The Magaification Is Complete

 Last night's demolition of John Cornyn is the final death knell of the old Chamber of Commerce GOP. Paxton is the personification of the moral rot at the heart of the GOP: an adulterous grifter with an opposition file a foot thick. Yet the primary voters swallowed him whole. 

Talarico is the anti-Paxton in so many ways - in fact he was one of the prosecutors during the failed impeachment of this gutter dweller. If Talarico can't win, then Texas is irredeemable. If the stench of Trump's corruption mingling with Paxton's corruption isn't enough to make Texas voters gag, I don't know what to say. 

He does have a real shot, but he's going to need money to handle the onslaught of attack ads that are headed his way.

As Chait notes, Trump's record of destroying his perceived enemies within the GOP is near perfect. His record in general elections is far weaker. His coattails are short and the GOP performance in off year elections - including 2022 - is far weaker than it should be based on fundamentals. 

Trump himself my defy the laws of political gravity, but like a drowning man, he pulls under those around him.

Busy Day

 Busy time of year. I also learned that the degenerative condition in my neck might require some surgery. Or maybe a lot of surgery. But maybe no surgery. But one of the discs is in a bad place and if were to get into a serious accident, it could impact my spinal cord. Or maybe not. And maybe the fusion I had 25 years ago is solid. Or maybe it's not. One option would relieve my symptoms, maybe, but I might also lose the use of my right arm for a few months. But probably not. But maybe.

So, yeah. Busy day.

Another Failure

 In some ways, Donald Trump represents what happens if Republicans actually governed on what they say they want to do. "I believe in American manufacturing" becomes ruinous tariffs. "I believe Iran is an outlaw nation" becomes the current fiasco in the Gulf. "I oppose abortion" becomes Dobbs. "I believe in a color blind America" becomes naked white supremacy.

Nowhere is this truer than in Trump most orthodox Republican policy: massive tax cuts for the rich. Reagan famously (or maybe not) raised taxes when the Laffer Curve proved to be laughable. Bush 41 raised taxes in the face of a significant debt crisis. Clinton balanced the budget largely via increasing taxes, and then Bush 43 blew that all to hell.

Trump's tax cuts and overall chaotic stewardship on economic issues is creating a massive debt problem. Roughly half of the entire $39,000,000,000,000 debt was accrued under Donald Trump, a man whose business practice consisted largely of running up debts, then declaring bankruptcy and walked away from the wreckage.

Sadly, we know exactly what is required to solve this issue, and no one is interested in doing the hard work of restraining spending and raising taxes. "Tax the rich" is a nice bumper sticker and we absolutely need to tax capital gains more aggressively. However, you cannot do the things liberals and progressives want to do simply by taxing the rich more aggressively. One reason is that skyrocketing debt crowds out private borrowing and makes interest on the public debt more burdensome. 

Clinton's economy was really good. I know there's a whole whining culture about how nothing is affordable, because they can't DoorDash 7 nights a week. The permanent unhappiness about the economy is both real and also imagined. In a lot of ways, things are pretty good, especially compared to 2008 or 2020. It does FEEL worse, and that's before Trumpflation really digs into our wallets. 

The spiraling debt will make everything - and I mean - everything more expensive, by driving up borrowing costs for everyone. Economic stagnation caused by trade wars and deportations means that we won't be able to grow out of our debt situation very easily, but that's going to be a requirement of the next administration.

I'm sure that the American people are super duper eager to sacrifice to make that happen.

Abandoning Oneself

 Trump's approval rating is in the thirties, which is historically unpopular.

That seems higher than it should be.

As Martin Longman points out, the GOP is REALLY dependent on the Trump cultists and the idiotic voters who don't know which party supports universal health care. The latter are turning against him. These vibe voters have had enough of $4.70 gas and declining purchasing power. That's what makes most analysts think that even the GOP's gerrymandering won't be enough to save them.

But how the hell do a third of Americans still support this guy? It's not just partisanship, but this piece has a nugget buried in it that might help.

