" We’re told that a new, ascendant America — more nonwhite, more culturally liberal, more feminist — is going to dominate our politics for years to come. Those predictions have partially come true. Barack Obama was elected and reelected president in 2008 and 2012, respectively, and Democrats won majorities in House contests in 2006, 2008 and 2018.

But those are slimmer pickings than were promised. And President Donald Trump’s victories in 2016 have made a mockery of the predictions. He wasn’t ascendant America’s choice. Like (but no more so than) other Republicans, he ran way behind among nonwhites. From millennials and Generation Z he evokes the response “OK, boomer.” Feminists feel queasy at the mention of his name.

Demographics, it turns out, don’t automatically turn into destiny.

Ascendant groups’ airs of domination can spur those with opposite values into unaccustomed unity and enthusiasm. Ascendant leaders can concoct extreme policies (Green New Deal, anyone?) unsellable to most voters. And perhaps ascendant groups, with their low birth rates, may not become as ascendant as demographers expected.

That’s a conclusion you might draw from the Census Bureau’s recently released state population estimates for midyear 2019. They’re the best leading indicator we’ve got for the 2020 Census. Congressional reapportionment, it appears, would work to the advantage of Trump: The 30 states he carried in 2016 seem likely to gain at least three congressional seats and electoral votes.

One reason is that California, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850, is gaining population at a rate below the national average and is likely to lose a House seat.

Texas, the second most populated state, is growing far more robustly, from 25 million in 2010 to almost 29 million last year. That’s a bigger percentage gain over nine years than any other state except big-family-size Utah.

Florida, which passed New York to become number three in 2013, gained 14%. A decade ago, Florida trailed New York by half a million. Now, with 21 million, it’s 2 million ahead of New York.

These changes favor Republicans. Some upscale Texans trended Democratic in 2018, and perhaps, as in Colorado and Arizona, some incoming Californians might import the left-wing politics whose results spurred their migration. But Texas’ middle-income Latinos and high-education whites remain much more Republican than their California counterparts.

Florida, though attracting more international immigrants than California and more domestic in-migrants than Texas, is nevertheless trending Republican. Domestic newcomers tend to be Trump-friendly: Catholics fleeing the high-tax Northeast and small-town Midwesterner retirees fleeing the cold. Many incoming immigrants and Puerto Ricans seem amenable to Republican policies, and Hispanics and blacks join in, making Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ job approval over 60%.

With Texas projected by Polidata Inc. to gain 3 electoral votes, Florida projected to gain 2 and California projected to lose 1, together they should outvote California 72 to 54 electoral votes, compared with 67-55 this year.

Working in Democrats’ favor is the perceptible migration of blacks from ailing northern cities like Chicago to Southern boom metros like Atlanta.

In the early 2010s, there was notable population growth in the core areas of major cities that have become almost unanimously Democratic. But that trend has now been reversed. Even New York City, after six years of Mayor Bill de Blasio, is losing people.

That leaves Democrats, however ascendant they may feel, with the disadvantage of having their votes heavily concentrated in low-growth metro areas while opposition voters are more evenly spread out over the faster-growing remainder of the country.

A party in that situation has two choices. One is to change the rules, but amending the Constitution is hard, and finagling to undercut the Electoral College likely won’t work.

The other choice is to extend your appeal beyond your 80%-plus strongholds in central cities, university towns and suburbs favored by Ivy League graduates. Democrats had some success doing this in 2018. But many of their presidential candidates, seeking Democratic primary votes, so far seem less interested. "

" The U.S. fiscal deficit topped $1 trillion in 2019, the first time it has passed that level in a calendar year since 2012, according to Treasury Department figures released Monday.

The budget shortfall hit $1.02 trillion for the January-to-December period, a 17.1% increase from 2018, which itself had seen a 28.2% jump from the previous year.

Rising corporate tax revenue helped lower the pace of increase in the spending gap.

For the fiscal year, which began in October, the shortfall is already at $356.6 billion, an 11.7% increase from a year ago. If that pace continues it would also lead to a fiscal deficit for 2019-20 of more than $1 trillion.

Through December, receipts have totaled $806.5 billion while outlays have come to $1.16 trillion.

President Donald Trump had vowed that his stimulus policies, including massive corporate tax cut and aggressive deregulation, would help stem the red ink coming from Washington, but it has only increased. As deficits have swelled, so has the national debt, which is now at $23.2 trillion. "

" In 2016, Bernie Sanders waited until July -- long after the Democratic nomination had been decided -- to endorse Hillary Clinton. Radio host Howard Stern asked Clinton if Sanders could have backed her earlier.

