#MAGA

Simon Jenkins gets it.

There's no real way to stab allies in the back and come out looking like anything but scum. And Trump, to his credit, hasn't bothered to try. He is utter scum and he doesn't care who knows it.

But - with the Kurdish withdrawal - he's achieved something that Obama could only aspire to. He's tied the hands of every US administration to come for the next generation. At a stroke, he's made it vastly harder for the US to intervene in future wars anywhere in the world - because only the very foolish or the very desperate would ally with them. Nobody trusts a traitor.

This may be the Suez moment of the American empire - the moment when everyone, even Americans, are forced to accept that they just don't matter that much any more - because it doesn't matter how invincible your army is, if the taxpayers back home have lost the will to use it. If so, Trump deserves a deal of credit for getting there so quickly. Obama may have hunted bin Laden down, but it takes a Trump to surrender to him and get away with it. #MAGA - Make America Go Away.

Just to be clear - I personally think this is a horrible thing. I think the world was a better place for American intervention. I am aghast at the despicable treatment of the Kurds, and I think this treachery will haunt America. But given a choice between fighting until they were beaten, and simply giving up and going home - it's hard to fault the USA for choosing the second option. Generations of brave, decent and honourable US presidents, trying desperately to do the right thing - "to lead the cause of freedom", as George W Bush once put it - have led the US into seemingly endless wars. Now Trump, who combines in one man the personal courage of a diseased rat, the integrity of Pontius Pilate and the morals of a Bangkok pimp, has shown how to end them.

I hope people elsewhere who are placing their hope in US support - such as in Hong Kong, and Israel, and even some poor fools in Britain - are taking note.

Demotivated reasoning

So, a lot of normally calm people are crowing that Trump is going down.

Like them, I really want it to be true - but based on a lifetime of being disappointed in politics, I don't believe it. And since I have a solid track record of incorrect predictions, I'm hoping this one will prove to be wrong as well (but to bring that about, I have to publish it): "impeachment" is making him stronger.

Now, I'm not claiming he knows exactly what he's doing. He's not some supra-genius level grandmaster who's playing twenty moves ahead of us all. But this isn't chess. What he is, is a past master at opportunism. Let him so much as sniff a lifeline, and he will not only haul himself to safety, but also lash it around his opponents' necks and do his redoubtable damnedest to haul them into the soup in his place. He doesn't yet know what form that lifeline will take (although he has a few contingency plans, obviously) - but he has faith, based on a lifetime of avoiding consequences, that it will come along in time.

To deny him such a lifeline? - would take a laser-focused prosecutorial intellect, a party of unwavering discipline, media who can maintain an attention span of months while retaining detachment and perspective, and two parties that are still committed to pluralistic republican democracy and the rule of law. How many of those ingredients are present in Washington right now?

Failing all that, it would take a more convincing case than that phone call. Because I read the published "transcript", and while it is appalling, it still contains enough plausible deniability to give talking points to Trump himself and his highly-motivated allies in the media and elsewhere. And talking points is all they need. They don't need to be convincing, they just need to keep talking, and Trump's followers will keep listening.

Impeachment will fail, Biden is sunk, and Warren will lose to Trump next year because (I don't pretend to know why this is, but the polling data is clear) working-class blacks won't vote for her, just as they didn't for HRC. It's time to resign ourselves to a second term of Trump.