From Dan Balz in the Washington Post today, this assessment of the credit side of President Trump's ledger makes for encouraging reading if you're a conservative, and should give you pause for thought if you're a liberal who thought that Trump's bizarre, maverick style might spell his doom:

"That’s not to say the president hasn’t had successes or made progress in changing the course of policy in the aftermath of the administration of President Barack Obama. He signed a huge tax cut. The economy is in good shape, unemployment is at a low level, and the stock market, despite some recent downs and ups, is well above what it was when he came into office.

He has changed the enforcement of immigration laws, as he promised during the campaign. He has softened or reduced regulations on businesses. He has facilitated a conservative shift in the makeup of the federal judiciary. He has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and sought to shift U.S. trade policy away from the free-trade consensus of past administrations.

President Trump attends a bipartisan meeting Wednesday with members of Congress to discuss gun control and school and community safety in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Those changes cannot be underestimated, and to the degree that he has been stymied or unsuccessful elsewhere, many of his supporters blame the Democrats, congressional Republicans or the federal bureaucracy, a.k.a. the deep state. The core of his support remains intact, and he is the most popular person in his party by a mile."

The wording of the famous Second Amendment to the US Constitution is this:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed".

My students and I saw it just a few days ago, the faded writing on the Bill of Rights displayed in the National Archives still visible. I was puzzled for a while, as in the document this is actually the fourth amendment, but it turns out the first two weren't ratified, thus pushing the famous arms amendment up to number 2 in the ranks.

I've read it a number of times, and it still seems to me that the so-called right to bear arms is very dependent on the maintenance of a militia to defend the state.  It is not, thus, an individual right at all.  It is very much a concession granted in the interests of state defence.

So how has this seemingly obvious interpretation become so sullied that the second amendment now becomes synonymous with individual freedom and democracy?  So ingrained into the American psyche as a key element of freedom that no matter how many kids are shot in schools, the right to buy any type of weapon for individual use can never be controlled?

It turns out this is a recent phenomenon.  And it's down to an organisation called the National Rifle Association, itself the front group for gun manufacturers.

As early as 1876 the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment was not a granting of the right to bear arms (United States v Cruickshank).  A 1939 ruling (US v Miller) maintained the link between arms and a militia.  Only more recently has the Second Amendment been given such broad latitude as to imply a defence of the individual right to bear arms, most noticeably in the 2008 District of Columbia v Heller ruling.

It beats me how the so-called "originalists" - the right-wing judges who claim to adhere to the very wording of the constitution and its amendments - can possibly interpret the 2nd in any other way than the one written above - as the need to preserve a "well regulated" militia.  They say the commas should be ignored and that the two clauses, on militia and the right to bear arms, are not really linked.  Doesn't read that way at all, so I guess originalists are more like creativists after all.  Which is just one of the many tragic ironies of the gun control debate in America.

The NRA's chief, Wayne LaPierre, has given an uncompromising defence of arms in the wake of the Florida school killings, at the CPAC conference.  He trotted out the old line that all you need to stop bad men with guns is good men with guns.  Do lots of "good men" hold guns?  Would "good men" want to be always ready to shoot to kill I wonder?

The NRA has been so successful in its defence of the right to have guns - and thus the immediate use of a lethal killing machine right by your side as and when you want it - that it has radically altered the culture of America.  From the president down, dozens of lawmakers - nearly all Republican - dance to the NRA tune.  Not just because of NRA money, though some do receive lots of that, but because they have bought wholly in to a culture that now identifies the right to own the means to kill with freedom.

The kids who are campaigning so prominently and admirably for gun control now won't win.  Not yet anyway.  They're up against lawmakers who can witness any number of mass killings and still refuse to ban the one thing that cause them.  If they do want to change, they have to be in for the long haul.  That's what the NRA did, and they were so successful they even got Supreme Court Justices to re-interpret the second Amendment for them.  Money and culture is still powerfully behind gun possession in America, and don't expect it to change anytime soon.

From the Washington Post's "Plumline" blog, some still optimistic points about the Democrats' chances in November:

* DEMS POUR MONEY INTO STATE LEGISLATIVE RACES: The New York Times reports that a Dem-aligned group led by former attorney general Eric Holder is set to pour big money into obscure state legislative races across the country in 2018:

The group [is] determined to deny Republicans so-called trifectas in state governments — places where a single party controls the governorship and an entire legislature … The group’s list of high-priority states includes most of the critical states in presidential elections.

Preventing total GOP control in as many states as possible could block lopsided pro-GOP congressional maps in the next decade and avoid a repeat of the last decade’s disaster.

* DEMS GRAB ANOTHER SEAT IN DEEP RED TERRITORY: Last night, Democrat Mike Revis won a special election for a state legislative seat in Missouri. Reid Wilson explains:

If Revis’s lead holds, it would mark a significant swing from 2016, when President Trump won the district by a 61 percent to 33 percent margin. Four years before that, Mitt Romney beat President Obama in the district, south and west of St. Louis, by a 55- to 43-percent margin.

It’s another sign of the energy on the Democratic side putting deep red territory in play, which continues to bode well for 2018.

* DEMS HOLD ADVANTAGE IN BATTLE FOR HOUSE: The punditry has swung toward a Trump/GOP comeback, based on the economy and Trump’s slightly rebounding approval. But National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar diagnoses the situation much more accurately:

If there’s one constant that strategists in both parties acknowledge, it’s that Democratic turnout will be sky-high, fueled by deep-seated antipathy towards Trump. … For Republicans to mitigate the impact, they need to persuade enough independent voters to support them and turn out their own voters in similar numbers. … They could hang on to many of their most-vulnerable seats, but still see the bottom fall out because of red-hot Democratic intensity and lackluster GOP preparation. It’s why Democrats still hold the edge in the battle for House control, even if the anti-Trump tsunami never materializes.

By the way, ignore the punditry that tells you Dems are overconfident. They know this is still very much up in the air and that there’s tons of work to be done.

(Greg Sargent)

It is truly stunning that the President of the United States has almost certainly given classified information to the Russians because he loves bragging and has no control over his tongue.  He has himself pretty well admitted this in his latest tweets (here and here).

It is worth taking a moment to think about how extraordinary this is.  The president of the United States gives intelligence to the Russians!  This was the stuff of jokes not very long ago, or far fetched political thrillers.  Now, it's real.

