I'm veering away from the impeachment hearings today to write up my reactions to last night's fifth Democratic presidential debate. This morning's testimony was pretty powerful, and Adam Schiff's closing statement was one for the history books, but it'll all have to wait until tomorrow.

The Democratic field now has 18 people in it, as Wayne Messam formally dropped out but Michael Bloomberg formally took his place. Other than Bloomberg, the candidates who are still running but who didn't appear last night are: Deval Patrick, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Julián Castro, John Delaney, Joe Sestak, and Marianne Williamson. The ones who did appear on last night's debate stage: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer. Hopefully, by the next debate, that entire list will have shrunk a bit more, but these days you never know -- maybe it'll even get bigger!

Overall, last night's debate seemed a lot smoother all around. The moderators did a pretty good job of not being too controlling, but also never letting things get completely out of control. The candidates also seem like they've settled into the debating format, and we had a lot less "everyone talks over each other" moments. The answers given seemed a lot smoother, too, with far less "I memorized this quip, so here it is, everyone stand back!" moments as well. This is all to the good, because it made for better television than some of the more-awkward earlier debates. Perhaps this is due to the fact that almost all the gadfly candidates weren't on the stage last night, or perhaps it was because all the moderators were women, but for whatever reason things seemed to flow much better last night.

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You'll have to forgive me, but during this morning's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee by Gordon Sondland, I kept thinking of a few key passages from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. If you watched the hearing, you'll understand what I'm referring to. Here are the quotes that sprang to my mind during this extended math lesson:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

. . .

"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

If you watched this morning, you'll immediately understand why these quotes sprang to mind.

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I'm starting to write this at about 10 hours in to Day 3 of the public impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee. The five minute segments are continuing as I write this, but at this point they could go on all night. Or so it seems -- you'll have to forgive me for being a bit loopy, since I'm not used to sitting and watching 12 straight hours of television at a time, and certainly not beginning at six o'clock in the morning (my time). So today's review is going to be rather choppy, as I type up what seemed to me to be the high and low points of the testimony so far.

Today's testimony has been in two parts. The morning session was with Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Vice Presidential staffer Jennifer Williams, and the afternoon session was with Ambassador Kurt Volker and Timothy Morrison. Interestingly enough, the morning witnesses were called by the Democrats on the committee, while the afternoon witnesses were called by the Republicans (with the Democrats' consent).

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In the midst of all the impeachment-mania, there have been several recent interesting developments in the Democratic presidential primary race in the past few days. We've now got one-and-a-half more candidates in the race, a major candidate either backed off (as her detractors would have it) or clarified (as her supporters will tell you) one of her main policy positions, and a poll out of Iowa has shaken up the frontrunner status in that state. So let's dig into all of these developments in an effort to see where the race stands, two days before the next nationally-televised debate.

One-and-a-half more candidates

I say "one-and-a-half more candidates" not to demean, but rather in confusion. Deval Patrick firmly tossed his hat in the ring, while Michael Bloomberg sort of dangled his hat over the ring while refusing to actually throw it. Bloomberg officially filed to get on the ballot in a few states that had the earliest filing deadlines, but he has yet to actually declare himself a candidate. However, he certainly is acting like one, as he recently made an attempt to insulate himself over the inevitable heat he's going to get for the "stop and frisk" policing policy he championed while mayor of New York City -- and long afterwards, as well. This doesn't go over too well with African-American Democratic primary voters, so Bloomberg publicly apologized for stop and frisk over the weekend, to an audience of black voters. "I was wrong" he unequivocally stated, which is a lot more direct than is normal for politicians' apologies. But one wonders how effective even this abject apology is going to be, in the long run.

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Rather than our usual weekly roundup, we are going to focus today solely on the public impeachment hearings. This is due to them being the most important thing that happened politically during the week, as well as the fact that we're admittedly more than a little frazzled sitting down to write this, after getting up at 6:00 A.M. and staring at the television for over six hours straight. Normally we would have used a good chunk of that time to sift the news stories from the past week, but that's simply not possible today. Nor is it all that important, because as mentioned everything else really pales in comparison to what is being witnessed right now by the American public.

What's most striking about the partisan divide in these hearings so far is the difference in demeanor. The Democrats are soberly laying out a prosecutorial case, in the serious fashion that such an endeavor demands. This, after all, is really the "grand jury" part of the case, where the prosecutor is allowed to lay out the evidence so that it can be judged worthy of a court case or not. That is precisely what the Democrats intended, and that is also precisely what they have been doing. Throughout it all, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has remained absolutely unflappable, to an almost superhuman degree. Everything the Democrats do and say communicates one very basic message: this is very serious business, and should be given the gravitas it demands.

Republicans, on the other hand, don't feel as constrained, as has been obvious in both of the hearings. Today they were a little more restrained than on Wednesday, but their coordinated plan of "don't personally trash the witness" completely fell apart when, very early in the proceedings, Donald Trump personally trashed the witness via tweet. After this tweet was read into the record by Schiff, all the Republican kind words for Marie "Masha" Yovanovitch fell rather flat.

