Taking Down A Warlord

 One hallmark of state dysfunction is the presence of warlords or regional powers within a country that are unanswerable to the national government. As state capacity declines, petty local rulers step into the gap and become powers unto themselves, unaccountable to the popular will.

Elon Musk should now be seen as a warlord within the teetering structure of American democracy. His decision to throttle Starlink and Starshield in Ukraine represents a form autonomy on matters of national security and national policy making that should be denied to any individual. You cannot have some ketamine-fueled autocrat unilaterally deciding whether a US ally - acknowledged and supported by the US Congress - has access to strategic assets.

What's more, Musk has done something that contemporary business leaders typically eschew: he has aligned himself not just with one political party, but one political figure. Some of this is the nature of Trump, who requires personal fealty, but some of this is Musk's complete simpering ignorance of how politics works in the US. Parties swap control of power, and that means that smart executives play both sides, give to both parties. Musk has wrapped himself so tightly around Trump that he's not really giving Democrats any reason NOT to go after him, once they have subpoena power. 

Musk's reputation as a genius is overblown. He has some decently profitable companies in Tesla and SpaceX, but their net profits are fairly low compared to their stock valuation. Tesla's P/E ration is a little over 350; SpaceX is somewhere between 160 and 225. Those numbers are...insane. Back before the tech start-up revolution, a safe P/E usually wouldn't exceed 20-25. Anything more than that would be considered intensely speculative. 

What's more, Musk's "safest" company is obviously SpaceX, because they have largely taken over satellite launches and Starlink is a genuinely impressive achievement. That company, though, is largely dependent on government contracts. What's more, if he's operating outside of governmental oversight and control, then he risks having the entire enterprise seized on national security grounds, and if he loses even a part of SpaceX, the whole enterprise collapses. 

Tesla is already getting hammered by people abandoning his cars in favor of companies not owned by megalomaniacal douchecanoes. Tesla's profits have declined 43% last year. People more on the left side of the spectrum are generally more likely to want to buy EVs and he's pissed them off all over the place. Europe has already hammered him and is trying to develop an alternative so SpaceX and Starlink. China obviously wants no part of ceding autonomy to someone who is not controlled by the Chinese state. If Musk loses cover in America, he's going to spend some time in the barrel.

Given that DOGE's murder of USAID is likely leading to the premature deaths of 100,000s of children, I'd say whatever brings this colossal colostomy bag to heel is a good thing. 

Polls And Narratives

 The follow-on revelations about Wedgewood polling add context to what we already know, but are not likely to be the end of what we will know. Wedgewood produced fake polls as a "social experiment" to see the impact of these fake polls on narratives. OK, so that's...bad. There is at least some evidence that this might have tilted close races, including the Michigan Senate race. Elliott Morris, who has been doggedly pursuing this story, suggests that the prime mover behind these polls was a Republican operative, but it might also be some degenerate Kalshi gamblers trying to sway "prediction markets."

The two big examples is that perhaps they tilted the Michigan race to Abdul El-Sayed and they certainly tried to tilt the Wisconsin race to Hong. Hopefully AES wins, because I think the Senate would be a better place with his perspective, but he could very well be an electoral underperformer in a Blue year. Hong thankfully lost, as she looked doomed in the general election. 

Ratfucking has always been a Republican prerogative, going back to Nixon. In Trumpistan, the reverence for the democratic will of the people is irrelevant, so ratfucking seems the least of things to worry about. Still, with Trump hitting historically low popularity numbers, the question is beginning to emerge about whether it will be a Blue Wave or Blue Tsunami. The numbers are reaching 2008 levels of anger at the GOP.

Ratfucking is all they have.

Getting a reform agenda through both Houses of Congress and past Trump's veto pen will be nearly impossible, but Democrats do need to be thinking seriously about reforms. A few places they should be looking:

- Ending partisan gerrymandering. This - and many other areas - are where legislation intersects with Court reform. Simply outlawing partisan and racial gerrymandering might not survive this Court's arbitrary constitutional interpretations, but they have to try.
- Campaign finance reform. This, too, will likely run afoul of the Court absent reform. At the very least, transparency laws need to exist.
- Prediction Markets. We have a gathering gambling scourge across multiple cultural avenues, but they need to ban gambling on political outcomes, even if they can't ban gambling on sports.
- Establish criminal penalties for fraud. This would include AI deep fakes, but also the Wedgewood nonsense. Electoral democracy cannot survive in a landscape where the very idea of objective truth is absent.