Now consider the reaction of the Republican leaders on the Hill, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.  They hounded Hillary Clinton over her emails (though no significant information was ever discovered to have leaked) and set up numerous committees to investigate the Benghazi Embassy attack.  They portray themselves as American patriots.  With the exception of a half-hearted mention by Ryan, they have had nothing to say on this issue.  No comment on the fact that the president has given classified information to a hostile power, endangering the intelligence relationship with an ally in so doing.

Ryan and McConnell have spent a long time demeaning themselves and placing party interests before country, but so far this is their nadir.  It's ok to put intelligence lives at risk and betray your country's secrets if it means keeping a Republican in the White House.  McConnell has already shown how little he regards America's once revered constitution with his party games over the Supreme Court.  Ryan's whole mission in his political life has been to cut funding to any form of welfare programmes. Not exactly a couple of inspiring political heroes even before the Trump juggernaut exposed their self-serving, vindictive and malicious political dealing.

Donald Trump is a braggart and a moron who has little idea of the implications of his actions.  His only defence is that no-one expected any better of him; his whole political adventure has been to extend the brand of Trump and give his barely thought through political beliefs a megaphone to the world.  But Ryan and McConnell have come through political life.  They have brains of a higher working order.  Unlike Trump, they do know exactly what they are doing.  And it is one of the most depressing political spectacles ever witnessed.  Not since the days of Franz von Papen have we seen such naked political self-interest and cowardly retreat from morality give service to such an unspeakable populist power.

 When the history of the decline and fall of the American Republic is written, Ryan and McConnell will have prominent roles.  But why would they care?  What is the future of the republic compared to their political careers?

President Trump's sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, just after a former fired Justice Dept official, Sally Yates, had been giving damning evidence to Congress, is an extraordinary event.  But not unprecedented in style.

Trump has fired Comey while Comey is overseeing an investigation into Trump's links with Russia.  Back in 1973, Republican president Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox while Cox was investigating Nixon's links to the Watergate break-in.  Reports have not been slow to raise the links, and Democrats on the Hill have quickly referred to the Comey firing as "Nixonian".

Nixon's actions led to his eventual impeachment.   But enemies of Mr. Trump shouldn't be too keen to expect significant retaliatory action against him.  Here's why.

1.  Nixon's actions came after a slow-burning revelation of the internal paranoia of his presidency through initially unregarded reports in the Washington Post.  By the time Cox was fired, the Nixon White House was already in a state of siege.

2.  Nixon faced a Democrat controlled House and Senate ready to use their significant constitutional power to investigate him.

3.  Trump faces a House and Senate controlled by virtually supine Republican leaders utterly in thrall to his presidency.  Ryan, McConnell, Nunes, Grassley and others have all shown their willingness to roll over in front of Trump if it furthers their judicial or economic agenda.

4.  Trump still retains a strong support from his voting core.  This won't budge.  He has already faced down public protest over a range of other unorthodox or unethical moves in his frist 100 days; this is simply one more.

5.  The presidency was still regarded as having to work by understood ethical and political standards under Nixon.  He breached those, and thus began his downfall.

6.  There has never been an understanding that Trump will use the presidency in a dignified or ethical way.  Media and political opposition have failed to shift this narrative, due to Trump's continuing hard-line support from his activists and an extraordinary abdication by Republicans of any thought that they will offer independent scrutiny of the president.

7.  Popular pressure is all, but it has to be seen to be large and widespread.  After Nixon's firing telegrams and messages poured into Congress and the White House from concerned citizens.  It suggested a general shift in the public mood away from the president.  Trump can remain secure in the knowledge that the base which put him into office still would so again.  Millions of opponents in Calfifornia or New York will have no impact on him.

8.  The Democrats have colluded in undermining Comey, notably Hillary Clinton herself.  She has consistently blamed him for her own election defeat and been supported in this view by supporters such as Chuck Schumer.  This makes any opposition they now express to Comey's firing extremely suspect.  They should have kept quiet and understood the need to coalesce around an independnet minded Director who was, after all, appointed by a Democratic president.

No-one can tell how this latest abuse of presidential power will run.  Trump is still at the beginning of his presidency, he enjoys support where it matters, and neither the media nor Democrats have yet found a way of seriously challenging him.  They may still not have managed to do so in four years' time.

Parties

Democrats in the House

While Republicans have effectively divided into two warring parties over the Obamacare repeal, Democrats have retained a strong congressional unity, says the Washington Post’s Daily 202.

Key points:

1-      Democrats have voted with consistent unanimity in rejecting repeal proposals, even those up for re-election in Trump states and districts

2-      The House Democratic caucus has changed since Obamacare’s passage in 2010.  “Blue Dogs” have been wiped out and the party’s base has moved left; of 34 Democrats who opposed Obamacare in 2010, only 3 are still sitting in 2017 and they are all opposed to GOP repeal attempts.

3-      The Democrats are reacting to the so-called Resistance movement’s pressure from outside the House; similar to Republicans and the tea party at the beginning of Obama’s presidency

4-      House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi acknowledges it is easier to mobilise votes against something than for something and imposes strict discipline on her caucus

5-      In a Washington Post interview, also promoted in the Daily 202, Pelosi noted the importance of keeping the Democrat tent a wide one, incorporating pro-lifers as well as abortion rights activists.

Democrat Problems

“Commentary’s” Noah Rothman says the Democrats have been learning the wrong lessons from their 2016 defeats:

1-      Blaming Hillary Clinton and other external party factors for their defeat, the Democrats have concluded that re-energising their base is the way forward

2-      The problem is that the Democrat base was already energised in 2016 – but for Donald Trump

3-      The so-called “Obama Coalition” seemed to show that Democrats no longer needed their white working-class voters; 2016 showed that Clinton could not keep the “Obama Coalition” in place – perhaps no other Democrat can

4-      Democrats are thus allowing a new and radicalised base to drive them, whilst ignoring the original white working-class base which used to win them elections

Hillary Clinton on defeat

Hillary Clinton has been speaking about her reaction to her defeatin an interview with CNN’s Christine Amanpour.  Whilst accepting “personal responsibility” for the defeat, she also cited other factors as being decisive – notably James Comey’s re-opening her email case, the Wikileaks hack of John Podesta’s emails, and misogyny in politics.   Clinton’s campaign has also been the subject of a “tell-all” book – “Shattered” – which is hostile to the former Secretary of State’s failed candidacy against Donald Trump, suggesting she was insular, secretive and isolated from disenchanted Democrat voters. 

