So much . . . losing.

Who could forget candidate Donald Trump's boastful campaign promise:   "We are going to win . . . so much.   Believe me, we're going to win so much, you'll get tired of winning."

So, how's that working out lately?    Just look at all the losing over the last few days.

1.   Trump pushed the Graham-Cassidy bill, -- and lost.  The Republican's latest effort to repeal Obamacare.   Reportedly, Trump made a lot of phone calls to senators, trying to get their votes for the bill;  and we know, from news reports, that he sent out some tweets, publicly insulting one or two of the No voters.
   Tuesday, the leaders decided not even to bring it up for a vote, because three senators:   Rand Paul, John McCain, and Susan Collins declared they would vote No.   That was the crucial number, so repealing O-care was dead, again.   Of course, Trump blames everyone but himself.   He'll proclaim to support whatever they tell him is their plan, since he's never had one of his own;  and he has no understanding of the ones he supported.   So he could not be much use in going after tough holdouts -- he couldn't explain anything or rebut their arguments;  and they knew he didn't know what he was talking about.   So, OK, Trump has to share the blame.   Count this a loss for him, especially since he said he would repeal it on his first day in office.

2.  Trump supported an Alabama candidate -- who lost.  A special Republican primary election was held in Alabama, also on Tuesday, to choose their candidate for the seat left vacant when Sen. Jeff Sessions became Trump's Attorney General.  Alabama's governor had named his own Attorney General, Luther Strange, as the temporary, acting senator;  and Gov. Bentley set the election for January 2018, giving his appointee a year's incumbency before having to face the voters.
   This choice raised as lot of questions and gossip, because the governor himself was in a heap of trouble over a scandal involving a woman employee;  and impeachment proceedings had begun against him.   There's no evidence of quid pro quo;  but it raised a lot of questions:   a governor facing impeachment appoints the AG to a senate seat in Washington;  then he gets to name the replacement AG;  then somehow the impeachment gets put on hold.
   Sen. Strange quickly became part of the GOP establishment in the U.S. Senate, voting with the president 97% of the time.   Trump, along with VP Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all endorsed Strange, and Trump and Pence both went to Alabama to campaign for him.
   But when the votes were counted Tuesday night, it turns out the pre-elections polls were right.   Strange had been defeated by the colorful, cantankerous Roy Moore, a far-far right former judge who thinks homosexual acts should be criminalized and who -- not just once, but twice -- was removed from his position as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defying a court order from SCOTUS.
   The first time was following his refusal to remove the 10 2.6 ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments he had installed in the Judicial Building;  the second was his refusal to accept the U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, saying that Alabama law superceded the federal law and the constitution.
   And then there's the colorful part.   Moore rode into his campaign rallies on a horse, wearing a Stetson, a leather vest, and at one point pulled out a handgun and waved it around, in defiance of any restrictions on so-called Second Amendment rights.   You know, those rights in that Constitution that Moore obeys only when he agrees with it.
   To find a comparable character in politics, I think we have to go back to Lester Maddox, Georgia's staunch segregationist governor from 1967-71.  He first came to notice by refusing to serve African-Americans in his restaurant, in defiance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, threatening to take an axe handle to any who tried to cross his threshold.    "Ole Lester," as he was called, had one skill that he enjoyed showing off.   He could ride a bicycle . . . backwards.  Nevertheless, he served four years as governor.   Perhaps his most memorable quote was in explaining what to do about the bad state of Georgia's prisons.   Maddox suggested that what we needed was "a better class of prisoners."

But I digress from Trump's spate of "losing."   Trump somewhat reluctantly endorsed and campaigned for Strange, especially when he saw that he was lagging about 8 points in the polls.    Then, along came Steve Bannon, who campaigned for Roy Moore.    Double double trouble.   Trump even said the night before the election,  "Maybe I made a mistake in endorsing him."   And, in the most Trumpian way of distancing himself, he deleted his positive tweets about the candidate -- the most significant one being from the morning of the election, which (falsely) proclaimed that Strange was "shooting up in the polls since my endorsement."  . . . .  Pathetic.   Definitely a loss for Trump.

3.   Trump told NFL coaches to fire players who knelt during the national anthem -- and they didn't.  This whole war Trump started with the NFL players who have taken to kneeling during the playing of the pre-game national anthem isn't working out too well for him.    Oh, his base loves it, because it's one more way of poking the establishment and the black players, who began it as a protest of police brutality and unequal treatment for blacks.   Trump latched on, turned it into his own crusade for patriotism, denigrating those "who do not respect the flag and the sacrifice of our patriotic military."    Trump is playing a calculated strategy to keep his base tightly in his corner -- because he doesn't have much support beyond them.    For others, it's a cheap trick that is backfiring.   This isn't over yet, as to whether it's a win or loss.   In exciting his base and in taking attention away from other problems, maybe it's a win.   But for the majority who find Trump to be obnoxious, it's just another loss.

4.   Two important agency heads, career professionals, have resigned because of Trump's lack of respect for the law and for ethics.   This looks bad for Trump, especially that they're both being vocal about why they resigned.   So count these are losses -- for him, but even moreso for the American people and for good government.
   The acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Chuck Rosenberg, announced his resignation to be effective this weekend.  In a letter to his associates at DEA, he said that he "has become convinced that President Trump has no respect for the law.  
   Rosenberg is a career professional, not a political appointee.  It seems similar to the resignation a few weeks ago of Walter Schaub, the Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, the top ethics officer, also a career professional in the ethics office.  Appointed to his position by Obama, Schaub initially stayed on in the job after Trump's inauguration -- but then resigned when he realized that he could be more effective in a position outside the government than he could be inside in an administration that pays no attention to ethics.
   Both of these are very good, dedicated public servants who cared too much about professionalism in their highly sensitive positions to be able to tolerate working in a Trump administration.   We will all lose -- as will Trump himself too -- because their replacements will not come anywhere close to the high level of expertise, integrity, and effectiveness of Rosenberg and Schaub.

Is that enough losing, Mr. Trump, so you're supporters don't get tired of winning?

Ralph