I Hate Illinois Nazis

 I'm teaching the 1930s in US History right now, and it's fascinating looking at the rise of Nazi Germany, their co-conspirators in the US and the parallels to today's Republican Party. (Let's leave aside the merits of the New Deal and our need for a new Fair Labor Standards Act.)

This week we saw the annual freakshow that is CPAC, but simultaneously, we saw the America First PAC hold a conclave down the street. At CPAC, as I mentioned earlier, they are doing the usual coy flirtation with Nazis and Klansmen that has typified the GOP since Nixon's Law and Order campaign and Reagan's speech at Philadelphia, Mississippi. Shaping their stage like a Nazi symbol is not an accident and Matt Schlapp is lying when he says it is. The Odal Rune is a white supremacist symbol.

As white supremacy has passed from the foundations of American culture to its fringes, white supremacists have relied in little winks and nudges to communicate to each other and enrage those who are watching out for the symbols. A great example of this is the white power symbol that is basically the OK sign. Because it's a positive symbol ("OK!") they can plausibly deny that they are making a symbolic gesture of solidarity with white supremacists, while simultaneously doing so AND pissing off the libs, which is after all why a modern conservative gets out of bed the morning.  The Odal Rune is a great example of this. Shaping your stage like that was absolutely signaling the white supremacists whose side you're on and yet obscure enough to allow Schlapp to deny it is exactly what it is.

Meanwhile, AFPAC simply lets its swastika flag fly. Disgraced white supremacist Congressman Steve King basically makes a speech right out of prewar Nazism about how we need to have white babies to prevent the country from becoming non-white. Those are his literal words. Paul Gosar - who in normal times would be the worst member of Congress, but Louis Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Trailerpark Greene, Lauren Boebert, Devin Nunes and Matt Gaetz are still there - basically echoed those themes. Gosar also embraced white supremacy in no uncertain terms, saying if America "loses its white demographic core and if it loses its faith in Jesus Christ, then it's not America anymore." 

The whole thing was organized by Nick Fuentes, an actual Nazi, represents an underground but interconnected movement of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who are successfully infiltrating College Republicans and other areas of white, young, make anger. 

Now, these are still fringe groups.  What is truly terrifying is that savvy DC operators in the Republican Party are not repudiating them and calling them out, beyond a few voices. 

The lesson Republicans have taken from Trump is this: The only way to win national elections is to explicitly appeal to white nationalists and white supremacists. The historic losses that Trump has actually accrued, the movement of suburban, college educated voters away from the GQP has apparently not made an impact on their thinking yet. 

Illinois Nazis used to be a joke, now they are the Republican Party's electoral strategy.

UPDATE: As always, the overlap is with "White Evangelicals" which might as well be synonymous with White Supremacists.

The Delusionalists

 Every year, CPAC happens and we point and laugh at things like the Trump Golden Calf or whatever stupid stupidity the stupid people do. Meanwhile, this year there is a concurrent white supremacist convention happening down the street. Roy Edroso wonders if they have a shuttle bus. 

Then you read things like this survey. Only 42% of Republican policy makers believe the election was legitimate AND THAT'S THE GOOD NEWS. That number collapses to 22% among the general Republican electorate. We have entered into a doom cycle on the right, where every election is proof that things are being rigged against them, because they keep losing elections. At no point will they admit that their really unpopular policy ideas or repellent personal views or behavior is to blame. It must be because the system is rigged.

Look at Texas, plunged into a preventable catastrophe by a fetish for deregulation. That SHOULD make people in Texas vote for Democrats, and if it does, that will simply be another example of how the system is rigged against Republicans, rather than force them to examine their crappy policy preferences. Joe Biden HAS created bipartisan support for his Covid relief package, just not among Republican office holders. So every Republican in the House is on the record for opposing Covid relief. Ideally, this would lead to them losing elections, because people want this to pass. It won't in most cases, however. When it does, it will be a sign of a nefarious plot against white people Americans.

This is why Republicans - faced with electoral peril - have simply lapsed into a cult of personality around a grifting reality TV star. This is why they have convinced themselves to support someone who is a raging narcissist and a moron and lazy and unfit in every way for public service: because he "stands up for them" by hating on "liberals" like he does. 

The single greatest current threat to American democracy is the Republican Party as currently constituted.

UPDATE: Nancy LeTourneau has a similar, more comprehensive take on how the GOP has simply given up on it's generations-long fight against the New Deal. Ending the rein of the Paul Ryan-type Republicans is..fine? Except all that leaves the GOP with is a desire to hold power to...wage war against the New Deal. And it hold power, they have to lean into white supremacy and grievance. 

Blindspots

 Paul Campos outlines a really important blindspot in discussions about both the minimum wage and cost of living. Because most people have a very slim grasp of how inflation works, we don't understand how costs and wages change in value over time. We have the example that Campos and other have noted of John Thune saying he did just fine on a $6/HR wage when he was a kid. But $6/HR when he was a teenager is the equivalent of $25/HR today. Is Thune arguing for a $25/HR minimum wage? Of course not. Is he stupid? I don't know. Is he wrong to base his argument against a $15/HR minimum wage on his experience decades ago? Very much so.

