Don't confuse me with details

I suspect one of the reasons for Trump's popularity is apparent disdain for detail and specifics. His opponents on the GOP side and most informed pundits assumed that this will do him in in the end. The public, they reasoned, will eventually see that he has no plans only rhetoric and defect to a more solid wonkish establishment type like Rubio. This is a miscalculation.

The public isn't interested in detail for several reasons.  First thinking though complexity is hard and simple sound bytes are easier to take in. Second, detail and nuance are less clear cut and thus less conformable than bright lines (like good and evil - as in "the Axis of..."). Third, when you don't like to think too hard, having someone as self-professedly-self-evidently as successful as Trump validate your choice to ignore the hard to remember / hard to think about stuff is very affirming; and the better you feel about yourself the more you approve of the person who made you feel that way.  And finally, complex policy and wonkish debate is what Washington is all about, and Washington has hardly covered itself in glory these last 6 years. And as people are fed up with Congress, so too they have had enough of establishment politicians lying and playing political games while the country burns (or so says The Donald).

What voters, particularly on the GOP side, seem to want are some simple prescriptions from someone who doesn't confuse them with detail. And that's why Trump will be the GOP's candidate.

Apple vs the DOJ

Although it would certainly be helpful to law enforcement to access private encrypted information on suspected terrorists cell phones, trying to get the San Bernardino shooter's phone open seems like the wrong place to start.

Since there is no pending prosecution (both these terrorists are dead), the information is of no use to the judicial process. And if it contains only information about the shooting and the shooters' process of radicalization, it will likely only confirm what is already known.

It may, however, contain information on contacts with other groups and people involved in planning terrorism; indeed if a court has said this is a lawful search one assumes evidence to this effect much have been shown to the court.  

The issue here is not whether the FBI can look at information, but whether Apple can be compelled to help them do so; Tim Cook for Apple has refused.

There are probably a number of reasons for this; the obvious one is that he does not want to make his customers feel less secure.  But there are others. For example, if any ruling is fairly narrow (for example limited to Apple), that gives Android and thus Google a competitive advantage, at least temporarily. So Cook must balance his duty to Apple shareholders with his duty to the Government.

To do what the FBI is asking appears to require a patch to the operating system that would be applied to the phone allowing it to be unlocked. But that patch, once created, is "out there" and will likely 1) be requested again so would either have to be recreated each time a request is made or 2) have to be kept under lock and key thus affording hackers the opportunity to steal it and render all iPhones vulnerable.

And it's not just local hackers we have to worry about. Some maybe working for unfriendly governments (think of China's hacking of US corporations). Yahoo's rather sorry history here (it was forced to provide the name of one of its email users to the Chinese government who then jailed him for sedition on the basis of one email he had sent to a friend at the New York Times). Then there are those who would pay hackers for the patch to sift though any personal information iPhone users keep on their devices, credit card information, for example. Or your home address and social security number. The potential for mischief once the patch is out there is enormous.

That's the dilemma Tim Cook is wrestling with. Not an easy one; but easier than had the FBI claimed with certainty that the phone contained information needed to foil an imminent terror plot. 

Backfire?

Almost before Justice Antonin Scalia's body was cold, Mitch McConnell called a pre-emptive press conference to announce that he would block any Obama nomination to the Court.  That seems a risk strategy.

First, while it may be music to the ears of the Obama-haters, it plays right into the hands of those (and they are not just Democrats, but many Trump supporters too) who see the Tea-Party-dominated Republican legislature as belligerent and obstructionist, more interested in grand gestures than getting anything done. It makes him look, particularity to independents, as high-handed, manipulative, and unreasonable. The problem with "just saying No" without heading the case, is that when things need fixing, doing nothing isn't a good answer, no matter how you try to spin it.

And as terrible as an Obama nomination may seem to McConnell, his grandstanding may help the Democrats take the White House, in which case he'll be no better off since he can't kick the can down the road much further once Hilary moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Av.

Worse still it could improve the odds that the Democrats retake the Senate which would be a disaster for Republicans since if Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires,  Democrats had a good shot at getting two seats on the Court and a 6-3 majority.

Trump and the media

Wherever else one might say about Donald Trump, I can't help having a modicum of grudging admiration for his campaign, specifically the way he plays the media for fools.

The trick is this:

1. Say something utterly outrageous
2. Get interviewed on all the major television channels
3. When questioned about that outrageous statement, make a completely different point
4. When pressed again about that outrageous statement, make another completely different point
5. (He now has gotten a minute or more of completely free air time that would otherwise have cost him millions) 
6. Finally, either lie, or back away from the original statement that got him the interview time.    

What's depressing is the way reputedly sophisticated news anchors like George Stephanopoulos let themselves be tricked into this. Trump managed to make a variety of completely unrelated points while Stephanopoulos pressed him on his statement about George W Bush and 911.

Perhaps the best media response was, ironically, on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert:

Colbert:	"Of course, Donald Trump had to have the last word".
Clip of Donald Trump:	"So I just wrote this out very quickly about the Pope - do you want to hear it"?
Colbert:	"No".

And he moved straight on to introduce the rest of the show.     

Protest vote

A phrase I haven't heard in a long while popped into my head a few days ago and I think it captures the current mood of US voters: it's "protest vote". It's a vote not so much for something as it is against the status quo, a vote that people know won't count in the end but provides a way for them to vent their frustration at the current state of affairs.

Trump's support falls into that category, as - if one is honest - does Sanders'. Neither really have a clear coherent plan for achieving the vision they are setting out.

That's a pity because realistically we will be left in November with a choice between two fairly similar results while Clinton and Rubio (or possibly Cruz) differ vociferously on many things neither will do anything significant on campaign finance, lobbying, the power of special interests, or health care, poverty, education, inequality and  inequality of opportunity. 

Something else I realized too, is that as unlikely a candidate as Sanders seems to many Americans, many of his supporters were born after the Berlin Wall fell. The visceral loathing of socialist government that the cold war stirred up is foreign to many of them, a distant echo of an older generation.

And finally, it dawned on me that the reason none of the central themes of  Sander's campaign seem odd is that they were all things that Britain had when I was growing up: free higher education, universal health care and an electoral system free of the overly corrupting influence of political advertising, money, and the revolving door between the private and the public sector (at least there was a sense that where it did go on, it was improper).  He's campaigning for the kind of government (pre-Maggie) I grew up with; not in the least bit extreme, just the way it was...