Race and Parties

Trump and the resurgence of race issues

President Donald Trump has reiterated his admiration for President Andrew Jackson (the first real “Democrat” president), claiming that had Jackson been president later the Civil War would not have happened, in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

Salon writer Chauncey Devega sees this as further evidence of Trump and the Republicans’ neo-Confederate racist leanings.  His key take-aways:

1-      Trump’s inner circle hold white ethno-nationalist, supremacist beliefs

2-      They came to power in part by promoting a false idea of white victimhood

3-      Andrew Jackson, who carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the American west against Native Americans, is an appropriate symbol for this movement

4-      Neo-confederates promote a historical fiction that the Civil War was not about slavery but states’ rights

5-      It is no surprise that the KKK endorsed Donald Trump

6-      Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act gave birth to the modern, white supremacist Republican Party.  It “transformed the party of Abraham Lincoln into the party of Jefferson Davis”.

7-      The Trump Administration’s treatment of undocumented Latino immigrants is redolent of the hunting of fugitive slaves before the civil war.

8-      Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions continues to be dogged by allegations of a racist past.

Historical note: The Washington Post noted that Democrat House Leader Nancy Pelosi sat beneath a portrait of the first Republican president Abraham Lincoln, while Trump espouses the virtues of the first Democratic president Andrew Jackson.

Republicans consistently rave about Ronald Reagan as one of the twentieth century's greatest presidents.  There is more than a little yearning for Reagan in their attitudes to Donald Trump. Trump himself is an admirer of the 40th president and sees himself treading the same path.

And Trump may well be right.  I was struck, when reading William Leuchtenburg's chapter on Reagan in his "The American President", just how much there was a similarity between them.  Forget the traditional smiling picture of Reagan, and consider this:

"If the casual observer thinks that Trump’s presidency is headed for the rocks, then reflect for a moment on the actuality of Reagan’s presidency.  His swingeing budget cuts condemned millions to poverty and wretchedness, cutting off millions more from any realistic chance of health care. His tax cuts benefitted primarily the very wealthy.  He sought to weaken the Voting Rights Act and became the first president to veto a civil rights act; in both his elections he received the smallest share of African American votes ever given to a presidential candidate.  He appointed an anti-environmentalist to the Environmental Protection Agency who proceeded to halve the EPA’s budget, urged drastic weakening of the Clean Air Act and refused to enforce most of the congressional regulations on the environment.  Her name, incidentally, was Anne Gorsuch, and her son became President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee.

 In foreign affairs, Reagan actively connived with a hostile power (Iran), selling them arms in a trade that his administration banned as aiding terror when undertaken by other countries.  He went to great lengths to deceive Congress on this, and when he could evade responsibility no longer he threw those of his aides who had done his bidding under the proverbial bus, sacking them without a backward glance.   His consistent defence was that he couldn’t remember authorising such sales.  He also supported some of the most brutal and dictatorial leaders in the world, including the murderous presidents of El Salvador and Guatemala.  Early in his presidency he sent several marine divisions to Lebanon against the advice of his military chief.  Over 260 marines were eventually killed, mainly in suicide attacks, before Reagan recalled them, having gained nothing.  

For all the mishaps, for all his political ignorance and his utter disdain for the poor, working class victims of his domestic policies, Reagan is somehow remembered as a great president."  

There are some extraordinary parallels between Trump and Reagan, even down to the reason why so many people voted for them.  The above extract is part of my longer article on Reagan as Trump's curtain-raiser, and even when writing it I felt increasingly pessimistic about the chances of anyone really dislodging Trump before his time is up.

The full piece is here.

Democrats are in no mood to play nice with the Gorsuch nomination it seems.  I still maintain that since Gorsuch will be confirmed anyway, Democrats might want to hold their most lethal fire for the next one, who may not be as qualified or as easy to sell as a suitable Supreme Court Judge as the undeniably credible Gorsuch.  Nevertheless, after denied a vote on Merrick Garland, with Republican leaders McConnell and Grassley mounting a very effective year-long blockade, you can see why there is such anger on the Democratic side.  It can't be denied that Republicans have no moral authority on this issue at all.

For a sense of just how deep the anti-Trump anger runs, look at any post on Daily Kos.  Or have a read through this interview with New York Magazine's Frank Rich.  Rich was the most famous and feared theatre critic of his day and he has lost none of his punch when discussing - or writing about - politics.

Gorsuch's presentation by Trump reduced him to the "status of a supplicant at a corrupt royal court".

Trump was "using language you'd expect to hear from a Vegas lounge singer paying tribute to Frank Sinatra".

And on the wretched House Speaker Paul Ryan, Rich is especially sharp, describing him as "the leading Vichy Republican.  A coward who will do anything to hold on to power."

Meanwhile, Politico's report on the prime time presentation ceremony noted Trump's lack of apparent understanding of any of Judge Gorsuch's legal opinions.  The show was everything.   As, so far, seems to have been the case with the whole of this presidency thus far.

We simply don't have a similar institution in Britain.  Our own relatively new Supreme Court - a creation of Tony Blair's - received its first real bit of headline publicity with its deliberations on triggering Article 50, and acquitted itself perfectly soundly, providing a new and important constitutional document in the process.  But British citizens are unlikely to get too exercised by the UK's deliberately down-played Supreme Court.

It's a whole different matter in the United States.  The very pillars of the Court breathe remote majesty and authority through their brilliant white marbled stone.  The nine robed justices play such a significant role in the legal ante-room of American politics that they were once even charged with deciding the president of the United States.  It is said that candidate Trump paid most attention to the poll that said the Supreme Court was the single most important issue to them.

After eleven days of perhaps deliberately provoked chaos and division, President Trump's Supreme Court nomination looks positively statesmanlike and actually presidential.  The originalist nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is respected across the spectrum and is clearly a fine jurist with the capability of producing lucid, deeply thought out rulings.  He is no right-wing head-banger.  He speaks honeyed words when defending the law and the principle of an independent judiciary.  Even if you disagree with his broad legal philosophy, you get the impression that the integrity of the Court is safe in the hands of this man, this chosen successor to Justice Scalia.

Of course that isn't quite how this is playing, and the Republicans have only themselves to blame for that.  The unprecedented action of Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Judiciary Chairman Grassley has undeniably poisoned the atmosphere of Supreme Court nominations.  For Democrats, this is the "stolen" seat.  The one that Republicans held back when President Obama still had nearly a quarter of his last term to run.  If Neil Gorsuch is being garlanded with praise by Republicans and their ilk, is being spoken of as a great jurist, a man with previous support across the political spectrum, well then so was Merrick Garland similarly presented back in March of 2016.

