David Leonhardt

In the ‘50s, New York had Jackie Robinson. It had “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” — the center fielders whose baseball teams combined to win eight straight championships starting in 1949. The city also had the football Giants, a team that hosted the 1958 game known as the “greatest game ever played.”

But 1950s New York has now arguably been surpassed as the setting for the country’s luckiest sports fans. (And, yes, sports fans will certainly argue over this.) The new titleholder? Boston, in the early 21st century.

On Sunday, the New England Patriots will play their ninth Super Bowl in 17 years, a modern dynasty with no peer. The Boston Red Sox have won four of the past 15 World Series. The Celtics and Bruins have each won a championship since 2008.

Here are the rankings of the best two-decade runs that any pro sports fans have had since World War II, based on both statistical and subjective factors, in the NFL, NBA, NHL or Major League Baseball.

1. Boston, 2001-18

Red Sox (4), Patriots (5), Bruins (1), Celtics (1)

11 titles in 71 team seasons (15%)

All 4 franchises won a title

The breadth of the success makes Boston’s current run unique. Across one recent seven-year span (2008-14), its teams in each of the four major sports won a championship. No other city has completed such a sweep in fewer than 21 years. During the past two decades, Boston fans have been able to watch Tom Brady and Pedro Martinez, two of the great modern team athletes, as well as the beloved David Ortiz and the gruff mastermind coach, Bill Belichick. And because this run began in 2001, it is still two years shy of the 20-year mark.

For much of the 20th century, of course, Boston was famous for its sports heartbreak. The rest of the country looked at the city’s fans with a mixture of mockery and pity. These days, fans outside of Boston tend to loathe the city’s teams. Boston’s fans are quite happy with the trade off.

2. New York, 1951-70

Yankees (7), Giants (MLB, 1), Dodgers (1), Mets (1), Giants (NFL, 1), Jets (1), Rangers (0), Knicks (1)

13 titles in 108 team seasons (12%)

7 of 8 franchises won a title

New York in the 1950s is still probably the best setting for a baseball fan. Think of the all-star lineup that could be formed with players only from the city’s three teams: Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Gil Hodges, Sandy Koufax and on and on.

Beyond baseball, the picture is more mixed. The Knicks won a title in 1970, and the Giants won one in 1956. But the Giants also lost five title games during this span, and the Rangers did not win one at all. In 1957, baseball’s glorious run in the city came to a shocking end: The Dodgers and Giants left for California.

3. Pittsburgh, 1974-93

Pirates (1), Steelers (4), Penguins (2)

7 titles in 60 team seasons (12%)

All 3 franchises won a title

Pittsburgh is the only city where the different professional teams share one color scheme: the black and gold of the city’s flag. There were a lot of championship banners with those colors flying from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. This run was the most successful any three-team city has had. (Pittsburgh lacks a basketball team.) The Steelers were a dynasty. The Pirates won two titles in the 1970s, partly by signing large numbers of Latino players, including Roberto Clemente, before other teams did. And the Penguins closed the run with Mario Lemieux leading them to back-to-back Stanley Cups.

4. Chicago, 1997-2016

Cubs (1), White Sox (1), Bears (0), Blackhawks (3), Bulls (2)

7 titles in 100 team seasons (7%)

4 of 5 franchises won a title

The best basketball player in history — the Bulls’ Michael Jordan. Two baseball teams — the Cubs and White Sox — each ending championship droughts that had started before the end of World War I. And a hockey team — the Blackhawks — that won three Stanley Cups. Only the Bears missed out on winning a title.

5. Boston, 1957-76

Red Sox (0), Patriots (0), Bruins (2), Celtics (13)

15 titles in 71 team seasons (21%)

2 of 4 franchises won a title

There was one giant exception to the mediocrity and disappointment of Boston sports in the late 20th century: The Celtics, basketball’s most successful franchise. Starting in 1957, they somehow won 13 titles in 20 years. Strictly by the numbers, the city’s original golden age was even better than the current one: 21 percent of team seasons ended with a championship. But the success was narrow: Beside the Celtics, only the Bruins won a title.

6. Detroit, 1950-69

Tigers (1), Lions (3), Red Wings (4), Pistons (0)

8 titles in 72 team seasons (11%)

3 of 4 franchises won a title

Detroit was both an economic and sports powerhouse in the 1950s and 1960s. The Lions, Red Wings and Tigers all won championships. Gordie Howe became the icon of hockey. Strange as it may sound to younger football fans, the Lions were a dynasty, appearing in four NFL title games in the 1950s and winning three of them. But since 1957, they have won just a single playoff game, in 1991.

