GameStop? JustStop!

 I didn't want to follow the GameStop saga, but here we are.

There are no "good guys" here. The hedge fund guys are atrocious people whose actions destroy the economy for people who depend in the shitty jobs at a place like GameStop.

The crew ruining the hedge funs guys' week are creating a bubble in the stock market at a time when the economy is teetering on the edge of collapse. Now is not the time to be experimenting with exploding stuff on Wall Street.

Also, the media apparently spent the White House briefing hammering this story, because apparently we've cured Covid or something.

The Trial

 There are a great many reasons why Democratic victories in the Georgia Senate run-offs were important. Obviously, the ability to confirm Cabinet positions and Judicial vacancies and pass a budget are huge. Whether or not the filibuster survives is an ongoing question. Another reason why Democratic control of the Senate is going to be important is the Trial of Donald J. Trump for his second impeachment.'

As I'm sure everyone recalls, the first impeachment trial under Republican control called no witnesses. Basically, by doing so, Senate Republicans never had to confront the actual charges. This time will be different. The decision to delay the trial will also benefit Democrats. Every day, more and more facts about the Beerbelly Putsch comes forward. It was a pre-meditated attack by right wing groups like Oathkeepers, with planning and coordination launched weeks and days in advance. They intended to kill people, with prominent Democrats (and possibly a few Republicans) in mind. Over 50 Capitol Police officers were injured and three have died, two by suicide. 

Democrats will be able to parade these police officers before the Senate and defy the GOP to acquit Trump. Additionally, if there was direct coordination between anyone in the White House and these militia - and would be willing to bet there was - then that, too, will come to light. Even if there wasn't, there is a clear and documented pattern of Trump exhorting his cultists to come to DC to create chaos. 

It is a common practice for Rightist militias to create a plausible deniability shield for themselves. The Post notes:

Former domestic terrorism investigators say the alleged discussion by Watkins and Caldwell about the group’s leader points to a longtime pattern among such extremists.

“Historically, within the right-wing extremist movements, leadership has produced rhetoric to spin up their members, increase radicalization and recruitment, and then stand back and let small cells or individual lone offenders follow through on that rhetoric with violent action,” said Thomas O’Connor, a former FBI agent who spent decades investigating domestic terrorists. “Domestic terrorism actually developed the leaderless resistance concept, taking the potential blame away from the leadership and putting it down into small groups or individuals, and I think that is what you’re starting to see here.”

There will be a similar attempt to exonerate Trump because he never actively said, "Go kill Nancy Pelosi." That flimsy pretext will be enough for a majority of US Senators. Hopefully, it will make for "good TV" and there will be a price to pay for all this. Even more hopefully, Ted Cruz and Joe Hawley lead a group of authoritarian lickspittles to boycott the trial and vote, thereby preventing Trump from holding any future office by reducing the number of votes needed in the Senate.

Marjorie Traitor Greene

 For all the good electoral news that came out of Georgia, the election of an absolute lunatic to the GA-14 Congressional District was...bad. Along with Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene represents the cutting edge of GOP insanity. A purveyor of crackpot conspiracy theories, this pair's stupidity is matched only by their cruelty.

These are garbage people.

Here is the real test. What will the GOP do about them? There might be evidence that they conspired with the putsch crowd on 1/6, and they could be arrested. Maybe, but I doubt it. Unfortunately, they will likely need to be expelled from Congress first, and that would require GOP votes and I think you can see the problem.

As Karen Tumulty notes, the problem extends beyond Greene. As she puts it, Trump has basically demonstrated that you can say any damned stupid thing and there are no consequences for it among fellow Republicans. One of the rallying cries for the Lincoln Project was "country over party." The GOP has not heard it.

And why should they? They picked up seats in the House. While they got crushed in the popular vote, they came reasonably close to winning the electoral college. Trump's unique awfulness and incompetency made it impossible for him to steal the election in court. If you're the GOP, however, you've seen how he motivates a certain low-information/bad-information voter. Much of that is invested in his person, rather than the party. Why try and purge your party of the madness of people like Lauren Boebert when they actually win elections for you?

The problem, as I see it, is that January 6th will recede down the memory hole by the time the 2022 elections roll around. Democrats will need to tie every GOP Senator and Member of Congress to Boebert and Greene, and then hope that people will recall the horror show that happens when you allow the QAnon nutters anywhere near the seat of power.

Ideally, we get the pandemic under control by summer, and Democrats ride the gratitude for that to solid gains in 2022. The new strains of Covid, however, are worrisome. If it keeps mutating (which it will) it could escape containment. If Democrats lose control of the House and/or Senate in 2022, rabid crazies like Greene and Boebert will drive policy, because people like McCarthy will be scared of them. We've seen it with Trump. They will strip Liz Cheney of her leadership position before they will censure a woman who suggested we shoot the Speaker of the House in the head.

The GOP has to cease to exist as it is currently constituted. 

Democracy Agenda

 Josh Marshall is right. We will remember the score, not the libretto. I doubt it will convince Manchin and Sinema, but creating a narrative around the basic principles of democracy is exactly what should happen. 

Republicans are already trying to ratfuck the 2022 elections. No time to lose.

Bolsonaro Will Kill Us All

 Brazil elected an even more malevolent version of Trump and between destroying the Amazon rain forest and letting the virus rampage until it mutated into something worse, his disastrous leadership has real global ramifications. 

Brain Worms

 Reading this description of Republican "logic" that a majority of Republican Senators used to justify voting against having the impeachment trial is depressing. We all know that politicians routinely practice hypocrisy, and I have no problem with politicians whose opinions change over time because their understanding of the world and its problems changes. If you were against marriage equality in 2000, but for it in 2012, I have no problem with that. 

The GOP has elevated base hypocrisy to its basic organizing principle. Since their policy portfolio is unpopular and they rely on a minority of the population to give them whatever power they have, they rely on this cynical rejection of the very idea that what they say on Monday has any bearing on what they do Tuesday. 