Think about MAGA; it's a cult. He's just an awful, stupid human being. Yet millions of Americans avidly supported this guy as a "disrupter" who was going to upend a frustrating status quo and usher in a return to the "good old days" which is really just nostalgia for a past that didn't exist. Now, the evidence that he is just a stupid, corrupt, senile old fool is piling up. His war against Iran was a disaster. His stupid ballroom and arch and reflecting pool are examples of both his stupidity and his greed. 

If you're the average GOP voter, though, you've been supporting this guy again and again. All the pointy headed libtards have been accurately describing how awful this guy is, but your defense of him has simply made you need to defend him more. I liked John Edwards as a politician, but when he turned out to be a moral sewer, I moved on. When Biden's age and speaking decline proved impossible to ignore, I moved on. I am not "invested" in the person.

MAGA is invested - not in the GOP - in Trump himself. His bloated person IS their belief system. They cannot abandon him without realizing that the last decade has been their disgraceful embrace of the worst this country can vomit up. 

Even if they were "smart enough" to change, they cannot without abandoning what has become not just a voting preference but a fundamental part of their entire personality. 

The Autopsy

 The DNC did what parties do when they lose an election they feel they should have won: the commission an autopsy, a report on what went wrong.

The DNC commissioned an autopsy, but it was a trash heap on top of a dumpster fire. It was little more than a blog post of conventional wisdom. 

DNC Chair Ken Martin made the correct decision to scrap it, because it was trash. However, the drumbeat of "What are you covering up?" became so loud, he released it last week. Guess what? It was a trash heap on top of a dumpster fire. 

My favorite criticisms are those about how shoddy an unhelpful the "conclusions" are. Yes. Yes, that's why it wasn't released. You can criticize Martin for who he hired to write it, but you can't criticize him for trying to bury it, because it's a piece of shit.

You are going to win in 2026 and 2028 because Trump and the Trumpublicans are fucking awful. Yes, that's pretty much all you need to do. Because most voters are smooth brained naïfs wandering guilelessly through a pristine political landscape in which no past, present or future really exist, things sucking will pretty much do it. Even a good autopsy would have been mostly useless and mostly devolved into the sort of online slapfight that serves no one but the GOP.

Anyway, Trump apparently just surrendered completely to Iran, so...

Misconduct

 The Online Famous Popehat (Ken White) has a thread where he discusses the rank misconduct in the case against people opposing ICE in Chicago. There's a no-zero chance this actually leads to disbarring some of the lawyers. It sure sounds like this needs to start happening to DOJ lawyers, because the worst thing we can have right now is a  bunch of DOJ lawyers that aren't afraid of losing their law licenses. Same goes for doctors giving professional cover for RFK's assault on public health. Every lever of civil society needs to be pulled to help push back against this shitshow. 

It's A Cult

 Reading this piece about the Texas Senate GOP runoff and Trump's endorsement is to see just how Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs the average Trumpist is. The reason they believe the 2020 election was stolen is because they are aggressively, willfully ignorant to the point of insanity.

As Trump slips into historic levels of unpopularity, his cult will seemingly slip further into an alternate reality. Conversely, when I read this about the schism in the left and whether there can be a left populism, it inevitably founders on the fact that most people on center-left actually care about results and not performative vibes. The people supporting Greene over AOC are just the absolute dumbest people within what can very loosely be called the left wing coalition. 

The Right is prone to being a cult, because they are reflexively drawn to hierarchies. The left is drawn to schisms and in-fighting, which makes the emergence of a "Democratic Trump" a non-starter.

Cracks

 Josh Marshall likes to note that in politics power is unitary. You either have the juice or you don't. Trump - old, incoherent, corrupt with collapsing poll numbers - is losing his juice. In fact, the one way that he still does have juice - over the GOP cult of personality - is only making things worse for members of Congress. As the midterms approach, those members are either being primaried away or looking at an increasingly dire landscape. As a result, they are starting to buck him: on Iran, on his stupid ballroom, on his criminal slush fund.

