Steve took too narrow a view

Trump congratulates far-right activist Laura Loomer on GOP primary win

Loomer was banned from ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft in 2017 after a public tweet threat in which she told the companies that she "never want[s] to support another Islamic immigrant driver," along with others calling for "someone ... to create a non Islamic form of @uber or @lyft."

"Isn't it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate 'women, LGBTQ, and minorities' is a picture of Ilhan Omar?" she added in a 2018 message shortly before being banned from Twitter as well, referring to the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman. "Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro-FGM Under Sharia, homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti Jewish."

Loomer told The Hill previously that a victory in her primary would mark the "first time a deplatformed candidate will get a party nomination."

Republican Anna Paulina Luna Wins Primary in Florida’s 13th District – Will Face Democrat Charlie Crist in November

Steve has photos of both and a comment for David Brooks accompanying the photos of Luna.

Dear David Brooks: You want to know what the future of the Republican Party looks like? This is what it looks like.

I left a comment.

The future of the Republican Party? 

Nah, the future of the people's house, legislation to be decided by opposing teams of hot babe mud-wrestlers. 

Trump proved it. You can never have too much democracy.

Perhaps that came to mind because I was reading The Federalist just this morning.

The King of Chaos, again

A move that would cause chaos and delay the counting of ballots but not, so far as I can see, prevent a single voter from choosing to mail in a ballot rather than show up in person on election day.

Just as doing less testing does nothing to lower the actual number of cases but only suppresses and makes less accurate our count of cases.

Trump says he opposes funding USPS because of mail-in voting

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he opposes much-needed funding for the United States Postal Service because he doesn't want to see it used for mail-in voting this November.

. . . .

The pandemic has led to record-shattering levels of voting-by-mail, but Trump has tried to restrict the voting method because he says it will hurt his re-election and Republicans across the board.

During an interview on Fox News, Trump said that if USPS does not receive the additional $25 billion funding request that Democrats included in the ongoing stimulus negotiations, then he believes the Post Office won't be able to handle the influx of mail-in ballots in the upcoming election.

"They want three and a half billion dollars for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent, that's election money basically. 

"They want three and a half billion dollars for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. 

"Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said, repeating his false claims that mail-in voting would be "fraudulent."

"But if they don't get those two items that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because you they're not equipped to have it," Trump added.

Of course, we've no idea in general how much voter impersonation fraud there actually is, even ordinarily.

The Dems rightly point out there is not a lot of evidence of that sort of thing but, without voter ID, how would anybody really be able to rule it out?

And while Trump's motivation is to blunt a Democratic advantage he sees in facilitating mail in voting on a much bigger scale than ever before, he is right that it provides very different and maybe greater opportunities for fraud than in person voting.

If I were a Democrat, I would expect the worst and keep a sharp eye on the Republicans.

They have a known record of fraud in connection with mail-ins.

Meanwhile, Trump's Postmaster General is removing thousands of high volume, high speed mail processing machines, slowing mail delivery even now all over the country.

Yet another proof of the folly of allowing a constitution to be changed by a single, simple majority plebiscite

David Campbell stupidly blew the UK out of the EU with such a plebiscite.

This is just way too foolishly democratic.

I am terrified at the thought of what American voters might do with such power, and you should be, too.

Russian voters overwhelmingly back a ploy by President Vladimir Putin to rule until 2036

He has already been in power for about twenty years.

Really excellent video

The Abolitionists, a PBS American Experience series.

And very, very far from allowing any sort of moral equivalence to obtain between these folks and the slave owners and their broader alliance, the opponents of the abolitionists all over the country, including the mobs of the North.

Who, watching this, does not see that struggle as continuous with the struggles not only of the Civil War, but also of Reconstruction, and of the Civil Rights Era?

Or the struggle even today?

Oh, and last night there was the chilling Hitler on Trial, also on amazon video.

Also, in its way, the same struggle.

For liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

About His Majesty, Ubu Roi

Cuomo denies Trump has ‘total authority’ to reopen US economy

Donald Trump is not a “king” and does not have “total authority” to reopen the US economy from its coronavirus shutdown, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said on Tuesday.

At a chaotic, angry and rambling White House briefing on Monday night, Trump, champing at the bit to reopen the US as early as 1 May, made a startling claim.