My college cost $18,000 a year when I went. It now costs $57,500 a year. I had $6/HR jobs in college and it kept me in enough money to scrape by. There is no way $7/HR could function the same way for a college student today. The idea of living on $7/HR and a 40 hour work week is absurd, and it's based on a flawed perspective on our individual past and the broader understanding of how inflation works in a post-gold standard economy.

It looks as if the "Fight for 15" will die in the Senate, because Joe Manchin is similarly stupid about how much things cost and won't abolish the filibuster (which is stupid for a host of reasons). The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that a minimum wage increase isn't part of the budgetary process, which is broadly true. 

Still, Democrats need to show they understand that a living wage is both popular and a potential huge attack angle against Republicans, but they will have to convince people who made $6/HR when they were kids how the world actually works, and I'm not optimistic.

I'm sure Populist Hero of the People Josh Hawley will help them out.

The Worst People

 Who's the worst person in Congress? Is there ANY Democrat who is as cruel as Marjorie Trailerpark Greene or Matt Gaetz? Anyone as dumb as Lauren Boebert and Louie Gohmert? Anyone as cynical as Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley? 

How is it possible that all the worst people are in one party and that party still commands the loyalty of millions of Americans?

The Minimum Wage

 This piece summarizes nicely the arguments for raising the minimum wage to $15 and hour. Simple economic models have made predictions about the negative impact of the minimum wage that simply haven't been borne out. If anything the minimum wage increase could drive jobs overseas, but how many of those jobs are left? I suppose it could have an impact on an already struggling retail sector, but again...already struggling.

Ultimately, the arguments against raising it are steeped more in ideology than evidence.

Time To Brag

 Josh Marshall makes a really important point: good policy does not automatically make good politics. Obama was not a braggart by nature and existed in the realm of logical technocrat. He presumed that he could make a logical case for the achievements of his presidency and that would be enough for re-election (yes) and a Democratic successor (no). In fact, Obama is the only president I can find that lost support for his re-election and still got re-elected. 

It was Biden who came up with the theme for re-election: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. That's pretty clear messaging, and Biden seems to have the old Irish pol's feel for simple, encompassing statements. In 2009, Obama and Democrats saved the country from a depression and expanded health insurance for millions of Americans (and would have expanded it to millions more if not for Republican governors and Supreme Court justices). But Democrats got smoked in 2010 and didn't recover the House until that Orange Shitstain moved in. 

Democrats need to embrace the "forever campaign." They need to sell their policy as it's happening, rather than waiting for the month before the election. Set the terms of the debate; otherwise the Republicans will do it for you.

Decline And Fall

 One question has seemingly stymied the professional chattering classes: What happened to Lindsay Graham? The guy who attached himself to John McCain like a remora has now attached himself to Donald Trump. How could this be? 

As Martin Longman explains, it's because Lindsay Graham is both smart and unprincipled. Donald Trump has turned the party in the National Front or UKIP or AfD: crypto-fascist parties who appeal to an entirely different set of voters that the Party of McCain (or Bush 41).

Current Republicans say that if Trump breaks with the GOP, they will follow Trump 46-27. Given all we know about Trump, that's a depressing number. If there's any reason to hope, it's that sane people are departing the Republican Party. Jennifer Rubin argues that "sane Republicans" should leave the party. 

There can be little argument that the GOP has become a Cult of Personality surrounding arguably the worst person (much less President) that this country could produce. 

What needs to happen is a full on schism. Sure, if Susan Collins wants to be an independent and vote with Democrats on some things, fine. But it's Susan Fucking Collins. There is no way I want to depend on her for anything. Maybe liberating her from the party whip would move her in a saner direction, but she's hopeless.

We need two rightist parties in America. We need the party of Wall Street: Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins. And we need a party of Trumpism: Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Trailerpark Greene and Lauren Boebert. They need to run slates of candidates everywhere and split the vote. What's more, they need to do it KNOWING it will hand universal control to the Democratic Party for several years.

Only the Democratic Party of the late 19th century is less deserving of running the country than the GQP is right now. And frankly it's neck and neck.

Why I'm Optimistic

 I feel like we will be getting back to normal with Covid sooner rather than later, and by sooner, I mean summer. I was taken aback by claims that you might be able to spread it after you have been vaccinated. It turns out that's not exactly true, in fact it's likely false. The structure of the initial trials back in the fall simply prohibited them from being able to say with any certainty if being vaccinated stopped you from being able to spread the disease. The early data from mass vaccination is promising. As we pass the half million mark of deaths, we also reckon with the fact that over 28,000,000 Americans have had confirmed cases of Covid, and we can safely assume the number of people actually infected is much higher. Since so many people exhibit no symptoms, it's safe to assume significant numbers of people have had the virus and shook it off, giving them some immunity going forward. 

As we approach the 44,000,000 mark of vaccines, we are also seeing real evidence that even the first shot provides real protection. Almost 1,500,000 people are getting vaccinated daily. That means by early May another 100,000,000 Americans could have their Fauci Ouchies. At that point, you start to bump up against the millions of Americans who simply won't get the shot. At the same time, if you add up the tens of millions who have had the virus - even if they never knew it - and the half of Americans who will likely have been vaccinated, then the spread of the disease should dramatically slow. Warm weather will do wonders, too.

