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The problem that the GOP have is that they’re torn between voters: Trump has significant support from the Republican Base, and those Senators facing re-election need the base in order to win. Unfortunately, Trump has also alienated significant numbers of Americans (including many Republicans and former Republicans), and those standing fervent in support of Trump are not going to get their votes.I need to be clear on this: although Trump has done his level best to subvert the Republican Party into his own power base, there are still plenty of Republicans who will support their party, but don’t back the President. If a Senator goes pro-Trump, he loses the votes of those individuals - and, at present, that could be the difference between victory and defeat.We also need to recognise that Donald Trump is likely not going to win re-election - if that happens, the Republican Party will no longer be his to lead, and the GOP are therefore having to think about life after Trump. This election is a referendum on Trumpublicanism - while he has a strong support base, if he loses, it’ll be clear that his approach is not supported by a majority of Americans, and the GOP will have to see it as a losing strategy to continue that same approach further down the line.When Trump’s support was stronger, and the GOP felt secure, the Republicans in Congress similarly felt more certain about backing him, and trying to articulate a “We all stand behind the President” message. Now that he’s losing, they’re being forced to consider what happens if they lose, because the Republican Party will have lost their most significant political office in favour of their opposition: and they have to decide how they’re going to cope with that.If they continue standing behind Trump, that losing streak could just keep going. The Republicans will need to rebrand themselves, and try to decide on a new political identity going forward: will they return to more traditional conservative roots, move further right, or perhaps move a little more to the left?Trump’s been a liability, but never more so than now, because he could cost the Republican Party everything. They can’t support him without dooming themselves to defeat in their downticket races, and especially because they need to distance themselves from him in order to re-invent themselves after the election.

How important slavery was to the Confederacy.Most people understand that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. However, I am not sure if people grasp how important slavery truly was to the planters.General Howell CobbThis is a letter from General Howell Cobb, a former House Speaker and founding member of the Confederacy, to Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon. It was dated January 8th, 1865. For some context, at this point General Sherman is preparing to move his scorched earth campaign from Georgia to the fertile crescent of the Confederacy itself: South Carolina. Irish-born Confederate General Patrick Cleburne had proposed in 1864 that the Confederacy emancipate slaves and conscript them for military service. For his trouble, he was castigated and—despite his tactical skill—denied promotion. However, as defeat added onto defeat, the debate reemerged, and in desperation senior Confederate leaders like Lee endorsed the plan. Here is Cobb’s letter responding for calls to arm slaves:“I think that the proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy. My first hour of despondency will be the one in which that policy shall be adopted. You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the Army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war with negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together, and you can't trust negroes by themselves. It is difficult to get negroes enough for the purpose indicated in the President's message, much less enough for an Army. Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong”And so the Confederate Government decided not to arm slaves. Approximately four months later, the war was over.At that point, regardless of whether slaves were drafted, the war was drawing to a close anyway. But that’s not the point. The point is that Confederate leaders have a choice to make — to continue to exist, or to die with slavery intact. They chose the latter. When push comes to shove, the Confederacy’s political leadership would rather commit national suicide than to walk down a slippery slope that might lead to emancipation.When people deny that the Civil War was about slavery, they are usually given “the rap sheet.” This rap sheet includes excerpts from the Confederate Constitution, quotes from senior Confederate leaders, etc. However, for me, this is the strongest piece of evidence that the Civil War centered around slavery. Not only did the Southern state governments secede from the Union to preserve slavery, they also risked their own political destruction to defend it.The bolded text is also haunting to me for a variety of reasons. If there’s anybody who assumes that evil people are simply dumb, they need to be shown this letter. Cobb is not a dumb person. He understands that chattel slavery is based on a notion of inferiority — that people of a certain race are inferior, and so they cannot be treated as free citizens. But, if slaves are able to fight of their own volition as freemen, then he understands that the fundamental assumptions of chattel slavery are “wrong.”But he’s too scared to find out. Instead, it’s best to simply dismiss the idea entirely.And four months later, the Confederacy itself was dismissed.

The complete sentence is, “With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.” (Emphasis mine, page 220 of Mueller’s report).The phrase a President instead of the President indicates that Mueller wasn’t specifically referring to Trump. However, Mueller was passing the issue to Congress for further investigation and possible impeachment when he said:Firing Comey would qualify as an obstructive act if it had the natural and probable effect of interfering with or impeding the investigation - for example, if the termination would have the effect of delaying or disrupting the investigation or providing the President with the opportunity to appoint a director who would take a different approach to the investigation that the President perceived as more protective of his personal interests. Relevant circumstances bearing on that issue include whether the President's actions had the potential to discourage a successor director or other law enforcement officials in their conduct of the Russia investigation. The President fired Comey abruptly without offering him an opportunity to resign, banned him from the FBI building, and criticized him publicly, calling him a "showboat" and claiming that the FBI was " in turmoil" under his leadership. And the President followed the termination with public statements that were highly critical of the investigation; for example, three days after firing Comey, the President referred to the investigation as a "witch hunt" and asked, "when does it end?" Those actions had the potential to affect a successor director's conduct of the investigation.(Mueller Report, Vol II, Page 74, Page 286 in PDF)Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General's recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. For example, the President's direction to McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed was followed almost immediately by his direction to Lewandowski to tell the Attorney General to limit the scope of the Russia investigation to prospective election-interference only-a temporal connection that suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose with respect to the investigation.The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests. Comey did not end the investigation of Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn's prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the Special Counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President's order. Lewandowski and Dearborn did not deliver the President's message to Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President's direction to have the Special Counsel removed, despite the President's multiple demands that he do so. Consistent with that pattern, the evidence we obtained would not support potential obstruction charges against the President's aides and associates beyond those already filed.(Mueller Report, Vol II, Pages 157–158, Pages 369-370 in PDF)