Two Games Changed

1) Trump Dodgeball - If you know the game, we are now down to that last stage:  there's only one ball active in play, and Mueller's got it.  The question is, who is/are the target(s)?

Paul Manafort copping the plea will make it clear--finally--to Donald that he will not be able to snuff this out through use of his pardon.  Mueller didn't particularly need Manafort to turn in order to finalize his case, but this will allow him to connect the dots more clearly for the cases he will bring.  Whatever crimes were committed in the original Russian-political-interference case, Manafort was there and knows what they were.  He also should understand fully that any lies he gives to the investigators would invalidate his deal (and put him in jail forever, probably), so he would have to be extremely careful, saying nothing that anyone could prove false.  For Mueller, Manafort will help him wrap things up more quickly and effectively.

Based on what I've seen, there is no solid criminal case against the President for this stuff.  We can take a clue from the Anonymous op-ed (remember that?  It was six days ago!)  The way DrumpfOrg worked and continues to work is: the Boss is strictly on a Need-to-Know basis, the less the better.  Any funny business, these career hacks and dirty tricksters know, keep him out of it, protect him completely.  If we are waiting for Mueller to name him Un-Indicted Co-Conspirator (as happened with Nixon), we should stop waiting, as it really doesn't mean that much anyway.  The real danger to Donald is that Donald Jr. and maybe Jared could be implicated, in something like taking an illegal meeting with known foreign agents to benefit the campaign, and they wouldn't have any immunity from indictment.  Now, Trump could announce pre-emptively that he will "forgive" (read: pardon) any misstatements or missteps because they were trying to do right by him, our one and only President.  Trump used similar logic earlier in pardoning Scooter Libby, the top assistant for VP Dick Cheney who took the fall for the 2003 Valerie Plame outing scandal.

A pardon will keep them out of jail, but it won't keep The Donald from the jail he will come to see the White House being next year--it will be that bad for him.  The question is:  will he want to stick it out?  Supposedly he likes doing this and wants to continue; basically that is an unrealistic view of the job for any President, and if he does feel that way, I would expect that view to change.  I continue to think defeat in 2020 is the sure path to ending Drumpfenreich once and for all, but I would say the odds of him just quitting, or of announcing that he will not run in 2020, both just got shorter (I previously rated those two as #2 and #4 most-likely of the six ways it can end; maybe the opt-out from the 2020 run now passes the likelihood of Trump's death in office.)

2)  Hop-SCOTUS - There is a path to confirmation for any nominee, power dynamics permitting, and regardless of the nominee's ideology.  It resembles the kids' game of hop-scotch:  step in the right spots, stay off the lines, bounce over the selected blocked-off square (the one you put the chalk on, after your first run through).  It's a sort of solo dance, but not too difficult if you follow.

The game was going according to form until today, really.  The anonymous letter accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault back in his high school days didn't appear to be much of an obstacle for him to leap over (along with the one from the previous round, Roe v. Wade) and get to victory.  Until the accuser chose--possibly under pressure from some unwelcome journalistic snooping--to reveal her identity and come forward.* 

Now it's going to be Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, variations on a theme.  She said, he denied. Surely some things have changed, though.  One, of course, is that this is a white-on-white offense, which is viewed differently than a black-on-black one.  One was a "lynching" (Thomas' word); this will be a "witch hunt".  Let's see how long it takes Donald to come up with the use of his favorite phrase for the Mueller investigation for this one, too.

But seriously, when the accuser comes to testify, as it appears she will be bound to do, and the Republican senators have their chance to "cross-examine" (to use the court term), it is going to be ugly all the way around.  Apparently, she does not remember the particulars, like the date, address, anyone who else might be able to corroborate.  Though she passed an (unofficial) lie detector test that she is telling the truth, that will not count as evidence.  They will ask harrowing, hounding, speechlike-questions such as, "Who told you the alleged assailant was Brett Kavanaugh? How do you know it wasn't someone pretending to be him?  Had you ever met him before? He denies being there, wherever it was."

I do think that this "game-changer" gives pause to Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican Senators who were on the fence but leaning toward voting for confirmation.  Outgoing Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who feels free to do the right thing, has already announced he will vote against immediate approval in committee, which would mean the vote might well fail there if the party leadership tries to force it through now.  That defeat, however, would not prevent Kavanaugh's  nomination coming to the floor of the Senate.  The ultimate outcome there would now be uncertain (while it was not really uncertain before this development), but I feel it will make it almost impossible for any Democrats, no matter how red their states may be, to vote for confirmation now.  One phenomenon that seems likely to continue is that Democrats own up to their failings in the #metoo arena, while Republicans dare to defy their accusers.

Thus, even heavier implications for the massive gender divide emerging in the midterms.

*No need to call her out by name, since it seems she was originally trying to avoid the unwanted publicity.