Covid will eventually become an endemic disease. The Trump team made two assumptions that were wrong at the time but will become true as we move forward. We will reach herd immunity, but through a combination of almost unchecked spread in some states and mass vaccinations. And it will eventually become like the flu, requiring a yearly booster and killing some of the vulnerable. 

So, as we pass the grim milestone of half a million deaths, I think the worst is pass.

Can We Chase The Money Changers From The Temple?

 Nancy LeTourneau takes a run at a specific cluster of dark money groups that surround conservative court packing efforts, including the Judicial Crisis Network, the Federalist Society and now the 85 Fund. 

It's helpful, obviously, to look at reactionary politics in America as consisting of two distinct groups. First, you have the Trumpists. These are largely petty bourgeousie from the exurbs: plumbers, small business owners and others who feel squeezed and blame it on people of color. They feel their privileged status as white people slipping away and invest their hopes in a thrice divorced con artist. Evangelicals are a huge part of this. This is where most of the votes come from.

Secondly, you have a coalition of antigovernmental libertarians. These are either ideologically motivated or motivated from self-interest and often both simultaneously. These are the billionaires who are trying to rig the courts for a generation to strike down efforts to constrain great wealth. 

If the MAGA crowd are populists, the Federalist Society are plutocrats. Thus, their interests overlap in voter suppression. 

The most critical piece of legislation that will die under the filibuster is HR1, a voting rights bill. All across the country the racist MAGAs and the plutocrats are working to prevent Americans in certain areas from voting. 

The MAGA crowd is largely unreachable, and luckily, the actuarial table will reduce their numbers yearly. The plutocrats can best be exposed by sunlight laws to disclose how this dark money sluices around our politics. 

I'm skeptical that "campaign finance laws" will magically erase the advantage that racism gives the GOP in the Senate and state houses, but exposing the money that eats at the heart of our democracy could. 

Texas Sized Reckoning Is Coming

 I sadly doubt that the entrenched one-party rule of free market ideologues plunging the state into a preventable disaster will lead to Republicans losing control of the levers of government in the Lone Star State.

The coming catastrophe of huge bills? That might do it.

Reopening Schools

 Greg Sargent lays out the problems with Republicans using schools in specific and Covid in general as an attack angle on Biden and Democrats. First, Biden is "going big" in his Covid plan and working to reopen schools. 

Second is really about the American Attention Span. When voters go to the polls in 2022, how much will they remember two things: the 1/6 insurrection and the recovery from Covid? The first is unknowable until it's knowable.

With Covid recovery, I'm actually optimistic. All along the paradox of Covid is that it is simultaneously deadly and not deadly; contagious and not-contagious. Masks and distancing are a pain (actually, as an introvert, distancing is...fine), but I don't feel especially worried about getting Covid as long as I follow got precautions. And if I DO get it, I feel reasonably confident I will live. I worry most about long haul Covid and an impact on my health which is already feeling the indignities of middle age.

As a teacher, I am hopeful that I will get my first Fauci Ouchie in the next 6 weeks, and be fully vaccinated by Memorial Day at the latest. I will still mostly follow precautions as advised, but my worry about developing heart problems or even dying will be greatly reduced. I think schools reopen in close to normal conditions in the fall. I think Covid becomes an endemic seasonal illness that is a hassle for some people with occasional dire implications for others. In other words, it becomes like the flu in reality, not just Trumpian rhetoric.

I really think the summer is going to be OK, not perfect, but OK. And Republicans attacking Democrats and Biden for their Covid response will not echo outside Fox/OAN/Newsmax.

20/20

 A global pandemic. America turning away from the world. Racial unrest. Labor strife. Restrictions on civil liberties. Massive corrupt self-dealing in the government. White supremacists emboldened and marching on Washington. Anti-immigrant hysteria. A government struggling to ban illegal substances.

This is a description of America roughly a hundred years ago. The flu pandemic; tariff and trade policy; race riots, including the Greenwood massacre; general strikes; the Harding Administration; the "Second Klan" effectively taking over the government of some states; various immigration exclusion acts, Prohibition...all of this was from the period 1918-1923. The pandemic then was worse and coming off a murderous and especially pointless war.

This turmoil helped usher in a conservative governance that survived Teapot Dome scandals and the absolute lack of charisma in Calvin Coolidge. It led to the Scopes and Sacco and Vanzetti trials. The first Red Scare. The rise of criminal cartels supplying Americans with illegal alcohol.

In all, there are a lot of reasons to feel overwhelmed, but our grandparents and great-grandparents had it worse. They also seemed to make pretty shitty choices as a result. Coolidge and Andrew Mellon helped create an economy tailor made to suffer a bubble and a collapse. Hoover took the blame, but the Great Depression was created on Coolidge's watch. 

If Trump was re-elected, not only would we return to an America where the Klan would be welcome in the Oval Office but one where economic policy would prioritize short-term market returns over long-term economic health. 

