Pawns

 One of Trump's defining character traits is a complete lack of empathy to the point of sociopathy. He cannot see other people except as they exist to be utilized by him. 

His recent comments about the conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln can be filed in the massive folder "Things That Would End Any Other Politician's Career." He has trapped himself within his ignorance surrounding the Iran War, but while he's "suffering" from cratering approval ratings, the sailors floating off the coast of Iran are truly suffering. Soldiers based in the Middle East are dying and being wounded by Iranian attacks. For Trump, though, their suffering is irrelevant. He needs a way to declare victory over Iran and if the troops suffer, well, they're just "suckers" anyway for volunteering.

Just a hateful human being, and I use the term human being loosely.

It should also be said that sailors and soldiers will endure a lot. If the mission is broadly legitimate. This one is not, and that has to weigh on the service members.

I've Been Saying!

 Krugman makes the political - as opposed to economic - case for allowing a public option within Medicare. The economics of single-payer are pretty well established. Yes, there is some rationing, but it is not based on ability to pay. There is, perhaps, some road in the US that leads to a baseline or floor of health care coverage that can be supplemented by private insurance. We travelled to Chile, where they have a universal system and a buy-in system. Everyone gets healthcare, but you can pay for private clinics. In an earlier post, Krugman notes that wealthy Canadians come south for some treatments.

At any rate, Krugman makes the political case that I've been making since Obamacare. We need a public option - not because it's the preferred policy outcome, but because it's a feasible policy outcome. If we allowed people and employers to buy insurance from Medicare the way they do from Aetna, then we should over time - if the theories are correct about costs and delivery - see more and more people elect to be covered by Medicare, until mandating the change only effects fewer than 10% of the population.

It would also allow the sort of gradual change that might prevent some of the problems that are attendant with big policy changes. When Obamacare rolled out, the system crashed. It was repaired, but first impressions and all that. Massively straining the Medicare system all at once would lead to the same poor first impression.

The other issue that would need to be addressed in the wake of Trump is how to insulate the new universal healthcare program from Republican fuckery. They will absolutely try and wreck whatever Democrats build and I'm not sure the American public has demonstrated that they are really smart enough to assign blame to the appropriate party. Slow rolling a public option would be perilous for this reason, but having corporate buy-in via cheaper costs could push back on this. If DynaCorp is paying 15% less in insurance costs, I would wager they'd be pretty eager to preserve that.

Finally, I have expressed by deep seething hatred of Joe Lieberman in over a decade, but man, what a horrific shitbag of a person he is. Yeah, Nelson of Oklahoma was also responsible for killing the public option in 2009, but Lieberman...man, I hate that guy. 

Limits Of The DSA

 A lot has been written about the collapse in support for Tiffany Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. As per usual, a lot of it looks wrong and serves to justify people's priors.

First of all, looking at a Marquette poll from late July, Hong was getting 38% support. On election night, she got...38% of the vote. She had clearly maxed out her ceiling and anyone who hadn't made up their mind seems to have shifted to Crowley.

There was also some sense that the more scrutiny Hong was placed under as the election got closer, the worse she looked. She did not exactly enthuse the usual rainmakers like Bernie or AOC either. 

It seems like Hong captured some imagination among younger voters and the "Fight!" crowd because she was a bit edgy, but some of those edges were natural attack avenues for Republicans. Abolish Thanksgiving? Abolish the police?

As Josh Marshal reminds us - not that we needed reminding - Zohran Mamdani is a very talented politician. He has expertly navigated between the somewhat utopian nature of DSA campaigns and the nuts and bolts nature of being a mayor. He is not "angry" and scary, and a lot of what he proposes are just solid, "improve people's lives" measures. 

There are two hobby horses that DSA flog nearly to death: Medicare for All and Israel. The distance between the DSA and the median Democratic representative in DC on Medicare for All is likely too small to measured with the naked eye. The median Democratic Rep just understands how the Congress works and how math works. On Israel, there is likely much more daylight, but the calculus of support for Israel - at least militarily - is also collapsing. The difference between the DSA candidates and normie Dems is mostly about rhetoric. 

For instance, I don't believe Israel's actions rise to the level of genocide - a word that is being diluted by throwing it around so much. I DO believe that we should cut off military aid and abandon our practice of protecting Israel with a UN veto. Does that make me "anti-Zionist"? No, I think Israel has a right to exist, but I think they have forfeited the right to count on unconditional support from the US. In policy terms, my difference from the DSA is pretty small. 