7. San Francisco, 2010-18

Giants (3), 49ers (0), Sharks (0), Warriors (3)

6 titles in 36 team seasons (17%)

2 of 4 franchises have won a title

One city is now in the midst of a run that could ultimately match or surpass Boston’s. Fans in San Francisco have enjoyed six championships since 2010, from the Giants and Warriors. (The Warriors currently play in Oakland, but we’re counting them as San Francisco’s basketball team and the San Jose Sharks as the city’s hockey team, to be consistent with rooting patterns there.) The 49ers, once the city’s main source of championships, will need to rebound, however.

8. Los Angeles, 1969-88

Dodgers (2), Rams (0), Raiders (1), Kings (0), Lakers (6)

9 titles in 91 team seasons (10%)

3 of 6 franchises won a title

Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s was home to some of the most memorable athletes and games of the past century. The Lakers of Wilt Chamberlain turned into the Lakers of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and ultimately of Magic Johnson. Kirk Gibson hit perhaps baseball’s most dramatic home run, helping the Dodgers win the 1988 World Series. As a bonus, the city hosted the 1984 Summer Olympics.

9. Milwaukee, 1957-76

Braves (1), Brewers (0), Packers (5), Bucks (1)

7 titles in 48 team seasons (15%)

On April 13, 1954 — opening day — a 20-year-old outfielder named Henry Aaron made his debut for the Milwaukee Braves. He went 0 for 5 that day in Cincinnati, but it was the start of Milwaukee’s best sports era. Aaron’s Braves won the World Series three years later. The football Packers — effectively Milwaukee’s football team — won five titles in the 1960s. And a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the Bucks to a title in 1971. This period would rank higher on our list if it hadn’t been marred by the Braves’ departure for Atlanta in 1965.

10. Oakland, 1972-91

A’s (4), Raiders (2), Seals (0), Warriors (1)

7 titles in 55 team seasons (13%)

Oakland in the 1970s won with attitude. The A’s — in their mustaches and bright yellow uniforms — were quirky and fractious. Still, they won three straight World Series. The Raiders of the same period were notoriously nasty. In the midst of it all, Rick Barry’s Warriors won a basketball title in 1975. The A’s, with “Bash Brothers” Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, won another title in 1989.

11. Cleveland, 1948-67

Indians (1), Browns (4)

5 titles in 40 team seasons (13%)

2 of 2 franchises won a title

The most frustrated sports city of the late 20th century was Cleveland. The Browns sometimes lost in spectacularly painful fashion. The Indians and Cavaliers were usually just bad. Old-time Clevelanders, however, knew a happier sports scene. The Indians won a title in 1948 (still their most recent), while the Browns were to the 1950s what the Patriots have been to recent years: They appeared in seven title games during one eight-year stretch and won three. The Browns won again in 1964, which would turn out to be the city’s last major title until LeBron James’ Cavaliers won one 52 years later.

12. Baltimore, 1957-76

Orioles (2), Colts (3), Bullets (0)

5 titles in 50 team seasons (10%)

2 of 3 franchises won a title

“The greatest game ever played” was the first overtime game in NFL history, and it made many Americans realize how exciting football could be on television. It took place Dec. 28, 1958, at Yankee Stadium, with Baltimore’s Colts beating the New York Giants. The years that followed brought more titles for the Colts, behind Johnny Unitas and others, while the Orioles of the 1960s and 1970s flourished with great pitching. The Baltimore Bullets, who decamped for Washington in 1973, were less successful.

13. Philadelphia, 1964-83

Phillies (1), Eagles (0), Flyers (2), 76ers (2)

5 titles in 80 team seasons (6%)

Of America’s longest-standing four-team cities, Philadelphia is among the least successful. But it has had a few periods of glory. The 76ers won an NBA title with Wilt Chamberlain in 1967 and again with Julius Erving in 1983. The Flyers team known as “Broad Street Bullies” won twice in the 1970s. The Phillies won their first World Series in 1980. And just outside of the 20-year window listed here — in 1960 — the Eagles won an NFL title. The 21-year stretch in which all four Philadelphia teams won a title (1960 through 1980) was the shortest until Boston recently broke the record.

14. Dallas, 1992-2011

Rangers (0), Cowboys (3), Stars (1), Mavericks (1)

5 titles in 78 team seasons (6%)

Dallas is among those Sunbelt cities that have attracted a full complement of pro sports teams only in the past several decades. The 20-year period that began in 1992 included a return to dominance for the city’s original team, the Cowboys, as well as the first titles for hockey’s Stars and basketball’s Mavericks. Baseball’s Rangers came within one strike of winning the 2011 World Series, and the city hasn’t won a title since.