This National Review article by Jim Geraghty is pretty typical of the paeans of praise to Gorsuch and damnation to oppositional Democrats currently being generated (this one too, from American Greatness, lays out the Republican case pretty clearly).  How stupid of the Democrats, how narrow-minded of them to want to oppose such a universally loved jurist as Judge Gorsuch.  But nearly everything in this article could have been written by a Democrat about Judge Garland too.  The Supreme Court process has become so politicised that neither side can give credence to any suggestion or nomination from the other.

But, you know, this was also Justice Scalia's seat.  Gorsuch's appointment simply maintains the old balance of the Court, with a man who undoubtedly deserves his nomination.  Democrats may be wise to row back from a dust-up over this one.  They may still be fuming over the Garland obstruction, but fighting Gorsuch would seem to be the wrong battle this time.  And maybe we should remind Democrats that they had their scalp long ago, back in 1987 when they successfully prevented Robert Bork's nomination.  The Republicans are simply catching up.

Gorsuch should be given tough questioning by the Judiciary Committee Democrats, but they might be willing to give the Supreme Court itself a chance to recover some much needed dignity by not invoking a filibuster here.  By submitting to Gorsuch's nomination, the Democrats can keep their moral high ground, leave the Court where it was before Scalia's death, and most importantly keep their more lethal ammunition in reserve for the nomination that truly matters.  The one to replace the first liberal to step down.

Despite himself, Trump has played this one well.  After an exhausting eleven days, plenty of people would thank the Democrats for not picking an unnecessary fight.

Has the White House had a certifiable lunatic as its resident in previous years?  Here we are in the second day of the Trump presidency and the most important thing on the mind of the most powerful individual in the world is how big his crowds were at the inauguration.

As he addressed his intelligence community - or part of it - you might have thought he could have come up with slightly more pressing topics of consideration for his speech.  But nope.  Crowd numbers and the mendacity of the press were his highlights.

We know Trump cares about his ratings.  During his bizarre transitional period he found time to lambast Arnold Schwarzenegger for his low ratings as the new host of the "Apprentice".  He even gave himself a nickname.  "Ratings Machine DJT".  So this stuff is important.

The two picture above have had wide circulation.  The top one shows the crowd for Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009.  The second shows the crowd for Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017.  There is a bit of a difference.  Even a casual observer can see that.  Whatever the numbers were in 2009, they were considerably lower by the looks of it the other day.

This would normally be a matter of inconsequential comment before moving on.  But partly because Trump bigs himself up so much, the photos received wide publicity across various media.  Cue the statesmanlike White House response.

Not only does Trump major on this to the intelligence officers, but his new press secretary, Sean Spicer, indulges himself in an extraordinary rant at the media in his first press conference.  Both Trump and Spicer show-cased their infrequent relationship with the truth.  Trump could apparently see that there were around 2 million people in the crowds from his perch at the podium.  Spicer ranted first that there were no official numbers available and then, without batting an eyelid, announced that this had been the largest inauguration crowd ever.  Period.  So there.  He also misrepresented a comparison of DC metro numbers, claiming that there were over 500,000 journeys on Friday compared to a mere 3000,000 on the day of Barack Obama's second inauguration.  Washington Metro actually reported 193,000 metro rides just after 11am on Friday, compared to 513,000 on Obama's first inaugural.  The figures for Friday seemed to be the lowest of any inuagural travel since 2005.

Spicer- surely the most comic figure to ever stand in that press room - then had to go further.  When Trump addressed the intelligence officers, so the press were told, there over 500 people there, and over 1,000 had applied to be present.  The officers were ecstatic in their joy at having Trump as their new president.  They love him and he's got their back.

The problem is I'm not actually sure they were lying.  There is a serious danger that they actually believed their own nonsense.  Trump is delusional enough to convince himself that he can accurately assess 2 million people standing in front of him.  The raging Spicer could not even maintain a basic consistency for two sentences.

Pathological liars or delusional maniacs.  Either way, the lunacy in the White House became more palpably certifiable just two days in to the administration.

The New York Times report of the press conference is here.  The opening part of the press conference from old loony-bag Spicer is below.

Slate fact-checked the lies in Spicer's statement - 4 in 5 minutes.

The Washington Post puts it best here:

Washington veterans marvel at how much Trump has been able to get away with because he just doesn’t seem to care what anyone else thinks. The president-elect has disregarded the longstanding tradition that there should only be one president at a time. He talked to the leader of Taiwan in contravention of the One China policy; his national security adviser has been in contact with a senior Russian government official. He’s refused to fully divest his financial holdings, given his son-in-law a government job and ordered his aides to declare war on an independent ethics office that raised questions about these arrangements.

Just reading through that reminds us of how far the goalposts have moved.  This may be a failure of news reporting, although to be fair most outlets are busy trying to hold Trump accountable; there is just so much material that it's difficult to keep track.  Perhaps the big problem is the lack of obvious public discontent.  This is still the Trump who was on offer in the elections, and I guess if you thought he was suitable to be president then you are not likely to think anything he has done since is out of order.

By way of comparison, the Post referred to the case of Tom Daschle.  A former Senate Majority Leader tapped by the new President Obama to be Health and Human Services Secretary in 2009, Daschle eventually had to withdraw over an issue of unpaid taxes (which he later repaid on being nominated).  Unpaid taxes?? Donald Trump pretty well admitted he didn't pay taxes during the campaign and it's a fair bet that several of his billionaire cabinet appointees have found ways to avoid such a tedious task.  But there has been so little trasnparency from Trump and his appointees that virtually anything goes now.  The new normal is that ethics and openness are for the birds, and much of that is thanks to a Republican controlled legislature led by one of the most cynical men to adorn a democracy, which operates on an anything goes policy if it brings party advantage.

Welcome to the new normal.  Old standards no longer apply.

This has been an extraordinary presidential election.  In its outsize anger, ugliness and insurgent appeal it has beaten every modern presidential election into a grey shadow of virtual irrelevance.  For some presidential historians you have to go back to 1828, the culmination of a four-year long populist campaign by General Andrew Jackson against the Washington establishment led by President John Quincy Adams, to find a similar one.  Even then Jackson did at least have some concrete public achievement behind him. 