Thankfully, we won't get a chance to test this thesis, but America requires at least 12 sustained years of Democratic control of the government, so that we can avoid the 1930s. It's too late to avoid the 1920s. We're already reliving them.

Texas Two-Step, One Party

 The situation in Texas is bad, and it's largely a creation of Texas' self-mythologizing and Republican one party rule. This manifests in several ways. Politicians will always deal with the imminent problem, so Texas is about as prepared as you reasonably can be along the Gulf Coast for hurricanes and in the Panhandle for tornados.  Deadly cold is not something they are prepared for. However, their desire to remain aloof from the national power grid is directly causing people to die. And the Republican fetish for deregulation has left power generators with obvious weak spots.

Several years ago, we had a massive, heavy wet snow storm strike Connecticut on Halloween, when the trees were still largely covered in leaves. We lost power for almost a week and had to move into a friend's house. Walking outside that night, you could hear tree branches exploding under the weight of snow like gunshots. As a result, Connecticut - which prides itself on its trees - began to massively cut back limbs from powerlines. It was expensive, but it was necessary.

Texas never prepared for something like this because they don't understand that a government is NOT supposed to be efficiently run "like a business."  Government is SUPPOSED to be inefficient to fill in the gaps when Black Swan events happen.

Faced with their own incompetence, Texas Republicans have been literally tilting at windmills, falsely blaming windmill freezing with the problem. (In fact, the windmills are meeting their quotas and the only reason they froze is that they weren't required to be winterized, which...back to our original problem with GOP rule.) Ted Cruz, always in the running for Worst Person Who Is Not Donald Trump, apparently scampered off to Mexico.

Obviously, I feel Texas would be better off with a Democratic governor and state house majority, but what Texas REALLY needs is to be "purple" and not just from the cold. Each party needs to fear screwing up and losing the next election. Republicans haven't had to worry about that. One party rule is corrosive of good government, and that applies to Democrats (see Cuomo, Andrew and De Blasio, Bill).

Rush To Judgement

 I usually try and restrain myself when someone I loath dies, but I'm going to go ahead and revel in the death of Rush Limbaugh. While I haven't thought of that ambulatory tumor for years, except to roll my eyes in disgust when Trump debased the Presidential Medal of Freedom by giving it to him, as I reflect on him at his death, I can be convinced that no single person is more a personification and cause of the maladies infesting our body politic than Rush Limbaugh.

There's a certain argument to made for Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell, as cynical inside operators who exploited norms to destroy the idea of bipartisan legislating. In terms of elected officials, they are the two most responsible for the dysfunction of the Congress, and I will piss on their graves when the day comes.

What Limbaugh represents is the living, breathing manifestation of Cleek's Law: Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.

That is modern "conservatism," effectively. When the GOP made their 2020 party platform an empty expression of fealty to Donald Trump, that did more than signal the intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party. Trump was and is hated by anyone to the left of Ben Sasse. That hatred of Trump is precisely at the root of his appeal and hold over the GOP base. The more we hate Trump, the more the base loves him.

It was Limbaugh who first tapped into this and made it his schtick. Anything liberals or even moderates wanted or supported, Limbaugh mocked and attacked. He was a racist, at least in part because liberal America thought racism was bad. He mocked the disabled, because liberals felt that they should be valued members of society. He was Trump before Trump, and helped drag the right into it's reflexive hatred of tolerance, kindness and inclusion. 

Without Limbaugh, I don't think there is a Trump, but then perhaps Trump was inevitable.

Infrastructure Week

 The ongoing disaster of the power grid in Texas is largely a product of Texas' own insular thinking - having its own power grid - and poor governance - not regulating that grid properly.

However, it would be interesting to see if Biden put in a strong infrastructure plan separate from his Covid reconciliation bill and how many Texas Republicans would vote for it.

The GOP Is A Mental Illness

 This is a longer read about Maddison Welch, Pizzagate and the larger trajectory of toxic bullshit that is sluicing through the right wing in this country. It begins with Welch, the man who entered Comet Ping Pong pizza in 2017 armed to the teeth looking for the pedophilic dungeon that online nutters claimed was there. He has been released into a halfway house, and from the attempts to interview him or his friends and family, it doesn't seem like he's walked away from Pizzagate or it's larger, malignant successor, QAnon.

The piece makes fascinating connections to Welch's hometown of Salisbury, NC and issues like the removal of Confederate statues. Rachel Blum and Chris Parker have been doing research into MAGA and the results are unsurprising:

The demographic composition of the MAGA movement is overwhelmingly white, male, Christian, retired, and over 65 years of age. They’re attracted to the following groups, ones that include gun rights, charities, pro police, anti-lockdown, pro-life, and “stop the steal.” They’re extremely politically active, all in support of the Republican Party. However, only roughly 60 percent are solid Republicans, the rest either “lean” Republican or Independent. The MAGA movement overwhelmingly believes Trump’s election fraud claims, would have supported him for a “third term”(had it been an option), and don’t believe that voting should be made easier. They’re also of the opinion, to a large degree, that Covid-related restrictions should be eased, that Americans are overreacting to the pandemic, and that Trump told the truth about the threat to American public health posed by the pandemic. Further, responses to our survey suggests that MAGA is populated with a good number of racist, sexists, and nativists. 

