The Saga Of Bo French

 Bo French is a Texas Republican. He once seemed to model himself on George Bush's "compassionate conservatism." Now, he's a Trump-style racist and xenophobe. 

Here's the question that is going to be really important to the immediate future of this country: Was French always this racist? Or did Trump show him that being really racist could win you elections?

It sure seems like the Texas GOP has taken Trump's racism as a roadmap. Adam Serwer famously said that not all Trumpists were racists, but that racism wasn't a dealbreaker. French and many in the Texas GOP seem to think that, no, we are racists and we need to front that message.

The position French is running for is...whatever. However, a complete rejection of Asian immigrants or second and third generation Asian-Americans is going to be litmus test for the future of the GOP. If he wins...there's no penalty on the Right for this vile hatred. If he loses, maybe there's hope for the country yet. 

Russia, Russia, Russia

 One of Trump's uncountable lies is that the Mueller Report exonerated him. Mueller found widespread efforts by Russia to influence the 2016 election and that Trump and others around him tried to obstruct the investigation. Russia wanted Trump in the White House, and though no one appears to have directly coordinated with Russia, they welcomed the help. I would hardly be shocked if Paul Manafort coordinated with Moscow, but they couldn't find the evidence of that.

Yesterday brought the totally unsurprising report that a Russian oligarch close to Putin threw lavish parties for Donald Trump, Jr. at his recent wedding. It was Don Junior who famously said years before Trump polluted our civic life that Russian lenders kept Trump afloat when credible banks stopped loaning to them. Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law - who for some reason has been given responsibility to resolve the Ukraine war - says that all that's need for peace between Ukraine and Russia is for Ukraine to accept defeat and cede territory to Russia.

Oh, and Trump is blaming high oil prices on Ukrainian strikes at Russian refineries, not his ill conceived war against Iran. 

The crazy thing is, we know that Trump is Putin's puppet. The evidence of his treachery is simply overwhelming. Yet - as with so many Trump scandals - we come up against two barriers. The first is obviously that his cult will never abandon him. The second is that the sheer brazenness of his outright perfidy sort of boggles the mind. It's so obvious and so substantial that it's hard for normal people to get their heads around it.

Interesting

 Apparently the attacks that were launched by Iran in early July were launched by a hardline faction within state security without the approval or even knowledge of the president. 

Iran's current president is not, I think, a crazed ideologue. Iran IS suffering in this war, even if it's not exactly going great for the US. I am deeply, deeply concerned about Houthis trying to shut off the Bab al Mandeb; global oil production and refining capacity is in the shitter; inflation is going to get worse.

Iran, however, is really suffering, but if the hardline faction are in charge, then they simply don't want peace. They don't care if the Iranian people suffer immensely; this war is what they want.

Also, the Supreme Leader hasn't been seen since the war began and his father was killed. Rumor has it that he's badly disfigured, if he's even alive. This, too, gives the hardliners leeway to do whatever they want, as the only figure with the authority to stop them is either dead, incapacitated or unable to fully exercise his office.

This is a well sourced story from within the Iranian government, so they want the word out. The US isn't winning this war, but we shouldn't assume Iran is winning it either.

You Can't Spell "Hair on Fire" Without AI

 Lots of people talking about AI today. Yglesias, Krugman and Richardson all talk about the groundswell of voices within the AI companies themselves - even among the top leaders - for some form of regulatory oversight. The problem is that each company pursuing AI doesn't want to "lose" to their competitors. So each company rushes headlong towards faster and faster development and more and more powerful models. 

When people like Jacob Coxon quit and go public with their concerns, it creates a moment when everyone takes a deep breath and looks around and ponders is maybe it's time to take a step back. The problem is that no single company wants to be the one to give up progress to a more heedless rival. Even these techbros are asking for a regulatory framework. 

Back when the Food and Drug Administration and food inspections were created, lots of the bigger meat packers were supportive of it, because smaller operators were selling tainted meat and making everyone skeptical of processed meat. Same dynamic today. The main AI companies want an international regulatory framework to make sure AI doesn't get out of control.

As an aside, I don't think AI will "wipe out humanity." I heard a helpful distinction. AI is unlikely to produce an extinction event, but it will very likely create a catastrophic event. If a rogue AI took over air traffic control, hundreds of planes could crash, thousands would die and the global economy would take a Covid-level body blow. That would be really bad, but not the end of humanity. Just please keep fucking Grok away from the nuclear weapons.