"He could have," she replied. "He hurt me. There's no doubt about it. He hurt me." Clinton added: "I hope he doesn't do it again to whoever gets the nomination. Once is enough."

Many of Clinton's most grievous wounds were self-inflicted. No one made her use a private email server, or give high-dollar speeches to Wall Street, or ignore warnings in key Midwestern states, or call Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables." It was her campaign that was deplorable.

But her comments about Sanders are still correct. His behavior remains one of the principal reasons for her defeat. As Hillary wrote in her book "What Happened," Sanders' attacks "impugning my character ... caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign."

Sanders is poised to play the role of spoiler again. His huge fundraising haul over the last three months guarantees his staying power, and he is starting to do to Joe Biden what he did to Hillary -- emphasizing his rival's personal flaws and handing the Trump campaign a stockpile of ammunition.

In a recent Washington Post interview, Bernie echoed Trump's caustic condemnation of Biden as "Sleepy Joe" by saying, "It's just a lot of baggage Joe takes into a campaign, which isn't going to create energy and excitement."

Primary opponents have every right to criticize their rivals, but what makes Sanders so dangerous to the Democrats is his insufferable self-righteousness. We're pure, he tells his followers, and everyone else is corrupt. Like Trump, he warns that the system is "rigged" against them, so if they lose, they lose unfairly and therefore have no obligation to support the winner.


Analysts studying the 2016 vote concluded that about one in five Sanders primary voters did not back Clinton in November. About one in 10 actually voted for Trump, while the rest supported third parties or stayed home. Professor Brian Schaffner of the University of Massachusetts calculates that in each of the three states that made Trump president -- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan -- the number of Bernie backers who voted for Trump exceeded the president's margin of victory.

Sanders is threatening to repeat that perfidious performance this year. Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, a Biden backer, told the Post, "My big concern isn't that he'll beat Joe, but that this movement of his may decide to take a walk if Bernie isn't the nominee. It'd be deadly to the Democratic Party if he didn't do everything he could to support the nominee."

Sanders, of course, insists that he's not a spoiler -- that by calling for a "revolution," he can actually beat Trump by energizing marginal voters, particularly young people. But that is a delusional myth. This is not a revolutionary country. The last successful insurrection happened almost 250 years ago, when we liberated ourselves from a tyrannical British monarch. Since then, the core of our political culture, and its enduring stability, has been rooted in reason, not revolution, and pragmatism, not passion.

Since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, Democrats have elected six presidents; not one came from the Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. The orthodox liberals who did win the nomination all lost badly.

In the 2016 exit polls, only 26% of voters identified as liberals; 39% called themselves moderate and 35% conservative. It is totally inconceivable that this country would elect a self-proclaimed socialist who proposes vast increases in government spending totaling more than $50 trillion. Sure, Sanders could galvanize some left-wing voters, but he would alienate far more moderates: exactly the voters Democrats will desperately need in battleground states to deny Trump a second term.

For example, Mason-Dixon Polling reports that Biden beats Trump by 2 points in Florida, while Sanders loses by 5; in Virginia, Biden has a 4-point lead over the president, while Sanders trials him by 6. Harry Sloan, a Republican fundraiser, reinforced that finding in The New York Times: "I've spoken to many Republicans who don't intend to vote for Trump. They're looking for an alternative. They are pretty polarized against Warren and Sanders and that so-called progressive wing of the party."

Bernie Sanders cannot win the White House, but he can stop another Democrat from winning. That's why many party pragmatists don't feel the Bern -- they fear the Bern. "

There is always an eighteen month ' shakeout ' period after one of these five billion dollar monstrosities officially opens to the public ( roof leaks  ; sound issues  ; long concession lines ; malfunctioning poopers ; etc  ..... )   . Stones would be smart to pass on Vegas this summer . 

" The contrast could not have been starker. One picture showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi smiling as she signed (with numerous pens) two articles of impeachment against President Trump. She passed out the pens like souvenirs to fellow Democrats. They were embossed in gold with her signature and rested on silver trays.

The other picture was of President Trump signing phase one of a new trade deal with China.

Which picture depicted events of greater long-term benefit to Americans? Unless you are a rank partisan out to remove President Trump from office by whatever means, the obvious answer is the China trade deal.

The latest wrench thrown into the machinery of government comes from Democrats who released to their compliant media friends a "note to self" written on a hotel notepad supposedly by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney and a frequent flyer to Ukraine. The note said, "Get (Ukrainian president) Zalensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated."