15. Denver, 1996-2015

Rockies (0), Broncos (3), Avalanche (2), Nuggets (0)

Until 1996, Denver had not won a single major sports title. Then the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup that June. During the next few years, John Elway — initially known for losing Super Bowls — capped his football career by winning two in a row. Each of those two franchises would win another title in later years. The Rockies and Nuggets still have not done so.

16. Miami, 1997-2016

Marlins (2), Dolphins (0), Panthers (0), Heat (3)

As in Dallas, football came first to Miami. And as in Dallas, the team — the Dolphins — was one of the best in the 1970s. But they haven’t won a championship in 45 years. The titles that younger Miami fans have enjoyed are thanks to the Marlins and the Heat.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/opinion/03leonhardtsports.html" id="9cfab920-45ee-3a21-aa29-451e30465a1c">The New York Times</a>.

New York in the 1950s holds a special place in the consciousness of sports fans. For many people, it’s the answer to a question: If you could have grown up as a fan at any time and in any place, what would you choose?

Where Fans Are Luckiest

I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, given that the economy has now been growing for almost a decade. But the truth is that younger Americans have not benefited much.

Look at incomes, for starters. People between the ages of 25 and 34 were earning slightly less in 2017 than people in that same age group had been in 2000.

The wealth trends look even worse. Since the century’s start, median net worth has plummeted for every age group under 55.

Why is this happening? The main reason is a lack of economic dynamism. Not as many new companies have been forming since 2000 — for reasons that experts don’t totally understand — and existing companies have been expanding at a slower rate. (The pace of job cuts has also fallen, which is why the unemployment rate has stayed low.) Rather than starting new projects, companies are sitting on big piles of cash or distributing it to their shareholders.

This loss of dynamism hurts millennials and the younger Generation Z, even as baby boomers are often doing OK. Because the layoff rate has declined since 2000, most older workers have been able to hold on to their jobs. For those who are retired, their income — through a combination of Social Security and 401(k)s — still outpaces inflation on average.

But many younger workers are struggling to launch themselves into good-paying careers. They then lack the money to buy a first home or begin investing in the stock market. Yes, older workers face their own challenges, like age discrimination. Overall, though, the generational gap in both income and wealth is growing.

Given these trends, you’d think the government would be trying to help the young. But it’s not. If anything, federal and state policy is going in the other direction. Medicare and Social Security have been spared from cuts. Programs that benefit younger workers and families have not.

The biggest example is higher education. During the past decade, states have cut college funding by an average of 16 percent per student. It’s a shocking form of economic myopia. In response, tuition has risen, and students have taken on more debt. Worst of all, many students attend colleges with high dropout rates and end up with debt but no degree.

And as badly as the government is treating the young today, the future looks even more ominous.

First, the national debt, while manageable now, is on pace to soar. The primary cause is the cost of health care: Most Americans receive far more in Medicare benefits than they paid in Medicare taxes. The Trump tax cut also plays a role. It is increasing the debt — and it mostly benefits older, affluent households.

Second, the warming planet is likely to cause terrible damage and bring huge costs.

Young Americans favor aggressive action, now, to slow climate change. But the Republican Party — which wins elections with strong support from older voters — has vetoed any such action. As a result, greenhouse gases keep spewing into the atmosphere, and the climate crisis is likely to be far worse than it needs to be. Today’s young Americans will be left to suffer the consequences and bear the costs.

Last week, one of those young Americans — somebody who qualifies as an older millennial — announced that he was running for president: the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg. A Navy veteran and Rhodes scholar who’s been praised by Barack Obama, Buttigieg (“BOOT-edge-edge”) is a rising star in Democratic politics. But of course he is a long shot to win the nomination. He is the mayor of a moderate-size city, after all.

And yet I think his candidacy is important, because it has the potential to influence the entire campaign. Buttigieg kicked off his run by talking about “intergenerational justice” and made clear that he would focus sharply on the future. After we spoke Friday, I looked at my notes and discovered he hadn’t said “Trump” once.

During our conversation, I asked him how he hoped to win over older Americans — who, to their credit, vote at much higher rates than the young — and he told me an intriguing story. When he first ran for mayor of South Bend in 2011, he had the money to conduct only one poll. In it, his team asked voters how they would feel about having such a young mayor. The group most likely to see it as an advantage were the oldest voters.

“Many of the people who respond most positively to a moral message about the future are older people,” he said. “The American story is one of making sure that each generation is better off than the last. I don’t want my generation to be the first not to enjoy that. But I also think older generations don’t want to be the ones to cause that.”