The reason it has been so outsize, and so ugly, is of course entirely down to just one of its candidates – Donald J Trump.  Everything one says about this election, one is really saying about Donald Trump himself.  He has dictated the discourse of the campaign.  He has consistently dominated the media coverage.  He is the outlier, the leader of an angry, often ugly movement of alienated citizens who just needed someone to take their irrational hatred onto a higher platform.  Donald Trump is their man.  For all of his differences from his supporters – he is wealthy, well-connected, insulated from problems, benefits from rather than suffers from deals with foreign powers – he has become their messiah.   Hillary may be his nominal opponent, may even be the victor on Tuesday, but he has been by far the crucial figure in this campaign.

There is much that appals about Donald Trump, but the most appalling thing is the utterly fanatical, eyes-closed-shut loyalty of his band of supporters.  Democracy, after all, isn’t just about the leaders.  It is about the people who make them leaders.  Democracy is the only system of governance that puts the people front and centre.  And if the image they project, through the leaders they choose, is an unpleasant one, well that is the whole point of the system.  Media pundits may be trying to find ways of describing the wilful ignorance and strongly held bigotries of Trump supporters in more anodyne terms, but you can’t ignore the fact that he could not possibly have got where he is unless a significant number of ordinary Americans hadn’t bought in to his incendiary, falsehood laden rhetoric.  He has never disguised what he stands for, and the excuse that “we didn’t really know what he was like” will never be one that can be used by Trump supporters.  But then they will never want to use such an excuse, because they will never need to claw back from their support for Trump.  He is why they are with him.  His rhetoric reflects their thoughts.  His attitudes – or at any rate the ones he chooses to project – are their attitudes. 

Isolated, angry, alienated, frozen out from the modern political firmament?  Trump supporters are nothing of the kind.  They are wilful players in a toxic campaign and their views, their positions, are front and centre in this campaign.  It is Hillary Clinton, a woman who has tried to pursue her aims of civic improvement through decades of grinding involvement in the establishment process, who seems to be the alienated, isolated individual at times.

It doesn’t how many emails you destroy if you are a private businessman (Trump has deleted many thousands); it doesn’t matter how many lawsuits you face (Trump has some 75 pending against him covering everything from fraud, political subversion and sexual harassment); it doesn’t matter that you can never willingly tell the truth, that you manufacture evidence and make up issues as you go along.  If you are not a “politician”, not part of the “establishment” then for Trump supporters, that’s fine.  Do anything.  You deserve to. 

Even this weekend, the classic Donald Trump post-truth machine has been both evident and rapturously received and supported and re-tweeted by his followers and acolytes.  When President Obama – a man whose moral authority and dignity seem so far removed from the grubby Trumpian realities as to make him seem altogether elevated on another plane of existence – seeks to calm his own crowd, and defend the right of a protestor to make his pro-Trump stand at one of his rallies, Donald Trump himself manages to tell this as an example of the president “screaming” at a protestor.  Trump says he wants to punch protestors in the face; Obama tells his audience to calm down and allow the right of protest.  But in Donald’s world – endorsed  by his supporters – he is the virtuous one and Obama the unhinged fascist. 

Then when another opponent at a Trump rally holds his anti-Trump sign, the paranoia that engulfs the whole Trump campaign sees him being rushed off the stage, his mad audience shout “gun” and then precipitate a mass pile in on the protestor before he is led away with full military escort.  In Trumpland, this becomes brave Donald’s escape from near assassination.  They were tweeting this nonsense long after it was evident that it was nothing of the sort, because truth is subservient to their image of themselves as brave, isolated freedom fighters, rather than violent, intolerant thugs.

This campaign has been ugly because Trump’s supporters are ugly and they need their candidate to be so too.  This campaign has barely touched the surface of any policy discussions because that involves a rationality that has fled the Trump supporters, because it would mean engaging with the world of truth not the world of make-believe which they have constructed.   This campaign reinvents events because that’s the way they fit into a make-believe narrative.  This campaign has seen unprecedented bigotry towards Hispanics, women and blacks, because that is what Trump supporters want to see.

Democracy allows the people to come centre stage.  It is no good simply moving the unpleasantness of this campaign onto the shoulders of one man, since he represents the active desires and beliefs of his supporters.  Donald Trump is successful not because of his own innate brilliance, but because of his native cunning in understanding and encapsulating the vision of his supporters.  This is really the only way to understand how such a man can have come so close to the White House – may even be its resident for four years.  If this democracy looks ugly today, it isn’t because just one man has made it so.  It is because democracy is simply doing its job – reflecting the will of the people.  Tuesday will show us just how many people.  

Part of Donald Trump's slash and burn electoral strategy is to claim that the election is rigged.  The only way to prove, in Trumpland, that it isn't rigged is for him to win.  Trump's claims of rigging are ludicrous, but they are taken seriously by the nearly 40% of voters who are firmly in his column.

Politico notes that the Trump strategy could have serious repercussions for American democracy after the election, especially if Republican leaders keep the same silence on the result that they've been keeping about the campaign itself.  Trump cites media coverage as his main "evidence", but let's just consider for a moment the other case - that the election is rigged against Hillary Clinton.

If you were Hillary, and you had the same political nihilism as Trump, you could cite the following:

1.  The consistent hacking of Democrat emails by Wikileaks and possible (though only alleged) Russian agencies.  Wikileaks has emerged firmly in the Trump camp, and hasn't undertaken any leaks against Trump and his associates at all.  The leaks, no matter how innocuous or explainable, consistently hurt Hillary.

2.  The mainstream media insistence on "equivalence" between Hillary and Trump.  Trump is arguably the worst candidate in American history, lies consistently, has failed to pay income tax or declare his tax returns, is a four-time bankrupt, has sexually assaulted women, uses dangerous rhetoric against minority groups, has run businesses that have destroyed the livelihoods of small workers, cosies up to one of America's biggest foreign foes.  Hillary's record doesn't even begin to touch all of this, yet is portrayed in the media as being somehow equivalent.  This campaign is indeed destroying American democracy, but the destructive impetus comes from one side only.

3.  The Republicans have history in rigged elections, as witness the "Gore v Bush" 2000 one.  Al Gore won the popular vote, and a predominantly Republican appointed Supreme Court decided in favour of the Republican nominee in the highly disputed Florida count.  The Democratic nominee, Gore, conceded as soon as the decision was made.

4.  Election machinery in each state is in the hands of state governance.  31 states have Republican governors, only 18 have Democratic governors.  It was a Republican governor's administration in Florida in 2000 which determined the Republican outcome of that state's vote.