Do I think this will last? Probably not. These are craven men and women. What it does create is a sort of YOLO Caucus, especially in the Senate. Collins is in trouble, Tillis, Cornyn and McConnell aren't going to be there in January...why should they genuflect before Trump's stupid agenda?

This doesn't mean things will go smoothly. Desperate to reaffirm his authority, Trump looks - unbelievably - to be preparing to invade Cuba. Since he is a smooth brained nepobaby who never had to suffer a true consequence in his life, he has learned exactly nothing from his Iran debacle. Stymied at home, feeling the pangs of narcissistic wounds, he could very well launch his third military adventure.

A Cuban invasion might shore up his support in Southern Florida, but it's going to be another sign for any voter capable of seeing it that he does not give a flying fuck about how your life is going. He's going to launch his wars, build his ballroom, payoff his cronies. 

Boomerang

 Trump's purge of people like Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie was intended to have a chilling effect on Congressional Republican. What if it has the opposite effect?

There are three areas where even the lickspittles in the GOP Caucus are choking to get them down. The first is the obvious slush fund for January 6th criminals. Given the fact that the Capitol Police nearly gave their lives on that day, given the GOP's reflexive support for police in general, and given the fact that the January 6th mob likely would have killed members if they had broken. It is also so brazenly corrupt that it's hard to justify on any level outside the cult.

The second is the ballroom. Somewhat surprisingly, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House actually did resonate with voters, even in the midst of the government shutdown. Trump's bizarre obsession with it is a great example of how out of touch he is with most voters. His constant stream of bizarre statements about how he doesn't care about the American public's economic hardship is something that Republicans are going to have to navigate in the midterms. Drawing a line on the ballroom is a good place to do it.

Then there's Trump's monumental (literally) edifice to his fragile ego: the Arch de Trump. Again, this is so obviously, brazenly out of touch and unpopular, that the funding for this could easily be a place where Republicans kick back against Trump's weird priorities.

I don't expect a wholesale revolt. The GOP is a combination of craven cucks and true believers. Given the margins, I also don't think you NEED a wholesale revolt. Why would Massie or Tillis or Cornyn or Cassidy want to support Trump? How much latitude can they afford to give Susan Collins or Ashley Moody or Dan Sullivan? Even Lindsay Graham and Roger Marshall better look over their shoulder. If they are viewed by voters as being so beholden to Trump's wars and vanity projects, they could get swept out the anti-incumbent tide.

Republican Senators, in particular, were very angry over Trump endorsing Paxton over Cornyn, because Cornyn is their colleague and Paxton is a fucking criminal. We've been waiting for the Congressional GOP to grow some spine, and it likely WON'T happen, but it COULD.

Donald Trump, Family Man

 This seems hilarious, but is really incredibly sad, as in pathetic.

Another Way To Fight Back

 In Texas, the two candidates in the Democratic runoff for the 35th district include Maureen Galindo, a therapist with no track record in public office, but a history of saying really, really vile things. This includes putting Jews ("Zionists") into camps. She's being propped up by a PAC called Lead Left, which no one has heard of. It's almost certainly a rat fucking effort by the GOP to elevate horrible people with which to smear the Democratic Party and potentially throw swing seats to Republicans.

It's unethical, but in the world of 2026, it's par for the course. Democrats should try and respond in kind.

Get Thomas Massie to run as an independent, for instance. See if you can create a "grassroots" MAGA Party that runs lunatics and siphons off votes from Republicans.

Democrats want to run as institutionalists in a time when the public wants arsonists. In order to keep the house from burning down, you might have to play by a different set of rules.

More Adventures In Orbanism

 Trump is setting up a taxpayer funded slush fund to pay his foot soldiers from the January 6th insurrection. It is easily the single most corrupt act in a corrupt presidency, simply because he's brazenly stealing your dollars in the open to pay his criminal cohort.