It's a lot and they won't get a lifted finger of help from the GOP. All they have is fraud and ratfucking. 

Early Voting

 "Friends don't let friends extrapolate from early voting." This basically means that leaning into the relative composition of the electorate based on people who vote early is a fool's game. Democrats do tend to vote early; Republicans tend to vote on election day.

Still, one thing Democrats and democrats might hope for is that this year, Republicans, even MAGA Republicans, just stay home. That might be happening, emphasis on the might.

Hopefully, a lot of typical GOP voters are sitting on the fence about whether to reward their party with their vote, even when they nominate terrible candidates. If one more scandal or price shock occurs between now and election day, those late GOP voters might also stay home. Maybe some new Epstein revelation or yet another corruption scandal.

Let's hope.

Trump's Third Impeachment

 Operating from the twin assumptions that we have free and fair elections and that no effort is made to refuse to sit the impending Democratic House, I think it goes without saying that Trump will be impeached again. I also think that if we get the result that the polls are suggesting - Democrats with the House and about 51-55 seats in the Senate - then we will see Pete Hegseth impeached and possibly even removed from office. If a bloodbath comes for the GOP, will they see what Trump has done to their party?

However, the question is whether the House will impeach even without much chance of removal. There is...ample...evidence of Trump's crimes, so it's not a question of looking under every couch cushion for some slim evidence to impeach. The corruption is an obvious one, but I think that will require more digging to really build a case. Democrats should think about two full years of investigating every single instance of GOP corruption, from Trump down through the MAGAt ranks.

In January, they already have the evidence that they need to impeach Trump on his betrayal of Ukraine. This will also get worse and not better as we get closer to the election. Krugman thinks that impending defeat will make Trump more reckless in his flailing as the impending defeat looms. Possibly, but I think it's more likely in the lame duck period. Certainly the GOP is behaving like they are going to get crushed, and even Trump is behaving that way. Someone must be telling him this uncomfortable truth, which is not something Trump wants to hear. Maybe this is why Susie Wiles is apparently going to get canned. If she is replaced with Stephen Miller, I think we can see this degenerating incredibly quickly. 

It will not be enough for Democrats to win the toss-up Senate races in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. They will need to score huge upsets in places like South Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas in order to get close to 60 votes. That's the only way we can get 8-10 Republicans to put their country over party and their own political careers and save this country more abject humiliation at the hands of this deluded and dangerous old man.

Wired For The GOP

 Over the years, Josh Marshall has argued that the DC Press Corps is "wired for the GOP." He doesn't mean that individual reporters lean towards Republicans. What he means - if I recall his argument correctly - is that there is a sort of horse-race, inside-baseball tilt to the way that they cover politics. This leads to focusing on the tactics of a electoral competition, rather than the impact that one side's policies may have.

Another way this shows up, obviously, is in the bothsides framing that preserves neutrality in voice. However, bothsidesing things is not neutral. By elevating certain stories over other stories, the media takes a side without "taking a side." The best example remains the stories in October of 2016 about Hillary Clinton's email practices, while dropping the story of Trump bragging about sexual assault after a few news cycles.

The other example is the process of "nut picking." There are some crazy opinions out there, on the left and the right. In order to flip the Michigan Senate seat, Republicans are trying to draw a straight line between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and the podcaster Hasan Piker. Piker has some legitimately obnoxious positions and statements, some of which fall into the "shock jock" category, some of which are the noxious rhetoric of the Very Online Left. El-Sayed has tried to distance himself from those positions, but I think he likely hasn't been forceful enough to completely sever himself from Piker, which is why he seems to be running behind the national climate.

On the other side, we have - well - the President of the United States saying legitimately insane things that would somehow be more damaging if they came from someone who wasn't the President of the United States - especially if it came from someone aligned with the Democrats. Even you want an apples to apples comparison, there's Elon Musk. Musk is an open White Supremacist and eugenicist. He has some frankly insane positions that are passed off as genius. He is also spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the election, because he's landed so firmly in Trumpistan that a Democratic government will feel compelled to clip his wings - wings that are feathered with US tax dollars.

In trying to figure out why Trump won election after January 6th, Paul Campos lists three possibilities. The first is that people believe Trump when he says the 2020 elections was rigged. These are, of course, MAGA voters. I don't think that holds water as a portrait of the electorate that actually swung the 2020 race.

