Automatic Against The People

The Trump regime has crossed a huge line in their war on California's environmental standards, declaring that automakers meeting the state's increased fuel efficiency standards are committing illegal collusion, and that the Justice Department is targeting Ford, Volkswagen, BWM and Honda over what it calls "antitrust violations."

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the decision of four automakers in July to reach a voluntary agreement with California to adopt state emissions standards violated antitrust law, people briefed on the matter said on Friday.

The antitrust division has sent a letter to the automakers indicating the Justice Department had opened a preliminary inquiry, the people said, and comes as the Trump administration has ramped up its opposition to automakers seeking to sidestep it on rolling back Obama-era fuel efficiency rules.

In July, Ford Motor Co (F.N), BMW AG (BMWG.DE), Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and Honda Motor Co (7267.T) said they had reached a deal to adopt standards that were lower than Obama-era rules but higher than the Trump administration’s 2018 proposal.

In doing so, the automakers are defying the Trump administration’s effort to strip the state of the right to fight climate change by setting its own standards. Automakers fear years of legal battles and want to ensure certainty over the requirements they will face nationwide.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Ford said on Friday it had “received a letter from the Department of Justice and will cooperate with respect to any inquiry.” Honda said it was cooperating with the Justice Department. The probe is in its early stages, the people said.

On Friday, general counsels at the Environmental Protection Agency told California Air Resource Board Chair Mary Nichols in a letter that its actions in connection with the voluntary agreement “appear to be unlawful and invalid.”

The letter, copies of which were also sent to the automakers’ chief executives, warned that commitments made by the automakers “may result in legal consequences given the limits placed in federal law on California’s authority.”

Nichols did not immediately respond to a request for comment. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the state “will continue its advance toward a cleaner future. We’re prepared to defend the standards that make that promise a reality.”

Public Citizen, an advocacy group, called the investigation “blatantly retaliatory” and suggested the Trump administration is “hell-bent on repealing the clean car standards.”

Of course it's retaliatory.  The entire Trump regime is built around being retaliatory. Nobody defies the Orange Emperor without paying the price, you see.

And let's not forget the Trump regime is slaughtering California's ability to enforce the Clear Air Act, too.

On Thursday, Reuters reported the administration was moving forward with plans to strip California of its waiver under the Clean Air Act to set its own vehicle emissions rules and requiring a rising number of zero emission vehicles.

Acting Office and Management Budget Director Russ Vought said in a statement “a handful of irresponsible auto makers are aiding California’s radical agenda that will hurt every one of us.”

The Obama-era rules called for a fleetwide fuel efficiency average of 46.7 miles (75.2 km) per gallon (mpg) by 2026, compared with 37 mpg (60 kpg) under the Trump administration’s preferred option. The final regulation will modestly boost fuel efficiency over the preferred option’s freeze of 2020 requirements but be far less than the Obama rules, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Trump wants it all gone.  He's probably going to get his way, too. I expect automakers will want to dissolve the agreement rather than face years of guaranteed DoJ harassment wrecking their stock prices.  You can already see the line of attack from the Trumpies, that automakers are "colluding" with "California's radical agenda" to hurt consumers.  That may not play well in the Rust Belt where the automakers are, but it will in the plains and the South.

Yet another reason we have to take the White House back in 2020.

The Never Trump Trap

The media is starting to smell blood around the Never Trump primary challengers, or at least an exploitable story to annoy Trump with.

The Republicans mounting primary challenges to Donald Trump are not exactly the Never Trump movement’s top draft picks. With little hope of defeating an incumbent president dependably popular inside his party, country-club Republicans of the more-in-sorrow-than-anger variety—Jeff Flake, Larry Hogan, Ben Sasse—politely declined recruiting pleas from anti-Trump intellectuals, operatives, and donors. Hogan, the governor of Maryland, called it a “kamikaze mission.” 

What remains is a trio of gadflies. Bill Weld, a patrician former Massachusetts governor and perma-candidate who was a running mate on the Libertarian ticket in 2016, was the first in the primary pool. He was followed last month by Joe Walsh, a loudmouth ex-radio host who briefly served in Congress and is best known for his racist tweets about Barack Obama. Former South Carolina governor and congressman Mark Sanford is also looking at the race, promising to focus his campaign on fiscal responsibility, a plank of pre-Trump Republican orthodoxy that’s been left by the wayside in the era of big tax cuts and trade wars. 