Krugman's position is that this is a sign that Trump isn't expecting Democrats to overcome his gerrymanders. While it is true that we have an uphill fight against these gerrymanders, the lesson of Hungary is that public outrage at corruption is greater than even the most severe attempts to destroy substantive democracy.

More likely is simply that this is a mad dash to plunder as much as possible before Democrats take control of the Congress. For Trump himself, he has never faced real consequences for his lifelong lawlessness, why should he fear it now, when he's the sitting president? Also, it seems pretty much like he's fading into senescence. Why wouldn't those around him loot as much as possible before he strokes out? Park it in a Cayman Islands' bank and move to a country without an extradition treaty and hope you get better lawyers than Alina Habibi. 

I've been screaming it for months, but the corruption is the main issue that will depress Republican turnout and drive independents towards Democrats. 

UPDATE: Richardson (naturally) catalogs all the corruption involved here.

An Evangelical Christianity Problem

 Richardson lays out the case against presuming America is a "Christian Nation." This is - ironically - against the backdrop of another one of Trump's grifts, this one surrounding the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Trump and his creatures are trying to hijack the celebration of America articulating the idea of limited, representative government to create a cult of personality around Trump and elevate the ahistorical idea that America was founded for White Christian Men. (Ok, yes, men, but still.)

When thinking about "conservatism" in general, we should understand that conservatism has a preference for established hierarchies. That's not always bad, but it obviously can stand in the way of human progress, which is the essential tension in most democratic politics.

Trumpism and the modern GOP is not even "conservative" in that sense. They are not trying to protect established hierarchies, they are trying to revivify old ones - ones that previous generations disassembled. An obvious example is the effective ending of the Voting Rights Act, in order to re-establish White Supremacist government in the South. 

This twisted form of Christian Nationalism that Trump and his cadre of institutional arsonists are trying to create is a deference to a hierarchy that Americans have never really cottoned to: one that deifies the sitting president. Trump routinely calls members of the press who challenge him on anything - even questions of fact - "traitors" because in this mindset, questioning the president is treason to the country, because l'Etat c'est moi.  

This blinkered, chauvinistic version of Christianity is a fringe sect, but it still constitutes millions of Americans and the very bedrock of Trump's support. If you believe that a literal angel sits on your shoulder and protects you from the temptations of demons, I guess you can believe that Trump is a savvy businessman sent by God to redeem this nation. 

Max Weber referred to the period when America wrote its founding documents - the period known as the Enlightenment - as the "disenchanting of the world." The magical thinking Christians wish to re-enchant the world. This blind deference to authority is not only deeply un-American, it is a prime grifting opportunity, a tradition that goes back to the fictional Elmer Gantry and the very real Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and however many youth pastors who raped children. 

Eat Your Own

 The defeat of Bill Cassidy in the Republican primary in Louisiana is a sign of where the Republican Party is, and it's not good. Cassidy was decent Republican by the standard of the Republican South. He voted to convict Trump of his very real offenses on January 6th, and that was that. Even after being the deciding vote that gave us the trainwreck of RFK, Jr, his offense of holding Trump to the most minimal of standards was too much for Trump, and the cult that exists in the remains of what was once the Grand Old Party.

For existing Republicans, the fates of Cassidy and Thomas Massie are reminders of what happens when they cross Trump and expect that he be held accountable for his crimes. If you cross him, you will lose your primary, no matter how well you've served your constituents. 

However, the ultimate test of this will occur in November. It's unlikely that a Democrat can win the Louisiana Senate seat, because it remains a very conservative state. However, if Blacks turn out in protest of Callais, and the GOP is seen as representing Trump and billionaires...a guy can hope!

Like A Fiddle

 Trump's trip to China was...something. China stage managed the optics and the protocols to make the US and China look like peer countries. This has been China's goal for a while now. China remains a relatively poor country; it's GDP per capita is close to Mexico's. It is clearly a Great Power, but it's goal is to be seen as the next superpower to stand equally with the US. 

