derby terms, the pack is just now breaking from the gate. Iowa and New Hampshire are the start of the final turn, so there's a lot of shuffling to come.


Top Tier

--Joe Biden (D) (Former VP)
--Bernie Sanders (D) (VT Senator)
--Elizabeth Warren (D) (MA Senator)
--Kamala Harris (D) (CA Senator)
--Pete Buttigieg (D) (South Bend, IN, Mayor)

From unpronounceable longshot to top-tier candidate in just a month, Pete Buttigieg (BOOT-EDGE-EDGE) has pole-vaulted over the crowd. We'll see if Mayor Pete sticks or is just Flavor of the Month, but he's picked up a lot of name recognition that has translated into donations, so it looks as if he'll be a genuine contender.


You've probably heard of…

--Cory Booker (D) (NJ Senator)
--Beto O'Rourke (D) (Former TX US Rep)
--Amy Klobuchar (D) (MN Senator)
--Julian Castro (D) (Former Sec of HUD)
--Kirsten Gillibrand (D) (NY Senator)

To my surprise Kirsten Gillibrand is the member of this tier most likely to fall into the "Also appearing" tier. Her candidacy has thus far gained no traction or enthusiasm that I can see, though she always struck me as a pretty good campaigner in prior campaigns. Despite her weak early fundraising she has $10 million from her Senate campaign to see her through this year and into Iowa and New Hampshire. So we shall see. My guess is that she's going to need a strong showing in the debates if she hopes to re-ignite her campaign. In horse-race terms I guess this would be stumbling out of the gate, but not actually falling down. There's plenty of time to recover, but she's a few lengths back from where I thought she would be.


Also appearing…

I haven't added anybody new to the crowd thus far. In another month or two it'll be time to think about which of these folks might have staying power, but for now, they're all faces in the crowd:

--John Hickenlooper (D) (Former CO Governor)
--Stacey Abrams (D) (Former GA State Rep)
--Tulsi Gabbard (D) (HI US Rep)
--Terry McAuliffe (D) (Former VA Governor)
--John Delaney (D) (Former MD US Rep)
--Steve Bullock (D) (MT Governor)
--Eric Holder (D) (Former Attorney Gen.)
--Jay Inslee (D) (WA Governor)
--Michael Bennet (D) (CO Senator)
--Bill de Blasio (D) (NYC Mayor)
--Seth Moulton (D) (MA US Rep)
--Tim Ryan (D) (OH US Rep)
--Eric Swalwell (D) (CA US Rep)
--Jeff Merkley  (D) (OR Senator)
--Andrew Yang (D) (Businessman)
--Richard Ojeda  (D) (Former WV State Senator)
--Mike Gravel (D) (Former AK Senator)
--Marianne Williamson (D) (Author)


And on the Republican side, we now have a primary! Bill Weld officially tossed his hat in the ring.

The GOP has grown so rotten and foul in recent years that I doubt there are enough decent Republicans left to make Weld a serious threat for the nomination. But we shall see.

Actual Candidates

--Donald Trump (R) (Cancer on Democracy and Truth ... er, I mean, POTUS, God help us all.)
--Bill Weld (R) (Former MA Governor, Libertarian VP candidate in 2016)

Republicans who like to talk but ultimately won't have the cojones to challenge Trump

--John Kasich (R) (Former OH Governor)
--Larry Hogan (R) (MD Governor)
--Jeff Flake (R) (Former AZ Senator)