Senator Evil Was Caught Monologuing

 In certain poorly written action or superhero movies, the villain will "monologue" about his or her plan to the hero who is tied up or restrained some way, so that the audience and hero know the stakes. The hero then escapes and uses that information. (I was watching Endgame again last night, and Thanos monologues.)

Looks like Mitch McConnell was monologuing about his evil plan to "scorch the earth" in the Senate. Basically, his plan will be to prevent any non-budgetary legislation to pass by filibustering it. Biden will get judges, Cabinet picks, budgets and the occasional piece of bipartisan legislation.

If...IF McConnell goes overboard, forcing Manchin and Sinema to rethink their support for the filibuster, then McConnell has laid out exactly how he will grind the Senate to a halt:

(McConnell) went to on to describe in detail how the GOP would respond if Democrats changed their position and moved to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass their agenda.

Republicans, he said, would exercise their rights to object to routine business and demand frequent quorum calls — procedural feints that would grind business to a standstill and require senators and Vice President Harris to be on constant standby for roll-call votes.

Senate rules can be voted on by the majority once the filibuster is gone. So every step he's taken to slow the Senate to a halt can simply be voted away.

McConnell has had one insight in his entire career: people blame the party in control of the government for inaction and therefore he can obstruct at will. Otherwise he's a stupid hack.

You Knew I Was A Scorpion...

 If Trump really does follow through with his vindictive plans to destroy dissent within the GOP, well I certainly would be entertained. I honestly don't know what would become of a splintered GOP with the Freedumb Party and more traditional Republicans having a schismatic rift. One of those factions would eventually come out on top, and if it is the Freedumb Party, we will well and truly be screwed.

The Filibuster

 Mitch McConnell tried to force Senate Democrats to guarantee that they would preserve the filibuster. They refused, stood firm and McConnell caved. As Martin Longman notes, while McConnell got more verbal commitments from Manchin and Sinema, they have always been in record as opposing scrapping the filibuster. However, if McConnel embarks on complete obstruction, Sinema and Manchin can "more in regret than anger" join the rest of the Democratic caucus in getting rid of the filibuster. Or maybe reforming it via various rule changes about universal consent or forcing a "talking filibuster."

The usual Twitt-iots were decrying how Schumer and Senate Dems were already a bunch of worthless failures. A day or two passes and Schumer wins. The Internet has trained us for instant gratification but legislating is a slow business. I think we can expect more of this impatient whining from those who don't seem to understand how little leverage anyone has over Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema right now. Maybe if Sara Gideon and Cal Cunningham had won their elections, we would be having a different conversation right now, but they didn't so we aren't.

Break Them

 Mitch McConnell is up to his usual fuckery, refusing to move forward on the Senate rules for the 50+1-50 Senate. He's trying to preemptively tie Democrats hands on the filibuster. This is significant, because Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have said that they will not get rid of the filibuster. If either one of them sticks to their position, the filibuster remains. If McConnell is worried about Joe Manchin axing the filibuster, it's because McConnell is going to abuse the filibuster process (again).

The reality is that Biden's agenda is popular. However, that's been true of the Democratic agenda this century. On the merits of policy, people prefer Democratic policies. What McConnell's only insight has been is that if nothing gets done, it usually redounds to the benefit of the GOP, who is telling people government can't do anything anyway. He's a neo-Calhoun, nullifying the very idea of government.

We are in the middle of a series of cascading crises, including not just the pandemic and the economic fallout therefrom, but also climate change, the eroding liberal order and toxic inequality. People want and need action. Hopefully Manchin and Sinema realize this, if McConnell tries to subvert the public good to his narrow political aims.  Again.

Waiting For My Fauci Ouchie

 As a teacher, I'm reasonably high up the ladder for getting the vaccine as more and more become available. Of course, it certainly looks like there was zero plan for getting vaccines coordinated across the country, with red states seeming to get more doses than blue ones. (If this was a plan, it's also something that needs prosecuting.)

Anti-vaxxer nut job, Robert Kennedy, Jr., has suggested that maybe Henry Aaron was killed by complications from his vaccine. First of all, let me say to Mr. Kennedy, "Fuck off and die of Covid." Seriously. It struck me not only for being the sort of baseless conspiratorial thinking that is killing this country, but another example of how the experts were right again.

First, yes, there were mistakes, especially early on in dealing with the coronavirus. I don't know to what degree the advice in March against mask wearing was based on not understanding the virus or trying to preserve PPE availability for health care workers, but by April, that mistake was rectified. Trumpists, in particular, seized on the shifting opinion about masks as a way to discredit all scientific and medical advice. In fact, what it shows is how science moves with new facts, something the GOP and Trumpists have a demonstrated incapacity with.

I remember last spring, as cases waned, that Fauci and others were saying that we would see spikes in the fall. We did. They said the holidays would be terrible, they have been and continue to be. They are saying 500,000 deaths by the end of the winter. I wouldn't bet against it. 

New information prompts new conclusions. The new variants are concerning, but entirely predictable. Viruses lifespans are so short that mutations are much more likely. 

I'll admit: I'm worn out. I'm exhausted. Teaching sucks right now. My mind feels like cheese left out in the sun. This is all so brutally hard. I can understand why people want to throw caution to the wind and go back to normal. I think by June we will see more Americans die from Covid than died in the Civil War. Yet that 650,000+ number will be a tiny fraction of the population, compared to the Civil War. It will be devastating and also somewhat invisible to most of us. 

I desperately want to have a graduation in late May, for my son and all the other Seniors. But it will require discipline that I just don't think we are capable of right now.

Nope. Nopenopenope

 Apparently there are people in the FBI who are considering not charging some of the Beerbelly Putsch rioters. Certainly their priority should be the ringleaders, but everyone who was in the Capitol should be charged. If they want to plead down to misdemeanor trespass, fine. But the convictions and arrest warrants must remain in the public record.