5.  Mainstream media may lean towards Clinton (but see point 2 above), but much other media leans heavily towards Trump, including Talk Radio and the still much watched Fox News, who present Trump's outlandish and palpably false claims uncritically.

6.  The Trump campaign is the culmination of more than two decades of well-funded, committed and consistent denigration of the Clintons by Republican right-wingers.  From the millions poured in by Richard Mellon Scaife to things such as the Arkansas Project in the 90s, through the special prosecution of Bill Clinton by Republican activist judge Kenneth Starr, to the present day, the Clintons in particular have been the target of unrelenting abuse.  There is a whole Republican industry dedicated simply to destroying the Clintons and reversing their and President Obama's liberal agenda.  Nothing similar exists on the Democratic side.

7.  The last boundary changes for the House of Representatives saw one of the most audacious gerrymanders in modern representative politics (detailed in a book by Salon's David Daley).  While the Senate could change hands, there is virtually no possibility of the House doing so - it will stay Republican.

Donald Trump is the Republican Party's Frankenstein, and his claims of election rigging would have more resonance if they were spouted by a Democrat.  At the moment, though, Democrats still believe in the American system and refuse to denigrate it.  When media outlets talk of a "dirty election" and how it threaten American democracy, it's worth remembering that their false attempts at equivalence hide the fact that only one party, and its atrocious nominee, are engaged in that work.

A few quick takeaways from tonight's Trump v Clinton debate.

1.  Hillary Clinton is not great at being able to take down a great hulking target standing right next to her.  Perhaps she's wary because of the various scandals attached to her own person, but such scandals are in no way equivalent to the host of issues suggesting Trump is unfit for high office.

2. Trump really has no use for his vice-presidential running mate.  Rarely has a No 2 been so publicly humiliated as Mike Pence was tonight when Trump dismissed his views with the words "He and I haven't spoken and I disagree".  If Pence had any dignity left he would leave the ticket.  He hasn't and he won't.

3.  Trump could have been a nightclub bouncer; his body language was tense and uneasy throughout and he wouldn't sit down, preferring to loom ominously over the set.

4.  Trump got off lightly over the video of his sexist comments - or virtual endorsement of sexual harassment - and shoudn't have done.

5.  Trump wants to put in place criminal proceedings against his opponent if he wins, with the intention of seeing her jailed.  He would do well in an authoritarian banana republic.

6.  Hillary is far more comfortable talking policy than debating, and it showed.  She allowed Trump to lead the debate several times.  She's not an instinctive politician in the way her husband or Obama are.

7.  This debate will have changed few minds, but it may well have entrenched their respective supporters behind the two candidates.

8.  Trump is awful.  He is grotesque, lies congenitally, has few ideas about the policies he name-checks, is brutalistic and should never have been a contender.  But you get the democracy you vote for.

I doubt there are many Democrats who would want to entertain the thought of Donald Trump winning on November 8th.  That's traditional, long-time registered Democrat voters rather than the more recent, brash, Sanders insurgency supporting youth who so nearly upset the convention.  And yet there may be a case - which some hard-core Sandersites have long endorsed - for suggesting that a Trump win would be the better option for the long-term future of liberalism in America.

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency then her very tenure will reinvigorate the Republicans in Congress, united in their bid to frustrate her at every turn.  It will likely give Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, an even higher profile and a leading role in not only refurbishing the Republican image - something he is desperate to do - but also in running for the presidency in four years time.  A Clinton presidency will also leave the substantial army of Trump supporters wholly unsatisfied, and ready to back either Trump or similarly iconoclastic right-wingers next time round, when they can point to four more years of "Democrat misrule" and establishment alienation.

A Clinton presidency might even engender a constitutional crisis.  While Trump said he would support Clinton as president if she won the election on November 8th., he has made enough noises previously to suggest that he and his supporters consider the whole electoral system rigged against them, and would use that as justification to dispute another Democratic victory.  Edward Foley on Politico has shown how such a challenge might work given the partisan nature of America's state operated electoral decision machines.

Should Trump actually win, a whole new scenario emerges (I know, I know....a contender for statements of the blinding obvious).  Given Trump's maverick approach to politics, and the division he has already inflicted on the Republican party, the Democrats can look forward to four years of ever increasing Republican turmoil as House and Senate Republicans try and deal with an unpredictable, and essentially non-party, president.  Four years of President Trump also provides even his hardest core supporters with the irrefutable evidence of not just how damaging such a presidency might be, but more importantly show them just how little he is able to change.  When no wall goes up - or at best a small symbolic one - and immigration doesn't cease; when terrorist attacks continue; when Trump's pally approach with a politically superior Vladimir Putin fails to bring gains to America and merely makes her look like an international patsy; when Trump's economic decision making fails to match the promise he has given of work for all those disenchanted, unemployed voters; when race relations hit a nadir and riots envelop the cities on a scale not seen since the 60s; when the economy tanks under the weight of an illiterate economic stategy; when all this and more happens do we really think the Trump brand will retain its potency in the re-election battle of 2020?

In such circumstances, the Democrats could nominate a new, fresh face, reinvigorate their liberal appeal, shore up their popular support across a variety of groups - the young, the black, the female, the Hispanic - and storm to victory not just in the race for the White House but also in the House and the Senate, probably for a generation at least.

The only question is - would four years of Trump be an acceptable price to pay for such future largesse?

Plenty of keyboards have already been called into action to provide quick analyses of last night's stormer of a presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  To give just a flavour of some of the more prescient online commentary, this is the Washington Post take from Dana Milbank; Howard Kurtz gives a pretty balanced view from the right of the spectrum on Fox News; while the liberal viewpoint is most articulately expressed by Michelle Goldberg on Slate.  Politico meanwhile remains a forcing house of regular and detailed commentaries.

The commentariat consensus is that Hillary won - and unequivocally so.  Even Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani admitted as much in a tweet he sent.  But Giuliani's tweet also offers - unusually - a proper cautionary note for the Clintonites.  She may win the debate and the plaudits of political insiders, as well as those voters who are more politically switched on than their peers.  Whether the debate will have translated that into an appeal to those who are largely alienated by politics is another matter, and Trump's one decent gambit last night was to keep identifying Clinton with the "failed" political establishment.

We already know that the hard-core Trump supporters will never be convinced by anything other than what Clinton characterised as a "Trump reality" that bears little relation to facts.  What Clinton needed to do was to try and win back some of that support which she appeared to have after the Democratic convention but which has dissipated over the course of the summer.

