Andrew Sullivan on Brexit, Trump and the Democrats

Andrew Sullivan writes in the NY Magazine:

It’s clear to me now — as it should be to any dispassionate observer — that the pro-Remain parliamentary and media elites in all parties have never had any intention of honoring the result of the 2016 referendum. And they still don’t. They are sabotaging that democratic decision simply because they did not like the result, and they’re too chicken to take that case to the polls. So they’re keeping this zombie minority government in power, while preventing it from achieving its primary goal indefinitely. For all this, in my view, they deserve nothing but contempt.
Look at the record. Every single major Remain supporter has explicitly said in public they would accept the 2016 result and implement some kind of Brexit that a majority of voters supported. But almost none have walked the walk. When Theresa May came up with a deal generous to the E.U. and Remain position, they voted overwhelmingly against it (alongside the Brexit purists). As the deadline approached without a new deal, these same parliamentary elites insisted that the default of crashing out without a deal was unacceptable, and so voted to extend the deadline, not once but twice. But when Boris Johnson shocked everyone by meeting the second deadline and successfully getting a second deal, the Remainers first voted for the bill in principle, covering their asses, and then voted to stall its process through Parliament because they said they needed more time to examine the fine print. Now that they’ve been given more time — surprise! — they don’t want it if they have to face the voters afterward. I give up.

Sullivan is right that the remainers or remoaners are doing everything they can to sabotage Brexit, as they can’t accept they lost. They need to be swept from Parliament.

Sullivan actually supports remaining but says:

I also believe in abiding by the result of legitimate national, democratic votes. Upholding that principle, even when it goes against our own strong wishes and personal vote, is foundational to liberal democracy. And retroactively nullifying by waiting out a referendum result solely because you lost is unacceptable, period. Consistently bullshitting about your own motives thereafter is contemptible.

Then he turns to Trump:

I’ve not been an impeachment fan, even as I have regarded the president as mentally ill and characteristically tyrannical from the get-go. I was long unconvinced by the Russia “collusion/conspiracy” claims, saw impeachment as inapplicable in most cases of executive wrongdoing, and only switched sides this year when evidence of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report became undeniable. But the Ukraine matter? If you were to look up an impeachable offense in a metaphorical dictionary, you’d see Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas as illustrations.

Ukraine is vastly different to Russia. As Sullivan says, what Trump has done is exactly what impeachment was put in the constitution to prevent.

But if what Trump has clearly done isn’t a big deal, or a high crime, then you have surely nullified the impeachment clause for the indefinite future. If the clause doesn’t apply to secret quid pro quos with foreign leaders that abuse congressional funds in order to skew the course of a domestic election, what on Earth could it apply to?

Makes lying over sex look trivial.

But then he turns to the Democrats, and I’ll summarise his views:

• Joe Biden: confused, addled, over-briefed, and clearly past his expiration date as a pol
• Bernie Sanders: appealing to millennial Marxists who have no memory of the 1970s
• Elizabeth Warren: unelectable by pledging to rip everyone off their current private health insurance. A supercilious, smug, know-it-all Massachusetts liberal who reveals contempt for the deplorables
• Cory Booker: On paper, he’s perfect. In reality, he comes off as an earnest cyborg from outer space
• Kamala Harris:  a feckless, authoritarian, lying opportunist who treats the Constitution as cavalierly as Trump, but without his excuse of total ignorance
• Tulsi Gabbard: despised by too many Dems to have a hope
• Amy Klobuchar: a ball of nerves and insecurity who seems to shrink upon exposure
• Beto O’Rourke: a woke, moronic bigot, who believes we live in a white-supremacist country
• Julian Castro: an open-borders globalist panderer dedicated to the vital cause of free abortions for transgender male illegal immigrants

The only two he rates are Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang. He goes on to say:

I’ll vote for anyone, including Warren or Sanders or even the vacuous “Beto” to defeat Trump. We proud human scum will not be distracted from the central task at hand. But let’s be honest: This is a field that has largely wilted upon inspection. For what it’s worth, I suspect Warren will win the nomination and dutifully lose the election just like Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and the second Clinton. She has that quintessential perfume of smug, well-meaning, mediocre doom that Democrats simply cannot resist.

Warren is indeed now looking most likely to win the nomination.