Conservatives Can?t Distinguish Between Democratic Reform and Authoritarianism

You need some norms to prevent ruling parties from abusing their power in order to perpetuate their control of government and to discourage political violence.Many left-wing critics who downplay the unique threat posed by Trump have made exactly the same error, treating defenses of democratic norms as though they were defenses of all norms.Yes, Democratic proposals to change presidential elections so that the second-place vote-getter doesn’t win (i.e., the same rules we use in every other election in this country) and Trump’s proposal to unleash a bloody crackdown by right-wing members of the armed forces are both changes to political norms. Realistically, by the time I sent that email, if I had thought it would have gotten the desired reaction from Donald Trump Jr., I would happily have stated that I was bringing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Trump Tower.Trump hopes Virginians will be so turned off by scandals facing state Democrats that they vote for one of history’s most scandal-plagued presidentsLeading the offensive is Vice President Mike Pence, who on Wednesday evening headlined a fundraiser in McLean for Republican state legislators up for election in November. Before Pence departed for the fundraiser on Wednesday, the president asked him to deliver a message to state Republicans.“Tell them we think Virginia is in play and that I’m going to be there,” Trump told the vice president, according to one person familiar with the exchange.Black box data from the Ethiopia Airlines crash supports the leading theory that the automated MCAS system was the causeOfficials investigating the fatal crash of a Boeing Co. 737 MAX in Ethiopia have reached a preliminary conclusion that a suspect flight-control feature automatically activated before the plane nose-dived into the ground, according to people briefed on the matter, the first findings based on data retrieved from the flight’s black boxes.The emerging consensus among investigators, one of these people said, was relayed during a high-level briefing at the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday, and is the strongest indication yet that the same automated system, called MCAS, misfired in both the Ethiopian Airlines flight earlier this month and a Lion Air flight in Indonesia, which crashed less than five months earlier. The two crashes claimed 346 lives.It’s not ideal footing for Trump’s attempted pivot to brand the GOP as “the Party of Great HealthCare!”The Trump administration has lost another Obamacare legal battle — its second this week — just as the president has revived his drive to destroy and replace the 2010 health law.A federal judge ruled late Thursday in Washington that the administration’s efforts to expand the availability of health plans that don’t meet the coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act is a deliberate and illegal “end run“ around the federal health care law. But when President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in October 2017, the island’s dire predicament was hardly the only topic on his mind.People familiar with the visit said the President was distracted by other matters – including his then-devolving war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – as he toured devastated neighborhoods and took an aerial tour of the damage.At one point, Trump pointed to the “nuclear football” – a briefcase always in the President’s vicinity that can be used to authorize a nuclear attack – and claimed he could use it on Kim whenever he felt.“This is what I have for Kim,” he said, according to three people familiar who witnessed the remark.The Obamacare folliesJust one day after Attorney General Barr released his summary of the Mueller report, President Trump’s Department of Justice announced that it is now fully supporting a radical and widely lambasted legal opinion from a federal judge who ruled that the Affordable Care Act is completely invalid because Congress nixed the individual mandate. Will a circuit court side with his absurd opinion, much less the Supreme Court?Anything’s possible in the Fifth Circuit, but I doubt the Supremes will fish in.I agree, I don’t think there’s much evidence that the court would be willing to overturn the entire law.Until such time as it’s resolved, though, Republicans have to figure out how to convince Trump to shut up about it all.That’s what’s particularly hard to figure here: this move has all the downsides of coming out against a now-popular law, with none of the upsides of fulfilling a major campaign promise — that is, getting rid of that law. But it certainly doesn’t help with elite Republican confidence in him…not that there’s anything they can do about it.It’s hard not to enjoy the manifest agony over this of Trump sycophants like Kevin McCarthy.Yes, probably a mistake to assume Trump would either recognize reality or respond to it the way a normal person would.What a mensch!What’s wrong with this picture?That’s our manA meeting of the lefty mindsNYC’s ferries are a lot nicer than the subway, but at a steep costNew York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s system of ferry boats linking Manhattan with transit-poor sections of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx is costing city taxpayers almost $11 per ride, 10 times more than they pay to subsidize subways and buses, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.The system’s dependence on high taxpayer subsidies comes as city and state officials move toward enacting congestion pricing fees for motorists entering midtown Manhattan.