There are some unavoidable trade-offs between the young and the old: A dollar spent on Medicare is unavailable for universal pre-K. But the country’s biggest economic problems aren’t about hordes of greedy old people profiting off the young. They’re about an economy that showers much of its bounty on the already affluent, at the expense of most Americans — and of our future. The young pay the biggest price for these inequities.

That’s a vital subject for the 2020 campaign, whoever the leading candidates end up being.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/opinion/buttigieg-2020-millennials.html" id="5b156436-97e2-31f8-aed4-cec4d7f86071">The New York Times</a>.

For Americans under the age of 40, the 21st century has resembled one long recession.

The Fleecing of Millennials

He has repeatedly put his own interests above those of the country. He has used the presidency to promote his businesses. He has accepted financial gifts from foreign countries. He has lied to the American people about his relationship with a hostile foreign government. He has tolerated Cabinet officials who use their position to enrich themselves.

To shield himself from accountability for all of this — and for his unscrupulous presidential campaign — he has set out to undermine the American system of checks and balances. He has called for the prosecution of his political enemies and the protection of his allies. He has attempted to obstruct justice. He has tried to shake the public’s confidence in one democratic institution after another, including the press, federal law enforcement and the federal judiciary.

The unrelenting chaos that Trump creates can sometimes obscure the big picture. But the big picture is simple: The United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for the office as Trump. And it’s becoming clear that 2019 is likely to be dominated by a single question: What are we going to do about it?

The easy answer is to wait — to allow the various investigations of Trump to run their course and ask voters to deliver a verdict in 2020. That answer has one great advantage. It would avoid the national trauma of overturning an election result. Ultimately, however, waiting is too dangerous. The cost of removing a president from office is smaller than the cost of allowing this president to remain.

He has already shown, repeatedly, that he will hurt the country in order to help himself. He will damage American interests around the world and damage vital parts of our constitutional system at home. The risks that he will cause much more harm are growing.

Some of the biggest moderating influences have recently left the administration. The defense secretary who defended our alliances with NATO and South Korea is gone. So is the attorney general who refused to let Trump subvert a federal investigation into himself. The administration is increasingly filled with lackeys and enablers. Trump has become freer to turn his whims into policy — like, say, shutting down the government on the advice of Fox News hosts or pulling troops from Syria on the advice of a Turkish autocrat.

The biggest risk may be that an external emergency — a war, a terrorist attack, a financial crisis, an immense natural disaster — will arise. By then, it will be too late to pretend that he is anything other than manifestly unfit to lead.

For the country’s sake, there is only one acceptable outcome, just as there was after Americans realized in 1974 that a criminal was occupying the Oval Office. The president must go.

Achieving this outcome won’t be easy. It will require honorable people who have served in the Trump administration to share, publicly, what they have seen and what they believe. (At this point, anonymous leaks are not sufficient.) It will require congressional Republicans to acknowledge that they let a con man take over their party and then defended that con man. It will require Democrats and progressive activists to understand that a rushed impeachment may actually help Trump remain in office.

But if removing him will not be easy, it’s not as unlikely as it may sometimes seem. From the beginning, Trump has been an unusually weak president, as political scientists have pointed out. Although members of Congress have not done nearly enough to constrain him, no other recent president has faced nearly so much public criticism or private disdain from his own party.

Since the midterm election showed the political costs that Trump inflicts on Republicans, this criticism seems to be growing. They have broken with him on foreign policy (in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria) and are anxious about the government shutdown. Trump is vulnerable to any erosion in his already weak approval rating, be it from an economic downturn, more Russia revelations or simply the defection of a few key allies. When support for an unpopular leader starts to crack, it can crumble.

Before we get to the how of Trump’s removal, though, I want to spend a little more time on the why — because even talking about the ouster of an elected president should happen only under extreme circumstances. Unfortunately, the country is so polarized that such talk instead occurs with every president. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama were subjected to reckless calls for their impeachment, from members of Congress no less.

So let’s be clear. Trump’s ideology is not an impeachable offense. However much you may disagree with Trump’s tax policy — and I disagree vehemently — it is not a reason to remove him from office. Nor are his efforts to cut government health insurance or to deport undocumented immigrants. Such issues, among others, are legitimate matters of democratic struggle, to be decided by elections, legislative debates, protests and the other normal tools of democracy. These issues are not the “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors” that the founders intended impeachment to address.

Yet the founders also did not intend for the removal of a president to be impossible. They insisted on including an impeachment clause in the Constitution because they understood that an incompetent or corrupt person was nonetheless likely to attain high office every so often. And they understood how much harm such a person could do. The country needed a way to address what Alexander Hamilton called “the abuse or violation of some public trust” and James Madison called the “incapacity, negligence or perfidy” of a president.