The second is that they knew he was lying but didn't care; the third is that they didn't even know he made these lies. Look, I think there are a lot more people in that third category than there should be. Maybe a better way to think of them is that they didn't understand WHY those lies about the 2020 election were so profoundly important. If so, that is the shared fault of the media, civic education and basic informational literacy. 

To me, the real problem is likely the second group. These are people who think that "all politicians lie" and "all politicians are corrupt." If you begin from this basic position, then Trump is "just like the rest of them" - even if you admit that maybe, just maybe he's MORE of a liar and MORE corrupt than most - it's really just a difference in how much lying and graft he does. But since all politicians lie and steal, then why not Trump?

This, to me, is the real failure of our media institutions. In an effort to bothsides political disputes, they show someone like Bob Menendez or Graham Platner and make them the equivalent of Trump, without noting that Democrats abandoned both of the former and Republicans have created a cult of personality around the latter.

Treason

 Elon Musk and Donald Trump conspired to deprive Ukraine of their access to Starshield/Starlink, which they use both for self-defense and for drone attacks. Starshield - as I understand it - is run through the Pentagon, and Ukraine uses it to coordinate attacks on Russian targets. Starlink is a commericial network that use to coordinate defense; Starlink cannot be used for offensive military operations. Slowing both of them down has led to preventable deaths. What's more, it's a clear expression of where Musk/Trump's loyalties lie.

If that wasn't glaringly obvious, Trump decided he was just going to break the law and get money to Putin. This latter thing is a certifiably impeachable offense. Congress explicitly levied increased sanctions on Russia and Trump has decided he's going to do the opposite. That's just textbook lawbreaking.

Most guess that Putin has helped Trump win elections in the past, and Trump thinks Putin can help him again with enough blandishments. Or maybe he really thinks the diesel will somehow, I dunno, reverse the widespread anger over his Iran war and price spikes? 

Of course, the most likely explanation is that Trump admires Putin and hate Zelenskyy, because Zelenskyy is more popular than he is and doesn't bend the knee sufficiently.

Let's hope that Blue Tsunami arrives in a few weeks. Even if it does, it's going to be tricky for Congress to exert control over Trump in this area. Sadly.

Which Punches Will Land?

 Elliott Morris pisses on everyone's cornflakes this morning by noting - correctly - that a "normal" polling error could mean that Democrats only come out of the election with 47 Senate seats. Of course, a similar error in the other direction could mean 56 Democratic Senate seats. His point being that polling errors are routine and a lot of races are very close. If we wind up with an underperformance on election day, the question will obviously be: why?

Let me begin by saying that I don't think that will happen, but I remain chagrined by how wrong I got it in 2024. Trump, though, routinely overperforms his polling. Republicans since 2016 have underperformed a bit when he's not on the ballot. What's more, the fundamentals and the things voters overwhelmingly say that they care about all run against Trump and the GOP.

The two main things that people tell pollsters that they're upset about a prices and corruption. These numbers are not within any margins of error either.

Corruption stories are coming faster and faster from an administration that is staffed by people who are either corrupt by nature or look around themselves and realize that the old rules don't apply anymore.  Meanwhile, inflation is getting worse, shows no signs of getting better and are entirely a byproduct of two of Trump's two signature policies: tariffs and the Iran war.

This environment should spell a Blue Tsunami. What's more, you have really terrible individual candidates in places like Texas and Kansas. Even in red districts in blue or purple states, you have bad candidates that can drag down the whole ticket. What is the motivation for a Republican leaning voter to go out and vote for Ken Paxton? The GOP candidate for governor in Colorado is literally insane, but will that impact down ballot races like Lauren Boebert - herself a weak candidate?

Trump has always benefited from Steve Bannon's firehose strategy. If there is a different outrage happening every day, the media can't focus on one. Trump gets away with all sorts of shit using this dynamic. However, people still get the sense that everything has gone to shit. They see what's happening with prices. They see what's happening with the East Wing and the Reflecting Pool. They may not say that they are upset about any one specific thing, but the accumulated weight of all this is beginning to tell.

But hell, we've been so bitterly disappointed by the basic intelligence and comprehension of the average American voter over the past decade, I hate to think we have to rely on them again. Hopefully, the sheer tonnage of issues - issues that they say that they care deeply about - will finally tip things over. That Republican partisans will just stay home in disgust, that independents flood the ballot box on behalf of Democrats, and - the one thing I'm sure of - Democrats will crawl over broken glass to vote these fuckers out. 