They’ve each been dismissed by the pundit class and, predictably, the Republican establishment, which is doing everything in its power to box out even a whiff of a sedition. These Never Trumpers are scoffed at for two main reasons. First, it’s impossible to win the primary. And second, none of these Trump challengers have the kind of star power or message that might result in a serious weakening of Trump’s standing among Republicans. The first point is not in question: Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is anywhere from 79 to 88%, depending on the poll, and the last Republican president to lose a primary was Chester Arthur in 1884. 

But the second assumption deserves more scrutiny. Weld has been in the race since April, to little effect in the media. But according to an Emerson poll from August, Weld is still somehow pulling 16% of the Republican vote against a sitting Republican president, a number that would give any White House political director pause. (Imagine how much media attention would be given to an Obama primary challenger running in double digits at this point in 2011.) The Republican and independent voters who will have a say in the primary, especially in a mercurial state like New Hampshire, are still only dimly aware of these upstart campaigns. Press attention is largely focused on the Democrats. Walsh and Sanford have not yet prosecuted their cases. 

Despite our compulsive need to handicap every political twist and tweet—to write obituaries before any ballots are cast—presidential campaigns remain impossible to evaluate ahead of time. The addition of Weld, Walsh, and Sanford simply adds a quirky layer of unpredictability to an already-uncertain political moment. With the economic outlook looking bumpy and Trump, who can possibly say that these guys will just fade into the background without laying a finger on the president? Polls show only about half of Republicans and Democrats are paying “close attention” to the presidential campaign. 

“The whole race is just completely unformed,” said Stuart Stevens, the longtime Republican strategist who is backing Weld’s bid. “There is only one constant out there, and that is Trump’s favorables, which are below 50%. Having been through this before with George W. Bush in New Hampshire in 2000, the only thing I can tell you is that when things happen, they happen late.” In that primary, over the course of just four months, John McCain vaulted from a long-shot curiosity to thumping Bush by almost 20 points. 

But even if beating Trump is just a pipe dream for frustrated Weekly Standard fanboys, the Republican primary might be about more than just softening up Trump, or dealing him some kind of mortal blow in New Hampshire. If Trump’s fitness for office becomes a viable conversation piece among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, for even just a few weeks next January or during the primaries in February, they will have accomplished something that nobody in politics has even bothered to attempt this campaign year: talking to center-right swing voters who are uncomfortable with the man in the White House.

I suppose, but it won't last.  Weld, Sanford, Walsh and anyone else will be crucified by Trump personally, and it'll be game over the second one of them drops out of the race after the pressure kicks in.

The press badly wants some sort of primary drama heading into next summer, but the reality is both nominees will be completely decided by Super Tuesday next March 3rd.  It's six months away, anything else between now and then is noise.

StupidiNews!

• Former Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe has died at age 95, he had ruled the country for over three decades before being deposed in a coup in 2017.
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than delay any Brexit deal past October 31, but he may not have much of a choice as his government keeps losing votes.
• Warning signs for the US economy continue to flash red as farm loan delinquencies in Wisconsin are up sharply as Donald Trump's trade war with China continues to hurt agriculture markets.
• Ivanka Trump is visiting Argentina and bringing millions for new road projects with her as the White House wants to shore up allies in South America.
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry is trashing Obama-era lightbulb efficiency standards completely, a move that will almost certainly be challenged in federal court.

Last Call For The Return Of House Of Pain

The Trump regime is about to finish off the economy by starting another housing crisis through turning Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages over to the big mortgage banks, and that will blow a hole in the side of the housing market almost overnight.

The Trump administration released a sweeping plan Thursday that could remake the U.S. housing market, starting with ending more than a decade of government control of two massive companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that back half of the nation’s mortgages. 

The long-awaited plan from the Treasury Department features nearly 50 proposals, including many technical changes to financial regulations, and is aimed at shrinking the government’s role in the housing market. The cornerstone of the plan would resolve the fates of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which 11 years ago this week were put into government conservatorship during the global financial crisis.