Certainly Mrs. Clinton exceeded expectations in the debate, while Trump probably came in under his.  All the more remarkable given that expectations for Clinton were already high - she was seen as a capable and professional debater who masters her brief exceptionally well - and those for Trump were correspondingly low - he was seen as a man of bluster and bluff with little regard for the facts.

It turned out to be Clinton who scored the more aggressive hits, on Trump's income tax returns, his "stiffing" of ordinary workers who worked for his companies, or his racism over the Obama Birther affair.  She maintained poise, looked relaxed, went in for the kill with appropriate but not over the top aggression.  She arguably didn't press one or two issues enough.  She could have pressed further on his tax returns, or seized upon his implicit admission that he hadn't paid federal tax in years.  She could have pressed on his pursuit of Obama's birth well after the president made his birth certificate public.  She could have been specific in calling him out as an early supporter of the Iraq war.  But these are quibbles.  The debate went well for her.  The only issue is whether it will have been enough to bring voters back into the fold.

For Trump, the issue is a little different.  He has defied all expectations and all campaigning conventions to get where he is today - that is, within a whisker of winning the White House.  No-one expects him to be articulate, no-one even really expects him to understand and ally himself with facts or, more broadly, the truth.  None of his nearly 40% of hard-core supporters are going to move away from him simply because his blustery one-liners didn't work in a debate, or because he was called out on various contortions of reality, or even because he is a giant narcissist who only talked about himself.  So emotionally based is his appeal that it is impervious to facts and events.   I thought one of his most astute points was when he noted that Clinton had spent hundreds of millions of pounds on television adverts attacking him, while he had spent nothing, and yet they were still level-pegging in the polls.

Trump is the anti-candidate, and to succeed he just needs to continue to exist.  The real issue for America in November is whether enough American voters - especially those in the so-called swing states - are nihilistic, alienated and angry enough to tell reality to go hang and put Trump in the White House.  We already know he can't get there because he is better qualified, or more astute, or has a better understanding of politics, or is a more eloquent and articulate speaker.  He is none of these things and Clinton beats him handily on each one.  Her unpopularity remains mysterious in many ways for a woman who has genuinely dedicated herself to a lifetime of public service, and who has come up from relatively humble origins.  But she is now the single most lethal personification of the politics of old, of the establishment, and if enough people are alienated from all of that, then she can't win them over.

This is an election between primal instinct and rational thought, and rational thought has an uphill battle.  That is why it may not matter that Hillary Clinton won the debate.  Donald Trump isn't campaigning that way, and his support base isn't interested.  So if you haven't yet seen it yet do watch it and enjoy - it was a great and rumbustuous debate (although the audience should have been allowed to make more noise!).  But for all the viewership - the highest for any presidential debate - it may not have mattered much.

Donald Trump has reached a position of such demagogic lying that no truth will be able to bring him and his campaign back to the realms of sanity.  And the alarming fact is that his supporters will stay with him all the way.

In any rational political campaign Trump should have been finished when he slandered a judge on the grounds of his ethnicity.  The case awaiting that judge's ruling - over the failure of Trump University to adhere to its published prospectus - should also have rebounded firmly against Trump.  This man who parades himself as the saviour of white American working class citizens wilfully conned many of them out of hard earned savings with the false promise of riches through his "university" set-up.  And yet he went on to seize the Republican nomination and runs Hillary close enough in polls to suggest he may well win in November.

Trump's racism and bizarre political headline - to build a wall along the Mexico border - should also have holed him beneath the waterline as a dangerously divisive populist and a spewer of fantasy politics.  It has done no such thing.

Trump's aggressive misogyny towards a Fox News reporter early in the primary campaign should have ruined him irreparably, but he continued to push forward against an anaemic and spineless group of "opponents".

Then came Trump's call on Russia to hack into Hillary's emails.  His willingness to engage the support of a hostile foreign power, and essentially underwrite their own malign interference in America's election campaign, should have made him a pariah, and yet his continued vocal support for one of the world's most corrupt and power-hungry despots, Vladimir Putin, somehow makes good waves for him amongst his legion of supporters.

This week alone Trump has endured - and will survive - his ill-judged criticism of a mother who lost her son in an heroic action against the very Islamic terrorism that Trump claims to defy.  Trump - the man who profited from buildings while others sacrificed their lives in war - is immune to any of the normal standards of decency that might apply in a political fight, and certainly to the higher standards that apply in everyday life.  He calls Hilary Clinton the "devil" (and means it), encourages chants of "lock her up", and spits out venom every time he speaks or tweets.  He now claims that the election will be rigged against him.  He is, to all intents and purposes, a malign man who is completely out of control.

And yet he could be president.  His supporters have remained tight and his party - with a few individual exceptions - refuse to disassociate themselves from him.  We have come to expect men of the calibre of House Republican Speaker Paul Ryan to avert their gaze from Trump on an almost daily basis and keep supporting him.  Ryan long ago lost his backbone in this struggle, and stands condemned as Trump's fellow traveller no matter how awkward he may occasionally seem to be.

But the real sign of alarm for America is how Trump's campaign has infected and is destroying a land once hailed for its openness and freedom.  His attack on a Muslim military mother for staying silent during a convention appearance should have breached the last wall. It almost looked as if it had with Republicans like John McCain and Jeb Bush rounding on him.  But they are mavericks or has-beens and out of the loop.  It's the Trump supporters who bear attention, and they have rallied around him.

Take this story of another military mother who dared to ask an adverse question of Trump's vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence.  As soon as she even suggested that Trump had dis-respected the military, the Trump supporters at the meeting booed her, harassed her and tried to drown her out.  Afterwards, it was she - not Mike Pence, the vice-presidential candidate serving as an empty vessel for Trump's extremities - who received criticism from the crowd members.

Think on that.  Think on the spectacle of an America so utterly subverted that a manipulative, congenitally deceitful businessman whose career has been spent exploiting others, should be seen as somehow more honourable and moral than a mother seeking to defend respect for military heroes.

It is only as that sinks in that you realise the enormity of what is happening in America.  It is a democracy, and it changes not just because of one man but because ordinary people change it.  Trump has already won the votes of over 13 million Republicans.  Despite everything he has said, despite his career history, his refusal to be honest with his tax returns, his frequent and scatter-gun abuse and his friendliness towards America's foreign enemies, this man retains the support of a huge swathe of American voters.  Whether he wins or loses in November - and he has a high chance of winning - America has already changed.  He hasn't changed it.  But he has channeled the hate, bigotry and division of so many Americans that the fabled shining city on a hill really is no more. 

