The Weekly Sift

As you know, I’m trying (not always successfully) to resist having the Weekly Sift turn into an all-presidential-politics blog. The presidential election is important and the race is addictive once you start paying attention to it. But figuring out who will (or even should) be the next president isn’t the be-all and end-all of what the Sift is for.

On the other hand, the presidential race does focus the public’s attention, and so occasionally provides a good hook for discussing something that has independent value. That’s what I’m doing with this week’s first featured post: “Crime and Punishment: Did Trump Spill the Beans on the Pro-Life Movement?”

As you probably already know, this week Donald Trump first said that after he outlaws abortion (as he wants to do for all but a few exceptional cases) women who get abortions will have to be punished. That caused an uproar not just from feminists, but from pro-lifers who usually deny that they want to punish women. And so something rare happened: Trump had to walk back one of his headline-making statements.

There’s a whole political angle on whether that was a good thing to do and how it will affect his chances in the Wisconsin Primary tomorrow and so on, but other people have that covered already. To me, the interesting question is: Did he have it right the first time? Whatever pro-lifers might say now, won’t the inevitable logic of their position lead to punishments for women who seek abortions? And if that’s true, why do they say otherwise? That post is just about done, and should be out shortly.

The other featured post will be “Where North Carolina’s New Law is Going”. North Carolina’s hastily passed LGBT-rights-restricting HB2 is close enough to laws the Supreme Court has already thrown out that the issues involved are pretty clear. There’s only one facet of the situation that needs new Supreme Court guidance, and it’s already obvious how all the justices will vote. Or at least that’s how it looks to me.

I’m still looking for a cartoon to illustrate that article, so let’s say it gets out by 10 EDT.

That doesn’t leave much space of the weekly summary. I’ll check in with the presidential race, get annoyed with the WaPo for yet another false alarm about Hillary’s emails, and maybe do a few other things. That still needs work, so let’s predict it for noon.

So now we have the unprecedented situation of a Supreme Court nominee that the Senate is ignoring. That’s one more tick in the “Countdown to Augustus” I’ve been talking about since 2013: the slow degradation of the norms and traditions that make the Republic work, leading up to the moment when our system of government becomes so dysfunctional that large numbers of people will be happy to see a strongman sweep it all away.

This year the significance of the countdown is highlighted, because one of our presidential candidates seems to be auditioning for the role of Caesar, and doing quite well with it so far.

I’ll pull all those threads together in this week’s featured post “Tick, Tick, Tick … the Augustus Countdown Continues”. That should be out around 9 EST.

In the weekly summary, I’ll discuss the Garland nomination and the state of the presidential race in both parties, touch base with a series of ongoing stories I’ve sifted before, and link to a video of Tim Wise very concisely describing how the rich have used race to divide the working classes since the 1600s, before closing with a viral video of Obama hosting Hamilton.

This week I’m going out on a limb and announcing “Peak Drumpf”, the moment when the threat of President Donald Trump looks scariest, and then begins to fade. The reason I expect things to start turning against the Donald is not that Mitt Romney finally marched into battle against him, and certainly not that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio has finally started to catch fire. I think it’s still possible that the GOP will stumble its way into nominating Trump.

But what makes me optimistic about the Donald’s ultimate fall is that the right message to use against him has finally emerged and started to spread: He’s a con-man.

Here’s why that’s important: The victims of Trump’s past cons (like Trump U or the condo projects that took people’s deposits and never built any condos) aren’t Mexicans or Muslims or anybody else his followers resent or fear; the victims are people just like them, and the kinds of things he said to con them sound just like what he’s telling his supporters now.

“Peak Drumpf” still needs a little bit of work, so let’s say it gets posted around 9 EST.

We’re in that three-week period where the nominations are going to be wrapped up, so the weekly summary is also going to be full of presidential politics: the least presidential debate in America history, where the nomination races stand, a better notion of why black voters aren’t backing Bernie, and Trump’s healthcare plan.

Non-race-for-the-White-House stuff includes a fun book about (believe it or not) behavioral economics, more good news about unemployment, and the simple change that would have made Straight Outta Compton an Oscar-winner.

This week it became clear that President Obama will nominate a Supreme Court justice to replace the late Anton Scalia, but we don’t yet know who. Meanwhile on the Republican side, a number of reasons/excuses for not considering that nomination were raised. I’ll discuss them, along with the history of election-year Court nominations, in the first featured post “Replacing Scalia (or not)”. It should be out by 8 EST.

Another topic of discussion this week was Apple’s decision to fight a court order instructing it to help the FBI crack the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. To some, Apple is siding with terrorists over public safety, leading Donald Trump to call for a boycott of Apple products. To others, Apple is championing the individual right to privacy against a snooping government. My intuition puts me on Apple’s side of this question, but the deeper I looked, the more I realized that neither position is as clear-cut as a first glance makes it appear. I’ll sum up what I found in “The Apple/FBI question is harder than it looks”. That should be out by 9.

In the weekly summary, there are election results to consider: the Democratic Nevada caucuses and the Republican South Carolina primary. Digging into the entrance/exit polls reveals stuff with implications beyond the simple vote totals. The falling price of oil has led to speculation about the long-term stability of oil-dependent dictatorships like Russia and Saudi Arabia. Right-wing groups are experimenting to see which burn-Bernie attacks work, just in case. And we’ll close with a pitch for making Canada the next president of the United States.

OK, the primary’s tomorrow, so I really have to decide who I’m voting for. In spite of all the trepidation I’ve been expressing the last two weeks, it’s Bernie, for reasons I’ll explain in the weekly summary.

This week’s featured post is another one of those long history-and-theory rambles that I’m sure any blogging coach would tell me to stop writing — if not for the fact that Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party and The Distress of the Privileged are my two most popular articles. It’s called “Say — you want a revolution?”, and it’s about what’s really involved in the kind of “political revolution” Bernie keeps calling for. I think it’s a bigger job than a lot of Sanders supporters imagine. The problem isn’t just getting people out to vote once — Obama did that — but creating a reliable new voting majority that will keep coming back election after election. And that means understanding a lot more about why people do or don’t vote.

Even the parts of the summary that aren’t about my own decision are largely going to be about the campaign. Living in New Hampshire right now, it’s hard to think about much else. But I’ll also mention my cup of coffee with Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland, who is leading the fight in Congress against money in politics. (A lot more about that in coming weeks. If Sarbanes isn’t a future presidential candidate, I’ve never seen one.) I’ll try to keep a sense of humor, even about tomorrow’s primary, and I’ll look for a much less serious closing.