This is a moment, though, where Trump's malevolent ignorance becomes potentially lethal on a large scale. His contempt for anything he didn't think of, his avarice to make a quick buck off AI stocks, his antipathy towards sharing power with other institutions means that Trump will actively thwart the steps that AI companies themselves want the government to take. 

I remain amazed that he has a 37% approval rating. Seems high.

UPDATE: The last of my essential writers, Josh Marshall, weighs in. He looks at how digital companies have largely avoided paying the negative externalities that come with their products. An AI "event" could crash everything. 

Armageddon

 HCR summarizes Michael Luttig's argument that the GOP will simply try to end American democracy rather than let a Democratic Congress be seated. It's important to realize that the GOP will need near unanimity in both Houses to pull this off. It's not a question of Trump just leaning on Mike Johnson - he will need to have the complete House GOP caucus behind him.

The language used at last week's Snooze-apalooza where Trump got his fragile ego coddled was certainly alarming. However, it really is the case where he says a bunch of shit, and you can't tell if he's planning January 6th or threatening to invade Greenland. He's insane, and his public ramblings are most likely quite different from what the mass of Republicans are prepared to execute in his name. 

When it comes to things like Luttig's dooming, I am also of two minds. We probably should be bulletproofing everything we can for not just November, but January, when the new Congress will be seated. On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of doom being in the background of people's minds when it comes to exercising their franchise.

I know, for instance, that I've been very reluctant to contribute to Democrats, because I'm sick to fucking death of the apocalyptic text messages. More than happy to give what I can, when I can. But STOP FUCKING TEXTING ME ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IS GOING TO SHIT UNLESS I PITCH IN $20, $50 or $100 TODAY.

Someone needs to sit down with Johnson and a host of these other Weak Creatures and lay out an alternative. If Trump tries to stop this election from occurring or from being certified, then we need to talk about secession. The Northeast and Pacific Coasts can break off and - in an ironic twist - join Canada.

UPDATE: Martin Longman points out that Trump is doing everything he can to antagonize voters. Pundits will seek the deeper strategy that Trump is pursuing, but I think he's just big mad and angry at the voters and telling them to fuck off. There's no one around him capable of telling him just how poor his instincts are. 

The Legacy of 9/11

 I'm usually a fan of Paul Campos, but this discussion between him and Robert Farley feel way wide of the mark. Their argument is that 9/11 really didn't have a cultural impact on par with the Kennedy Assassination. The assassination certainly did exert of vise grip on the imaginations of Boomers, to the point where Trump routinely flatulates some nonsense about releasing the files. Certainly, the Kennedy assassination birthed many conspiracy theories.

However, the argument that 9/11 had a greater political and policy impact on the US is undeniable. Kennedy's death did not lead to Vietnam - sorry, Oliver Stone, that's bullshit. What it did do was unleash America's longest war and perhaps its most pointless defeat. I'm willing to argue that Vietnam was the price for winning the Cold War. It was a terrible mistake, but it was a mistake borne of a policy - containment - that won the conflict. Iraq was just completely bullshit from the start. So, if we are analyzing the cultural impact of 9/11, we have to look at the two wars (three if you want to include the GWOT) that arose from it.

Yes, the Vietnam War spawned a ton of films, but so did the cycle of wars after 9/11. What's more, a lot of tangential media like the Jason Bourne movies seem directly related to the period of fear and anxiety that came after the attacks. If anything, I think Farley and Campos are simply confusing the media that they consumed as young people with the media landscape today.

What I also think that they get wrong is not seeing how 9/11 in many ways led to Trump. There's the obvious xenophobia, sure. There's the obvious Islamophobia, sure. However, Trump's primary message was one of American decline or American Carnage. In his telling, 9/11 happened because America was "weak" (in fact, it happened because America was strong). The "forever wars" were bad not because we shouldn't have fought them, but because we weren't ruthless enough. America was a feeble nation that lost to Iraqi and Afghan insurgents. 

That message was married not only to 9/11 and it's impact, but also the 2008 financial crisis, but I don't think Trump win in 2016 without tapping into the sense that America was a declining nation. Clinton represented the status quo and he was the wrecking ball.

That latter part was true, I guess. 

UPDATE: Chait documents the link between 9/11 and Trump.