As a result, China stage managed everything. Xi did not meet Trump at the airport, sending lesser functionaries instead. He referenced the Thucydides Trap (I'm trying to imagine how many times his aides tried to explain to Trump who Thucydides was), which explicitly posits that China is rising and the US is declining. In fact, he got Trump to sign off on this, when Trump blamed it - as he does everything - on Biden.

This image is worth more than an aircraft carrier to China.

Trump, of course, came home blathering and boasting about "deals" that will probably evaporate - if they ever existed in the first place. Fox and similar outlets will fluff him endlessly. Sure, there's the endless fanboying from Trump towards any dictator, but this was deeper. Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and South Korea are all now deeply aware of how little they can rely on the US to stand with them, should China become belligerent. 

Just as Presidents have more latitude to act in foreign relations, they have the capacity to do more damage in that arena, too. Trump is turning his back on our allies, including Europe. He is Orban on a superpower scale.

Let's hope we get an Hungarian Solution to this newest Orban.

Let Them Eat Ballroom

 Paul Krugman points out that Trump's "big win" in China is that China will start buying more American petroleum....which will further drive up the cost of gasoline here in the US. This is just rudimentary market stuff. Oil is famously fungible; it's a global market and every gallon sold to China or Europe is a gallon not sold in the US, reducing supply and driving up costs.

As Trump and Republicans try and dismantle democracy via partisan gerrymanders, they have to contend with the idea that Trump's cratering approval rating will create a dummymander, where they take reasonably safe seats and dilute them with Democratic voters in order to crack open Democratic districts. At the moment, the Democratic Party lags Trump's disapproval rating, because Democrats have zero levers to constrain Trump and therefore "look weak." I would anticipate that - if current trends continue and I see no reason why they wouldn't - Democrats will make gains on the generic ballot. Of course, Senate seat can't be gerrymandered, and I would expect Democrats to do particularly well there in places like Ohio, Iowa and Alaska that aren't typically seen as battlegrounds. Gerrymandering itself is likely to motivate Black voters in particular in places like South Carolina and Georgia that should only help Democrats.

In the midst of rampant inflation directly caused by Trump's war in Iran and now prioritizing oil sales to China, Trump has also devoted his true energies to really unprecedented levels of corruption. Trump has benefited from the cynicism most Americans feel about politicians, but his destruction of the East Wing of the White House and his continued desecration of the nation's capitol to assuage his fragile ego has created an easily understandable image of monarchical corruption - just in time for the 250th celebration of America throwing off monarchical rule.

Trump, of course, seems oblivious to his political peril, when he says things like "I don't think about Americans' financial situation." Now, there's a context for this about weighing the impact on the American economy and preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but he can't deliver a coherent sentence, because he's a senile old dipshit. The result, is a perfect soundbite to play on repeat (if Democrats get their shit together).

Trump extorting the Executive Branch, trading favors for payouts and generally prioritizing the wealthy over Americans is the precise conditions of a Blue Tsunami, powerful enough to overcome Republican gerrymandering efforts. 

Art Of The Steal

 Trump is in Beijing, where he was met not be Xi Jinping but by cheering children, which I have to think is subtle Epstein shade being thrown by the CCP. 

Here is what I fear is going to be the outcome: Xi will agree to help extricate the US and the world from the Iran Fustercluck in return for the US selling out Taiwan. For Xi, Taiwan is a similar obsession as Putin felt for the former Soviet Republics that are moving to integrate with Europe. He wants it "back" and seems intent on making that happen. 

Trump - who is absolutely without morals or loyalty - would sell Tiffany Trump to a human trafficking organization if it would help him assuage the narcissistic injury he's suffering through with regards to Iran. Selling out Taiwan for an off ramp would be something he would jump at.

What Trump the Idiot fails to understand is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be similar to America's attack on Iran. Taiwan holds a central position in the global economy as the computer chip maker to the world. While Xi no doubt wants Taiwan for reputational reasons, effectively monopolizing chip manufacture would vault China's global prominence clearly ahead of a declining Trumpist America. 