The proposals will “protect taxpayers and help Americans who want to buy a home,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “An effective and efficient federal housing finance system will also meaningfully contribute to the continued economic growth under this administration.” 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a critical part in the housing market, buying mortgages from lenders, then packaging them into securities to sell to investors. The government seized control of both companies in 2008 as the housing market unraveled and the firms’ losses piled up.

The housing giants back half of the United States’ mortgages, and housing experts have warned that allowing them too much freedom again could lead to higher mortgage costs for consumers while enriching Wall Street investors.

“President Trump’s housing plan will make mortgages more expensive and harder to get. I’m urging the president: Make it easier for working people to buy or rent their homes, not harder,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Eventually the two companies do have to come out of conservatorship.  But if you think the Trump regime is going to correctly unwind Fannie and Freddie without causing another housing crisis, I don't know what to do.

Buckle up, folks.  If this doesn't get stopped, the economy is 100% sunk.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

In a move that will, well, give ammunition to the right for months, San Francisco has declared the NRA to be a domestic terrorist organization.

The city’s board of supervisors passed the resolution on Tuesday, accusing the NRA of inciting gun violence and arming people who commit acts of terror across the U.S.

“All countries have violent and hateful people, but only in America do we give them ready access to assault weapons and large-capacity magazines thanks, in large part, to the National Rifle Association’s influence,” the resolution reads in part. “Now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the City and County of San Francisco intends to declare the National Rifle Association a domestic terrorist organization.”

The board also cited gun violence statistics in its decision.

“The United States is plagued by an epidemic of gun violence, including over 36,000 deaths, and 100,000 injuries each year,” the document notes. “Every day approximately 100 Americans are killed with guns and ... there has been more than one mass shooting per day in the United States in 2019.”

The NRA ― which is facing collapse amid financial mismanagement and legal fees ― dismissed the resolution, calling it “ludicrous.”

“This ludicrous stunt by the Board of Supervisors is an effort to distract from the real problems facing San Francisco, such as rampant homelessness, drug abuse and skyrocketing petty crime,” NRA spokesperson Amy Hunter told KQED.

The resolution calls on other cities and states, as well as the federal government, to join San Francisco in designating the group a domestic terrorist organization.

I'm not exactly sure what this will accomplish other than being a terrible punchline to Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee tweets, but if there was some sort of banking or city contract sanction on those who partner with the NRA, that would have far more bite.  Maybe the resolution is a step towards this, but if it's not, it's just another talking point on FOX News to go DURR STOOPID LIBRULS.

It's morally right, I just don't how much it will matter.  But hey, if it's the tipping point that puts the NRA out of business, great.

The Blue Wave Returns, Con't

Five Texas Republicans heading for the exits, now Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, who's been in the House since I learned to walk, is leaving Congress.

Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, the second longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, will not run for a 22nd term, he said Wednesday.

Sensenbrenner made his first public announcement Wednesday on The Mark Belling Show on WISN-AM (1130).

In a separate interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he said, “I think the time has come to basically turn over the page in the 5th District.”

The 76-year-old congressman has long represented the GOP’s geographic base in Wisconsin — the suburban, exurban and rural communities north and west of Milwaukee County that historically turn out in droves for Republican candidates and provide a large share of the party’s activists and political leaders.

Sensenbrenner’s departure after 2020 is likely to draw huge interest from within a district packed with aspiring GOP politicians.

It also makes him the latest of several big-name Republicans to leave the Wisconsin stage: former House Speaker Paul Ryan (who retired after 2018), former Gov. Scott Walker (who was defeated in 2018) and current congressman Sean Duffy, who announced he would step down this month to focus on the health problems of the baby he and his wife are expecting.   

Sensenbrenner said he is not retiring for health reasons or because he is worried about a re-election challenge. He is at least the 15th GOP member of the U.S. House to announce retirement this year, a group that includes Duffy.

Sensenbrenner said his decision was also unrelated to serving in the minority, where he has spent virtually half his congressional career, and unrelated to the turbulence of Donald Trump’s presidency.

He plans to serve out his current term and said he will back “the Republican ticket from top to bottom” in 2020.