Democrats claim Parnas was an intermediary in the effort to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Parnas' credibility would be in doubt were he under oath before a court, instead of "testifying" on various cable TV programs. Parnas heads a company that claims to combat fraud. Oh, the irony!

Democrats insist the Senate trial be "fair." How is it fair when House Democrats continue to leak documents they hope will damage the president and influence senators to vote for his removal from office? Some Democratic senators, who will sit in judgment of the president, have already declared him guilty.

It is politics at its worst and opens the door, as some of the Founders warned, for "normalizing" impeachment.

Historical background is always helpful, and so I consulted the National Constitution Center, a private, nonprofit organization and a leading platform for constitutional education and debate, where I found this: The "high crimes and misdemeanors" language (in the Constitution) remains controversial today. In two essays Neil J. Kinkopf and Keith E. Whittington looked at the Founder's vision: "The Framers meant for the phrase 'high crimes and misdemeanors' to signify only conduct that seriously harms the public and seriously compromises the officer's ability to continue. If the phrase is given a less rigorous interpretation, it could allow Congress to influence and control the President and the courts."

The article continues: "When the Founders wanted to ensure accountability, they mostly relied on elections and the voters to hold government officials responsible for their actions," said Whittington. "But what might fall into the category of 'other high Crimes and Misdemeanors' was still quite unclear."

Trump's call to Ukraine's president, which is at the heart of the impeachment articles, does not meet the standard of seriously harming the public or compromising the president's ability to do his job as shown by the China trade deal and the USMCA trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, both signed and passed days after impeachment.

That the Government Accountability Office says the president "broke the law" by withholding $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, aid Congress had approved, doesn't help the president's defenders, but does it rise to the level of a "high crime and misdemeanor"? Senators will decide. But they should recall that in 1994 the GAO ruled President Obama's prisoner deal to exchange Guantanamo Bay detainees for deserter Bowe Bergdahl violated federal law. Obama was not impeached.

Speaker Pelosi summed up the true motives of Democrats when she said that regardless of what the Senate does, impeachment will be a "permanent stain" on President Trump's legacy.

In fact, the stain will be on Democrats. It is Democrats who have plotted ways to reverse the will of voters who elected Trump. It is Democrats who fear he will be overwhelmingly re-elected in November. "

" Actually, contends every 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, the economy is in really bad shape. It is only working for the wealthiest among us while leaving behind the poor, the working class and the shrinking middle class.

Now, I suppose one could forgive the socialist contingent of the party for offering knee-jerk class-based bromides -- their entire worldview, after all, is centered on class struggle -- but even alleged moderates such as Joe Biden are falling back on economic arguments that are wholly disconnected from anything resembling reality.

Democrats could simply say: "Yes, it's true that the economy has been doing rather well for most Americans since Barack Obama saved it from the nefarious clutches of the Republican Party, but it's important that we never forget the men and women -- and especially minorities -- who've yet to benefit from this recent economic uptick. We can do better!"

That, of course, would mean implicitly admitting that easing regulatory oversight, cutting taxes and leaving the economy largely alone can be a successful formula for growth, which won't do. So, instead, the left continues to be consumed by the zero-sum fallacies of "inequality" to such an extent that it often sounds like it's more interested in punishing the wealthy than lifting the poor.

As far as I can tell, not a single moderator or reporter has ever asked Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to explain exactly how instituting a punitive tax on the rich will create higher wages for low earners. Can either point to any time in history when tax hikes triggered organic wage growth or an increase in self-sufficiency among Americans?

Wages for the lowest-end earners, in fact, have grown faster than they have for higher-wage earners in recent years. Some of it is due to new minimum wage laws -- which, though they benefit very few, are a luxury we might be able to afford with a humming economy -- and a tight job market that's putting upward pressure on salaries. There are more open jobs than there are people trying to find a job.

In the last debate, Tom Steyer claimed, "90% of Americans have not had a raise for 40 years." Politicians have been peddling the "wage stagnation" myth for a decade now. The notion that Americans make no more than their grandparents conveniently ignores a big expansion of employment-based benefits, increased efficiency and technological advances that have, by any genuine real-world measure, vastly improved the economic life of the average American.

Yet in last week's Democratic debate, Biden again asserted, to applause, that the middle class was "being clobbered" and "killed." (The middle class is actually quite alive. It isn't losing ground to poverty. It has been losing ground to the upper-middle-class for 40 years, however.)

Last year, the S&P 500 rose by 29%, the NASDAQ by 35%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 22%. Middle-class Americans are increasingly reliant on their 401(k)s and pensions to live comfortably during retirement. Millions of other Americans depend on college-savings funds to help pay for their kids' educations. And even those without a stock portfolio benefit from a vibrant market, which generates profits that are invested in hiring, innovation and salaries while helping move money from unprofitable sectors to more profitable ones.

