In a column that opens with a description of his inadequacy as a parent:

We were discussing a Harvard law professor, Ronald Sullivan. He had been pushed out of his secondary job as head of Harvard College’s Winthrop House after he helped give Harvey Weinstein, accused of sexual assault, the legal representation every defendant is entitled to.

To me, as a progressive baby boomer, this was a violation of hard-won liberal values, a troubling example of a university monoculture nurturing liberal intolerance. Of course no professor should be penalized for accepting an unpopular client.

To my daughter, of course a house dean should not defend a notorious alleged rapist. As she saw it, any professor is welcome to represent any felon, but not while caring for undergraduates: How can a house leader support students traumatized by sexual assault when he is also defending someone accused of rape?

I believe that Nicholas Kristof is confused. He has confused the lightning with the lightning bug. As Lincoln noted just because you call a tail a leg does not make it one. Liberalism has been abandoned in favor of progressivism and today’s progressivism has assumed a decidely authoritarian cast.

Perhaps I can help clear the fog by referring to Aristotle. In Aristotle’s elaboration of Plato’s theory of forms, “essence” is the set of properties that makes an entity or substance what it is. It must have these properties. Without them it does not retain its identity. It may have other qualities as well that are not essential. These qualities are termed “accidents”.

Freedom of expression is essential to liberalism. Without freedom of expression it is not liberalism. It should also be added that subscribing to a code of ethics is essential to professionals. Legal ethics requires attorneys to provide a vigorous defense even to those with whom they disagree and of whom they disapprove. Whatever Mr. Kristof’s daughter believes, she is not a liberal and she believes that political beliefs transcend professional ethics.

I believe that Harvey Weinstein is probably guilty of the crimes with which he has been accused or at least some of them. I cannot know whether he is since I wasn’t there but I believe that he is. I disapprove wholly with what he has done but nonetheless I still believe he should have a vigorous defense.

When one believes that organizing mobs to defame people who have done nothing wrong because you assume that the only possible explanation for their behavior is based on race, you cannot be a liberal. You cannot even be a progressive.

To what view are suppression of freedom of expression and abandoning of ethical obligations in favor of the political passions of the day essential? I would claim that they are essential to authoritarianism.

I sincerely hope that the views of the young brownshirts whose activities are so much publicized these days are not typical of their age cohort. Mr. Kristof’s column suggests that they are.

Have I ever mentioned my plan for ending unwanted robocalls? For each call the call originator’s account would be debited 10¢ and the called party’s account would be credited 10¢. Optionally, the called could enter a code and the 10¢ would be credited by the called party back to the call originator. All handled by the phone company.

I suspect that would put an end to most robocalls practically overnight. If it reduces the number but doesn’t end them, up the amount from 10¢ to 20¢

Yes, the system could be gamed and, yes, there are opportunities for fraud. Wire fraud is a federal crime.

I disagree with so much in thie piece by Andrew Michta at The American Interest I hardly know where to begin. He opens by laying out some priorities:

Focus on Eurasia, invest in allies, rethink globalization. The West needs to focus on these fundamentals to achieve its overarching strategic objective: preventing China’s domination of Eurasia.

He expands on that:

Today preventing China’s domination of Eurasia should be our overarching strategic objective, and to achieve this we need to focus on three fundamentals: 1) Prioritize Eurasia and stop draining our military resources in secondary theaters; 2) invest in allies who see their interests directly aligned with ours and are willing to assume the attendant risk; and 3) decouple U.S. strategic industries from China’s and redefine the rules of international trade to ensure equitable competition.

What don’t I agree with in that? I think that “the West” is propaganda that once served a purpose but no longer does. I’m not sure we actually have any allies. Clients, yes. Allies, no. The problem is not that we’re not in investing in them but that they’re not investing in themselves. I agree completely with that third “fundamental”. That we have not been doing that all along is a scandal and an outrage.