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he said, referring to public health and police powers in the states and territories.

Constitutional scholars and state governors alike were quick to reject the idea with Cuomo leading the charge in a spat over tackling the pandemic that is pitting the White House versus state leaders.

“I don’t know what the president is talking about, frankly,” Cuomo told NBC. “We have a constitution … we don’t have a king … the president doesn’t have total authority.”

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, also chimed in.

“I am not running for office to be King of America,” he said in a tweet.

“I respect the constitution. I’ve read the constitution. I’ve sworn an oath to it many times. I respect the great job so many of this country’s governors – Democratic and Republican – are doing under these horrific circumstances.”

. . . .

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund said the pandemic would lead to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

. . . .

On Monday, the names of a “council to reopen America” were reported.

All were Trump administration officials, among them the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.

There were no public health advisers among them.

. . . .

Trump’s performance at the White House podium, meanwhile, prompted alarm.

His repeated claim of “total authority” reminded some observers of Richard Nixon’s infamous claim after the Watergate scandal that “when the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal”.

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, tweeted:

“Nope. That would be the literal definition of a totalitarian government – which our traditions, our constitution, and our values all rightly and decisively reject.”

There was also dissent among some Republican Trump allies in Congress, many of whom spent years accusing Barack Obama of executive overreach, including the Florida senator Marco Rubio.

As TV networks and news websites continued to debate whether Trump’s briefings should be shown live at all, some observers reached for more colorful language to describe the president’s misleading claims, attacks on journalists and showing of a propaganda film largely culled from Fox News.

In a column for the Daily Beast, the former Republican consultant turned anti-Trump author and organizer Rick Wilson called the briefing “a manic, gibbering, squint-eyed ragefest by America’s Worst President, a petty display by a failed man who long ago passed the limits of his competence and knowledge”.

On Tuesday, the White House scheduled its next briefing for 5pm.

Bernie media discover new requirement of democracy

Bernie media have been bashing CNN and MSNBC and other Dem media for trying to keep Bernie from winning the nomination, with some justice (but not all that much).

Now they're floating the idea it would be an outrage if at a brokered convention anybody ended up the nominee but whoever came into the convention with the most delegates.

Confidence is high the candidate who shows up at the convention with the most delegates will be Bernie.

They complain of backroom deals wickedly allowing the process to act out second, third, or however many rounds as people with the least votes drop out and release their delegates to freely vote for whomever they prefer among those still standing, or recommend them (nonbindingly) to specific others.

Odd.

Most of the partisans of preferential voting, sometimes called "instant runoff voting", think it is far more democratically legitimate than first past the post.

Not these Bernie partisans. Not this year.

Why not?

Look at the combined totals for Mayor Pete, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar and the combined totals for Bernie and Sen. Warren.

More moderate voters are divided among more moderate candidates.

And that's why a brokered convention bodes ill for Sanders.

Amy Klobuchar has to Rachel Madow indicated she is OK with somebody emerging as the nominee - herself, in particular - who did not arrive at the convention with the most pledged delegates.

Is this how the Bernie bros signal to all others that if their guy shows up with the most votes at the convention but he is not the nominee they will not support the nominee?

Yeah, kinda, sorta.

Bernie bros this time are what Bernie bros were last time.

Once a shithead always a shithead.

Not easy not to hate Republicans

Another way to recoup the terrible deficit and increasing debt created by their trillion dollar tax cut for corporations and the rich.

True friends of the forgotten fucking little guys.

Trump administration announces Medicaid funding overhaul

Trump voters who drive junkers and live in trailers are living proof democracy cannot save the lower orders from their own malice and stupidity.

Pat Buchanan continues his long, slow slide to almost fascism

Although not quite.

Anyway, not yet.

If you think that what, about supranational institutions like the EU, the UN, or even NATO, bothers the new nationalists of Europe and America in part is their democracy deficit you are a fool.

And if you think they are even in part moved by concern for the political position of the world's eurowhites, or the rayonnement of their civilization, the much touted and much damned Western Civilization, you are again a fool.

Their increasingly evident love for authoritarian nationalism wherever it is to be found, while strengthening racism and racist policies within infected states, undermines both.

Let Them Howl, Boris!

PB here continues to celebrate stupid things ever less compatible with the rule of law, with republicanism, with responsible representative government.