The negligence and perfidy of Trump — his high crimes and misdemeanors — can be separated into four categories. This list is conservative. It does not include the possibility that his campaign coordinated strategy with Russia, which remains uncertain. It also does not include his lazy approach to the job, like his refusal to read briefing books or the many empty hours on his schedule. It instead focuses on demonstrable ways that he has broken the law or violated his constitutional oath.

— Trump has used the presidency for personal enrichment.

Regardless of party, Trump’s predecessors took elaborate steps to separate their personal financial interests from their governing responsibilities. They released their tax returns, so that any potential conflicts would be public. They placed their assets in a blind trust, to avoid knowing how their policies might affect their own investments.

Trump has instead treated the presidency as a branding opportunity. He has continued to own and promote the Trump Organization. He has spent more than 200 days at one of his properties and billed taxpayers for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If this pattern were merely petty corruption, without damage to the national interest, it might not warrant removal from office. But Trump’s focus on personal profit certainly appears to be affecting policy. Most worrisome, foreign officials and others have realized they can curry favor with the president by spending money at one of his properties.

Saudi Arabia has showered the Trump Organization with business, and Trump has stood by the Saudis despite their brutal war in Yemen and their assassination of a prominent critic. This example and many more flout Article 1 of the Constitution, which bans federal officeholders from accepting “emoluments” from any foreign country unless Congress approves the arrangement. Madison, when making the case for an impeachment clause, spoke of a president who “might betray his trust to foreign powers.”

Then, of course, there is Russia. Even before Robert Mueller, the special counsel, completes his investigation, the known facts are damning enough in at least one way. Trump lied to the American people during the 2016 campaign about business negotiations between his company and Vladimir Putin’s government. As president, Trump has taken steps — in Europe and Syria — that benefit Putin. To put it succinctly: The president of the United States lied to the country about his commercial relationship with a hostile foreign government toward which he has a strangely accommodating policy.

Combine Trump’s actions with his tolerance for unethical Cabinet officials — including ones who have made shady stock trades, accepted lavish perks or used government to promote their own companies or those of their friends — and the Trump administration is almost certainly the most corrupt in American history. It makes Warren G. Harding’s Teapot Dome scandal look like, well, a tempest in a teapot.

— Trump has violated campaign finance law.

A Watergate grand jury famously described Richard Nixon as “an unindicted co-conspirator.” Trump now has his own indictment tag: “Individual-1.”

Federal prosecutors in New York filed papers last month alleging that Trump — identified as Individual-1 — directed a criminal plan to evade campaign finance laws. It happened during the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, when he instructed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pay a combined $280,000 in hush money to two women with whom Trump evidently had affairs. Trump and his campaign did not disclose these payments, as required by law. In the two years since, Trump has lied publicly about them — initially saying he did not know about the payments, only to change his story later.

It’s worth acknowledging that most campaign finance violations do not warrant removal from office. But these payments were not most campaign finance violations. They involved large, secret payoffs in the final weeks of a presidential campaign that, prosecutors said, “deceived the voting public.” The seriousness of the deception is presumably the reason prosecutors filed criminal charges against Cohen, rather than the more common penalty of civil fines for campaign finance violations.

What should happen to a president who won office with help from criminal behavior? The founders specifically considered this possibility during their debates at the Constitutional Convention. The most direct answer came from George Mason: A president who “practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance” should be subject to impeachment.

—Trump has obstructed justice.

Whatever Mueller ultimately reveals about the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump has obstructed justice to keep Mueller — and others — from getting to the truth.

Again and again, Trump has interfered with the investigation in ways that may violate the law and clearly do violate decades-old standards of presidential conduct. He pressured James Comey, then the FBI director, to let up on the Russia investigation, as a political favor. When Comey refused, Trump fired him. Trump also repeatedly pressured Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, to halt the investigation and ultimately forced Sessions to resign for not doing so. Trump has also publicly hounded several of the government’s top experts on Russian organized crime, including Andrew McCabe and Bruce Orr.

And Trump has repeatedly lied to the American people. He has claimed, outrageously, that the Justice Department tells witnesses to lie in exchange for leniency. He has rejected, with no factual basis, the findings of multiple intelligence agencies about Russia’s role in the 2016 campaign. He reportedly helped his son Donald Trump Jr. draft a false statement about a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer.

Obstruction of justice is certainly grounds for the removal of a president. It was the subject of the first Nixon article of impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committee. Among other things, that article accused him of making “false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.”

— Trump has subverted democracy.

