Iran’s political establishment faces a serious test of will. So will Joe Biden. - "We know that, following his loss in the U.S. election, President Trump asked his advisers to offer options for strikes on Iranian military installations. The intelligence community and top military advisers oppose the idea. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — America’s top 'diplomat' — shares with his boss the attitude that expertise doesn’t matter nearly as much as finding people to agree with you."
For Trump advocate Sidney Powell, a playbook steeped in conspiracy theories - At the Nov. 19 news conference, before a national television audience, she asserted that “communist money,” the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and a manipulated computer algorithm were all connected in a secret plot that had altered potentially millions of ballots and stolen the election from Trump.
Powell did not stop there. In an interview two days later with the conservative outlet Newsmax, she said she had been given evidence — which she said she could not disclose — that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican and an ally of the president, had taken bribes and conspired to orchestrate Trump’s defeat. Nationwide, she estimated that “thousands” of local elections officials knowingly helped carry out the master scheme to tamper with ballots. In fact, Powell claimed, if anyone bothered to look, they’d probably find that U.S. elections had been rigged for decades.
America needs an epic narrative right now. Painters are working on it.
Iran’s president blames Israel for killing nuclear scientist and vows to respond at the ‘right time’
Marco Rubio is already suiting up for the politics of destruction
Why they fight: The Democrats are a big-tent party. The GOP isn’t. That explains everything. - "In the short term, Democrats clearly have a coalition-management challenge: Big-tent politics requires a lot of work and leads to inevitable bickering. But over the long run, Republicans are confronting decline, not only because the Democrats' diversity better reflects the country, both now and in the future, but also because the GOP's coalition is aging. Among Trump's voters, 65 percent were 45 or older; only 56 percent of Biden's were — and Biden captured voters under 30 by a better than 3-to-2 margin. In fact, the only thing that has saved Republicans in presidential elections over the past three decades is an electoral college that privileges White and conservative voters. The GOP has won the popular vote in only one of the past eight elections. Republicans took heart in their gains among Latinos, but the Hispanic vote was nonetheless key to Biden's success in Arizona and Nevada — and to the Democrats' ongoing advantage in California, New Mexico and elsewhere.
"Still, 2020 did not bring about the larger-scale realignment that the Democrats hoped for (and that was mistakenly forecast by many polls). To nurture that possibility, Biden and the Democrats must find their inner Job, with a little help from Machiavelli. For starters, each camp within the party can acknowledge the truth of what their internal rivals say. The left is right that it provides a lot of energy, especially among young voters and in the urban areas that turned out big for Biden. But the moderates are right that, to win power, the party needs middle-of-the-road voters, particularly from swing districts. This may produce more cautious officeholders, but they are essential to building a congressional majority.
"Progressives are right that the quest for racial justice should not be compromised — and is, in fact, an electoral asset. (After all, 85 percent of Biden voters told the exit pollsters that the criminal justice system treats Blacks unfairly.) But moderates are right that slogans like 'Defund the police' can bring down moderate lawmakers, such as Staten Island's defeated Rep. Max Rose. Here's a rule for the future: Any slogan that requires five minutes to explain what it really means is not a good slogan."
What hunting Bigfoot taught a Republican congressman about politics
China sharply ramps up trade conflict with Australia over political grievances
20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump’s quest to overturn the election - "The 20 days between the election on Nov. 3 and the greenlighting of Biden’s transition exemplified some of the hallmarks of life in Trump’s White House: a government paralyzed by the president’s fragile emotional state; advisers nourishing his fables; expletive-laden feuds between factions of aides and advisers; and a pernicious blurring of truth and fantasy.
...
"A simple and clear refutation of the president came Friday from a Trump appointee, when Judge Stephanos Bibas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit wrote a unanimous opinion rejecting the president’s request for an emergency injunction to overturn the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results.
"'Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,' Bibas wrote. “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.'"
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