The bourgeois revolution in China.

China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Protesters

Right now, that makes it a kind of latter day Cold War between the dictatorship of the Communist Party on the one side and the protesters on the other.

With the local government of Hong Kong a weak player in the middle

What do they want, these protesters?

What did the protesters of Tiananmen want?

The Revolution of 1848 in China.

The French Revolution - or any one of several - in China.

Think of that, but scaled back to cover only Hong Kong.

For now.

It is a direct challenge to the party's exclusive hold on power.

What a provocation it must be to Chicom nationalist eyes to see in the Times a photo of a gray-haired protester in the street waving the Union Jack, the banner of the former Western, white, racist, European colonial power, or demonstrators rushing around the Hong Kong airport, a youth among them waving the Stars and Stripes, as viewers of CNN saw this morning.

The talking heads of mainstream American cable news, all in varying degrees conscious or unconscious Children of Zinn, are accustomed to demonstrators burning the US flag and interviewees and guests who revile it as a symbol of slavery, genocide, misogyny, homophobia, Christianism - or indeed, simply Christianity - and racism.

They hear and repeat, day after day, that it is the banner of an evil regime of white males that is only a recent outpost of a larger evil white thing of millenia, Western Civilization.

They must have to try hard not to gag, reporting on a courageous democracy movement of nonwhites for whom the Stars and Stripes - and the colonialist Union Jack! Colonialism! What, better a Brit colony than one of the last Red Empire in Beijing? - are symbols of exactly the free society and government they want.

Meanwhile, the Beijing tyrants, relying on the Great Firewall of China to make easier their task, are incensing nationalist sentiment against the demonstrators with dangerous success, portraying them as criminals and terrorists manipulated and funded by foreigners and particularly the CIA.

The clashes have been off and on, and more on than off, since early this year.

The government clearly is in no hurry to send in the tanks and would prefer to wait it out.

And that could work, given enough patience.

Chaos Grips Hong Kong’s Airport as Police Clash with Protesters

And this inane remark by the moron in the White House is both hilarious and disgraceful, exactly as you would expect.

We are so going to get another four years of this orange jackass.

Trump on Hong Kong protests: 'It's a tough situation … but I'm sure it'll work out'

“We’ll what see what happens,” Trump said before boarding Air Force One for an event in Pennsylvania. 

“But I’m sure it’ll work out. I hope it works out for everybody, including China, by the way.”

UK should give British nationality to Hong Kong citizens, Tugendhat says

What, does he think they want to be airlifted to East Anglia?

Trump isn't the only moron.

The Youth of Hong Kong want a Bourgeois Revolution

While in America the ignorant young boobs, the kind who used to (still?) wear Che tee shirts, say they want socialism.

"Democratic socialism" is an oxymoron and the only really existing socialism that ever happened in the modern world was the ghastly horror of Communism.

But anyway.

In Hong Kong, It’s Now a Revolution

Hong Kong separatism apart, it's a rerun of the revolt in Tiananmen Square, decades ago.

No doubt it will share the fate of that revolt, too.

Hong Kong : Pékin lance une mise en garde sans précédent aux manifestants

“Nous devons mettre en garde avec fermeté les groupes violents et ceux qui les manipulent : à trop jouer avec le feu, vous finirez par en payer le prix. 

"Tous les participants auront à répondre de leurs actes en justice. 

"Ce message s’adresse à tous les fauteurs de troubles : ne prenez pas notre modération pour du laxisme, ne sous-estimez pas la détermination du gouvernement central à maintenir la stabilité [de Hong Kong].” 

C’est par ce message sans ambiguïté que Yang Guang, du Bureau des affaires de Macao et de Hong Kong, a mis en garde, ce mardi 6 août, les manifestants hongkongais, rapporte le South China Morning Post.

Pékin peut-il s’engager à ne pas recourir à l’armée pour trouver une issue à la crise actuelle à Hong Kong ? 

À la question, le porte-parole s’est contenté d’une réponse sibylline : 

“Mes réponses ont été préparées, mais je tiens à souligner une fois encore que le gouvernement central est attaché à la prospérité et à la stabilité de Hong Kong. 

"Nous ne laisserons impuni aucun acte qui s’en prendrait au principe ‘Un pays, deux systèmes’.”