Here’s something else about which I’m skeptical:

U.S.-German relations, which are vital to NATO’s continued success, are likely to present a challenge, for Washington and Berlin have thus far proved unable to insulate the German-American strategic conversation on shared security and defense priorities from domestic political constraints. Still, Washington should continue to make every effort to work closely with Berlin; as a key member of the NATO alliance and the main entry point for U.S. forces into Europe, Germany remains a vital American ally.

Who fomented the Balkan War? Who supplied the materials for Iraq’s, North Korea’s, and Iran’s chemical warfare arsenals? And Iran’s nuclear development program? Who built China’s factories? Who is cozying up to Russia for oil and natural gas? Who is destabilizing Europe by inviting hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants? Whose economic policies are making it hard for smaller, undercapitalized European countries to survive economically? The answer to all of those questions is Germany. These are not the actions of an ally.

But I agree with this:

Sovereign economic strength, including a vibrant manufacturing base, is as important to great power status today as it has been for centuries. Just ask the denizens of Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, or Berlin. It is also the essential prerequisite of military strength. We cannot have it both ways, pretending that the deindustrialization of the United States does not really matter while at the same time noting with growing concern the continued rise of the People’s Republic of China, today the world’s premier supplier of high-value manufactured goods. Should war come, it will not be enough to write software, for to run even the most basic app one needs also to be able to assemble a silicon chip.

My priorities would be different:

• Cultivate stronger, healthier relationships with our neighbors in the Western hemisphere. Our relationships with Mexico and the countries of Central America are not healthy. They are pathological.
• Reindustrialize the United States. We can’t afford not to.
• Let Europe take care of itself. If France and Germany want to become Chinese satrapies, let them.
• We need to have a much better Africa game than we presently do. China is doing much better job than we there and that’s where the real challenge is not in Europe.

Revitalizing our own society and politics wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

At The Cook Political Report Amy Walter saw the debate a little differently:

Biden came in as the frontrunner and took a lot of incoming flak on everything from his age, to his record on race, to his support for the Iraq war. He looked good on some things (he easily swatted down Rep. Eric Swalwell’s ham-handed generational attack) but was shakier on race (Harris attacked him on his past record on busing and two Democrats commented to me post-debate that his “states rights” answer on busing was terrible). Overall, however, he took a lot of punches but didn’t take on water.

That’s what the post-debate polling has shown. Biden’s numbers were essentially unchanged while Harris’s improved. However, I think that Ms. Walter is not taking into account what the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants. They want blood. They’ll never support Biden. I believe them when say they’d rather that Trump be re-elected than that a mild candidate oppose him.

The Democratic Party has a number of distinct factions: progressives, black voters, labor unions, technocrats. I don’t think that black voters vote on race as much as many commentators seem to or at least not in the same way and I think that Biden is likely to retain his present strong union support. The stage is set for a family feud.

I think that John Kass’s Chicago Tribune dissection of the debates is right on target:

It’ll take a few more days or so before what Harris did to Biden will take effect. But he’s not coming back from it. He can’t.

Democrats want to find someone who can take on Trump. Now they know Biden can’t.

Next up for Harris is Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s been repackaged to appeal to the hard-left voters who have drifted away from Bernie Sanders.

Sanders was set up in the 2016 Democratic Party primaries that were rigged by party leaders with plenty of collusion by the media on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders might have defeated Trump if he’d been the nominee. But the DNC and Obama wanted Clinton. And the media wanted Clinton. So, it was Clinton and the party base was betrayed.

Harris is a former prosecutor, a trial lawyer, and showed she can handle pressure. She calmly embraced all that heat on the debate stage, brought it to her for dramatic effect, drew it in, then released it right at Biden.

The way she played Biden and race, just think what she’ll do to Warren, who vaulted herself onto the faculty of Harvard Law School as a Cherokee and came up with those ridiculous recipes involving cold crab meat that were offered up as true Native American fare.

Warren’s career is a creation myth born in identity politics. She insisted she was a Cherokee, and Harvard praised her for it as if ethnicity was a virtue, perhaps because Harvard was desperate to promote minorities on its law school faculty.