We don't need to clog the courts with a bunch of second degree felonies, but there absolutely needs to be a "Oh, shit" moment when they get the summons for felony trespass. 

When traitors become numerous, treason becomes respectability.  

The Blob

 David Ignatius argues that Biden should keep "some of Trump's policies." He then lists things that Trump did that were "good." Namely, he believes that Biden should continue the Endless War. What's odd - and Ignatius comes ever so close to realizing this in his piece - is that Trump hated the Endless War, too. What he praises as Trump's "good" policies were really just examples of the foreign policy "Blob" remaining unmoved. 

One of Trump's better instincts politically was resisting the idea of more Middle Eastern conflicts. For whatever reason, Trump seemed to "get" that his voters were disproportionately touched by these conflicts because of the requirements it put on troops. While the troops are not monolithically white and rural, they are somewhat disproportionately white and rural. Lunatics like John Bolton would've been fine with war with Iran. Trump never seemed interested in the military as an instrument of policy, so much as a prop to reflect on his personal grandeur. 

If it IS actually true that the Iraqi government wants us to stay (I know the Kurds do), then...OK. But at this point, staying in Afghanistan is stupid. There are no positive goals being achieved there, only the absence of some negative outcomes. We are not making Afghanistan better (Kabul, maybe, but I'm not convinced). 

If Biden could negotiate some sort of détente with Iran that included a return to the JCPOA and American withdrawal from Afghanistan, that could constitute a major policy achievement. If Afghanistan degenerates into a feudal state of competing sectarian warlords...that seems to be its fate. We have been there for nearly two decades and what we are doing isn't working. This is Afghanistan's problem now. 

Deep Breath

 I was never convinced that Trump would win re-election. I was never convinced 100% that he would lose, but I was 99% convinced he would lose a free and fair election. Even in the fraught 72 hours after the polls closed, I was pretty sure Biden was going to win, it was really just a question as to whether he would win Georgia and possibly North Carolina. 

Even as the Beerbelly Putsch raged in the halls of the Capitol, I was convinced yesterday would happen. We are seeing a minority of zealots on the wrong side of history acting out tantrums, not a coherent, reality-based movement to seize power.

Nevertheless, I've found myself tearing up at various moments, beginning with the lovely and brief service for the dead on Tuesday night. The shuddering relief at having a president who cares about 400,000+ dead Americans isn't something we should have to feel. For the first time in four years, we are not a country that purposelessly traumatizes children to stop their parents from fleeing a different form of violence. For the first time in four years, we have a president who can grieve with us. For the first time in four years, we have a president who knows what poetry sounds like.

Everything will not be great. The legacy of Trumpism will have to be unraveled and stamped out. But as someone tweeted, when you saw the extraordinary production values of the inaugural festivities last night, you saw a return to even basic stage management competency. Unsurprisingly, we discover that there was no central plan for vaccine distribution; there will be one soon.

Feels better.

Maybe, Just Maybe

 Trump does nothing if not dominate the conversation. Even as Joe Biden does typically normal Joe Biden-y things, Trump continues to be the object of fascination: the car wreck of American presidencies.

However, I do wonder if maybe he just disappears. Some of this will depend on efforts to keep him off social media. Since Twitter and other platforms shut him up, he's basically been neutered. While plenty of people were worried about today, nothing happened. Evidence suggests that the lack of Trump directing his jihadists played into this. 

Trump's source of power was power itself. Because might meant more than right, Trump's literal presence in the Oval Office was the source of his power more than any idea. Sure, there are those committed to Trump's person and those committed to white nationalism. It's not a single overlapping circle, but it's close. As Trump loses the trapping of power, he just becomes the sad old man eating hamburdlars and yelling at the Tee Vee that in many ways he always was. 

Trump was an aspiring caudillo, an emergent Mugabe, but for white people. He can't be that person without the trappings of power. Especially as the law closes in, he will struggle to maintain the ludicrous veneer of masculine power that somehow people hung on him. The reason Trump did well with certain segment of non-white, make voters is this projection of power. Not just incumbency, but wedded to incumbency. That's all gone now.

I'm not saying it's the most likely outcome, but there is about a 33% chance he simply fades away, popping up in the news with a new indictment or a new lawsuit. 

Biden's Moment

 Josh Marshall pens a really nice about how this moment is uniquely Biden's. For all his numerous failures, Biden was tempered for this particular moment. He concludes:

There is a whole cult dedicated to Winston Churchill. But the reality is that Churchill spent most of his life as a politician who started at the very top and then found numerous ways to fail, largely through his own mercurial nature, stubborness and misjudgments. But late in life the world came together in a particular, horrifying way that made Churchill’s characteristic strengths somehow all that mattered. His flaws either fell to the background or, paradoxically, transmuted into strengths. I’ve thought many times over the last year that history has come together in a similar way for Joe Biden. His resilience, penchant for expressive empathy and experience of suffering suddenly seemed perfectly matched to a broken, grieving country reeling from a presidency rooted in predation, egotism and brutality. These are always valuable experiences and qualities. But at most historical moments they would be secondary ones. We should all be so lucky to have our flawed selves find the moment for which we alone are perfectly suited. It is resilience that keeps us present and ready.

Counterfactuals

 We don't know what a competent president would have down with Covid. America is uniquely resistant to both expert advice and unitary action. But we can compare governorships and the evidence there - both positive and negative - is pretty clear. Leadership matters and we had the absolute worst.

Just 26 hours to go.

Responsibility Precedes Reunification

 This piece begins a discussion that we need to have about how we "move on" from 1/6 and Trumpism. Sycophants and moral cowards like Lindsay Graham petition for "unity" without first demonstrating contrition.

Republicans have been complicit in Trumpism - even the proto-Trumpism with roots back into the '90s - since the beginning. They have cheered on tearing children from their families on our southern border. They have embraced openly discriminatory practices. They have embraced the lies and assaults on American democratic institutions. 