The Constitution that Trump swore to uphold revolves around checks and balances. It depends on the idea that the president is not a monarch. He is a citizen to whom, like all other citizens, the country’s laws apply. Trump rejects this principle. He has instead tried to undermine the credibility of any independent source of power or information that does not serve his interests.

It’s much more than just the Russia investigation. He has tried to delegitimize federal judges based on their ethnicity or on the president who appointed them, drawing a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. Trump has criticized the Justice Department for indicting Republican politicians during an election year. He has called for Comey, Hillary Clinton and other political opponents to be jailed.

Trump has described journalists as “the enemy of the people” — an insult usually leveled by autocrats. He has rejected basic factual findings from the CIA, the Congressional Budget Office, research scientists and others. He has told bald lies about election fraud.

Individually, these sins may not seem to deserve removal from office. Collectively, though, they exact a terrible toll on American society. They cause people to lose the faith on which a democracy depends — faith in elections, in the justice system, in the basic notion of truth.

No other president since Nixon has engaged in behavior remotely like Trump’s. To accept it without sanction is ultimately to endorse it. Unpleasant though it is to remove a president, the costs and the risks of a continued Trump presidency are worse.

— What now?

The most relevant precedent for the removal of Trump is Nixon, the only American president to be forced from office because of his conduct. And two aspects of Nixon’s departure tend to get overlooked today. One, he was never impeached. Two, most Republicans — both voters and elites — stuck by him until almost the very end. His approval rating among Republicans was still about 50 percent when, realizing in the summer of 1974 that he was doomed, he resigned.

The current political dynamics have some similarities. Whether the House of Representatives, under Democratic control, impeaches Trump is not the big question. The question is whether he loses the support of a meaningful slice of Republicans.

I know that many of Trump’s critics have given up hoping that he ever will. They assume that Republican senators will go on occasionally criticizing him without confronting him. But it is a mistake to give up. The stakes are too large — and the chances of success are too real.

Consider the following descriptions of Trump: “terribly unfit,” “erratic,” “reckless,” “impetuous,” “unstable,” “a pathological liar,” “dangerous to a democracy,” a concern to “anyone who cares about our nation.” Every one of these descriptions comes from a Republican member of Congress or of Trump’s own administration.

They know. They know he is unfit for office. They do not need to be convinced of the truth. They need to be persuaded to act on it.

Democrats won’t persuade them by impeaching Trump. Doing so would probably rally the president’s supporters. It would shift the focus from Trump’s behavior toward a group of Democratic leaders whom Republicans are never going to like. A smarter approach is a series of sober-minded hearings to highlight Trump’s misconduct. Democrats should focus on easily understandable issues most likely to bother Trump’s supporters, like corruption.

If this approach works at all — or if Mueller’s findings shift opinion, or if a separate problem arises, like the economy — Trump’s Republican allies will find themselves in a very difficult spot. At his current approval rating of about 40 percent, Republicans were thumped in the midterms. Were his rating to fall further, a significant number of congressional Republicans would be facing long re-election odds in 2020. The recent criticism from Mitt Romney, who alternates between critical and sycophantic, depending on his own political interests, is another sign of Trump’s weakness.

For now, most Republicans worry that a full break with Trump will cause them to lose a primary, and it might. But sticking by him is no free lunch. Just ask the 27 Republican incumbents who were defeated last year and are now former members of Congress. By wide margins, suburban voters and younger voters find Trump abhorrent. The Republican Party needs to hold its own among these voters, starting in 2020.

It’s not only that Trump is unfit to be president and that Republicans know it. It also may be the case that they will soon have a political self-interest in abandoning him. If they did, the end could come swiftly. The House could then impeach Trump, knowing the Senate might act to convict. Or negotiations could begin over whether Trump deserves to trade resignation for some version of immunity.

Finally, there is the hope — naive though it may seem — that some Republicans will choose to act on principle. There now exists a small club of former Trump administration officials who were widely respected before joining the administration and whom Trump has sullied, to greater or lesser degrees. It includes Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis. Imagine if one of them gave a television interview and told the truth about Trump. Doing so would be a service to their country at a time of national need. It would be an illustration of duty.

Throughout his career, Trump has worked hard to invent his own reality, and largely succeeded. It has made him very rich and, against all odds, elected him president. But whatever happens in 2019, his false version of reality will not survive history, just as Nixon’s did not. Which side of that history do today’s Republicans want to be on?

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/opinion/sunday/trump-impeachment.html" id="3acd0275-ef37-30a7-acc7-83e5db0e5432">The New York Times</a>.

The presidential oath of office contains 35 words and one core promise: to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Since virtually the moment Donald Trump took that oath two years ago, he has been violating it.