Drip, Drip, Drip

 Josh Marshall notes that we have defenestrated two corrupt Trump officials recently, and he warrants that more are to come. Trump is obviously the center of a massive amount of corruption himself. Do we think that Trump's latest betrayal of Ukraine is motivated by spite or perhaps corruption? Yes.

This all gives off vibes that Trump and the gangsters around him know that at least a Democratic House is coming, and that the good times of unbridled grift will give way to the times of slightly restrained grift. Trump himself knows that the Supreme Court has largely rendered him immune to prosecution, but the recent catapulting of various creatures around him suggests that either Trump is pissed that these goombahs got in on his action or that he doesn't want the headlines. He has to know that Capone went down for tax evasion.

One has to assume that the skittering grifters that circulate around Trump assumed that his immunity would transfer to them. However, Trump is absolutely and completely disloyal to anyone and everyone. He will stab you in the back and then complain that you got his knife all bloody. What happens when the pardons that they assumed would come don't come? When Kimberly Gargoyle gets called before prosecutors and discovers that there is no pardon coming, what tales could she tell?

Finally, there are quarters of the internet that consider the possibility of Democrats taking control of Congress as an impossibility. Trump will simply do another January 6th on steroids.

When you look at his actions, though, he doesn't look like he's got a plan for that? He looks like he's scared.

What Comes Next?

 Let's assume that every indicator is right and Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress - and that the new Congress is seated. I think that happens, but I can't say with 100% certainty of anything anymore.

We have a Trump Administration that has been engaged in a smash-and-grab campaign of thuggishness and graft. What's more is that Trump is already crashing out. What will he do if faced with a hostile Congress? 

Trump is mentally unwell. Yes, he is not intelligent AND suffering age-related cognitive decline. Yes, he's an example of what happens to the emperor when no one says, "no." However, the narcissistic wound that he might be about to receive is potentially mortifying.

Trump was not greatly restrained during his first term, but he was mostly constrained. Now, he's surrounded by so many toadies and creatures feeding his id, that the potential for intentional harm is very real.

Not Sending Their Best

 Today, we have two stories of incompetence rising and crashing down among the grifters, clowns and incompetents that populate Trumpistan.

We have Kimberly Guilfoyle - shape shifting gargoyle that dated both Gavin Newsom and Don Junior - resigning as Ambassador to Greece because she got caught soliciting bribes. Was Guilfoyle qualified to be ambassador to Greece? Of course not. Was she corrupt? Naturally. Was she more corrupt than Trump? Heavens no. What was her sin? Getting caught.

Meanwhile we have a truly WTF moment featuring new Blonde Chatbot Katie Zacharia. Marshall's piece digs into her likely false claims about being a lawyer in China (China?) but the real story is that she gives off the Ms South Carolina vibes of someone whose personality comes from her hair dye. This is the official press secretary of the fucking White House. She seems largely incapable of reading her cue cards. Saturday Night Live should just quit, if this is the reality we live in.

We have levels of incompetence riddling our governing institutions. I have no idea what a Democratic House and Senate can do to stem the dismal tide of so much stupidity and greed.

Boutique, Concierge Treason

 Both Richardson and Krugman take aim at Elon Musk's efforts to prevent massive GOP losses by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into dark money and other forms of campaign spending. I've been generally more skeptical of the idea that big money can save a bad candidate, especially in a bad political environment. However, there are two issues.

The first is that Democrats have greatly expanded the map in terms of competitive races. They seem to be leading in Alaska and Kansas, not to mention Texas. There are some vibes and data that places like South Carolina or Nebraska might be razor close. If Musk and other billionaires can make a 1-3% difference in the vote by spreading lies about transgender communists coming to make you wear a mask, then that might be the difference in those races. 

The second is that this represents the deeper pathologies of the hyper-rich of Silicon Valley. While the folks working at those companies are likely as liberal as most people with college degrees in the STEM areas, the Tech Lords are a weird-assed bunch of freaks. What's more is that they don't seem to understand the wheel of history. They are acting as if they will be immune from blowback from supporting Trump. 

The Gulf emirs, Netanyahu, various normie Republicans who all thought that they could deal with Trump have learned that he destroys everyone who comes into contact with him. He chews you up and spits you out, uses you and discards you. If that weren't enough, Democrats - I hope - will remember their perfidy when we have a trifecta again. These techbros are deeply unpopular, and like the earlier iteration of Robber Barons, they have so tightly aligned themselves with the Republican Party, that a broad progressive movement should keep the receipts and take them down.