Now that they have lost control of the House, Senate and White House, now that their lies have led to bloodshed, the Trump enablers want to unify behind a collective amnesia. They want to move on before they have been held accountable. No doubt they have already loaded rhetoric about "Christian forgiveness." But Christian forgiveness is first based on confession and penance. 

If Trumpsits and the GOP want unity and forgiveness, first confess your sins against the country and our institutions and ideals. Do your penance. 

Then ask for unity and forgiveness.

Winfield Scott For The Win

 Interesting thread on the last time Confederates and white supremacists tried to stop an election from being certified. Most notably, the role Winfield Scott played in saving the Republic.

That Other Crisis

 Remember the pandemic? We are entering the really fraught stages where new variants arise because of the increased number of cases. As more people transmit the virus, more opportunities arise for mutation. Every time a virus moves from host to host, the opportunity for mutation increases. There's a certain accelerated Darwinian dynamic at play. If a mutation is beneficial - like the UK variant that makes the virus more contagious - it will replicate more efficiently. 

So far, we've been spared the real nightmare. Covid is fairly contagious, but it's not measles. It doesn't persist for long on surfaces and even on surfaces it seems to not be very contagious. Masks have seemed to make a real difference in slowing transmission. And the fact is, most people will not die of this disease.

The nightmare is a new variant that is not only more contagious but resistant to the new vaccine or more lethal. So far, the lethality of the virus is less troubling (at least to me) that "long haul Covid" that permanently damages your health. If we discover a more contagious AND more lethal variant of the virus, we are likely truly screwed because the learned experience of many people with Covid is that it's not really a big deal. If public health officials say that we have a new variant that can kill, say, 10% of people who get it, everything has shown that millions will ignore the science.

Failure

 It's worth noting just how profound a failure the Beerbelly Putsch was ten days ago. As scary as it was and as scary as it remains, the insurrectionists had one primary goal: re-elect Donald Trump in the face of what they perceived as massive voter fraud and to demonstrate the resolve of "patriotic Americans" in the face of this new multiracial "Unamerican" 21st century.

So, where do we stand?

Trump has been impeached again and will leave office in four days. The putsch attempt has led to the fracturing of the Republican Party as to whether they will return to the party of the Chamber of Commerce and subtle contempt for the will of the people or become the party of QAnon and open contempt for the will of the people. The FBI, which has soft-peddled surveillance and enforcement against Rightist terror groups will now - especially under Biden - throw massive amounts of resources to make sure 1/6 never happens again.

Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and the rest of the Sedition Caucus are under tremendous scrutiny. It would be hilarious if ambulatory Parler thread, Lauren Boebert, were to be arrested before the end of her first term, but that seems almost likely at this point.

There is a fundamental delusion at the heart of all of this: that Trumpists make up the true majority of Americans. They were a majority on election day and they would activate that majority on 1/6. 

None of this is true.

Not that truth has ever really mattered to these yahoos, but it seems as if 1/6 was a tipping point where the truth is starting to manifest itself with arrests and job losses.

Where To Republicans? Part 192,034

 Fareed Zakaria points out what others are saying: The Republican Party is headed towards a reckoning. This has been long in the making. In a two-party system (and our electoral system makes a two-party system almost inevitable), parties must become coalitions. Left of center parties are usually known for their robust and powerful schisms. But right of center parties can fracture, too. 

As Zakaria notes, the modern GOP built the Nixon-Reagan coalition: Chamber of Commerce Republicans allied with evangelicals, libertarians and the racist crack-up of the FDR coalition. For two decades, this coalition held a fair amount of sway in Washington, beginning with Nixon and Wallace capturing 57% of the vote combined. Large parts of America turned away from the anti-war Left and while Carter managed a narrow victory in the ashes of Watergate, from 1968 until 1992, he was the only Democratic candidate to win the presidency.

Since 1992, Bush - as an incumbent in 2004 - is the only Republican to win the popular vote. It is worth noting that Nixon improved on his margins in '72, Reagan improved on his margins in '84, Clinton improved on his margins in '96 and Bush improved on his margins in '04. Barack Obama is the only president I can find since 1900 to win re-election with a SMALLER percentage of the popular vote. You either improve on your margins (Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Dubya) or you lose re-election (Taft, Hoover, Carter, Bush 41, Trump) or your Barack Obama. (I left out "accidental" presidents who rise to power after a president dies or resigns, Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, LBJ and Ford.)

So, one thing is that the "new Trump voters" of 2020 represent this natural trend towards rewarding incumbency, buffered by the fact that Trump is a shithead and people hate him.

Anyways, the Republican Party has been staring a demographic problem in the face for a while now. Natural and partisan gerrymanders have helped preserve competitiveness in the Congress, but these demographic trends have turned Virginia from a battleground into a safely blue state. If Georgia and Arizona represent new battlegrounds, then North Carolina and Texas seemed destined to trend purple, too. While Democrats will have to play defense in the "Blue Wall," much of the Democratic part of the country is pretty solid.

The GOP needs to decide who they will become. Will they become the party of Mitt Romney or Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene? 

Honestly, I hope they splinter like the Whigs, the way Zakaria suggests. Eventually they will coalesce into a new party, but hopefully that one isn't batshit crazy. In the meantime, the grown ups can govern for a while.

Hollowing Out The Government

 At least part of the reason why the Capitol was unprepared for the Cracker Barrel Putsch last Wednesday is that Trump - and really the GOP - has hollowed out important functions of the government. They have also politicized the agencies to ignore rightist terror.

Biden has his work cut out for him.

Groundhog Day

 So Donald Trump was impeached...again. For trying to subvert American elections...again.

There is some question as to whether the Senate will hold a trial for him. They will. McConnell slow walking the trial actually works for me. 