Oh, so that's how this "responsible government" thingee works, huh?

U.K. Voters’ Frustration High as 99% Are Sidelined in Prime Minister Election

A small slice of party members within each party chooses that party's leader.

That leader is the person who will be PM, head the government, if the party is called upon to form a government.

That happens if the party has or gains a majority, or leads a coalition making up a majority in the Parliament.

The Tories have since since the parliamentary election of 2017 led a coalition majority with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, and that has not changed just because Theresa May has resigned her post as Tory party leader and so as PM.

There isn't going to be another parliamentary election until 2022 unless an early election motion [is] passed by a super-majority of two-thirds in the House of Commons or a vote of no confidence in the government is passed which is not followed by a vote of confidence within 14 days.

The replacement of May involves only the party choosing for itself a replacement in the role of party leader, a replacement who, given the situation, will step into the role of PM of the UK.

Looks like it's going to be Boris Johnson, and it looks like he's going for a no-deal Brexit.

Something only a smallish minority of Brit voters actually want, though a majority of Conservatives support it.

What there is and what there isn't

There is democratic capitalism (capitalism under representative government, actually), as urged and celebrated by Barack Obama.

There is despotic, tyrannical socialism as urged and celebrated by Lenin and his followers.

There is not and never has been or will be democratic socialism.

Socialism under representative government.

That is a political myth.

An unqualified airhead will lead a nation of feckless airheads

Ukraine Election: Volodymyr Zelensky, TV Comedian, Trounces President

Imagine America facing a choice between Trump and Pat Paulsen with joy.

The comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election, according to official results with nearly all of the votes counted, making a comic actor with no experience in government or the military the commander in chief of a country that has been at war with Russian proxies for over five years.

With more than 95 percent of ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Zelensky had won 73.17 percent of the vote, compared with just 24.5 percent for Petro O. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s incumbent president. 

Mr. Zelensky triumphed in every region, except for the area around the city of Lviv, a center of Ukrainian culture and nationalism in the west of the country.

Ukraine’s central election commission said that final official results might not be ready until April 30 because of the upcoming Orthodox Easter holidays.

Mr. Zelensky’s victory will give Ukraine its first Jewish leader and deliver a stinging rebuke to a political and business establishment represented by Mr. Poroshenko, a billionaire candy tycoon who campaigned on the nationalist slogan “Army, language, faith.”

So. They elected the clown.

Ukrainians shit their pants.

Zelenskiy wins second round of Ukraine's presidential election – exit poll

People do lie to pollsters.

Especially people who think it would be a lark.

On the other hand, just such people might think voting for the clown would be a lark.

Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy has won the second round of a presidential election against the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, by a landslide, a national exit poll showed.

The poll on Sunday said Zelenskiy had won 73% of the vote and that Poroshenko had won just 25% of the vote.

Well, think about that

Ukraine election set to deliver damning verdict on traditional politics

Subtitle: Likely election of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy propelled by anti-establishment vote

There’s a 90% chance he’ll be a disaster, but I’m going to vote for him anyway,” said Alyona Sych, a 36-year-old nurse, strolling through Kyiv in the spring sunshine and explaining why she plans to vote for an untested actor and comedian in Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday.

“I know 100% that the current guy is a disaster, so of course I’ll go for the 10% chance we could really change things.”

For three seasons of the popular Ukrainian television show Servant of the People, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has played a frustrated everyman teacher, implausibly propelled to the country’s presidency.

Now he’s standing for the job for real, and most polls give him a commanding lead over the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko. 

By Sunday evening, Zelenskiy could have secured a fourth season as president, but his first one in real life.

. . . .

Most, like Sych, say they are voting for him as a gamble that he cannot be any worse than the status quo.

. . . .

At Friday’s unorthodox debate between Zelenskiy and Poroshenko, held inside Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium at Zelenskiy’s insistence, the shallowness of real support for him was visible: while Poroshenko filled out his section, Zelenskiy was cheered on by a meagre contingent of fans. 

It was another sign that if he wins, it will be a triumph not of dedicated Zelenskiy backers, but of an anti-Poroshenko, anti-establishment vote, fixing on to Zelenskiy as the default alternative.

“I’m not your opponent, I’m a verdict on you. I am the result of your mistakes,” Zelenskiy told Poroshenko on the stage, reinforcing the point.