This is why it's fair to call the GOP the GQP. There is the behavior of the Mitch McConnells of the world, who know that this is all bullshit, but can't afford to upset the base too much. He famously said in November - about Trump's lies and tantrum about the election - "what's the harm in humoring him." We know the harm now. 

As someone with a little experience in the small town South, people like Welch are invariably kind to their in-group. But they are so insular and suspicious (Welch himself is likely dealing with untreated mental illness) that anyone from beyond the borders of their small town is suspect. They will give from their scarcity to help the local kid with leukemia, but they won't vote for some city person who might give all kids healthcare. 

I was optimistic, at one point, that internet penetration into these provincial burgs would remove the burden of ignorance from those communities, but it has instead acted as a multiplier. My town - very Trumpy - is being roiled because students wanted to get rid of the "Indian" mascot and adults are pissed that "their" mascot is being retired. Obviously, if a mascot creates divisions in the community then it's a crappy mascot, but for those supporting it, there's this pervasive fear of change that makes every nod and gesture towards out-groups some sort of threat. Who the hell cares about the high school mascot? People who feel left behind by a culture that is increasingly not OK with exploiting marginal groups.

As the zeitgeist - driven by cosmopolitan cities - leaves this demographic behind, they will believe more and more rancid nonsense. And it will impact the institutional GOP.

I don't know how you combat the Paranoid Style. I don't know why Alex Jones hasn't been sued into oblivion. I just know that, yes, Mitch, there is harm in humoring them. 

The "Lesson" of the 1970s Is Finally Being Unlearned

 Jon Chait notes that we might be on the cusp of a revolution in the nation's monetary and fiscal policy. He lays out the history of inflation in the 1970s and how it shaped a generation of economists to fear inflation above all else. Trump's singular positive achievement might, in the end, be his appointment of Jerome Powell to chair the Fed. 

I've always felt that any discussion of inflation in the '70s tends to neglect the impact of the various rolling energy shortages. Chait himself points to the "guns and butter" issue of Great Society spending and the Vietnam war budget overheating the economy. That certainly exerted inflationary pressure on the economy. However, the phenomenon of "stagflation" was a direct result of inflation caused by rising energy costs. Prices rose, because the cost of moving goods exploded with gas prices, but the overall economy didn't grow, because those increased costs were sent to Saudi Arabia or where burned in combustion engines.

There are a lot of reasons to invest in renewable energy, but economic health is usually not considered one of the main incentives.  It should be.

Lindsay Graham: Shitstain Of The Senate

 Lindsay Graham went on Fascist Fox News Sunday and said that if the GOP gains control of the House in 2022, they will impeach Kamala Harris.  

Let's take the two most salient points. First, he threatened to impeach the Black woman, not the White man, because we've replaced dog whistles with air horns.

Second, the reason that Graham wants to impeach Harris has something to do with bailing out someone or other who may have done something...who the fuck knows with these clowns. There is no evidence to support Harris bailing anyone out. 

What Graham typifies, perhaps even more than Mitch McConnell, is the absolute nihilism at the heart of the GOP. Why does he want to impeach Harris? Because Democrats impeached Trump. Twice. The only two bipartisan votes for removal in the brief history of impeachment were Trump. Trump was impeached last winter for abusing the power of his office to warp and election. And then impeached again for launching an insurrection against the US Congress and his own Vice President. For Graham, the merits of the case are irrelevant. In his eyes, impeachment is simply a form of political payback. You may remember him as a House Manager when Bill Clinton lied about a blow job. 

Democrats - AND REPUBLICANS - believed that Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors. McConnell and other GOP Senators basically said that the House Managers proved their case, but that they felt that you can't impeach a private citizen. Whatever.

Graham goes a step further and decides that impeachment is just an act of vindictiveness. What he exposes is not what Democrats believe, but what he believes in the shriveled little void where his heart should be.

Hopefully, Georgia arrests his ass.

The Apotheosis of Murc's Law

 Murc's Law famously asserts that "only Democrats have agency over American politics. In other words, anything bad that happens is Democrats' fault for not doing more. Nothing Republicans do matters.

Yesterday's confusing episode surrounding witnesses followed by a minority of Senators voting not to find Trump guilty is a perfect example of this. "Do Something" Twitter was enraged that Democrats didn't do "one weird trick" to somehow convict Trump. Certainly, the debate over calling witnesses created some unnecessary hope that there was some dramatic twist, like an episode of Perry Mason or something.

There wasn't. There never would be.

Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, made an estimation that they did not want to have Trump be the first President found guilty in a Senate trial. Most likely so they could placate his rabid cultists. They hung their arguments on narrow argument - not of his innocence - that you can't convict a former president in the Senate. This is a bullshit argument, contradicted by precedent, common sense and the previous vote at the beginning of the trial, but it is an argument that allowed McConnell to make his disingenuous statement simultaneously trying to blame Trump for 1/6 and exonerating him from political repercussions. 