The People vs. Donald Trump

For a long time, many people thought that it was a mistake to use the weather as evidence of climate change. Weather patterns contain a lot of randomness. Even as the earth warms and extreme weather becomes more common, some years are colder and calmer than others. If you argue that climate change is causing some weather trend, a climate denier may respond by making grand claims about a recent snowfall.

And yet the weather still has one big advantage over every other argument about the urgency of climate change: We experience the weather. We see it and feel it.

It is not a complex data series in an academic study or government report. It’s not a measurement of sea level or ice depth in a place you’ve never been. It’s right in front of you. And although weather patterns do have a lot of randomness, they are indeed changing. That’s the thing about climate change: It changes the climate.

I wanted to write my last column of 2018 about the climate as a kind of plea: Amid everything else going on, don’t lose sight of the most important story of the year.

I know there was a lot of competition for that title, including some more obvious contenders, like President Donald Trump and Robert Mueller. But nothing else measures up to the rising toll and enormous dangers of climate change. I worry that our children and grandchildren will one day ask us, bitterly, why we spent so much time distracted by lesser matters.

The story of climate change in 2018 was complicated — overwhelmingly bad, yet with two reasons for hope. The bad and the good were connected, too: Thanks to the changing weather, more Americans seem to be waking up to the problem.

I’ll start with the alarming parts of the story. The past year is on pace to be the earth’s fourth warmest on record, and the five warmest years have all occurred since 2010. This warming is now starting to cause a lot of damage.

In 2018, heat waves killed people in Montreal, Karachi, Tokyo and elsewhere. Extreme rain battered North Carolina and the Indian state of Kerala. The Horn of Africa suffered from drought. Large swaths of the American West burned. When I was in Portland, Oregon, this summer, the air quality — from nearby wildfires — was among the worst in the world. It would have been healthier to be breathing outdoors in Beijing or Mumbai.

Amid all of this destruction, Trump’s climate agenda consists of making the problem worse. His administration is filled with former corporate lobbyists, and they have been changing federal policy to make it easier for companies to pollute. These officials like to talk about free enterprise and scientific uncertainty, but their real motive is usually money. Sometimes, they don’t even wait to return to industry jobs. Both Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, two now-departed pro-pollution Cabinet secretaries, engaged in on-the-job corruption.

I often want to ask these officials: Deep down, do you really believe that future generations of your own family will be immune from climate change’s damage? Or have you chosen not to think very much about them?

As for the two main reasons for hope: The first is that the Trump administration is an outlier. Most major governments are trying to slow climate change. So are many states in this country, as well as some big companies and nonprofit groups. This global coalition is the reason that the recent climate summit in Poland “yielded much more,” as Nat Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund said, “than many of us had thought might be possible.”

The second reason for hope is public opinion. No, it isn’t changing nearly as rapidly as I wish. Yet it is changing, and the weather seems to be a factor. The growing number of extreme events — wildfires, storms, floods and so on — are hard to ignore.

Only 40 percent of Americans called the quality of environment “good” or “excellent” in a Gallup Poll this year, the lowest level in almost a decade. And 61 percent said the environment was getting worse. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 66 percent of Americans said they wanted to see action to combat climate change. Some polls even suggest that Republican voters are becoming anxious about the situation.

The politics of climate change remains devilishly hard, especially because so many people around the world feel frustrated about their living standards. France’s “gilet jaune” protests, after all, were sparked by a proposed energy tax. Compared with day-to-day life, the effects of climate change have long felt distant, almost theoretical.

But now those effects are becoming real, and they are terrifying. To anyone who worries about making a case for climate action based on the weather, I would simply ask: Do you have a better idea?

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/opinion/climate-change-weather-2018.html" id="33bf806d-382e-387d-aa2c-645c85c6a4b9">The New York Times</a>.

Our best hope may be the weather.

The Story of 2018 Was Climate Change

They’re asking the wrong questions, though. Demographic identity matters much less than people often imagine. Think about it: Would an algorithm meant to produce the ideal candidate have spat out any of the past three presidents — a 70-year-old, orange-haired reality-television star, a law professor with the middle name Hussein or the son of a recent one-term president with the very same name?

There is only one quality — beyond, of course, charisma — that Democrats should demand in their nominee. The Democrats need a candidate who can and will run as an economic populist.

They need a candidate who will organize the 2020 campaign around fighting for the little guy and gal. (And most of the potential Democratic nominees could do so.) It would be a campaign about Republican politicians and corporate lobbyists who are rigging the game, a campaign that promised good jobs, rising wages, decent health care, affordable education and an end to Trumpian corruption.