Poroshenko has said that while Zelenskiy’s showmanship might make for good entertainment, it would be suicidal for a country at war.

. . . .

The problem for Poroshenko is that for the majority of Ukrainians, especially those outside the capital, this country is not one they know. 

Millions have already voted with their feet, fleeing the country in search of better wages, some eastwards to Russia, others to Poland and further west.

Poroshenko has portrayed the visa-free agreement he signed with the Schengen group of EU countries as a major achievement, but it’s of little use to millions who can’t afford to travel. 

Utility bills have risen sharply, infrastructure remains poor, and the judiciary remains corrupt and beholden to political and business interests.

A last-ditch attempt by Poroshenko to tap into nationalist sentiment and portray the Russophone Zelenskiy as a Kremlin stooge has fallen flat, with most Ukrainians apparently favouring the softer, more tolerant vision of Ukrainianness that Zelenskiy represents.

. . . .

“He [Zelinskiy] doesn’t really have any idea of practical solutions to real issues, it’s just a set of phrases. It’s crazy,” said one western diplomat in Kyiv.

. . . .

The way Zelenskiy has been able to leapfrog traditional politicians, with their party infrastructure and refined campaign strategies, is testament to the fact that real democracy is flourishing in Ukraine, unlike in most of the rest of the former Soviet space. 

Many Russians and Belorussians watched Friday’s debate with envy, imagining what it would be like to see their own leaders subjected to a stadium grilling.

But it is also a shocking indictment of the current political class.

Bollocks.

It's an indictment of institutions that permit utter amateurs to compete for the most important job in the nation, and an indictment of voters stupid enough to give him the job.

It is a proof there is too much democracy in their constitutional arrangements and ours, and a reminder that half the people are of below average intelligence.

It is almost as bad as the Athenians allowing some offices to be filled by lot.

How do we account for the key fact of our age?

That the worst and least qualified among us think they are entitled to rule everything?

And that so many others encourage this belief.

This is the real Revolt of the Masses.

It is what democracy as a cultural as well as political obsession corrupts into.

Maduro and his Cuban pals against democracy

‘It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters

But not surprising.

Actually, the kind of move Bozo would admire, but he's been schooled by the GOP about viewing socialism - not authoritarianism and probably not dictatorship - as a scary plague upon the Earth.

They have to campaign against the Democrats, after all, and try their best to make Medicare for All and tuition free education at public secondary schools scary to voters.

Not an easy assignment.

Didn't work against the New Deal.

Didn't work against the Great Society.

But it's all they've got.

So maybe he'll control himself and not gush admiration for this.

But he might not.

Consider his oft expressed admiration for Kim.

John Oliver is right

When the Tories decided to let so momentous and difficult an issue be decided by a simple majority in a single plebiscite they tossed the burden of decisions from those who know most about how horrendously difficult it is to those who know pretty much nothing.

It is because responsible and informed political choice is a full time job and a hard one that the modern "democracies" are actually representative governments in which the people do not make such choices but choose representatives to make them for them.

And on this one those representatives just irresponsibly and stupidly funked it.

Go watch his Brexit III on You Tube.

At last, Jeremy. Now Labour’s mission must be to prevent any Brexit.

Brexit is proof that too democratic an approach to a crucial political issue is stupid and dangerous.

So is Donald Trump.

No smoke-filled room would ever have nominated him.

Anti-democratic Democrats and how they will choose their candidate

If we Democrats are doing this with primaries at all - and the Duce refutes the claim that of course that's the best way to do it (he would never have got the nod from a bunch of old white guys in a smoke-filled room) - why not a single national closed primary on a nationwide primary day with instant runoff voting?

Or we could follow the French and if no one had a majority on the first ballot an actual runoff election could be held with the top two vote getters of the first the only candidates.

Either would shorted and cheapen the nomination process a lot.

And, sure, we could still allow early and absentee ballots and make voting day a paid holiday.

[And, yes, why don't we do the actual presidential election that way, eh?]

[And adopt proportional representation in the senate?]

[After all, there is absolutely no good reason to adopt electoral or representational arrangements intentionally in order to enhance the power of white conservative hillbillies vis-à-vis other Americans.]