McConnell's statement proves that there were never 17 Republicans willing to call Trump to account. McConnell laid out the framework to acquit with prejudice. This strikes me as too clever by half. The presence of Burr, Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse and Toomey among those who recognize the dangerous criminality of Trump's actions mean that there can be no doubt that Trump is guilty and being protected by partisan loyalty and fear.

The managers proved their case. McConnell basically admitted as much. By hanging their decision on a technical reading of impeachment (and the fact that they delayed the trial until after impeachment UNDER McCONNELL'S LEADERSHIP) the Republican Senate has proven that the majority of them simply do not care about the rule of law. Urging criminal proceedings against Trump is a craven abdication of responsibility.

Yet for some, this was a failure by the Democrats? Who thinks like that?

The Future Jeopardy

 Trump's "lawyers" produced an "argument" that simultaneously fell flat on its face and likely did enough to provide talking points for the Cowardly Lions of the Senate to vote to acquit and move on. It was a mélange of false equivalencies, out of context quotes and outright falsehoods. Jake Tapper called it a "Sean Hannity mixed tape." It was yet another example of arguments being tailored to feed the yawning void at the center of Trump's fragile ego. 

The problem Trump faces is this: the Cowardly Lions of the Senate will acquit him. At which point, he faces the legal challenges in the Southern District of New York and potentially Georgia. He is vulnerable to tax fraud charges, the subpoenaing of his tax returns, investigations into his properties, his campaign finance violations and election tampering in multiple states. 

As we saw in his endless attempts to overturn the election results, Trump's bluster and bullshit collapse in the face of a judge. Every time Trump's "lawyers" went before a judge and were asked if they were alleging voter fraud, they had to say, no. If they didn't, they put their law licenses in jeopardy. The endless nonsense spewing from Rudy Giuliani's quivering cakehole is protected at Four Season's Landscaping but not in front of a judge.

Trump's "lawyers" made a political argument yesterday, which is actually understandable: unfortunately impeachment is a political act. Those arguments won't work before a judge. Trump will likely escape conviction in the Senate, but the only thing that can save him in court is the inability to find an impartial jury or an endless stream of mistrials. He's guilty of myriad financial crimes; we know this. As Josh Marshall has put it: "The Law is coming."

Culpable

 The impeachment trial could be over today with a debate and vote tomorrow. Trump will likely not be convicted. (It would largely take about 25 rabid Trumpist Senators boycotting the vote to get to "two-thirds of those present.") There will be a lot of post mortems about why the Senate didn't convict. There will be lamentations about "the brokenness of our politics."

Bullshit. Our "politics" are not broken, the Republican Party is. 

By refusing to hold Trump accountable - as the House managers have amply demonstrated that he is - the Republican Party is effectively endorsing what happened in January 6th. There is some anecdotal evidence that voters are dropping their Republican party registration. That only means so much if they keep voting for spineless shit sticks like Marco Rubio, but it means there is a limited future for Trumpism. They might vote for a soulless Voldemort like Rick Scott, but Josh Hawley's aspirations are likely dead.

The first impeachment neutralized the bullshit Trump attacks on Hunter Biden's laptop. Whether the press would've fallen for that nonsense again, or whether it was all just misogyny and hatred of Hillary in the first place, we shall never know. But it is clear what Trump wanted from Ukraine, and exposing it neutralized it.

The second impeachment lays bare the cowardice of most mainstream Republicans. They are so petrified of their QAnon marinated voters that they can't even vote to bar from future office a man who literally sent a mob to threaten their lives. It is a staggering display of cowardice. The Senators who vote to acquit will never be able to talk about protecting police lives again without catching serious side eye from the men and women who were attacked, abused and killed to protect them, and then abandoned.

If, as expected, the Senate acquits Trump - let's say it's around 55-45 - then we will hopefully see the onslaught of a hundred other legal cases surrounding his taxes, campaign finance violations, the release of parts of the transcripts of the conversations with Putin, self-dealing, meddling in the Georgia election...as Josh Marshall says, "The Law is coming." If so, some Senators will lie and say that justice was ultimately served. Horseshit. This is THERE moment. The House managers have not indicted Trump, so much as they have prepared an indictment of the broad swatch of Republican officeholders.

They are all about to plead guilty,

The Blue Line Matters To Them

 One of the seemingly naïve statements in regards to Republicans is that they can never again be allowed to say "Blue Live Matter" if they do not support holding Trump accountable for the crimes of 1/6. Other lives don't matter to a certain segment of Republican, most typified by Donald Trump, but also his hellspawn - Devin Nunes, Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz.  

There is a statement attributed to Frank Wilhoit; it goes like this:

    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the        law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

This is the essence of the Blue Line flags seen at the Capitol in early January and that hang from flag poles all over the country. It is not in support of the "rule of law" that critical and fragile condition upon which all democracy rests. It is about the line that stands between them - white, rural, aggrieved - and the dawning 21st century America - multiracial, multicultural, educated. My neighbors (it's a very Trumpy town) see the neighboring small city of Waterbury not as a struggling rust belt town with pockets of poverty that should be addressed and elevated, but as a dangerous place full of thieves ready to invade their homes. A recent rash of car theft has added fuel to this fire, whereby the Black and Brown residents of Waterbury are alien and threatening. It's a reminder that the "American Carnage" theme of Trump's inaugural address remains the touchstone to understanding his appeal.