“I’ve said all along I’d know when the right time came and I’ve come to the conclusion it has,” he said. “There is nobody running against me. Nobody can say they’ve pushed me out. I am doing this on my terms.”

Said Sensenbrenner:

“You can see the end of the line sometime. Being able to do this on my timetable rather than after a redistricting in 2022 will allow me to go out on a high note … This is just me feeling the time would be coming in the next few years, and I think this is the best time for me personally, and for both the Republican Party and for me politically.”

Maybe he is actually leaving on his own terms...but he's still leaving.  The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin is calling it quits in a year where more than a dozen other GOP incumbents are throwing in the towel, and I expect a lot more Republicans to join him.

Deep down, they all know the damage Trump has done to the GOP for any Republican not named Trump is lethal.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in the Bahamas from Hurricane Dorian has risen to at least 20 and officials expect the total to go much higher as search teams are reaching areas that were flooded out over the weekend.
• French lawmakers are holding hearings on so-called "gay conversion therapy" with the National Assembly drafting legislation to outlaw the practice.
• House Democrats are investigating last month's revelation that Donald Trump supposedly offered subpoenas to immigration officials in exchange for getting Trump's southern border wall built.
• UK PM Boris Johnson's call for snap elections after his government lost a crucial Brexit vote has also been blocked, leaving Johnson with fewer and fewer options.
• Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden says Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg should face prison for in his view, Zuckerberg's repeated lying about privacy concerns to Congress.

Last Call For An Indefensible Decision

Donald Trump is more than happy to make America suffer as much as possible until he gets his border wall with Mexico, and if that means diverting billions in funding (illegally by the way) from existing Pentagon base repair, construction, refit and maintenance project to his silly wall, then so be it.

The Pentagon's announcement that it will divert $3.6 billion in military construction funds to help fund President Donald Trump's border wall has sparked bipartisan anger from lawmakers who learned Wednesday that their states will be impacted by the decision. 

Domestically, just under $1.8 billion is being shifted away from projects in 23 states and three US territories. 

Additionally, the Pentagon will defer more than $1.8 billion in military construction projects overseas to free up over $3.6 billion in funds for 11 wall projects on the southern border with Mexico, according to a complete list obtained by CNN Wednesday. 

In total, 127 domestic and overseas projects are being put on hold to help fund the wall that Trump initially promised would be paid for by Mexico. 

Among the sites affected are facilities used to store hazardous waste, repair Navy ships and conduct cyber operations, that had been identified as being in need of repair or additional construction. 

Puerto Rico was among the hardest hit of all US states and territories as it will see more than $400 million in funding for planned military construction projects diverted to the wall under the Pentagon's plan. 

Trump has consistently sparred with Puerto Rican officials while he's been in office following 2017's Hurricane Maria. 

"Most of the projects in Puerto Rico were a result of Hurricane Maria," a senior US defense official told CNN. 

"We've got a rebuild effort that we have ongoing here and I mentioned these projects aren't scheduled to award for more than a year. These are projects that we have on the list something we can use now and backfill, we've got time to do that." 

Overseas, $771 million in projects at various locations in Europe will be impacted. These projects, including airfield upgrades and staging areas in Eastern Europe, are meant to improve the defense of US allies from Russian threats. 

So we have two of Trump's favorite targets to harm: Puerto Rico and NATO.  We're coming up on two years since Hurricane Maria savaged Puerto Rico, and Trump is still doing everything in his power to cut them off.

Meanwhile, US bases in Eastern Europe are getting short changed just as Russia's ramping up nuclear weapon production as the IMF treaty between Washington and Moscow is dead.

Trump's pettiness is now the chief driver of both foreign and domestic policy.

The Blue Wave Returns, Con't

The rush of Texas Republicans heading for the exits is now a deluge.

Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX) announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection in 2020, making him the fifth Texas Republican to do so.

“Serving my country as the Representative of the hardworking Texas families in the 17th Congressional District has been an honor and one of the greatest privileges of my life,” he said in a statement. “When I originally announced that I was running for Congress in 2009, I was firm in my commitment that I would run for six or fewer terms. After much prayer over the past few days and following conversations with my wife, Gina, during that time, I have decided that my current term will be my last.” 