First, Trump is on a choke collar. With several Republican Senators at least theoretically open to convicting, he has to be on his best boy behavior these next few days. We are really just counting down the days until Biden takes the oath. We just have to limp over that line without Trump burning everything down. This helps.

Second, if the trial happens after Warnock and Ossoff have their elections certified, Schumer is the one who sets the rules. There is precedent for judges and officials who have resigned and then been impeached under a simple majority vote, preventing them from holding office again. Schumer could say that they are following that precedent or he could strike a deal so that enough Republicans boycott the trial to reach the 2/3rd present to convict. Every Senator believes they should be president, and that means that "boycotting" the trial means that Trump can't run in 2024 and opens the door to seize his mantle. 

I hear the arguments that Democrats should welcome Trump running in 2024, but I'm no longer interested in taking that risk.

How We Got Here

 This is an interesting interview with a right of center scholar, Geoffrey Kabaservice, who argues not only that the Republican Party has become a radical party - something I've been arguing for years - and not a conservative party. In particular, he identifies spasms within conservatism that are primarily about "lost causes." These backwards looking attempts to stall progress usually fail, and there's a certain accretion of failure that has increasingly radicalized people.

Most importantly, he looks at Newt Gingrich's role in cynically creating this idea of anti-government. As I've taught it, Reagan had a nice quip "Government isn't the solution to your problems, it IS the problem." Reagan understood this to be campaign rhetoric; Gingrich and those that followed him see it as a the philosophical bedrock of their politics. 

America needs a center-right party. Currently, it has a far-right party. Unless the GOP suffers a few decades in the political wilderness, it won't change.

Fourteenth Amendment Solutions

 Here's an interesting idea to bar Trump from ever holding office again by invoking Section 3 of the XIV Amendment. It was designed to prevent men who had sworn an oath to defend and protect the Constitution and then joined the Confederacy trying to overthrow the government. The question is simply how to apply the 14th Amendment to Trump. In Court? In Congress? Perhaps a simple majority vote could work.

What we do know, is that Trump is completely unrepentant and would do it again. In some ways, his being banned from Twitter is saving him from the 25th Amendment and impeachment. If he was allowed to spew his fetid nonsense into social media, Republicans would have no place to hide.

Following The Money

 As Democrats in Congress try and force Republicans to put their country before their party, there is another effort underway to force accountability on Trump and the Trumpists on the GOP. 

Private companies across the spectrum are taking actions to restrict Trump and Trumpists rhetoric and platforms. Cumulus Media, who employ Trumpists like Mark Levin and Dan Bongino, have told them to knock off the rhetoric that the election is fraudulent or else lose their jobs. Amazon shutdown Parler's webhosting, as the Apple story stopped distributing it. 

Quite a few Fortune 500 companies have said they will stop giving contributions to politicians that verbally supported the Cracker Barrel Putsch. 

I watched a panel of historians talk about Trump's efforts to subvert faith in our nation's elections. I was largely unimpressed with their arguments (they were fairly well trod paths). They spent some time talking about how the GOP is basically rooted in overturning the New Deal. I think that's right and wrong. The modern "Conservative Movement" arose out of opposition to the New Deal, but they never had the votes. People really liked the New Deal.  You may have heard of FDR; people liked him. 

What gave the "Conservative Movement" the juice to come to life was the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights and social goods for minorities. When Democrats became the party of "women's libbers" and Black Panthers and Jane Fonda, there was an opening to peel away New Deal Democrats. They then aligned those with socially conservative suburbanites in the Sun Belt to create the Reagan Coalition. 

At some point, those suburbanites moved left on social issues. Many still purport to be "fiscally conservative," but fiscal conservatism is really "don't give public goods to Black people." This was the beginning of the Obama Coalition of People of Color, Millennials, and the Professional Class.

The movement of the Professional Class into the Democratic Party has been decried by Leftists and "Socialists" who want a working class party, like FDR had. But having the financial power of the Professional Class on your side means that there are a lot more levers to influence public policy. 

I doubt that Mike Pence invokes the 25th Amendment, in which case the House will impeach him. I doubt there are enough votes in the Senate to remove him, but who knows. 

So far, aside from becoming the first president to be impeached twice, Trump's biggest consequence has been from the rejection of him, his politics and his party by the Professional Class. 

That seems important.

Not Just DC

 The WaPost has put up a timeline of Wednesday, and what is striking to me - who was glued to the TV for hours - was that these violent protests were not limited to the Capitol grounds. Similar assaults on the capitol builds occurred in GA, LA, OH, UT, NM, CO, TX, MN, CA, AZ and OR. 

In an exchange with a colleague, he asked how we respect and teach those who believed all the Little Lies until they needed to believe the Big Lie. 

I think we are past that point.

When Deray McKesson came to speak at our school, he said that (at least his version of) Black Lives Matter didn't want "no police" they just wanted police to treat Blacks the same as Whites, that communities of color are simultaneously over- and underpoliced. As we saw this summer, police are perfectly willing to deploy "less than lethal" munitions against peaceful protestors when they are Black, and they need to start employing the same tactics against the violent protests from the Right. 

Ever since Ruby Ridge/Waco and Timothy McVeigh, law enforcement has handled Right Wing anarchists and terrorists different than Left protestors and anarchists. The lesson of the McVeigh has been overlearned to the point where we basically tolerate massive illegality on the Right for fear they might use violence against the state. 

What we are discovering now is that this tactic hasn't worked, and it needs to change.

The High Priest Of The Big Lie

 This excellent essay by Professor Timothy Snyder tries to place Trump, Trumpism and the GOP into the proper context of fascism and other forms of authoritarianism. 

I have never been convinced that Trump was a true fascist. (This offer does not apply to Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka or others around Trump.) He lacked any ideology beyond his personal vanity. He played many of the strings on the fascist violin. Trump's belief in racism and white nationalism, his open embrace of dictatorships and contempt for democracy, these are clearly fascist. But he failed to explicitly embrace militarism and imperialism, because the military were insufficiently sycophantic to his person. He only tepidly embraced using state power to reward the bulk of his followers. His engagement in Covid relief is a great example of him being too lazy and self-centered to be a proper fascist. If he had really pressed for more checks, if infrastructure week wasn't a running joke, maybe he starts to become a full-fledged fascist. 