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This year's Republican convention has been a mess.  A delightfully anarchistic mess for those of us who do not wish him well, but a mess nonetheless.  Although he is unchallenged as the Republican nominee, he still faced a floor challenge to his candidacy.  In previous conventions - and you have to go back to 1976 for this - you at least had to have another candidate to rally round, but not this time.

Donald's wife gave a speech that had significant elements plagiarised from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech, which gave us the excellent spectacle of hardened Trumpites loudly applauding the sentiments of the current First Lady.

The principal speakers at the convention have all shown clear signs of madness.  Rudy Giuliani, once a respected New York mayor, tried to be Donald Trump on acid.  Chris Christie, once a governor who briefly looked as if he could reach across partisan divides, played his role as chief witch-hunter (prosecuting chief witch Hillary Clinton) to a perfection that would have been admired in Salem back in the day.

Only Ted Cruz - Ted Cruz!! - has emerged with any credit from this nonsense, and he did so by adding to the fiasco.  Unlike Marco Rubio - who prostrated himself on video before the Donald - Cruz used his convention speaking slot to basically stab Trump in the front.  He clearly loved doing it.  I think Cruz is in many respects a repulsive politician, probably in league with the sulphur burners, but he did this bit very well.

Yet despite it all, it probably doesn't matter.  The Telegraph's Tim Stanley makes a good case for suggesting that the conservative Cruz has fatally holed the Trump candidacy, but I'm not so sure.  Trump has succeeded on the back of a lamentable campaign that would have sunk anyone else.  But that is rather the point of Trump.  The media classes and the liberals and all those who hate him have rejoiced in a hopeless, divided convention.

Trump's supporters won't have heard any of that.  All they want to see and hear is their man telling them that all the ills of the world, all of their own poverty and economic dislocation, is down to dastardly forces and people who can be evicted from American society.  He'll tell them that again and they'll lap it up.  He won't lose any of that support on the basis of a lamentable convention week.  

Liberal democracy is in crisis at the moment because it turns out that it has failed to gain the support of significant numbers of left-behind voters.  In America, Trump has those people.  If it turns out there are actually more of them than there are of the many different groups Trump offends, then he's on course for the White House.  His convention plays no role in that calculation.

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This is appalling reading.  Well, it's appalling reading if you're not a racist, homophobic, mysoginistic, immigrant-baiting, Muslim-banning bigot who also wants to beat up anyone who disagrees with you.

Jared Yates Sexton is a professor and political writer, and he went along to a Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.  What he encountered there was a microcosmic representation of the Trump campaign in all of its ugly, discoloured reality.

Amongst the Confederate flags, drunken attendees, tasteless T-shirts and open misogyny towards Hillary Clinton was a palpably nasty atmosphere.  In the end, Yates concluded that yes, of course Trump should be defeated in the same way that a virus needs to be stopped in its tracks, but that the bigger question was how on earth to combat the deeply unpleasant, hate-filled people who are giving Trump such an extraordinary reach.

Of course Sexton is educated, a liberal, a man who thinks about what he's watching and doing.  Of course he approaches the Trump rally with a sense of foreboding and perhaps even slight derision.  Perhaps someone else would have gone along and seen a happy band of cheerful soldiers celebrating together and rooting for their unafraid champion.

But read his tweets for yourself and see if you think he was making it all up, or reporting accurately from a terrible event.  I wish it had been the former.

[Hat-tip to Politics.co.uk's Ian Dunt, who re-tweeted the Yates tweets]

Donald Trump has been roundly condemned by the liberal classes for his extraordinary ability to turn a tragedy into a bit of narcissistic self-promotion.  The famous tweet - "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness and vigilance.  Must be tough" - would seem, to any sane reader, to have come from some semi-educated loony who spouts his vitriol without thought onto the internet.  The fact that it actually comes from the Republican nominee for president is alarming in itself.  What is arguably worse is that the very view and temperament conveyed in that tweet chime so precisely with such a significant proportion of American opinion.

Much of the support given to Trump is inarticulately expressed, but the Breitbart site is a good place to find some attempt to express Trumpism in a form closely approximating to fluent English.  It is here that we get a character called Milo energetically endorsing Trump's approach and slamming Obama's. 

I must confess that I thought Obama's response was measured, thoughtful and soberly expressed without ignoring the sheer horror of what had happened, or shying away from the possible causes, be they hatred or terror.

"Milo" on Breitbart thinks differently.  Like Trump, he thinks the Orlando massacre is essentially about the impact of Islam.  In his bizarre online rant he takes a lesbian commentator to task for suggesting that the attacks were not about religion but intolerant extremism; claims the slaughter is entirely down to America's "Islam problem"; and attacks Obama for variously not mentioning Islam, having a go at gun control and refusing to acknowledge the homophobic nature of the attack.

Obama, of course, specifically referred to the fact that this was an attack upon Florida's "LGBT community", something Milo must have missed when ranting at his TV set, and something that Republican leaders, in their responses, have refused even to mention.  It is also surely beyond question that at least one issue that needs to be considered in assessing the whys and hows of this latest attack is the easy availability of guns - the attacker in Orlando bought his just a few days prior.

But this level of rational thought is anathema to Milo and his ilk.  So too is the recognition that by targeting homosexuals the Orlando attacker carries at least some baggage in common with America's own fundamentalist right.  The same Republicans currently tweeting their sympathy are those who have sought to marginalise the gay community in America by denying their rights to marriage, or to adopt children.  

The attack in Orlando was a terrible example of hatred towards a minority bubbling over into inchoate and destructive violence, taking the lives of 50 innocent people on this occasion.  Hate attacks are not new and are hardly confined to gays, as the Charleston church shooting in 2015 demonstrated all too clearly.

The American right, headed by Trump, have seized on "Islamic terrorism" as the key factor because it allows them to ignore the other possible elements of homophobia and lack of good gun control, which remain firmly embedded in the right-wing mindset.

The discomfiting fact is, though, that it is precisely such a mindset which is proving so electorally potent at the moment.  We may laugh at Trump and mock his primitive narcissism from the safety of our liberal enclaves, but out in the electoral lands of America he has real traction, and the murderous actions of the Orlando killer merely add grist to his mill of hatred.  Killer and would-be politician both understand the potency of collective bigotry.