To the degree that police share this philosophy, they stand in agreement with this conservative belief. They see themselves as the Thin Blue Line between order and anarchy, with anarchy - antifa, if you will - being explicitly racial in composition. 

What we are seeing the impeachment trial is the degree to which conservatives do not see the law as binding on them. They are shocked when the police do not join their side, outraged that police would not side with them against the out-group. They respond with the violence that we see in the new videos, because when the police no longer serve the purpose of "binding the outgroup" but serving the rule of law, they are no longer to be revered. 

(I caught a little heat on Facebook for saying that I did not think the Capitol police were to blame for 1/6. Leadership, yes, for not seeing what was coming, but the police themselves were not complicit the way the Hot Take Brigade assumed. I feel vindicated a bit, not that it matters.)

For all the talk of "unity," the reality is that this group of white people see the purpose of government as to restrain people who are not like them. It's a Hobbesian belief tempered and shaped by white supremacy. To them, the cities full of out-group people are, by definition, not real Americans. Again, Sarah Palin is Trump's precursor, with her talk of "Real Americans." There can be no unifying with that perspective. 

What the Trumpist mob is discovering is that they slipping into the position of "out-group." As they shrink further into the minority, things will get worse, not better.

A Long Read

 Molly Ball put together a fascinating look at the year long effort by various advocates to secure the election.  It's quite long, so I'll summarize. It was apparent to everyone that Trump would try to disrupt the election, so they put into place mechanisms and plans to prevent that from happening. They created a bipartisan group that could bring unique pressure on people like the heads of the Michigan legislatures, whom Trump brought to the White House and tried to bully into thwarting the election.

There was one other interesting tidbit: they kept a tight rein on street protests in the days after the election and on 1/6. They deprived Trump of what he wanted, the street violence that dictators use to crush democracy. Hitler, deprived of it, burned the Reichstag himself and blamed it on his enemies. Trump hoped that his mob might clash with antifa or whatever. It never happened.

The sad question remains to me: did the righteous outpouring of anger over George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery actually make the election closer than it otherwise would have been? Did Trump's apocalyptic message - beginning with the Golden Escalator, through his inaugural address, Charlottesville and on - resonate more with those white voters who turned out in record numbers to make things much closer than they ever, ever should have been?

There have been several days in the past week, where I haven't really checked the news.  It's been nice. As we move on from Trump and Trumpism, as the crimes of 1/6 become increasingly catalogued and exposed, will that aura of American Carnage fade away? Will Joe Biden succeed in Making American Boring Again? I'm cautiously optimistic. The takeaway of Ball's reporting is that democracy didn't triumph over Trump without a strong bipartisan coalition. The assumption could be that we are simply waiting for a slicker, smarter Trump.  Maybe.  Maybe not. 

Maybe the moment of American Carnage has passed.

Watch The Video

 The House impeachment managers showed a video of the Trump mob's attack on the Capitol. It is brutal.

If the first day is any indication, the House managers will prove that Trump incited the mob that attacked the government of the United States. The majority of Republicans will not vote to convict.

My hope is that 20 Republican Senators boycott the final vote. This would lower the votes necessary to convict and prevent this human tumor from running again. Just hearing his nasally repellent voice in that video gave me PTSD.

Happy Twos-day

 Today is Trump's second impeachment.  He's been impeached twice.  Two times. He accounts for 50% of all presidential impeachments.  Because he's been impeached twice. One plus another one.

Twice.

Listen To Krugman

 The limit on spending is political not economic. However, failing to meet the moment will have both political and economic repercussions. And doing the right thing is popular.

Not Sure I Buy It

 Martin Longman points out how the GOP is on the losing end of demographics and is losing members in the weeks since 1/6. Something has broken among moderate Republicans.

His worry, which I don't share, is that the Democratic gains in suburbs will mean they will abandon the "little guy." The party of FDR will become the party of tax cuts.  

I think there are two things that will undermine this thesis. First, there is a LOT of room for growth in tax increases among the very rich. We can just check in with Elizabeth Warren if we need a plan for that. Democrats can raise substantial amounts of taxes without putting the pinch on a lawyer living in Cobb County. 

Secondly, everything I'm seeing is that most people simply don't think ideologically...unless they are ideologues. They join a party for one reason - say climate change or LGBT rights - and then come to adopt the rest of the party positions, unless they cross some bright line for them. Upper middle class suburbanites have zero problem raising money off Jeff Bezos. Being Democrats will change suburban voters. There was a time when the flight to the suburbs was about fleeing integration. I don't think that has the same influence on college educated suburbanites. 

The other thing is that suburban college educated voters show up in the midterms. Low information, working class voters are less likely to show up. They showed up for Trump, but unless there is someone who can harness that demographic, they aren't showing up for Ted Cruz or Ron Desantis.