Trump is undoubtedly an authoritarian. Think about how that manifests though. HIS elections were fraudulent, including 2016, because it didn't reflect on his glory. The other GOP losses? He couldn't care less. Fascism is devoted to the party and Volk. Trump was only devoted to himself.

What Snyder also nails is the importance of the "Big Lie." Trump is the undisputed master of the "Little Lie." He could not speak more than five minutes without lying, from the moment he came down the escalator to five minutes ago, Trump lied about everything. As Snyder notes, many of Trump's lies were also "Medium Lies." Snyder:

Some of his lies were, admittedly, medium-size: that he was a successful businessman; that Russia did not support him in 2016; that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Such medium-size lies were the standard fare of aspiring authoritarians in the 21st century. In Poland the right-wing party built a martyrdom cult around assigning blame to political rivals for an airplane crash that killed the nation’s president. Hungary’s Viktor Orban blames a vanishingly small number of Muslim refugees for his country’s problems. But such claims were not quite big lies; they stretched but did not rend what Hannah Arendt called “the fabric of factuality.”

What Trump did, though, was seed the ground for the Big Lie. That was the lie that America's democracy had failed because it did not give Trump a second term. That was the Big Lie that lead to the Cracker Barrel Putsch on Wednesday. That Big Lie was created by Trump AND THE BROADER GOP'S assault on objective reality. Here is Snyder on the cultivation of the small lies:

Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself.

By constantly lying and smearing the media, Trump made himself the only trusted source of information for millions of Americans. Social Media has amplified and accelerated this. Snyder mentions the death of local news...and, yeah, sure. But America has entered into Post-Truth Politics and the death of local news because there are now hundreds of other sources of "news." Trump exploited  the existing landscape. 

So, is Trump a fascist? A little bit, but not entirely. Does that in any excuse his or his party's behavior? Absolutely not. You can be an authoritarian dictator without being fascist.

Now...Josh Hawley on the other hand...

Eleven Days

 I'm guessing every day for at least the next 11 days will demonstrate yet another example of Trump's lawlessness. Today, we have what amounts to obstruction of justice in Georgia (naturally).

The House looks to impeach (or try to impeach) on Monday. That's providing we survive the weekend. It does sound like the military is taking steps to remove Trump's ability to create a war away from him. Given reports of him being basically non compos mentis, I doubt he has the mental wherewithal to make a "cunning plan" to subvert the measures being put in place to constrain him. 

If the House votes to impeach on Monday or Tuesday, the Senate trial can basically hang over his head as a threat. Personally, I hope that McConnell brings the Senate back into sessions and almost all Republicans stay away. Conviction in the Senate of a sitting President requires 2/3rds of all members present. If all 48 Democrats (presuming Ossoff and Warnock are not yet certified the winners) and a handful of Republicans (McConnell, Romney, Toomey would do) are present, Trump could be removed from office. Republicans can claim they didn't support it because they are cowards. The nation could be spared Trump's manic flailings and self-serving pardons. Pence can put on his Big Boy Pants for a week and we can wait to see what fresh hell Trump and his cultists unleash on 1/20.

Impeachment

 At some point, we need to impeach Trump so he can't run in 2024. Part of me wants to see him run again in '24 and get spanked even worse without the trappings of office and perhaps facing active court proceedings. I do worry that our legal system has proven problematic in prosecuting the rich and powerful though and the last thing I want is to roll the dice again in 2024 as to whether we become a dictatorship.

So I applaud Pelosi's agreeing with her members to advance this. If nothing else, it could put Trump in check as he awaits the Senate trial. 

By my count, we have 52 votes, with Romney and Murkowski seemingly on board. Frankly, I could see McConnell stepping up on this to get some Beltway plaudits.

Apparently the 25th Amendment will fail. This has to happen.

DC

 Yesterday, as I've tried to argue below, the Capitol Police were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The only way they could have been stopped was if the National Guard was there or perhaps large numbers of riot police.

So why weren't they there?

The best and simplest answer is that the Mayor of DC has no authority to do so. The authority rests with the Congress, the Pentagon and especially the President. There are some conflicting reports about exactly who called out the National Guard eventually, but we know that Maryland and Virginia sent significant police presences as well.

All of this is to say: It is well past time for DC to be a state.

The Capitol Police

 There's obviously a ton that I could write about concerning yesterday's putsch attempt, but I wanted to pushback on some of the online speculation about the Capitol Police. There are a few images of Capitol police abandoning barricades, one in particular has gotten a lot of mileage on social media. There is a lot more footage that will come out, and I recommend starting with this intrepid report from ITV. 

There very well could have been some complicity on the part of a few Capitol police officers. We certainly know that police lean authoritarian in their politics. But watching several clips of footage, it's clear that what happened was that they were overwhelmed. The Capitol police are not "real" police, in the sense of having riot control training. They basically patrol the Capitol grounds, usher visitors around and protect the Members of Congress. They are responsible not only for the massive Capitol building, but also the office buildings - huge bureaucratic buildings with hundreds of offices. They had about 2000 officers to cover the Capitol, the Russell, Dirksen, Hart, Cannon, Longworth and Rayburn buildings. 

It looks like as many as 10,000 Trumpist brown shirts flooded the Capitol grounds. At some point, a decision was made not to use live ammunition. Many people have commented that if these protestors were Black or Brown, the outcome would have been a bloodbath. I certainly hope we never have to test that hypothesis. We do know that one Trumpist, QAnon supporter was shot and killed by Capitol police. In the nationwide protests immediately following George Floyd's death, 19 people died. Four people died yesterday, though three died of "medical reasons" that are currently obscure. There is video or Capitol police shoving and punching the insurrectionists. 

