Anti-Trump campaigners going the wrong way about beating Trump

It shouldn’t amuse me, but it does, that there is a place called Chevy Chase near Washington DC, and another nearby in Maryland. The actor – star of European Vacation and many other cinematic triumphs looked down on by snooty critics – was born Cornelius Chase, apparently. His grandmother nicknamed him Chevy, and it stuck, apparently. There you go.

Anyway, Chevy Chase, the place, not the comedian, is where Brett Kavanaugh is from. Kavanaugh is in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for four days in Washington, being grilled because President Trump has nominated him for a seat on the Supreme Court. Proceedings were interrupted by demonstrators of various kinds objecting to him having worked for George W. Bush and other high crimes and ideological misdemeanours.

The BBC has a good account of the muppetry that went down. It elevated Kavanaugh, and made the protestors look shrill and intolerant.

Appointments to the Court are for life, of course, and the concern of horrified liberals is that Trump appointments are changing the complexion of the Court. Well, yeah. Conservatives are delighted at the direction the Court is going in because they are, well, conservatives. Conservatives have no more duty to appoint liberals than liberals have a duty to appoint conservatives. Trump is appointing conservatives. This is not shocking.

Trump’s conduct in other respects is extremely problematic, of course. The Washington Post has the first snippets of the new Bob Woodward book on Trump. He comes across appallingly. His staff think he is a national security menace and a man-child.

But all that – and all the demos and daft interruptions of Senate hearings – count for nothing without a proper alternative.

That’s the thing with the US system. You have to win. You win the presidency, you get to make these calls. If you want to win the presidency you have to do much better than pick the entitled representative of a faded insider dynasty who had been around for so long – Hillary Clinton – that she had alienated tens of millions of voters, and lost.

Time races on to 2020 and the Democrats and the anti-Trump crowd need some coherent ideas. Most of all they are in urgent need of a person – a fresh leader, a credible alternative president, low on left-wing identity politics and high on mainstream appeal. Where is he or she?