Then Warren’s embarrassing DNA test came out. No further questions, your honor. But Harris will have questions. Bet on it.

All such drama is about ambition and skill and tactics. But that’s too small to define a political party.

During the Thursday debate on left-leaning MSNBC, the Democratic presidential candidates raised their hands in agreement with the idea that illegal immigration should no longer be considered a crime.

Later came another question.

“This is a show-of-hands question and hold them up so people can see,” said co-moderator Savannah Guthrie. “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide (health care) coverage for undocumented immigrants.”

Biden raised his, as did Sanders, Harris, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, the magical Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper and Eric Swalwell.

Did any of them think how a declaration of open borders policy and free health care for undocumented immigrants who break into the U.S. would play out in a general election?

Did any of them pause before engaging in self-destructive pandering?

What defines an election isn’t take-down dramas.

What defines elections, and political parties, are ideas with sweep, ideas that announce “This is who we are” to the voters.

Like the Democrats’ new open borders policy. And their agreement to provide “free” health care to immigrants here illegally.

As Joe Biden learned, rhetoric has consequences.

But ideas have consequences too.

The only thing I can speculate is that either the candidates think they’ll be able to backpedal for the general election or they have their collective finger on the pulse of the wrong patient. I think that most of the Democratic Party, nearly all independents and even some Republicans are in favor of some merciful resolution for the DACA beneficiaries and more human treatment for migrants coming into the country illegally but the Democratic candidates have gone one step too far. Maybe two steps.

The next question is whether Kamala Harris can actually “take on Trump”. I’m skeptical. If there’s one thing we know about him it’s that he doesn’t play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

Based on the accounts of the two Democratic candidates’ debates I’ve read, there’s something crucial missing from the campaign so far: the presidency.

As defined in the Constitution the president has the following jobs:

• Commander-in-chief of the military
• Foreign policy
• Managing the federal government
• Making appointments
• Signing bills enacted by the Congress into law

pretty much in that order. As originally defined the president is not a prime minister, the head of his political party and, honestly, just a stand-in for it. He or she is not the domestic policy-maker-in-chief. Not the symbol of the country, its inspiration, or its collective parent. Not a monarch.

From the short shrift the actual jobs the president does has received you would think they’re running for some other job entirely.

At this point in his presidency IMO the best grade you could assign to President Trump is an Incomplete. I recognize that many would award an F. He has so many active but unresolved foreign policy initiatives I don’t see how even the strongest Trump supporter could honestly give anything other than an Incomplete. As far as managing the government and making appointments is concerned, he’s clearly not doing a good job.

And if anything he’s overqualified for not being the symbol of the country, its inspiration, or collective parent.

The seat of government is not the White House but the Capitol. Some would say the Rayburn Building. The most powerful person in government not the president but the Speaker of the House, closely followed by the Senate Majority Leader.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Back in the 1960s I was skeptical about Medicare. Its stated objective was to prevent the further impoverishing of the elderly poor, a worthy goal. I thought it was overly broad, the estimates of its costs were wildly optimistic, and there was a more direct way of accomplishing the objective: a system of federal clinics modeled on the VA system. Fast forward a few years and physicians who had opposed Medicare until the sweeteners added to the bill got large enough were earning more than ever before, got used to their new-found economic status, and began raising prices to maintain their standards of living, as Uwe Reinhardt among others has documented. By that time I had lived and worked in Germany for a while, seen how things operated in France, and had come to support a single-payer system for the United States to control costs.

When the Clinton Administration’s proposal for health care reform failed due to a combination of political mismanagement and steadfast opposition from the entire health care sector and it subsequently became obvious that the Congress was strongly disinclined to control the cost of health care, that reinforced for me the primacy of cost control. The math is extremely simple. There is no way we can afford anything that is increasing in cost three times as fast as incomes are. Just draw it out on a graph and you’ll see what I mean.

When President Obama turned his attention, prematurely in my opinion, from the economy to health care, I was lukewarm to the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that I doubted it would accomplish its goals and I was skeptical of the president’s claims that it would control costs.