The country doesn’t only need this agenda. It wants this agenda. A mountain of evidence shows that populism — the real kind, not the faux Trump version — is the Democrats’ most effective political strategy. Yet that evidence often gets obscured by less important issues, like a candidate’s race, sex or precise spot on a traditional liberal-conservative spectrum.

I’ve written several recent columns about what a populist agenda should and shouldn’t include, and I’ll write more in the coming months. This column focuses on politics, not policy — to make the case that populism is a winning issue like no other.

It’s a Populist Country

The first big batch of evidence is public opinion: On economic issues, most Americans are decidedly populist.

More than 60 percent think taxes on upper-income people are too low, according to Gallup. Almost 70 percent say the same about corporations. A clear majority also favors expanded government health care, more college financial aid, a higher minimum wage and tougher anti-corruption laws.

When these issues come before voters as ballot initiatives, the results are equally clear. Minimum-wage increases often pass in a landslide, including in red states like Arkansas, Montana and Nebraska. Expansions of Medicaid also keep passing. In Missouri last month, 62 percent of voters approved a law to rein in the influence of lobbyists (a law that the state’s Republican leaders are now trying to undermine).

These issues are politically potent because they unite the Democratic coalition and divide the Republican coalition. The Democratic base — including Africans-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, young college graduates and middle-class women — leans populist, polling shows. But so do the white working-class voters who often swing 21st-century elections.

Democrats still aren’t going to win a majority of the white working class. But they don’t need to. They just need to avoid getting crushed. When they do that, they win elections.

Populism Won in 2018

Whether they were social moderates running in red states or proud progressives in safe districts, many of this year’s Democratic House candidates ran similar campaigns. They focused on pocketbook issues, not on Trump. They ran as advocates for working families.

In southern New Mexico, Xochitl Torres Small talked about hard work and grit. In northeast Iowa, Abby Finkenauer’s campaign slogan was, “Fighting for Iowa’s Working Families.” In dozens of districts, Democrats campaigned on protecting people’s health insurance.

And most of these candidates won. If Democrats repeat their 2018 performance in 2020, they will win the White House.

A fascinating analysis of the midterms was published a few weeks ago. It focused on the fraction of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016 and a Democratic House candidate in 2018 — that is, the national winners in all three elections.

This group is mostly white, mostly without a college degree and disproportionately rural, according to the analysis, by YouGov Blue and Data for Progress. On social issues, the group’s attitudes look pretty Republican. Many of its members think sexism isn’t that big of a problem, for instance. They express anxiety about demographic change and favor tighter border security.

These are the sort of voters that some Democrats had written off as irredeemable racists. But that’s a terrible mistake.

On economic issues, swing voters look decidedly un-Republican. They are even more populist than loyal Democrats. By a wide margin, they favor free college, a big expansion of Medicare and federal action both to reduce drug prices and to create jobs.

“These voters want leaders who are going to look out for them,” Alissa Stollwerk of YouGov told me. Trump persuaded many voters that he was their ally by running a racially focused campaign. Democrats have already shown they can win back a meaningful share of them by running an economically focused campaign.

Look at Recent History

It’s not just 2018, either. Populism has fared well as a political strategy over the last generation — a period, not coincidentally, when living standards for most Americans have risen with frustrating slowness.

Trump’s populism is a mirage, but many voters believed it in 2016. He was the rare Republican who criticized free trade and seemed to care more about protecting Medicare than reducing the budget deficit. Trump managed to out-populist Hillary Clinton, and it’s a part of why he won.

Four years earlier, Barack Obama was the populist candidate. He ran for re-election casting himself as the defender of working people and Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch rich guy. The 2012 Obama was “more populist than any major party presidential nominee in decades,” as a column in The Guardian put it. The 2008 Obama, of course, ran against the financial crisis occurring on George W. Bush’s watch.

The Democratic president before Obama — Bill Clinton — ran as a populist, too. It’s true he also pitched himself as a centrist rather than a liberal. But populism isn’t the same as liberalism. Most voters don’t tote up all a candidate’s policies and try to figure out his or her precise ideology. They care more about the values a candidate projects, and Clinton sold himself as an ally of workers.

He gave the central economic speech of his 1992 campaign at Wharton, the elite business school in Philadelphia — during which he called the school “a powerful symbol of where our country went wrong.” Take that, fat cats.

Contrast Bill Clinton and Obama with the Democrats who have lost a presidential election over the last generation: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore. Fairly or not, none of them figured out how to portray themselves as defenders of ordinary families.

Young or old? Female or male? White, black or Latino? The first stage of the 2020 presidential campaign — the jockeying stage — is underway, and Democrats are trying to figure out who the ideal candidate is.

David Leonhardt

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