[So when somebody starts blathering that it is essential to ensure political candidates campaign in flyover country to keep up hillbilly confidence that they count too and deliberately giving them insanely disproportionate power in the government is the right way to do that, shout "Nooooooo" in his face just as loud as you can.]

But, no, the Democrats are doing it this way.

About that plebiscite thing

Brexit was not an issue to be decided by a single vote, by a simple majority, in a single mass constituency.

That was an exceptionally stupid thing for a Tory leader to set up.

George Will on the point.

Be warned.

Will's nostalgia for the "Europe of the nations" so beloved of Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump is as absurd and phoney as theirs.

None of the three wants a strong and united Europe emerging as an increasingly independent and significant player on the world stage.

Even though at least the latter two want America to abandon it.

European unification was conceived in fear — Europeans’ fear of themselves, a residue of wars produced by various atavisms, including unhinged nationalism. 

. . . .

The embryo of the EU was a free-trade zone — a single market. 

But as the unification project became more ambitious, it required the derogation of national parliaments and hence of nations’ sovereignties. 

So, in 1988 Margaret Thatcher voiced what became Conservative Euroskeptics’ cri de coeur: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

This is another objection to the EU Will has in common with Pat Buchanan and most of the Euroskeptical right wing politicians in Britain or elsewhere in Europe.

Liberal policies pursued by the EU are out of reach of local and national conservative politicians, and trump local and national authority.

It is as though conservative politicians in Georgia or Wyoming sought to secede from the United States because the federal government is too liberal for them.

Hoping to cauterize the Conservative party’s long-festering wound, in 2016 then–prime minister David Cameron succumbed to the plebiscitary temptation, scheduling the referendum that he thought Remain would win. 

It lost, he resigned, and Theresa May, who had voted Remain, became prime minister. 

She called an election expecting to increase her parliamentary majority and thus her leverage for negotiating terms of divorce from the EU. 

Instead, she lost her majority and was forced into an alliance with a Northern Ireland party.

. . . .

But why, with its primacy at stake, did Parliament punt one of the most momentous decisions in British history to a referendum? 

Precisely because the decision was as momentous as the adoption of a constitutional amendment, or even an entire constitution, there needed to be some sort of consultation of the voters.

Not being a federal republic, there could be no process of ratification involving consultation of or in the federated states, as there would be in American or Australia.

And the rather bizarre and hyper-democratic process for adoption of an entire new constitution, nowadays, seems to be a single plebiscite decided at one stroke by a simple majority voting to accept or reject a single proposed constitution.

Take it or leave it.

But David Cameron should really have thought of something better, requiring perhaps a series of plebiscites and the suffrage of a supermajority in each for so vast and momentous a change as leaving the EU.

Only idiots think constitutions should be amended by a single vote, by simple majority, by the electorate at large.

And, yes, I am aware that several US states absurdly allow their constitutions to be so modified.

The bedrock principle of representative government is that “the people” do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide. 

And once a legislature sloughs off responsibility and resorts to a referendum on the dubious premise that the simple way to find out what people want is to ask them, it is difficult to avoid recurring episodes of plebiscitary democracy.

. . . .

In 2016, a majority of voters over age 43 favored leaving, a majority of those younger favored remaining. 

Since then, mortality has taken many Leavers, and many young people have joined the electorate. 

So, demography, combined with a new understanding of Brexit’s certain costs and myriad uncertainties, could cause 2016’s big bang that began Brexit to end with a 2019 whimper of a referendum saying, “Oh, never mind.”

Has Brexit become unpopular?

This Guardian writer said so before Christmas, but others disagree.

Those calling for a second referendum are calling for another simple majority vote to, this time, once and for all, make the call.

Anne Applebaum says why a second vote is unlikely.

The People’s Vote campaign is calling for the deadlock to be resolved by a new referendum. 

One of its leaders told me recently that the campaign is now hoping to be “the last option standing”: After everything else is voted down, there may be no other choice. 

May continues to push back against a second referendum for a simple reason: Polling is showing increasing numbers of people opposed to Brexit. 

Indeed, when Britons are offered the choice between remaining in the E.U. and any other concrete option — May’s deal, or no deal — a clear majority favors Remain. 

But because that outcome would split the Conservative Party, and because the Conservative Party is May’s whole life, she wants to avoid that at any cost. 

And so here we are.