According to the Cook Political Report, Flores’ district, the 17th, leans Republican and voted for President Donald Trump with about 55 percent of the vote. 

Flores follows in the footsteps of his fellow Texans GOP Reps. Kenny Marchant, Will Hurd, Pete Olson and K. Michael Conaway.

This is now pants-wetting panic time for the Texas GOP.  Flores easily won in 2018 by 16 points.  There's no way his seat is in any real trouble.  Flores could have stayed as long as he wanted.  But he's gotten a taste now of the future, a House GOP with 269 pounds of ugly orange fat choking it, and increasingly a permanent position in the House minority.

If there are safe Texas GOP seats heading for the lifeboats, then 2020 is going to be a tsunami.

And everyone knows it.

The Gerrymandering Battle Rages On

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts may have removed federal courts from having any role in gerrymandering fights back in June, but all that means is that by leaving these battles to the states that the state courts can now play for keeps, as the NC GOP just found out the hard way.

North Carolina’s political maps for the state legislature are unconstitutional and must be redrawn before the 2020 elections, a court has decided. 

A panel of judges struck down the maps Tuesday, in a 357-page ruling that focused on the level of political partisanship used to draw them. The maps were drawn in 2017 to replace previous maps, drawn in 2011, that had also been ruled unconstitutional. Both sets of maps were drawn by North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature. 

The judges found that “The North Carolina Supreme Court has long and consistently held that ‘our government is founded on the will of the people,’ that ‘their will is expressed by the ballot.’” 

And that fact helped the judges conclude that the maps violated the state constitution because “it is the carefully crafted maps, and not the will of the voters, that dictate the election outcomes in a significant number of legislative districts and, ultimately, the majority control of the General Assembly.” 

Tuesday’s decision may be the final word in this legal battle, since at least one top Republican lawmaker said he doesn’t plan to appeal the ruling. 

“This is a historic victory for the people of North Carolina,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, one of the groups that sued to overturn the maps. “The court has made clear that partisan gerrymandering violates our state’s constitution and is unacceptable. Thanks to the court’s landmark decision, politicians in Raleigh will no longer be able to rig our elections through partisan gerrymandering.” 

The three-judge panel was unanimous in its ruling. The panel consisted of two Democrats — Paul Ridgeway of Wake County and Alma Hinton of Halifax County — and one Republican, Joseph Crosswhite of Iredell County. 

“The conclusions of this Court today reflect the unanimous and best efforts of the undersigned trial judges — each hailing from different geographic regions and each with differing ideological and political outlooks — to apply core constitutional principles to this complex and divisive topic,” they wrote.

Of course, the battle in NC is far from over, as Republicans overwhelmingly have control of the state House and Senate to redraw the maps, but thanks to the Roberts Court, NC Republicans can't cry foul.  The entire reason this ruling came about was that the GOP won in June, forcing the federal ruling against NC's gerrymandered districts to go back to state court. 

And hey, given that the federal and state judges found massively, overwhelming evidence of gerrymandering so egregious that it violated North Carolina's state constitution, it was a no-brainer (although not a given) that the state court this time would find the same thing.

Redrawing Pennsylvania's districts made a huge difference a few years ago.  Now it seems North Carolina will get a turn at fairness.

StupidiNews!

• Bahamian PM Hubert Minnis is calling the devastation from Hurricane Dorian's landfall this weekend "the greatest national crisis in our country's history" as the death toll rises.
• A UN human rights group report on the five-year civil war in Yemen finds evidence the UK, US, and France may be complicit in war crimes by assisting Saudi Arabia's massive bombing campaign.
• OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma says it will have no choice but to declare a "free-fall" bankruptcy if the company cannot come to settlement terms with several states over opioids before month's end.
• French President Emmanuel Macron says France will engage Iran and the US in last-ditch nuclear talks in order to try to salvage the international agreement scrapped last year by the Trump regime.
• Google's Project Zero team, dedicated to sniffing out tech exploits and stopping hackers, says 0-day exploits in iOS existed for nearly two years before Apple patched them last December.