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Democrats have always been the masters of a rather dubious skill: second-guessing themselves. For any idea, proposal, or candidate for office, Democrats are continually seeking the perfect, sometimes (as the saying goes) at the expense of the good. Nowhere is this more evident than in Democratic presidential primaries. In fact, it's actually a general rule for Democrats, and it seems to be playing out once again this time around.

After a record-setting number of candidates has been battling it out for voter support for almost a full year now, some in the Democratic Party have now decided that what the race really needs is a few more candidates. This is pretty insane, obviously. To date, by my count, a whopping 27 Democrats have previously announced a bid for the presidency. These range from the well-known to people who are so obscure that few can even remember their names now, whether they've already dropped out of the race (Richard Ojeda) or are still running (Wayne Messam). Out of this incredibly wide field, 17 are still in the race. And yet this week we've seen the entry of the 28th candidate (Deval Patrick) and serious consideration by a man who would become the 29th Democrat to run (Michael Bloomberg). Maybe Democrats should go for an even 30? At this point, why not? Maybe Hillary will run again!

Sigh.

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The first public impeachment hearing was held today, in front of the House Intelligence Committee. It lasted almost five hours, and painted the same picture as all of the closed hearings -- at least, for anyone who has paid attention to them to date. The case was methodically laid out by the Democratic questions and the witnesses' answers that Donald Trump abused the power of his office to leverage both a personal White House meeting with him as well as military aid appropriated by Congress to Ukraine to force the Ukrainian leader to publicly announce an investigation into the 2016 election interference as well as Hunter Biden's work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Both of these were not some sort of broad push to get Ukraine to fight corruption, as Trump has maintained, but rather to dig up dirt on his likely political opponent in next year's election. As such, it is not only unethical and illegal, but also an impeachable offense.

This is all a pretty straightforward case to make. As a matter of fact, the most damning part of this case is Trump's own words in the infamous phone call he made to the new Ukrainian leader. This was reinforced very early on, when William Taylor added a new snippet to his testimony that landed like a bombshell -- one of his staff overheard a phone call that Gordon Sondland had with Trump, where Trump specifically pressed again for dirt on the Bidens.

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I must admit, I'm a sucker for "what if" storylines, especially when they concern little-used sections of the Constitution or congressional rules. Which is why an interesting article in Politico caught my eye today, because it lays out how a curveball move in the Senate could actually lead to Trump's removal from office (assuming that the House does impeach him, which seems like a pretty safe bet at this point).

The story was written by Juleanna Glover, described as "an adviser for several Republican politicians, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Rudy Giuliani." She also worked on the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Jeb Bush. So she's not some lefty journalist or anything remotely like that (although she may in fact be a "Never-Trumper" Republican). She begins the article by pitching her parliamentary curveball (and yes, I know that I should be using football metaphors by now, but "curveball" just seemed the most appropriate):

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[Note: I'm taking Veterans' Day off, so please enjoy this previous column, which was originally published on Veterans' Day 2013. It's short, and I've made it even shorter by omitting another old (and lengthy) column which was pasted on at the end.]

Originally published 11/11/13

Today's holiday originally celebrated the end of "the war to end all wars," when the 1918 armistice took place on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. No World War I veterans still remain alive, and the holiday has grown to honor all America's veterans of more-recent wars -- so much so that many forget the origins of the holiday itself (which used to be "Armistice Day").

Next week, however, is an even more poignant anniversary: the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, certainly the most well-known speech in American history. Only 275 words long, Lincoln spoke for mere minutes, following a lengthy two-hour oration given by Edward Everett. But today, only scholars remember Everett's name, and few historians bother to read the text of his remarks. Lincoln's words are still memorized by schoolchildren, even to this day.

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Republicans, it seems, are just never satisfied. First, they howled for a full House vote on impeachment. When the Democrats gave them one, they were not happy for some unfathomable reason. Then they demanded the end to "secret hearings" with no public transcripts. This week, Democrats began releasing all the transcripts to the public. When the first two were released, Republicans complained that the transcripts released were "cherry-picked." By week's end, all the major transcripts were released, putting the lie to this notion. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham, in a snit, said that he wouldn't be reading the transcripts, for some unfathomable reason. Next week, public hearings will begin. So of course now Republicans are decrying the very idea of public hearings, for some unfathomable reason (President Trump: "They shouldn't be having public hearings."). It's almost as if Republicans don't care what they're complaining about as long as they get to complain about something. Hey, it's easier than trying to defend the indefensible, we suppose.

Republicans are really making a pretty poor showing all around. They tried to make the case for weeks that Democrats were somehow hiding things in the closed hearings, and if the transcripts were only to be made public then there would be plenty of exculpatory evidence for Trump. This turned out not to be the case. In fact, the transcripts showed that what had already been leaked to the press weren't even the most damning statements made. Witness after witness after witness all said exactly the same thing: there was indeed a quid pro quo and it consisted of withholding both a White House meeting and the military aid until the Ukrainian president went on television and said three words: "investigations, Biden, and Clinton." This corrupt bargain came straight from President Donald Trump, who was aided and abetted by Rudy Giuliani.

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