The Stay-At-Home Voter

 Elliott Morris has been running polls that show something that makes visceral sense. Trump was returned to power in 2024 by low information voters who were broadly unhappy with the state of the economy (and were likely unhappy with a liberal Californian woman of color, but that's my own slant). Those low information voters - Paul Campos calls them Ariana Grande Voters - felt that Trump could magically return us to the economy of 2019. The fact that this was always utter bullshit ties into the fact that these are low information and low engagement voters. I would wager very few of them understood the inflationary pressures that tariffs and deportations would create. 

The Trump-apalooza random rally in Dallas the last two days was designed to motivate those low information voters to get out and vote. I would guess that Republicans are seeing polling that shows the shape of the electorate moving against them. Democrats and unhappy Independents are going to vote; they are extremely motivated. Whereas they are likely seeing that some of their 2024 voters aren't planning to vote.

What Morris is saying is that getting those people to the polls - by centering Trump of all people - is likely to backfire. I certainly hope that's true. I would love it if the GOP did a robust Get Out The Vote effort that wound up turning out voters who vote for Democrats and Independents. 

Still, I really do think that a large factor in the November election will be voters who voted Republican in the last few cycles, but feel (justifiably) betrayed and decide to skip the election entirely. I think that's what the GOP is seeing and why they gambled on using Trump to rally their support. Vulnerable people running for actual office have shunned the event in Texas. Unsurprisingly. Only Trump seems not to understand how unpopular he is.

Utterly Loathsome

 It's so hard to keep track of all the horrible things that that orange motherfucker does, day in and day out. However, his latest lie that he was some sort of hero on 9/11 really burns my ass for some reason. Is it the rank narcissism? The mewling, craving need to be the center of attention? The obvious falseness of it? 

I think it might be just how much he degrades everything he touches. I have never fetishized 9/11 the way some people have. "Never forget" and all that. Still, it's a solemn day and I'm even teaching an elective this fall called "The World That 9/11 Made." The central thesis of that course is how people can make disastrous decisions for what they feel are the right reasons. Bin Laden thought he would topple America. Bush thought we could create democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If I try to force that frame on Trump, I founder on this point: Bush thought he was acting in the nation's best interest, but he was wrong because he wasn't very bright and couldn't see the obvious complications that his actions would create. Trump simply acts in his OWN interest and is wrong because he isn't very bright and can't see the obvious complications that his actions will create. Trump is simply incapable of acting in anyone's interest but his own. 

This is why he needs 9/11 to be about himself. This is why he needs everything to be about himself. It's why he's trying to make the midterms about himself, when he has a 35% job approval rating. 

Just a completely loathsome human being.

UPDATE: Trump is gutting health measures for 9/11 responders.

GOP Healthcare Plan

 Apparently, it's "sue patients who can't pay, and then arrest them." 

I've been wondering just how far and where the backlash to Trump will manifest in November, and a place like Kansas is an interesting test case. Democrats have a strong candidate, but more than that, Trump's policies have been very damaging to farmers. The trade wars have shut off foreign markets, the deportations have crushed the agricultural work force, the Iran War has exploded the cost of diesel and fertilizer and the healthcare policies will shutter rural hospitals and clinics.

In Kansas, where you have the incumbent wrapped up both in the cuts to healthcare AND the draconian debt collection that accompanies our system, you have a real possibility to flipping a seat. Kansas has elected Democratic governors recently, often in the face of ideological incompetence. Iowa, too, could be ripe for a double-barreled message to the GOP.

Power Doesn't Panic, Part II: Electric Boogaloo

 How is Trump responding to cratering approval polls? He's launching a troll offensive. How is he responding to rising costs? He's admitting potentially tainted beef from Brazil.

As Krugman notes in the second link, Trump and the contemporary GOP has no use for expertise. This goes back to things like the response to Hurricane Katrina, when Bush had a rankly unqualified person as the head of FEMA. This is why educational status is increasingly a predictor of voting behavior. The end result of populism is contempt for expertise and a hollowing out of state capacity.

The broader theme of Trump lashing out is still valid though. His torrent of AI slop - including a video of him attacking Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (who was an actually good hockey player) - reeks of flop sweat desperation. Consider the following:

- Voters are pissed at him.
- He has surrounded himself with sycophants.
- He has absolutely nothing to offer voters, because he has no policy chops.
- His lizard brain goes straight to the only thing he knows how to do: attack and insult.
- He doubles and triples down on the same frantic insults, since there is literally nothing else.