Last Call For Mark Of The Millennials

It's pretty easy to slag on older Boomers and Silent Generation septuagenarians as being the ones wrecking the planet, but there's five Millennial men in particular who are very convincingly making a bid to be Earth's Legion of Doom for the next 40 or 50 years.  The Cut's Noreen Malone

So here we are, a generation munching on the last greens of its salad days, saddled with dull, decade-old complaints about our coddledness, our entitlement, our selfies, our political correctness — most blah-blah-blah of all, by the boring cliché of our avocado toast. In a more self-serving version of this narrative, we are the generation that disrupted salad days and made them Sweetgreen days. The generation of AOC and Rihanna and DeRay Mckesson and Glossier! Of hope and protest and changing norms!

No. The world’s five most powerful millennials now, and maybe for the rest of our lives, are Jared Kushner (b. 1981), Kim Jong-un (b. 1984), Mark Zuckerberg (b. 1984), Stephen Miller (b. 1985), and Mohammed bin Salman (b. 1985). The globe is their avocado — to be splayed and robbed of its core and smashed, then spread before them for the taking — and we’re toast.
As for whether these are truly the five most powerful, yes, there is enormous influence in being the most visible member of Congress, in using your platform as a historically great athlete to do good, or in being Beyoncé. But is it unchecked power, of the kind that can move markets and armies unilaterally, swiftly, and on what can amount to a whim? Three of these men are the de facto heads of nation-states, if you count Facebook as a nation-state. The other two, with their mysterious influence, have more power in the Trump administration than anyone, arguably including the president.

These are men who, barely having hit their stride, can tout such accomplishments as: the undermining of an American election, the erosion of privacy norms and attention spans, the desiccation of journalism, the destabilization of the Middle East, a genocide, the creation of modern American internment camps, the beheading of a journalist, the flooding of the world economy with huge investments in unsustainable tech start-ups that undercut smaller merchants, public mass executions, the threat of nuclear war, and whatever other assorted horrors might be happening behind the cloak of secrecy that surrounds North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration, and the inner sanctum of Facebook. I am probably leaving a few things out.

Okay, you might be thinking. These men are technically millennials but not in spirit or practice. They are too unusual, too geopolitically unique, to function as members of any generation. No. They are, in fact, textbook exemplars of theirs. Name me a so-called millennial characteristic and I can name a fuckboy-despot who possesses it.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with the five most nihilistically dangerous assholes on the planet are all five to ten years younger than I am.

Which means, we're fucked for decades.  If you think today's adults are going to save us, understand they're not.  Especially the white ones.

And oh yeah, they helped elect Trump.  Did we forget this somehow?

Boris Bad Enough Versus Moose And Squirrel

As I hinted at yesterday, UK Emergency Inflatable Prime Minister Boris Johnson isn't very good at his job, and completely unfathomable, totally unexpected things like "somebody called his stupid Brexit bluff" have happened.  Beeb Politics editor Laura Kuenssberg:

Conservative MP Phillip Lee has defected to the Liberal Democrats ahead of a showdown between Boris Johnson and Tory rebels over Brexit.

Dr Lee, the MP for Bracknell, took his seat on the opposition benches as the PM addressed the Commons.

His defection means Boris Johnson no longer has a working majority.

MPs hoping to pass legislation to block no deal have cleared the first hurdle after Speaker John Bercow granted them an emergency debate.

That debate could last up to three hours, followed by a vote. If the MPs win the vote - defeating the government - they will be able to take control of Commons business on Wednesday.

That will give them the chance to introduce a cross-party bill which would force the prime minister to ask for Brexit to be delayed until 31 January, unless MPs approve a new deal, or vote in favour of a no-deal exit, by 19 October.

It seems right now - although there is still some arm twisting going on behind the scenes - that the government is set to lose the vote.

We are finding ourselves in the middle of a full-throttle confrontation between a Parliament that does not want to allow the country to leave the EU without a deal and a prime minister who secured his place in power promising he would always keep that as an option.

Both of them cannot be the victors here.

And they are both determined to win.

This is essentially the US equivalent of Donald Trump saying "If any Republican in the House votes for this Obamacare slash expanded debt ceiling legislation I'll kick them out of the party" in order to allow the GOP to destroy America's credit rating and economy...

