Dutch Salmon

Xenophon and Gemma on San Bruno Mountain

I read an article in the New Mexico Political Report this morning about the long struggle to protect the Gila, the state's last free-flowing river.  As has been the case for as long as I can recall the article started off with a reference to the involvement in the fight by Dutch Salmon.  It came as a shock to see that Salmon had died in March.  I found it hard to believe that his passing had not been sufficiently noted in the press for me to have seen it when it happened.

I read Dutch Salmon's first book, Gazehounds & Coursing, when we were living in San Francisco's Outer Mission District in the mid-70s.  His tales of chasing jackrabbits in the deserts of the Southwest inspired me to acquire a pair of salukis.  My dogs and I spent many hours together on San Bruno Mountain south of the city, and we also chased a lot of jacks in the fill land near Brisbane.  My decisions to move to Idaho and later to New Mexico were certainly influenced by Salmon's stories as well.

I put coursing and falconry aside for quite a while after we left Idaho, but I got back to the dogs when we moved back out to country living on five acres in the Chihuahuan Desert south of Hatch, New Mexico.  I got two greyhounds which were fine companions for walks in the foothills of the Sierra de Las Uvas.  Jet was a small black greyhound that came from a pack of coyote hunters belonging to some Basque sheepmen in central New Mexico.  Sky was an elegant brindle from a line of racers from the same area.  I miss those many fine days with my dogs in the high desert, and I will certainly miss Dutch Salmon's fine writing and his advocacy for the preservation of Wilderness.

Momentum

"For the first time since the beginning of the Democratic presidential primary, Elizabeth Warren took the lead in PredictIt’s online betting markets over the weekend. Shares of the Massachusetts senator were going for as high 29 cents on Sunday, one cent more than Joe Biden’s. Senators Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders were a fairly distant third and fourth..."

Bernie has a good excuse for a sudden relative drop in popularity.  Biden does not; he is just coming up against raw reality.

The idea that the former Vice-Pres was the one most likely to beat Trump was based on equal parts of his association with Obama and a dose of nostalgia for largely imagined better times.  Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that Joe is short on genuinely original ideas and he has demonstrated little skill in articulating the ideas he does have.  It seems unlikely that Biden would hold up well in a debate with an unscrupulous performer like Trump.

Warren has thought deeply about the major issues and developed thorough policy positions on all of them.  Equally important, she has shown that she knows how to deal with Trump-style trolling.
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Related:
How to get rid of that skunk smell?
(help from Science)

The Trump Spiral

It seems there is no way to know at this moment what is going to happen about impeachment or the 2020 election.  What is obvious, however, is that Trump is spiraling out of control in his responses to the daily challenges he confronts.  He spouts a poisonous torrent of daily Twitter posts interspersed with confrontations with the Press full of truculence and name calling.  His demeanor is that of a frustrated, inarticulate child.

Some commentators have speculated that Trump is losing his mind.  While that cannot be ruled out, it seems more likely that he has just panicked due to  losing control of the narrative, even within Foxworld.

Consider the contrast in Trump's behavior when he is in a campaign appearance with his loyal supporters.  In those venues he looks confident.  He is able there to stick to a very limited set of issues designed to appeal to the fears, frustrations and prejudices of his base.  He is able to present an image of being in charge of the nation's course.

Outside of those carefully staged appearances, however, Trump seems unable to sustain any coherent line of thought in response to daily challenges from Congress and the Press.  He lies compulsively and often contradicts himself in adjacent sentences.  He just cannot seem to shut up when that would clearly be in his own best interest.

Trump's behavior under pressure is in sharp contrast to his Republican predecessors in the Presidency.  Think for a moment about how they handled revelations about their lies and illegal behavior.  Ike lied about the U2 overflights of the Soviet Union. Reagan lied about arms sales to finance the Contras.  Bush fabricated the weapons of mass destruction myth to take us to war with Iraq.

In each of those cases, however, the perpetrator-in-chief knew to keep his mouth closed.  They let their Congressional allies carry the defense, and they let the agents of their plots take the rap and go to jail when necessary, knowing that a pardon was always available at term's end.

Nixon, of course, did talk himself out of office, but that was only because the Supreme Court forced the contents of the secret tapes into the open.  Trump, in contrast to his predecessors, also seems uniquely incapable of holding onto key advisors and of keeping his Cabinet supporters from being fatally tainted by his misbehavior.