Here’s Megan McArdle’s status report for the Affordable Care Act from her Washington Post column:

The rate of Americans without health-care insurance is now within a percentage point of where it was in the first quarter of 2008, a year before Obama took office. Yet in 2008, the unemployment rate was more than a full percentage point higher than it is now. Given how many people use employer-provided health insurance, the uninsured rate ought to be markedly lower than it was back then.

Overall, the effect of Obamacare seems to be marginal, or perhaps nonexistent.

You can chalk that up to Republican interference, since the uninsured rate has risen substantially in the Trump era. But Democrats weren’t really making that argument, perhaps because they realized that a system so vulnerable to Republican interference isn’t really a very good system.

But even before January 2017, Obamacare was failing to deliver on many of its key promises. At its best point, in November 2016, the reduction in the number of the uninsured was less than the architects of Obamacare had expected. And the claims that Obamacare would “bend the cost curve” had proved, let us say, excessively optimistic.

Adjusted for inflation, consumer out-of-pocket expenditures on health care have been roughly flat since 2007. Obamacare didn’t make them go up, but it didn’t really reduce them, either. The rate of growth in health-services spending has risen substantially since 2013, when Obamacare’s main provisions took effect. And since someone has to pay for all that new spending, premiums have also risen at about the same pace as before Obamacare. So much for saving the average American family $2,500 a year.

No wonder the Democratic presidential candidates are reluctant to speak about the ACA. They’ve turned their attention to another bright, shiny object.

The “Medicare For All” bill presently before the House depends on two things for cost control: savings in administrative costs from pushing health care administrative costs from wherever they are now to the roughly 2% that is Medicare’s present administrative overhead and reducing reimbursement rates to the Medicare reimbursement rates. I’m skeptical that the Congress will have the political will to do that but let’s assume they do. That will mean that hospitals that are presently teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, mostly rural hospitals, will fold, leaving people who live in those counties, a very large proportion of U. S. counties, without hospital care within a reasonable distance. That’s if it’s successful.

I also look forward to the Congress’s directing the CBO to estimate the costs of the Democratic presidential candidates’ promise that M4A will cover all comers including illegal migrants. That should make for entertaining reading.

I didn’t want to let the day go by without remarking on the supplemental spending bill AKA “humanitarian aid bill” passed by the House yesterday. I disagree with nearly every characterization I’ve read of it so far.

It was not a defeat for Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats. It was not a victory Majority Leader McConnell, President Trump, or the Republicans. The Democrats were overtaken by events. The situation at our southern border is a crisis and it’s not a crisis created by President Trump. It’s the same crisis as was faced by President Obama: families with children crossing the border in unprecedented numbers. House Democrats realized that they could not coherently rail against the Trump Administration’s detention practices but refuse to fund more humane detention practices in favor of what is euphemistically called “comprehensive immigration reform” without being reasonably accused of playing politics with people’s lives. Trump did not back them into a corner. Hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, and Honduran migrants did.

It was a pragmatic decision.

Here’s my major point. Stuff like this used to be easy or at least easier. It used to be much easier to do the right thing without every editorial page in the country complaining about defeat. It didn’t used to be the case that the only way to win was for the other party to lose.

Most people under the age of 40 don’t remember it but it wasn’t always this way. It hasn’t always been duels to the death 100% of the time. You can blame it on Newt Gingrich or farther back to Jim Wright but Congressional politics has not always been as fiercely partisan as it is now.

So, what happened in the “debate” last night? My understanding is that Joe Biden didn’t rise to the occasion, Kamala Harris did, and Marianne Williamson was Marianne Williamson. The quotes I’ve seen from her debate performance sound a bit as though the Reverend Jim (from the old TV show Taxi played by Christopher Lloyd = “Doc Brown” from the Back to the Future) were running for president.

It will be interesting to see the post-debate polls. I suspect that Beto O’Rourke is effectively out. I’m surprised he lasted this long.