Taiwan, though, has no doubt looked at the looming mainland threat and Ukraine's spirited defense and begun to prepare a drone force to thwart a Chinese invasion. If Xi really is that reckless, the resulting conflict would basically throttle off the majority of the world's supply of chips. 

Dictators are often cagey and capable as they ascend to power, but once in power, they can be captured by their own hubris. It's happened to Putin; it happened to Orban; it happened to Trump. Has it happened to Xi?

Part of the war on expertise is a war on the status quo. For many people, the status quo is not what they want, so they feel eager to overturn things like "globalization" or "liberal economics" or "the liberal postwar order." Once it's gone, though, they might realize what it is that they have lost.

Expertise

 Krugman notes that the Trump Administration's floundering can be traced back to the willful rejection of expert opinion. Whether on tariffs, Iran, climate change and energy policy or diplomacy, Trumpist populism married to Trump's personal enthusiasm for corruption means that anyone who might actually know how to solve a problem will be sidelined and denigrated.

As Krugman admits, experts are not always right. Here's the thing. If I (a few years and several pounds ago) were to take 100 swings at a major league pitcher, I might be able to make contact a few times. That doesn't make me Tony Gwynn. Gwynn may fail 60% of the time, but he's still so much more capable than some schmuck like me. Same deal with expertise: you aren't guaranteed success, but your odds improve a LOT.

It also goes to the basic advantage of democracy - that again, Trump rejects. Democracy has the capacity to self-correct, because it receives feedback from the populace. Expertise in some ways is simply using a broad base of knowledge to understand feedback and predict consequences. "Hey, if we go to war with Iran, they could try and shut down the Straits of Hormuz and that would be really bad." People with a basic respect for expertise - not even of global markets and maritime law specifically - would listen. 

This is why people calling for a "Democratic Trump" as so misguided. There cannot be a populist figure like that in a party that still respects the concept of expertise. Trump's electoral strength is based on idiots who think "common sense solutions" is anything more than a bumpersticker. His failures as a governing figure stem from exactly what won him elections in the first place.

Again, Trump is the symptom, not the sole problem.

Enablers

 Buried in this Sidney Blumenthal op-ed is a reference to the famous "adults in the room" during Trump's first term. 

In Trump’s first term, he was relatively constrained through an alliance struck between the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, and the secretary of defense, James Mattis, former commander of US Central Command, who filtered the options that would be presented to Trump, insisted on the importance of Nato, and argued to keep the US within the Iran nuclear agreement.

Gary Cohn, the former director of the national economic council, stopped Trump from signing executive orders that would cause economic and national security “catastrophes”, and prevented him from withdrawing from the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. “I stole it off his desk,” Cohn told an associate, as Bob Woodward reported in his book Fear. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”

The “committee to save America”, as they were dubbed, included the chief of staff, former general John Kelly, who made a pact with Mattis that one of them would always be in the country to keep tabs on Trump’s impulsivity. Kelly would reflect that Trump did not understand the constitution and had “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law”.

Not enough credence was given to this basic fact when Trump ran again in 2024. The median American voter was upset by nominal prices and they didn't like Harris' laugh, so they voted not just for Trump, but Unconstrained Trump. The result has been unprecedented corruption, skyrocketing inflation, illegal tariffs, the shooting of unarmed Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, a disastrous war of choice in Iran, slowing growth, the literal destruction of part of the White House, the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance, the murders of people in boats in the Caribbean, and that's all I can come up without googling it.

The recent string of absolutely lawless Supreme Court decisions that have basically enabled Republican mid-cycle gerrymandering while striking down Democratic efforts is an attempt to deny voters the ability to hold Trump accountable for his many crimes and incompetencies. We have to hope that Trump's incredible malice, incompetence and corruptness will overwhelm the banks of the gerrymandered districts.

What Could Trump Do To Get Out of His Iran War?

 Trump has committed the US to a disastrous war of choice that has left the other side militarily defeated by political stronger. Iran has learned how to choke off the world economy at their whim. That's...not good.

So, what can we do.