It is interesting to speculate about the calculations that are being made now by Republicans in the House and in the Senate in response to Trump's daily melt-down.  As long as Trump could stay in campaign mode, they could fall back on the idea that Trump-will-be-Trump and then forge ahead with their standard operating procedures of cutting taxes for the ultra-rich and slashing benefits for the rest of us.

The Republican leadership is still holding the line against impeachment with the usual techniques of deflection and obfuscation.  However, there have been a few tepid criticisms coming out of the red ranks, and there appear to be around thirty Republican Senators who would be very happy to see Trump be brought down if that could be accomplished without their own political demise.

Quite a few Republican congressmen have elected to forego an attempt to hold onto their seats due in large part to the Trump trajectory.  It seems very likely that those who plan on remaining in office, in the face of Trump's volatile behavior will focus increasingly on the idea that if Trump were forced out now before the election, they would still have Pence to carry their flag.
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ps:  I see now at 10:40 PM that Colbert is covering much of the same territory in his opening monologue.  He's funnier.  Maybe I should just post links to his show on a daily basis.

Ukraine

The whistleblower report is public and the congressional hearings are under way.  The whistleblower clearly has high level access to White House activities and has conducted a thorough initial investigation, interviewing many individuals with direct knowledge of events around interactions of the President and his administration with Ukrainian officials.

The hearings will bring out many additional details as the people indicated in the report are identified and brought in to testify.  However, the concise report really lays out the major accusations quite well.  The real battles will now be to control the media narrative while also pressuring members of congress to support or oppose impeachment.

The Democrats still need a few more votes to move forward to impeachment.  There are a number of Dem members of congress who have voiced opposition to impeachment, most of whom are in districts with a large contingent of Trump supporters.  A good example is Xochitl Torres Small who narrowly took a seat in southern New Mexico that has long been held by Republicans.  Another notable holdout on impeachment is Tulsi Gabbard* of Hawaii who recently qualified for the third debate.

Helpful commentary on the unfolding Ukraine story is in progress at fivethirtyeight.com.

* "Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii endorsed the impeachment inquiry against President Trump on Friday..." (nytimes)

Nobel candidate?

wikipedia

She has already received many honors for her environmental leadership, and it would be hard to dispute the impact on world opinion of Greta Thunberg.  That this young woman can consistently demonstrate such an astounding ability to articulate her advocacy for action on climate change along with great courage seems to make the choice for the Nobel obvious.
 
    I'll freely admit some bias in favor of Thunberg due in part to memories of my own cluelessness at her present age.  Of course I was not alone in that affliction.  I don't recall any of my teenage 1950s peers having any concerns beyond that generated by exaggerated self-absorbtion. The Vietnam war woke me up, but it was still a long struggle that extended well past the 1960s before my consciousness of social and political issues took on any coherent form.

Trump's Strategy

Trump's recent visits to Democratic majority states raise some interesting questions about his support for his 2020 run and his opposition.  His stated reasons focus on the possibility of flipping those states to the red column.  That seems like a pretty unlikely scenario and it is hard to believe Trump - and even more so his advisers - really consider such a development at all likely.

There is also the fact that Trump's rhetoric at his campaign events in those blue states really is not effectively aimed at broadening his base.  Trump continues to harp on imaginary economic gains associated with his policies and he continues to rant about immigrants and non-white groups - all the themes that are red meat for his base.  In the case of California Trump has also prefaced his visit with attacks on the state's emission standards and on San Francisco's homeless policies.

What we have not seen in recent political commentary is any assessment of what Trump's visits to the ultra-blue states have had on the opposition.  While Trump's words and actions seemed mostly designed to push the Dem's noses into the dirt, it seems possible that he could easily be hardening the opposition's determination to make Trump a one-termer.  It would be interesting to see the results of polling immediately before and after Trump's visits to New Mexico and California.  I could not find any such fine-grained analysis in progress right now, but maybe the pollsters will decide to play catch-up.

Lessons

Matthew Reichbach - NM Political Report

While Trump harangued his crowd on Albuquerque's west side we sat on the grass at Tiguex Park and listened to our local Dem politicos voice their opinions about Trumpworld.  It was a pleasant way to spend the late afternoon.

Andy Lyman - NM Politial Report

Nothing much new from either side of the long distance debate.  The main thing I took away from the day was that it is a lot easier task to tear things down by appealing to the country's base tendencies than it is to fix and build a better society.