There should very much be a reckoning. The problem, though, seems to me to be primarily one of a failure of imagination or even just observation on the part of Capitol and DC police forces. This was all very predictable. When I saw the first Trumpists attacking the barricades, I presumed that National Guard troops were on close stand-by and would come in to beef up the uniformed police. There were no National Guard forces available until much later. 

The Capitol police are fully capable of manning metal detectors, arresting a handful of protestors and their usual daily job. They are not capable of stopping an insurrection. Their first job is the security of the Members and their staff. When the insurrectionists breached Capitol grounds, they prioritized getting Members and staff to safety. They achieved that. Ultimately, the putsch failed. 

The first question is why they weren't prepared for an insurrection. 

So far, there have only been 52 arrests. Again, many on social media were wondering why they weren't arresting more people inside the Capitol. Again, it comes down to numbers. Their priority was clearing the Capitol grounds so that the counting of the Electoral votes could proceed and the members could be safe. Presumably, the 52 who were arrested were arrested for resisting those efforts. 

Here's the crux of the matter and I think just as important is finding out why they weren't prepared for an insurrection: what now? 

Federal law enforcement remains paralyzed by the memory of Ruby Ridge and Waco. They handle Rightist and Fascist groups very gingerly, at least in part because those groups are armed to the teeth. They presume, perhaps correctly, that every Randy Weaver becomes a martyr that creates more radicalization. However, at some point, this creates a feedback loop of lawlessness that culminated with insurrectionists storming the US Capitol. There is a direct line from how Ammon Bundy was handled to how yesterday unfolded.

There is ample evidence of who was breaking the law. These morons had their phones out, taking videos of themselves breaking the law. It made tactical sense not to try and arrest them all last night. You had a mob amped up on hate and anger, feeding off each other and not enough officers to both control them and arrest them.

However, they are now dispersing back to their homes. Arrest them in groups. Arrest them as they get off the plane. Arrest them on their way to work on Monday. 

I am sympathetic to the fact that a police force was unable to stop an insurrection. That's the military's job, usually. I am mildly understanding of not wanting to create martyrs or a mass casualty event in the halls of the Capitol. My understanding stops short of "let bygones be bygones."

Make no mistake, they will try this again. If there is one silver lining, it's that we now have a dry run for what they will attempt on January 20th. The authorities in DC were naïve in the extreme in thinking that the Trumpist Brown Shirts were just another protest group, that could be handled like just another protest. The blinders are off. Everyone of us who were saying Trump is this bad are exactly right. His supporters really are Deplorables and they are currently simmering in their 8chan rooms waiting to try this again.

Yesterday was a declaration of civil war by those Deplorables and there can be no confusion about what comes next.

The Sneaky Clause of the 25th Amendment

 There is increasing talk that members of the Cabinet are considering invoking the 25th Amendment. Given the events of today, it might actually land. I can think of a few Cabinet members (Mnuchin, Chao, maybe even Carson) who would jump on board. If you get to 50% of the Cabinet and the Vice President, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is invoked. 

Once it is invoked, the President can challenge it by transmitting a written declaration that he is fit for office. As long as the majority of the Cabinet and Vice President continue to assert that the President is unfit for office, the issue then passes to the Congress. Congress can then hold hearings for up to 21 days to evaluate the President. 

Biden becomes President in 14 days. 

In short, the 25th Amendment was never going to work because the Republican Party, especially in the fever swamps of the House, is in thrall to Trump. It CAN work, with less than 21 days however.

ALSO! The House should impeach again. But if they can get the 25th Amendment loophole, they should impeach after 1/20...a bare majority can prevent him from ever holding office again.

Holy Crap, It Happened

 There was a moment last night when CNN said - wrongly - that there weren't enough votes left in Dekalb County for Ossoff to win. After looking at really strong numbers all evening, I felt that old Democratic Dread creeping in. Somehow, defeat would be snatched from the jaws of victory.

And then it didn't happen. 

There is a coalition building between Blacks and College Educated Whites that could redraw the American political map. As Ohio reddens, Georgia, North Carolina and potentially Texas loom as the new battleground states. Virginia is now Blue, along with Colorado. A different dynamic is flipping Arizona, but the larger pattern holds. 

Republicans have benefitted from those White College Educated Suburban voters for a long time. As "professional class" whites abandon the GOP, it not only means places like Georgia become competitive while places like Virginia stop being competitive, it also means things for midterm elections. Those white suburban voters show up. Year after year, election after election.

They show up for a simple reason: they believe their vote will count. I mean, they are white, well off and things more or less work for them. No one is trying to disenfranchise them and never have. If African Americans begin to believe the same thing - and that was Stacey Abrams' accomplishment, as much as physically registering voters - then the electoral map gets harder and harder for Republicans.

Real change is possible now. The tax code will become fairer. Regulations can be rewritten more quickly. Judges and Cabinet posts can be filled quickly. Republicans will have to explain why they are filibustering legislation to create Green jobs or a new Voting Rights Act. 

This is a Big Fucking Deal.

2021 Off To A Great Start

 Did you hear the good news?

Oh, This Is Interesting

 The House could impeach Trump again AFTER Biden is inaugurated, and if a bare majority of the Senate approves, he could never hold federal office again. Obviously, if Democrats win in Georgia, Mitt Romney would join them and that's 51 votes. Maybe Ben Sasse or Susan Collins joins in, knowing that Trump has been permanently neutered.

Georgia

 Polls (I know) say it's a toss-up, and that certainly tracks with what happened in November. Ultimately, it will be about turnout. Early voting looks good for Ossoff and Warnock, so we will have to see what same-day voting looks like. 

Basically, my gut says one of two things will happen.

1) Trump is no longer on the ballot, Loeffler and Perdue are empty suits. Democratic inroads with reliable voters in the suburbs of Atlanta provide the margins of victory.