Kancel Kultur

 Fox has canned Lou Dobbs. I can remember Dobbs beginning the process of radicalizing my father with his "common sense" on trade and immigration. For the record, Dobb's common sense is really just 19th century mercantilism and nativism. Dobbs was a Birther.

Now, Dobbs is 75 years old, and maybe it's time to refresh the "talent" pool, but the looming reason he was fired was because he was explicitly advancing false claims against companies that make voting machines - Dominion and Smartmatic - about election fraud. What's more, these companies have pretty legitimate claims for libel. It's very hard to prove libel in American courts, but Fox, OANN and NewsMax clearly are scared of these threats. They could lose a lot of money for jumping on the Trump Train.

It's a little frustrating how much we rely on the Courts because our legislature can't govern, but there is very little way for the Congress to attack radicalized rightist puke funnels like Fox and OANN. First Amendment and all. So, I hope these companies sue the crap out of them and get massive payouts. 

There has to be a cost to Trumpism.

An Unfortunate Necessity

 The decision by House Democrats and a handful of non-crazy Republicans to strip Marjorie Traitor Greene was simultaneously necessary and troubling. It was necessary because House Republicans mustered more votes for censuring Liz Cheney over her impeachment vote than they could to strip Greene of her assignments. As the Post notes, this sets a dangerous precedent for whenever the Republican Party regains control of the House. Ilhan Omar will likely be stripped of her seat, just because. (At least in part, the impeachment of Bill Clinton was payback for Nixon. Republicans are nothing if not vindictive in their politics.)

I am legitimately torn over the fact that the Republican Party is well on its way to becoming the party of QAnon and 8Chan message boards. Part of me wants to believe that as people like Greene become the face of the modern GOP, it will force more suburban moderates to abandon the party. I'm more convinced that the dynamic of Cleek's Law will take over. Republicans will embrace QAnon, simply because Democrats oppose it. A party whose only central, core belief is hating the libtards will embrace a toxic ideology that libtards hate.

Anecdotal evidence of Republicans dropping their party registration is hopeful, but only anecdotal. The GOP cannot be allowed anywhere near the levers of power until they have rediscovered basic facts.

Can The GOP Hold It Together?

 Yesterday, Kevin McCarthy was able to prevent a splintering of the GOP House caucus along the lines of warmongering tax cutters versus QAnon racist nutters. The fact that his name is McCarthy is a nice historical curiosity, as this resembles nothing so much as the internecine wars among conservatives in the 1950s over Joe McCarthy. 

In that case, there were enough mainstream Republicans to keep a lid on the John Birchers. I have no idea if that is the case today. The Internet allows for organization among the fringes that could create real staying power.

My hope is that the QAnon loons create a Third Party for 4-5 electoral cycles, siphoning off 10-20% of Republican votes for all state and federal elections. My worry is that QAnon wins the battle for the soul of the GOP.

This Is Correct

 This Tweet is correct on the issue of Covid relief. I don't know how to embed a tweet, so....

pass an incredibly popular covid relief package and then make every republican vote against it. run on it during the midterms. if you lose, you were gonna lose the house anyway. you got people relief. if you win, you win, and people got money and, you know, you won. twice.

The big relief package promoted by Democrats is A) good policy and B) good politics. Nobody really gives a shit about the deficit, it's just a cudgel Republicans have been using against Democrats doing popular things before the sneak into the White House and cut taxes on billionaires. Their complaints are bullshit and should be treated as such.

"When Americans were struggling, Senator So And So voted to keep America's schools' closed and against aid to struggling Americans. When a crisis came, Senator So and So was unequal to the moment. Elect This Guy instead."

We Have A Christianist Problem

 Martin Longman shows how closely Trumpism and 1/6 is tied to White Evangelical Christian Nationalism. It's an excellent read as to why "Christians" supported a twice divorced serial sexual predator who couldn't tell Isaiah from Jeremiah. At the root of Christian Nationalism is a preference for authoritarianism that supports their worldview: a blinkered, bigoted reaction against the fact that America is changing to be a more tolerant, diverse place.

Please read.

Constitutional Monarchy Now

 I'm not sure the "genius of the British government" lies in separating the Crown from the Parliament, but if it would help, I'm all for making Dolly Parton our Queen.

Kill The Filibuster With Fire

 Jon Chait lays out all the arguments to kill the filibuster and it really should be required reading for every Senator. Democrats have been arguing that the filibuster is a temporary impediment to passing needed laws, but Chait makes an argument that it actually stands in the way of compromise and comity. The invisibility of the modern filibuster has meant that a few assholes like McConnell can abuse the process and avoid having their fingerprints on it.

Today, Joe Biden will meet with Republican Senators who think his Covid relief package is too big. It is not too big. They will talk about the deficit, even after blowing a hole the size of Canada in the debt by cutting taxes on the rich. They don't want Biden to demonstrate the capacity of a Democratic led government to actually solve problems, even if they don't admit this to themselves. Biden will listen respectfully and then rightfully ignore calls for austerity in the face of a pandemic and recession. 

Republicans can't run the 2009 playbook, because Biden was there to see it run the first time. Why Joe Manchin can't see it is a mystery.

EJ Dionne makes the same case.