Again, I don't want to imply that this isn't dangerous. Trump is a cornered rat, and we saw what that looked like on January 6th. Still, this doesn't seem like someone who is confident that he has the election fixed. 

Recently, he attacked Bombardier - a small airplane manufacturer with plants in Canada and Kansas. Senator Moran of Kansas actually pushed back against this. As we get closer to the election and Trump insists on centering his insults as the midterm message, Republican politicians are going to be cross pressured to get him to shut up, while needing his support to fire up the base.

Let's say the trends are accurate and Democrats win control of both Houses of Congress. The next crisis will be seating the new Congress with Democratic majorities. Trump will try and stop it, but are there enough Republican Members to basically tell him to fuck off? I think there might be, and I think that's especially true the further he sinks into his ranting madness.

"Economic Anxiety"

 Krugman looks at the recent local election in Germany that put AfD in power in Saxony-Anholt. He hits on something that has been noted before, but needs to be constantly recalled. There is a LOT of overlap between people who feel economically disadvantaged and people who rely on racism to explain why. In Europe, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany all rely on anti-immigrant politics to try and win elections. In fact, you can go back to the pre-World War II United States and see a ton of overlap between people who were upset by what they perceived as declining status and a hatred of immigrants.

There is a superficial logic to this, as you can imagine adding workers to a workforce would mean fewer jobs for people who already were in the workforce. Except economics is pretty clear that immigration leads to economic growth. This - not tax cuts for the rich - is the rising tide that lifts all boats. 

What I find interesting is that there have been some clips going around from some Socialist convention held in the US recently, and it's a bunch of weirdo positions on things like "weight loss is health genocide" or "criticizing me is basically slavery." The original criticism of "socialists" like Bernie Sanders was that Democrats had stopped putting the needs of working class voters at the top of their priorities. Now, the DSA has disappeared down the rabbit hole of what James Carville calls "faculty room politics." Basically, if you don't want to put your gender pronouns in your email signature, you're Adolf Hitler.

It would be nice if there really was some sort of magic button we could push that unified everyone against the oligarchs who have enshittified the world. In fact, fear makes people hateful and we shouldn't be surprised that Saxony-Anholt voted for Nazis than we should that the dying small towns of America vote for Trump.

Power Doesn't Panic

 I read Richardson, as I do every morning, but then didn't find anything to add. However, thinking about it, it occurs to me that many of the actions of Trump and his minions give off a reek of panic. The efforts to stop mail-in voting, the floundering around in Iran, the chaotic building spree that winds up going off the rails like the Reflecting Pool fiasco...there seems to be a mad thrashing about.

Trump has started musing in that unfiltered way of his that he's mortal. Maybe all the vibes and rumors of health problems are real; he certainly looks like shit. 

However, while we know he's a malevolent force in our country and the world, there is something panicky about his actions. He's rushing shit like the Arch de Trump and the ballroom, because he knows he's running out of time. Maybe it's health, maybe it's November.

Power doesn't panic. Power controls. Trump is spinning out of control.

That comes with risks - huge risks - but it also suggests that even his Swiss Cheese mind is aware that things are unraveling and he's scared.

Labor And Capital

 Richardson runs through the founding of Labor Day in the United States (and the backlash to a worker's political movement). One of the enduring mysteries in some quarters is why America never had a "Labour Party" (aside from the weird spelling). The best explanation is that workers had the vote far earlier than their counterparts in Europe and the Anglophone world. As a result, they joined existing parties rather than invest themselves in union movements that then merged with a political party once property restrictions on suffrage were removed.  In fact, the reluctance of Britain to extend the suffrage was likely a fear of the number of working class voters and what their votes might do to Britain. Mostly the result was that everyone get health care.

HCR has a quote from the Times in the 1880s arguing that everyone who works is a worker:

The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “[e]very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”

I've seen this argument recently from - of all people - DSA types who want to make sure that their main demographic - college and post-college educated white people - don't feel threatened. "No, no, no, we aren't talking ACTUAL socialism. Just Vibe Socialism." I suppose that's a nice "big tent" approach, but I think it misses the actual issue.

There is a clear schism between people who work for wages and people who work for a salary. A lot of salaried jobs require a college degree, and that salary comes with benefits, usually. Even if you are "only" making a $55,000 a year salary, chances are you get health care and other perks. The whole compensation package is, just that, a package. If you work for $25 an hour, your pay is roughly the same, but you might not get the same benefits package.

