One dog barking

By John Dineen

This election season, this never-ending slog, has been so crowded with events, so loud, so calamitous, that we will be sorting through the wreckage for some time to understand what happened, and what happens next.

Since we can’t possibly grasp all of this all at once, let’s look at some of the pieces, things that ultimately will have to be assembled into a bigger picture.

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Where to begin? Where else? Donald Trump.

With apologies to Thomas Pynchon, the opening of "Gravity’s Rainbow" comes to mind: “A screaming comes across the sky.”

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President Lyndon Johnson famously said that, in signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he had lost the South to the Republican Party for a generation.

Richard Nixon, no fool, accordingly pursued what was called his Southern strategy — focused on, but not limited to the South. Nixon called for “law and order,” a campaign phrase associated with what we now call “dog-whistle politics” — code phrases aimed at particular groups.

That dog whistle has been a feature of presidential politics ever since … until Donald Trump.

According to Dylan Matthews of Vox, racial resentment was a driver for Trump supporters in the primaries, and it is the second biggest indicator in the general election. (The first indicator of support for Trump in the general election is party. That is, Republicans are voting for Trump.)

Trump ended decades of coy, how-could-you-think-I-meant-that politics — no dog whistles for him — which turned out to be a pretty successful strategy.

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According to Politico, James Comey’s “disdain for partisan politics is well known among his Justice Department colleagues.” The FBI director “sees himself as a straight shooter who, in his own words, doesn’t ‘give a hoot’ about politics,” Politico tells us.

So, a man who “doesn’t ‘give a hoot’ about politics” concludes, 11 days before the election, that circumstance requires that he jump into the middle of partisan politics.

Now he tells us there was nothing to it, after all.

Oops. Never mind.

It calls to mind a scene in the movie version of "The Maltese Falcon" in which Kasper Gutman asks Sam Spade if he’s “a close-mouthed man.” Spade tells him, “Nah, I like to talk.”

Gutman replies: “Better and better. I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously, unless you keep in practice.”

Kasper Gutman would have distrusted James Comey.

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Will we ever look at email the same way again — back when it was simply a nuisance, the bane of our office lives, but in a mundane sort of way?

Before it metastasized into a giant, formless campaign issue that wouldn’t go away?

Someone will earn a Ph.D. trying to explain how Hillary Clinton’s emails became the most-reported issue of the campaign. Matthew Yglesias of Vox at least did the heroic work of sorting out the various strands that appear to be joined primarily because they share the word email.

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If that weren’t enough, we have been treated to the drip, drip, drip of John Podesta's emails.

Some of the emails have provided newsworthy information, but some are getting attention — let’s face it — because they are stolen and others because they’re, well, gossipy. Fun!

Just to be clear: These are private messages, stolen from a private citizen, likely by hackers associated with a foreign adversary, and leaked by an organization with the clear goal of damaging the prospects of one presidential candidate and influencing the outcome of the U.S. election.

Zack Beauchamp describes the situation as Russia “weaponizing” U.S. media.

Mathew Ingram talks about the “slippery slope” they represent.

James Poniewozik makes the point about the irresistible nature of the stolen material: “Just because it’s hacked, doesn’t mean it’s important.”

The value of encryption for private messages is becoming pretty clear, Farhad Manjoo says. 

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The New York Times greeted us with the startling news that Donald Trump’s campaign staff took away his access to his Twitter account.

President Obama wasted no time in making sport of this fact, and what it suggests about Trump's impulse control.

But let’s face it: At some point, the guy is probably getting his Twitter account back. The world is waiting.