Where the DSA has been most successful is in overwhelmingly Blue districts where you have the "Fight" dynamic and often a rival who is too old. Not surprisingly, DSA candidates have done best with bougie, urban, college educated white liberals. They are not creating a "class consciousness" among non-college people - precisely the demographic that socialism is supposed to mobilize. A large part of that is because the DSA isn't so much about expanding social programs as bullshit, boutique radicalism like "Defund the Police" or "Open borders" that just repels a lot of people. 

It is absolutely healthy to have a left wing in the Democratic Party pushing for health care expansion as a first priority. But caterwauling about AIPAC or the systemic racism of Thanksgiving isn't helping anyone.

Phew

 It looks like Democrats avoided a very poor choice in Wisconsin last night. David Crowley edged polling favorite and DSA standard bearer Francesca Hong in the race for the Democratic candidate for governor. With Tony Evers term limited, this quintessentially purple state could become the most critical governor's race in the country. The Republican nominee is a rabid election denialist.

Interestingly, another very purple state, Georgia, is also having a gubernatorial election. Holding on to as many governorships as possible has become far more important recently. Not only do governors fill Senate vacancies (with some exceptions) they are also the central figure in maintaining state sovereignty in the face of Trump's assault on democracy. Losing Wisconsin because they nominated someone with the quirky and toxic views of many leftists in a state that seems to teeter back and forth between supporting Democrats and Republicans is not the way forward.

Yglesias has been beating this drum all year, the way he does when he has a juicy bone between his fangs. Yet, he has found a way to see the merits in Abdul El-Sayed's candidacy in Michigan. I do think that he continues to wallow in the Yglesias Fallacy of believing that swing voters really care about policy and not vibes and blunt personality markers. AES' liability is not his ability to finesse his positions on Medicare for All or even Israel. His liability is that he's Muslim in a country that still harbors a LOT of Islamophobia. 

AES has some real charisma and juice (though I wouldn't put him in the same vein as Mamdani, despite some superficial similarities), and Stevens looks like she's going to go all in to help him win. (I wonder if Hong will do the same for Crowley. I have my doubts.)

While there have been some head scratching results from some House primaries, generally a robust sample size of Democratic voters have proven themselves equal to the moment. They are retiring reps who are over 75 - John Larsen lost last night, and that's a good thing - but they aren't always running to some extremes when they do so.

I believe the coming months will see more movement towards Democrats. I think Trump hiding in a catering truck while using the press corps and White House staff as bait on Air Force One is going to have some legs. He's not going to find a way clear of Iran; prices aren't going to fall; corruption isn't going to stop; ICE will kill again. The only thing that can stem the damage for Republicans is Democrats nominating people who will drive Republicans to the polls in negative polarization. The key to winning the Senate is keeping a lot of dispirited MAGA home in November.

Wisconsin understood the assignment. 

Trapped

 The Iran War (and tariffs) have started to create inflation that is deeply hurting Trump and Republicans. Under Josh Marshall's Unitary Theory of Power, a decline in power in one area leads to a decline in power elsewhere. If people don't like your tariffs and your Gestapo killing Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, they aren't going to care for your triumphal arch or your war with Iran.

And the war with Iran is going very, very poorly. As Philip Gordon notes:

“U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”

This is the logical outcome of an Administration that has spent a year and a half pissing off the rest of the world and then being so immune from internal debate and criticism that it thinks Iran is Venezuela. I've written about how people want "disruption" because they think that everything sucks and incumbent politicians are at fault. What Iran and the entire Trumpist foreign policy is demonstrating is that breaking things because they aren't perfect returns us to a state where we understand why those institutions were created in the first place. Allies matter and behaving like a petulant toddler means that in this moment, Trump stands alone in a shithole of his own making. 

No one is coming to help us.

Here is the situation that Trump (and Hegseth) have led us into:

- We are running dangerously low on precision munitions that allowed Trump to exert miliary force from a stand-off distance.
- We are also running dangerously low on anti-missile ordinance.
- The American people do not support the war and never have.
- Prices are rising because of the war, and that is one thing they won't accept.
- There are no more levers to push to get Iran to surrender. They know all of the above are true.
- The only way to free the Straits of Hormuz is to send in ground troops that will lead to thousands of flag draped coffins.

Iran has been deeply damaged, but the regime doesn't care about the suffering of its people. The US has been deeply damaged in terms of its credibility. 

The only winner of this war is likely to be China. In fact, Xi has a real opportunity here to place China at the head of the table here. If the pain from this standoff gets worse, then Xi can come in a broker a deal. The Iranians rightly don't trust Trump, but they can trust China (I can't believe that's where we are). 