Fair enough.

The real divide today though is not between wage earners and salaried employees. It is between wealth and income. You can earn $150,000 a year but not own enough stuff to be truly wealthy, especially if you are young. 

What Richardson did not talk about in her piece was that during the unrest from the laboring classes, one proposal from both Populists and Progressives was a graduated income tax. You earn more, you pay more. This was supposed to retard the growing accumulation of wealth from income.

In 2026, we have abandoned the idea that taxation can address inequality. We still mostly support some spending to address poverty (not most Republicans, but most Americans), but while we have a graduated income tax, we do not tax capital gains in the same aggressively progressive way. 

I don't know if Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax will work. I feel confident the Supreme Court will strike it down, but I also don't know precisely how it will work mechanically. How do you really assess wealth?  How can you tax a home the same as a stock portfolio?

Still, if we are going to arrest and rebuke the slide into oligarchy, we have to start somewhere. Encouragingly, we did it before.

November

 I don't think - within the context of January 6th - that it is an exaggeration to say that the future of the American Republic is on the line this midterm election. Given that context, it's tricky to brush aside the threat that Trump could pose at any step of the election process. We are already seeing him attack voting by mail. We hear dark whispers of ICE at polling places. We've obviously seen the mid-decade gerrymandering.

My take is that there are legitimate threats, but that we need to take a deep breath. Republicans can see the polls, but there is a real question as to whether Trump actually sees unfavorable polls of whether Natalie Harp prevents him from getting bad news. The behavior from a lot of Republicans is that they know they are going to get pummeled and they are preparing themselves for that. Even Trump seems to be aware of that. We don't see the behavior of people who have it fixed so that they can't lose.

The two biggest threats are overall voters suppression and efforts to void the election after the fact. The first is very real, I fear, as Republicans will use the bullshit excuse of voter fraud to justify targeting Democratic constituencies. They won't and can't cancel elections, but closing polling stations and setting up ICE checkpoints near those polling stations could depress voter turnout. However, anti-Trump voters are INCREDIBLY fired up, and I hope there will be an effort to circumvent those measures. For instance, if you vote by mail, you better turn your ballot in in person.

Efforts to void the election after the fact - January 6th Part II - seem less likely to succeed. The idea will be to caterwaul about voter fraud and delegitimize the election in order to placate the cultists surrounding Trump. Hardcore Trumpists are already predisposed to distrust objective reality, so that will work as an effort to keep Cult 45 happy. 

However, are there enough Republicans in Congress to actively take measures to end American democracy? The number isn't zero, which is appalling, but I don't think it's more that dozens in the House and fewer in the Senate. As we saw with the pre-riot January 6th actions, only a handful of Republicans supported Trump's fabulist claims. Also, given the nature of cults, the loyalty of MAGA lies with Trump, not the GOP. Having a Democratic Congress isn't going to provide the same motivation that existed with "Stop the Steal." 

It's objectively not great. We shouldn't be having these discussions. However, I do think that Democrats will take the House and probably the Senate. I think there is a groundswell of anger out there over Trump's naked corruption and manifest incompetence. I think his supporters are dispirited and many will stay home. 

Hopefully that will be enough.

In 1951, as American troops moved largely unopposed up the Korean peninsula after the Inchon landings, Stalin reportedly sighed and said, "I guess the Americans will be on our borders." (Korea shares a small border with Russia.) Even Stalin bent to reality, though Mao decided to throw hundreds of thousands of troops into the conflict. My point is simply that even dictators surrounded by sycophants often bend to reality.

More AI

 Josh Marshall has been ruminating on the backlash to data centers.

I can't help but feel it comes from three main concerns. The first is simply that energy costs are rising and data centers consume a lot of energy.

The second is that we are being forced to use AI for non-AI purposes. When I Google something on my phone, I don't have a choice about the fact that it's going to give me an AI bot - one that is often hard to click out of.

The final reason is simply that people are fed up with Tech Bros coming in, altering our lives without our consent (see above), hooking us on algorithmic dopamine and then jacking up prices and throwing up paywalls to things that we have been using for free for years.

The fact that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and even Jeff Bezos seem like actual Bond villains doesn't help, but in a growing climate of "eat the rich" it's not nothing.