...but also the same week there's an upcoming vote for Speaker of the House, and that vote whip count finds Republican Kevin McCarthy would win by one vote and then less than 24 hours later...

...not only does that Obamacare vote happen, the Republican switches to the Dems and votes to make Nancy Pelosi speaker.

The Earth would crack open and swallow up Capitol Hill.

This basically happened in Parliament just now.

Enjoy!

Forty-Five Versus Three Or Four

With the first 2020 contests now just four months out, Team WIN THE MORNING sees the Democratic presidential field narrowed to just three and generously, four.

The bottom is falling out of the Democratic presidential primary. And the top-tier — no longer five candidates, but three — is becoming more insurmountable.

For more than a year, Democrats had approached their nominating contest with a widely-shared belief that — like Republicans in the earliest stages of their primary four years ago — they, too, might take turns rising and falling in an expansive field. That expectation sustained the campaigns of more than two dozen contenders this year.

But in recent weeks, the leading band of candidates has contracted unexpectedly early. Heading into the fall, only three contenders are polling above single digits: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg remain at the periphery, while lower-polling candidates have largely failed to muster sustained, upward movement in fundraising or polling.

According to interviews with about two dozen Democratic operatives and consultants, there is little reason to expect any of them will.

“It was legitimate to say ‘Top 5’ for a long time, but with the exception of Kamala Harris being at the outer perimeter of the top three … you’d have to have a strange confluence of events for someone outside those four to win,” said Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton confidant. “It would require all four failing. Like, you would need all four of them to be in a plane crash or something.”
For every other candidate, Reines said, “It’s too late in the game to keep saying it’s too early.”

What's different now compared to four years ago and the GOP clown car?

By this point in the Republican primary in 2016, Jeb Bush was already cratering. Scott Walker had risen and fallen. Donald Trump was in first, still to fend off a surge from Ben Carson before running away from the field.

The 2020 Democratic primary, by contrast, has been defined by its relative stability, with two full fundraising periods and two sets of debates now done.

Anna Greenberg, a pollster who advised former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s since-aborted presidential bid, said there was no boom-and-bust for Democrats because the primary “started so early, before voters really started paying attention,” and because of “the sheer volume of candidates.”

“It’s a little bit surprising because compared to ‘16 on the Republican side, where it seemed like a number of people had their moment in the sun … there hasn’t really been anybody who’s taken a meteoric rise,” said Scott Brennan, an Iowa Democratic National Committee member and former state party chairman.

Brennan said he's spoken with several campaigns recently whose advisers “feel like they’re poised and ready, they’re poised and they're waiting for their moment.”

But “for whatever reason," he said, "they haven’t had that.”

The old saw is Democrats fall in love at primary time, whereas Republicans fall in line.  But if anything the reverse seems to be true.  Republicans have been falling back in love with Trump from 80% support to 95% for two years now, despite the 2018 drubbing in the House, whereas Democrats are increasingly falling in line behind "electability" and that's Biden, Sanders, and Warren, with Harris as the dark horse.

Everyone else is fooling themselves.

The problem is that for once, Politico's analysis isn't screamingly incorrect.  This is a three or four person race now, but settling this out will take a while.

We'll see who catches fire, I'm still edging towards Harris and Warren myself.  But there's still a good ten people that could and should drop out of this race tomorrow.

StupidiNews!

• Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said Monday that Hurricane Dorian was an "historic tragedy" as the northwestern islands were crushed by the Category 5 storm's 185 MPH winds.
• The death toll in last weekend's Midlands-Odessa Texas shooting attack has climbed to eight as law enforcement officials believe the suspect's firing from his trucking job may have set him off.
• At least 25 people are dead and nine more are missing after a pre-dawn fire aboard a dive boat sank the vessel off the coast of Santa Barbara, California early Monday.
• Democratic 2020 hopefuls are going after the Trump regime's latest plan to speed up federal executions after lifting a moratorium on federal death penalty earlier this summer.
• Forecast models show Hurricane Dorian will continue to rip north along hundreds of miles of Florida's eastern coast and could threaten Charleston, South Carolina by Thursday.