Europe won't help us, because we've pissed them off repeatedly. The other Middle Eastern countries are exasperated by Trump's fecklessness. That more or less requires some other head of state to come in and resolve this issue. India is to Islamophobic, so that pretty much leaves China, I suppose the EU could try, but would Trump trust them? Would they trust Trump?

We are learning in real time how Trump managed to go bankrupt selling gambling, football and steaks to the American public.

Why Netanyahu Will Never Agree To A Peace Plan

 It's unclear the degree to which young people's anger over Gaza tilted the election away from Harris. I have my doubts, simply because it was not those demographics that really hurt her. It was also not like 2016 where a few thousand votes could have swapped the result.

Still, Israel and Gaza remain a contentious issue within the Democratic Party (and though less of one, an issue among the right as well). The most recent effort to fashion a peace deal has foundered when Netanyahu rejected it.

To really understand WHY Netanyahu rejected it, you really should read Martin Longman's piece in full. 

Is Netanyahu a terrible person? Why, yes. He is. But he's also acting out of political and personal necessity that is shaped by the electoral politics of the Israeli right.

Worse Than Watergate

 Richardson reminds us that Richard Nixon was not hounded from office by Democrats, but he resigned because Republicans in Congress placed the rule of law and the interests of the United States above party loyalty. 

Trump's scandals are worse than Watergate. On a daily basis. What is truly worse than Watergate, though, is Congressional Republican spinelessness.

This Is Bad

 Pete Hegseth's little war with Iran has consumed most of our advanced stand-off munitions. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to create these missiles that can be safely fired outside the range of defensive batteries. Cruise missiles and the like are very effective...and very expensive and very hard to make.

Hegseth is a preening idiot whose qualifications to lead the world's most expensive and professional military is that he was a Fox News blowhard. His macho posturing worked...ok...when dealing with alleged drug boats that he could simply blow out of the water. Even the raid on Venezuela worked well, because it was so limited in scope.

Iran has been preparing for this moment since 1979. We know this, but Hegseth ignored the warnings. Now, we have degraded our advanced weaponry to the point we have degraded our overall national security. He should lose his job, but he never should have had it in the first place.

His ridiculous emphasis on cartoon masculinity does not inspire confidence in making wise decisions. The overall corruption of the administration is also not inspiring confidence in making good decisions in the face of this legitimate crisis. The great strength of a functioning democracy is course correction. During the Civil War, both sides struggled early in the war with "political generals" who earned their stars by being political figures who could raise a regiment of volunteers. The rise of actual competent generals like Grant, Sherman and Sheridan happened because feedback was assimilated in ways that doesn't happen in an authoritarian system. Apparently Trump didn't know about the munitions shortages, because no one wanted to be the one to tell him.

The solution to this emerging crisis is actually fairly simple. We should partner with Ukraine to mass produce drones. They could get 33% of the drones we build in return for their knowledge. Drones do not have the range of a cruise missile or an ATCM, but they could move to immediately repair the hole in our munitions.

However, we do not have competent people running the Defense Department and the Executive Branch. Hegseth is mewling about testosterone and there are unlikely to be enough corrupt kickbacks in a drone program to make it worth Trump's while.

We are a weaker country because a bunch of insecure men in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris' laughs. We have a president whose admiration of Putin has replicated Putin's disastrous defense posture.

From Tiny Acorns...

 The job market is softening, even as inflation remains relatively hot. Meanwhile we are starting to see Trump endorsed candidates lose Republican primaries. The two that stick out are a candidate in Michigan who had suspended his campaign and still won. The other is that truly awful Rep Andy Ogles went down last night in Tennessee. 

There are a few things that will create a Blue Tsunami in November:

- Low approval ratings for the president. Check.
- Economic unhappiness. Check.
- Enthusiasm on the part of the "out" party. Check.
- Dispirited members of the president's party. Check.

Gerrymandering will cut into this a bit, but a sufficient wave will actually swamp the gerrymanders. 

We aren't there yet, and I'm prone to hitting the Hopium Pipe. but we should win the House and I think we can win the Senate, too. 

It's The Corruption

 My summer work has been to add to a student reader in US History, as we have to condense readings for a new schedule. The last installment was on the 1920s. I wrote about Harding's scandals and the market crash, while reading Sorkin's book on 1929. There are echoes today.

Richardson runs through the revelations about Trump's money laundering and the way big banks sheltered Epstein. Capitol One suspended Trump's accounts because they reeked of money laundering (though they waited until he left office, because they know he's a vindictive prick). We have the president of the United States with MASSIVE money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes...and there is seemingly nothing we can do about it. 