2) Republicans, convinced by Trump that elections are fraudulent, flood the polls to "stop the steal." Gain the suburbs stall and rural Georgia overwhelms Fulton and DeKalb counties.

Either one is plausible. 

Oh, and we won't know for days.

The Emerging Democratic Majority

 John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote a book call The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002 (here is the summary from 2012, after Obama's re-election). Teixeira predicted that the "Obama Coalition" was here to stay...and then 2016 happened. Of course, the "Obama Coalition" did provide a plurality of the electorate for Hillary Clinton, but Trump upended things by breaking the Blue Wall. John Judis revisited it in August.

I find Judis' analysis fairly unconvincing (and not just in this instance). Judis tends to be very much a deterministic materialist, which is to say, everything is explained by economics. In his analysis, Obama and the Democrats lost support in 2010, because their policy portfolio wasn't economically populist enough. Maybe. Or maybe the absolute freakout by the Tea Party over being given health care has more to do with "those people" benefitting from government programs. I'm not saying it's ALL racial resentment, but it sure explains a lot.

It would be easy and wrong to read to much into this week's runoff in the Georgia election. In many ways, the future of competent governance is on the ballot. If Democrats win, they can control the legislative agenda and force the GOP to vote against popular programs. At the very least, Cabinet members and judges can get hearings and confirmed. 

Early voting is once again vigorous. Over 42% of registered voters in Fulton County have voted, as have over 40% of Cobb County and 46% of Dekalb.  But over 49% of Fayette County - overwhelmingly white - has also voted. Non-Hispanic Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites are voting at roughly the same rate. Over 118,000 voters have voted who did not vote in November and total turnout is over 3,000,000. A little under 5,000,000 voted in November. 

Runoffs are usually low voter turnout affairs, and we won't know whether that largely holds true depending on in-person voting later this week. Maybe everyone has already voted and election day only adds a million votes. Maybe turnout matches or exceeds November.

The really interesting test case is for what the "Trump Voter" means for the future of the Republican Party. It is clear that Trump energized a segment of the electorate that is hard to measure via polls and votes somewhat irregularly. This "working class" demographic (better understood as Whites Without College, some of whom are quite well off) was once part of the Democratic Coalition. Race, sexuality, gender issues...all have shorn these voters from the Democratic Party. As they have left, college educated suburbanites (especially, but not exclusively women) have filled in the gaps. 

Those college educated voters are more dependable voters, especially in lower turnout elections. The usual dynamic was this: Democrats did great in Presidential years, with higher voter turnout. In midterm elections, Republicans did better, because their voters voted. If that dynamic erodes, with Democrats being able to count on strong support in midterm elections, there is a chance for Democrats to retain a working majority in the House for the foreseeable future.

This Is A Crime

 The Post has obtained a recording of Trump trying to solicit a crime from the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger. The article is peppered by a few quotes from legal experts who say that it's unclear whether or not this qualifies as a crime. It certainly seems to me - completely untrained in the law - that doctoring electoral results is a crime. Asking someone to doctor electoral results - which is what Trump explicitly did on the phone call - is solicitating someone to commit that crime.

I doubt this crime comes with stiff sentences, but it should be the first focus of prosecutors, not only for Trump, but everyone who is participating in this ongoing effort to undermine the election of 2020. Back in 2017 when Neil Gorsuch was being confirmed to a seat that rightly belonged to Merrick Garland, Democrats were told elections have consequences. In 2020, during impeachment, Democrats were told that elections were the proper way to hold Trump accountable. Now that the election has been held and Trump has been repudiated, the GOP wants to erase the election.

This is as disturbing as pretty much anything Trump has done, aside from family separation. It certainly looks like the GOP is largely in lockstep with Trump in the active commission of this crime against American democracy. 

To be clear, I don't think Trump has much of any chance of overturning his loss. This isn't about that. It's about clear consequences for attacking the very idea of Democratic governance. Do we really think that if the GOP had control of the House, that this flagrant attack on the rule of law might not succeed? This is about establishing clear and criminal consequences for trying to undermine an election. This is a crime against everything that America has purported to stand for since 1776. 

Political squeamishness should not stand in the way of bringing these fuckers before the law.

Cowards Or Cynics

 We now have about a dozen Senators along with maybe a hundred House members who will baselessly contest the certification of Joe Biden in a few days. They don't believe the election is fraudulent. Maybe a few of the dumber House members do, but I would guess the ones who really believe that there was fraud can be counted on one hand.

The question therefore is whether they are cynical trying to light American electoral democracy on fire so they can capture Trump's fervid cultists or whether they are simply cowards before that same group. They could see that sucking up to the OANN/Breitbart/Epoch Times whackaloons as a way to position themselves for 2024. Trump will likely face multiple indictments (whether you can find 12 impartial jurors is an open question). So maybe they think they can seize his position. I doubt it. 

Maybe instead they fear the fate of Jeff Flake and others who dared get out of step with Trump.

The whole party needs to be burned to the ground.

What I've Missed

 Normally, I would be at the family farm in Georgia with friends I've known literally my whole life. This year, two of our moms would not be there, having died, though not of Covid. It's because of Covid that we aren't congregating there and likely never will again. That's not necessarily because of Covid, but it is because of 2020. 

My professional life has been turned upside down by the pandemic. Teaching is harder than it has been since I was a young teacher. Parenting remains hard. Getting older and less healthy remains hard. 

But I'm very lucky. I'm materially well off. Whatever struggles my sons have had and will have, we are in a position to support them. My school is better off than most and did a good job this fall, at least, with containing the pandemic.

I don't know what 2021 has in store for us. I'm not so naïve to believe that things will get better because we flipped a page on the calendar. Not having that orange-tinted fuckstick in the White House will help my equilibrium some. If we say 2021 can't be worse, we are setting ourselves up for something awful.

I certainly hope this year is better for all of us. Hope is better than the alternative.