It's similar to the Trump-Netanyahu axis of evil. As long as Likud rules Israel, I don't think a Democratic Administration can treat it as anything less than a hostile power. Same goes for Musk and the other cretins who were swept along with the tide of technological advancement but believed they were the moon itself.

Treason On The Cheap

 Trump's "deal" with Putin to buy Russian diesel so he can look like he's saving truckers and farmers does not, in fact, save truckers and farmers. The 300,000 tons number that Trump negotiated is about half a day's worth of US diesel consumption. As Krugman notes, it SOUNDS like a big number that he can boast about at his self-soothing rallies, but it's not really a big enough number to bring prices down.

So, Trump has broken the law and engaged in light treason for no substantive benefit to the US economy.  ART OF THE DEAL!!!!!

Will It All Come Out?

 It is unclear exactly why Donald Trump is so slavishly devoted to the political, economic and military well being of Vladimir Putin. The evidence that he is devoted is overwhelming at this point. As others have noted, if Trump wasn't a Russian asset what would he be doing differently. There is his contempt for the US-led post World War II order that largely relegated interstate war to the margins of world politics. Prior to 2016, wars between states were rare, and the deadliest conflicts were intrastate wars and the collapse of fragile states into civil war. The deadliest war of the 21st century - the Second Congo War - is unknown to most Americans, because it did not involve countries that we typically pay attention to. 

Trump's contempt for the "rules based order" has reopened the box of wars between states. His support for Putin and contempt for Zelensky could have many explanations. People love Zelensky and hate Trump, and he's a simple minded creature who operates on the emotional level of a maladjusted 3rd grader. He admires power, but his definition of power is simply more similar to the ways that Putin and Xi Xinping exercise it than democratic leaders do. He wants the adulation of the crowds, but he doesn't want them to exert any control over him. He wants the parades of Kim Jong Un, not the plaudits of an electorate.

Still, it's hard to escape the evidence that Russia has some sort of grip over him. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we learned exactly where the KGB had infiltrated American society. I hope we have that reckoning for Trump.

Corruption

 There have been more and more stories of the overwhelming corruption of the Trump Administration coming out recently. The problem is and always has been a polluted information ecosystem where most Americans simply don't interact with the news. In some ways, who can blame them? Why would you subject yourself to the firehose of misery and trauma that constitutes the daily news? In fact, learning about how corrupt the Trumpists are would just make people more miserable. The farrago of outrage is how Trump survives. First, it means no story really develops legs and penetrates the veil of ignorance that most Americans cocoon themselves in. Second, it helps weave that veil, because "the news is just so horrible." Then, when you have a Democrat like Bob Menendez, it allows the media to run with a Man Bites Dog story and deepens the cynicism of the electorate.

There was an interview in the Times about our postliterate society. People CAN read and read all the time, but in short snippets that don't require much cognitive effort. The torrent of short-form video also degrades the ability of people - especially but not exclusively kids - to actually read for meaning. I'm certainly discovering that my students struggle to understand the actual meaning of what they are reading. They tend to glance across the surface of it. I ask how many read more than one book for pleasure over the summer and one kid in each class raised their hand. 

When the Whigs spoke of "corruption" they meant a rot in the entire system. I fear that we now have that form of corruption in our entire society. Trump's graft is corruption that is enabled by the corrupted nature of our shared discourse, reduced to Trump's trolling videos and misleading social media posts.

Democracy only works with an informed populace and we are both angrier and more ignorant than we have been in a long, long time. 

Barbarism

 I don't even know what to say about Pete Hegseth's plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan. Even if you support the death penalty, this is a level of performative barbarism that is appalling. The botched execution of Krysta Pike might give normal human beings some pause in broadcasting the killing of a human being - even one as malevolent as Hasan.

Not Whiskey Pete! I think it was David Roth at Defector who described this administration as an "Influencer Occupied Government." Hegseth is exactly that, someone with a craving and craven need to create content - no matter how he looks. This is why we have had 20 times more videos of him doing fucking calisthenics than press conferences. He is a small man in a big job who has initiated an absolutely disastrous war with Iran. In his flailing attempts to justify his withered masculinity, he's going to reduce the United States to the savagery of the Taliban or North Korea.