Harding himself - like Grant - does not appear to have profited from his office. His Attorney General sold liquor licenses (under Prohibition you needed a special license) and pardons. He did not serve any prison time, of course, but he was put on trial. His Interior Secretary did go to jail for selling strategic oil reserves to a private oil company. His Veterans Bureau leader also pocketed millions in kickbacks and bribes. What distinguishes Trump is that he personally is getting rich off his office. That has never, ever happened in our 250 year history that we know of. 

In the aftermath of the crash of '29, Congress eventually got around to holding hearings - the Pecora Hearings - on the financial crimes and mismanagement that Wall Street committed in the bubble of '28-29. The thing is, they didn't find many crimes, because there were no laws against insider trading, tax evasion and market manipulation. Those hearings led to a few prosecutions, but I can't recall many convictions - similar to 2008 in the lack of convictions. Instead, it led to the New Deal financial reforms, like Glass-Steagall and the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Now, we have a (deeply unpopular) president who is at the nexus of a myriad of financial crimes and possibly a pedophile ring. He is building gilded monuments to himself with taxpayer money, while raking in bribes by the literal billions. 

Meanwhile, the Republican Congress is obsessed with Anthony Fauci and 45% of Americans will still vote for these corrupt fuckers. 

Spent The Day On A Tractor

 Moving stuff from one place to another. Mostly rocks. Had to get off and hand load the bucket a lot.

Freaking exhausted. I am not a young man anymore.

Vengeance

 The Incumbency Problem has been stalking global politics since Covid, but really since 2008. The financial crisis brutalized a lot of people, but not the actors most responsible for it happening. As Krugman notes (indirectly), Democrats have let people off the hook far too often when taking power. In Obama's case, Krugman faults him for not prosecuting those who lied us into Iraq, but the stronger argument was in failing to prosecute Wall Street. 

The recovery from 2008 was solid, but tilted initially far more towards Wall Street than Main Street. Biden was not going to get caught in that, and his recovery plan from 2021 was designed to help the average person, as well as forestall an economic contraction. Even more than just "helping", it really does seem like what the average person wants is vengeance. 

Sure, the Covid checks were nice, but they want to blame someone for being afraid, for disrupting their lives. That's why we have these stupid attacks on Fauci. The problem is that there really isn't someone to "blame" for Covid. I would argue that Trump's feckless, moronic leadership made things worse, and the high death rate in the US would seem to back that up. But the virus itself can't be held accountable. It's a virus. So instead, we have the Lab Leak deadenders, the Fauci Jihadists, the Antivaxxer Brigade. None of it really makes sense looking at the evidence, but it does make sense if you understand that people want to blame other people, not the impersonal universe.

This is why incumbent parties lost power all over the world since Covid. People need to blame someone, so they blamed those in charge. Sadly for Democrats, people don't seem to remember who was in charge in 2020. If Covid 19 had been Covid 18, I think Democrats win in 2024. 

All of this brings us back to Trump and his brazen lawlessness. Elliot Morris notes (paywall) that Trump is obviously hated by Democrats, but increasingly hated by Independents, too. What's more, his own supporters are getting more and more disillusioned by him. All of this points to another Blue Wave election - even with the gerrymandering. 

If Democrats do win both Houses, they cannot try and "govern" in the way they typically do when there is divided government. They have to go medieval on Trump's diapered ass. The reason why insurgent candidates are cleaning up in primary elections is not a deep and abiding love for "socialism" whatever that might mean to voters. It's a deeper feeling that Democrats have spend far too much time trying to repair the damage Republican policies have wrought and not enough time putting heads on spikes. Why trust that cadre to do anything different this time?

Presumption of Regularity

 In her recounting of the dismissal of charges against David Hearn, Richardson points out that judges are starting to deny "presumption of regularity" to Department of Justice lawyers. Basically, judges assume that DOJ lawyers aren't lying or otherwise being sketchy (like hiding evidence from a grand jury. Presumption of regularity is based on centuries, really, of precedent that the government is not captured by a patrimonial strongman bent on destroying American democracy to sate the void in his soul. Certainly there have always been DOJ lawyers who fucked around with this principle, but the presumption requires this to be treated as an act of individual malfeasance. Judges are now saying that this is policy.

Joe Biden made two huge mistakes as president. The first, obviously, was deciding to run again at an advanced age with a speech impediment that was getting worse. He simply could not communicate well on a daily basis.

The second was Merrill Garland.