This chaotic churning of money turns off technocrats. Rather than taking the view that the growing economy is a messy but neutral marketplace where ingenuity and opportunity can create comfort and wealth, they see it as a giant pile of money that should be "invested" in massive, state-mandated social engineering projects. As far as I can tell, both Sanders and Warren are interested in effectively nationalizing large chunks of the health care and energy sectors.

And yet the media continue to cover the Democratic primary debates where such ideas are the currency of the realm as if they were completely normal. They are not.

Democrats today argue that we should institute wide-ranging regulatory regimes such as the Green New Deal, which, whatever form it ends up taking, would necessitate the biggest tax increase in American history. There was not a single Democrat on the debate stage last week who didn't support deliberately limiting and inflating the cost of our most efficient and affordable energy sources. This is not an ordinary debate.

Now, whether we're living in the greatest economy the nation has ever experienced, as Donald Trump often contends, is up for debate. It's safe to say we've been experiencing one of the strongest stretches in modern history since back when gridlock hit D.C. during the Obama administration. "

" The fix is in. The jury is anything but impartial. The verdict is pretty much foreordained. But that isn’t what this trial will be about.

The Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is formally about a weighty constitutional question: Has Trump abused the powers of his office? But it’s also about politics, of course.

To borrow from Clausewitz, impeachment is the continuation of politics — including election-year politics — by other means.

That’s not a scandal. It’s an inevitable part of the way impeachment, the Constitution’s only method of sanctioning a president for misconduct, works.

An impeachment trial may look like a legal proceeding, but it isn’t. It’s not in a court; it’s in the Senate, a body populated by 100 politicians. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will preside, but he’ll act only as a referee, not a judge.

The senators have sworn an oath to render “impartial justice” in the days ahead. But most are already committed to the president’s defense or his downfall. A two-thirds vote for conviction would require at least 20 of the 53 Republicans to vote against him, and that’s not going to happen.

Still, the proceedings will be a pitched battle between two political parties trying to make cases to the public en route to the preordained conclusion. That doesn’t make the process trivial or tawdry. Republicans will say it’s only politics. That’s not true. Democrats will say it’s not about politics. That’s not true, either.

Two kinds of politics are at play — high politics and low.

The high politics are about the defense of the Constitution against a president who has claimed, erroneously, that Article II gives him “the right to do whatever I want.”

The high politics is what impelled House Democrats from conservative districts, like Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, to push for impeachment even though it might harm their prospects for reelection. It’s what prompted a handful of Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, to condemn Trump’s actions in asking Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden, a potential rival in the 2020 election.

The low politics — plain old election-year politics — will be easier to see. Impeachment has given Democrats a way to expose Trump’s conduct to public scrutiny. It’s been, in effect, a months-long infomercial — and it’s worked. A narrow majority of Americans believe Trump abused his power and acted improperly in his dealings with Ukraine, although not all believe he should be removed from office as a result, according to polls.

Democrats want to call witnesses in the Senate trial — especially John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, and Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff — to keep the infomercial going.

Senate politics are in play as well. A Senate trial that looks like a sham will discredit the president and his party in the eyes of many voters — or so Democrats argue. An anti-Trump group has released a television commercial deriding Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, one of the Senate’s most endangered Republicans. “Just another Trump servant: weak, frightened, impotent,” the commercial says. “He’ll do anything Trump orders.”

Trump has treated impeachment like a political contest as well. He’s praised his defenders and condemned his accusers, especially Republicans who threaten to break ranks. After Romney criticized his actions on Ukraine, the president called him “a pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning.”

The president sees the process, accurately, as a danger to his legacy — and possibly to his reelection chances.

“Why should I have the stigma of Impeachment attached to my name when I did NOTHING wrong?” he tweeted last Sunday.

I suspect little of this would have surprised the Founding Fathers; they knew the process they designed would be political. Impeachment will often “agitate the passions of the whole community and … divide it into parties,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers in 1788. “In such cases, there will always be the greatest danger, that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”

But there will be high politics at work, too — the politics of principles and ethics and preserving the Constitution. Romney is free to follow his conscience without qualms; he’s 72 and won’t be up for reelection until 2024. Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Pat Roberts of Kansas and Mike Enzi of Wyoming are retiring, and equally free. Their choices could be the stuff of high drama.

So, yes, there’s politics involved. And, yes, both sides think they know what the verdict will be. What matters — in both high politics and low — is how they get there. "