Garland was a judge, not a prosecutor. He had been denied a seat on the Supreme Court by Mitch McConnell (is he dead yet?), and that moment was really a watershed moment in Republican fuckery. Holding a Supreme Court seat open for a full year in order to gamble on a Republican winning the next election was a huge violation of "norms." Garland was supposed to reestablish the professional neutrality of the Justice Department, but in the process  delayed in prosecuting Trump for his many crimes. One has to think that Trump actually being in jail in the winter of 2024 might have made a difference. But "norms" man.

Making Garland Attorney General was not just a consolation prize, it was an effort by Biden and Democrats to reestablish those norms like regularity. Democrats have the burden of defending flawed but critically important institutions in the face of an historical moment when people are strongly anti-institutional. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration can be painfully slow in approving new treatments. However, RFK, Jr deciding that vitamins can cure measles is not a step in correcting this.

There has been talk in some quarters about the need for a Democratic Project 2029. Given the unpopularity of Project 2025, I'm not sure I see the point. However, there are some topics that Democrats need to coalesce around. Some are easy: kill the tariffs, restore America's alliances, raise taxes on the wealthy, undo the GOP's attacks on healthcare, end environmental degradation and his incessant building of monuments to himself. 

When it comes to norms in the Justice Department, this gets trickier. You absolutely need an impartial, professional DOJ. You also need to have real, tangible accountability for the orgy of corruption under Trump. 

Threading that needle - the creation of an independent commission, perhaps - will be an important part of restoring the presumption of regularity, by not engaging in the Garland-style caution about norms and prosecuting those leaving office.

UPDATE: And just on cue, the Republican holdouts against Todd Blanche as Attorney General have caved, because of course they did.

A True Reflection

 Richardson recaps the saga of the Trump reflecting pool fiasco and the indictment and then retreat from that indictment of David Hearn, the former Olympian who was arrested for vandalism for touching the algae mucked water in the reflecting pool.

I think this is an interesting angle on the question from yesterday: Is Trump suffering from dementia? As I wrote, Trump is of mediocre or below average intelligence; he has never been interested in the discomfort of educating himself; he is now surrounded by a host of sycophants who feed his delusions. This case is a great example of Trump making a stupid claim to assuage his ego and then having the machinery of the Federal government have to support that stupid claim.

For all the very real failure of Congress to act as a co-equal branch of government and the corrupt enabling of Trump by the Supreme Court, the courts - in general - have held. Especially when it comes to the many, many lies that Trump says, the Courts require proof and he has none. This exposes his "legal" team when they have to defend these lies. 

Trump is a malignant narcissist, and as such is psychologically incapable of admitting when he has been defeated. Whether in court, in the Persian Gulf or in an election, Trump cannot lose. It's simply impossible for him to admit this. 

So we get the spectacle of this farcical arrest, the quagmire in the Straits of Hormuz and January 6th. And millions of Americans felt this fucking guy deserved to be returned to the White House.

Is Trump Experiencing Dementia?

 Maggie Haberman - who has been a weird sort of insider reporter in Trumpistan - thinks that Trump is as sharp as he's ever been. Now, my position is that Trump has always been pretty stupid, especially if we are talking about higher, abstract cognitive functions. He has a base ability to bully and cajole and "sell" himself, but he is not a deep thinker. He has also spent his entire life at war with the world, and that stems from his lack of overarching intelligence. He was the not-too-bright failson of a self-made asshole from Queens, and he simultaneously craved the attention of the Manhattan set and resented them for not accepting him, except as a punchline.

As Rofer points out in the linked piece, saying that Trump is not suffering from dementia does not imply that he is operating in a productive cognitive state. Trump's business was an extremely small outfit of co-conspirators. During his first term, he was surrounded by the "adults in the room" - people who understood how government worked and what American principles generally were. 

Now, Trump is surrounded by sycophants who lavish North Korean-style praise on him. He is increasingly in a bubble, where bad news isn't really penetrating his inner bubble. The result is the Iran fiasco, the inflation, the various legal setbacks, and the complete inability to pass legislation despite having control of both houses of Congress. 

Haberman's point that Trump does not exhibit "dementia" is probably only slightly accurate. Having watched people fall into dementia, it's not a light switch. You slowly degrade in ways that can be very hard to pick up by people who are around you all the time. Still, there's a chance that we have someone who was not very smart to begin with, is experiencing normal aging and is walled off from information that might wound his fragile ego. 

This doesn't account for the falling asleep in meetings, the unexplained medical visits and his incessant bragging about passing a dementia test. As someone who felt that Biden was suffering not from dementia but from an acceleration of his speech impediment, I suppose I should extend the same benefit of the doubt to Trump.

I just don't feel like it.