1) Ground Invasion. I doubt this will happen, and it would go poorly. Ask the Russians.

2) Surrender. Most likely outcome, though the amount of psychic death Trump would experience would be profound. Could he sustain himself if he lost this war?

These aren't great options.

The final option is one that might be available to someone other than Trump. 

3) Establish a multinational force to insure freedom of navigation of the Straits of Hormuz. Create lasting security guarantees for the Iranian government, but use the combined pressure of the EU/NATO and China to re-open the straight. 

The problem with (3) is that it requires Trump not to be Trump. What's more, as this piece lays out, Trump has gone from "unpredictable" to "unreliable." There was a sort of efficacy to Trump's unpredictability, in that it forced opposing actors to be on constant alert for changes in direction. It functioned as a sort of variation on the Madman Theory. "Who knows what that crazy bastard will do?"

Now, however, Trump is accurately seen as simply unreliable. There is no secret plan. What's more, you cannot rely on him to abide by his agreements. This is why he crashed out of NYC real estate. No one would work for him, because he wouldn't honor his contracts. He stiffed people, sued for no reason and was a general asshole. That is a strategy of diminishing returns.

Trump's chaotic unreliability means that no one - and I mean no one - can rely on the US to honor its agreements. That's a real problem for global peace and it makes any solution to the Iran stalemate impossible.

Not Sending Their Best

 The hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to bloom into a full grown pandemic. However, as Yglesias rightly notes, we are likely living in a world where the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if. Connectivity has exploded and that allows a virus to travel around the world quickly. This hantavirus outbreak could be tricky, because it takes a while to develop symptoms. 

Of course, the real issue is that literally the absolute worst people in the world are in charge of American health care right now. The anti-vax movement has largely captured American health institutions and they are actively working to undermine both pandemic response and vaccine development. 

We are seeing in the Iran conflict how the idiocy of this administration can put even a military superpower into a losing situation against a third rate military power. It's bad, but it's not pandemic bad. 

So much of modern life has coasted along on expertise that has largely been operating outside of the public eye. Trump's wholesale assault on competent governance, very much including DOGE, has led to some seriously bad results, but if we get to pandemic territory again...

The Hungarian Solution

 Richardson's run down of the news from yesterday is...quite something. The following news stories dropped or were expanded upon:

- The Secretary of Transportation has spent a great deal of his term filming a reality show (his background) on a road trip.
- A No-Bid contract awarded to a Trump crony to paint the bottom of the reflecting pool to mirror an aboveground pool.
- The Iran War's stated cost of $25 billion is simply an equipment cost, not the various other costs that the war has incurred and will continue to incur.
- FEMA is denying aid to states run by Democrats.
- Trump us using "national emergency" to gut the Clean Air Act without letting Congress weigh in.
- Trump's latest tariffs were ruled illegal.
- Trump's cultists unveiled a 22 foot gold statue of Trump at his Florida golf course, in order to get more crypto lucre.

She then concludes with the lead story, which is the Virginia Supreme Court, on partisan lines, ruling that the new gerrymandered maps - which were approved by the Virginia electorate - was unconstitutional under Virginia law. 

In terms of partisan politics, this latest iteration of courts denying Democrats the same relief that they routinely provide Republicans is a gut punch to Democrats hoping to impose a political cost on Republican efforts to destroy majority rule in this country.

The only solution is the example that Hungary offers. Orban entrenched his rule even more soundly than Republicans have, but a massive wave overwhelmed his gerrymander and negated his control of the media. The lived experience was greater than efforts to control the narrative and people threw him out.

The overwhelming corruption of the Trump Administration is going to be increasingly difficult for Fox News to cover up. Gas prices aren't coming down. Food is going to become more expensive. Meanwhile, Trump is squandering money on ballrooms, reflecting pools and wars of choice.

The news from Virginia and about the Voting Rights Act was a gut punch. As Josh Marshall keeps reminding us, the Courts are currently handmaidens to the death of American Democracy. (Not ALL of the Courts, but enough and obviously the Supreme Court.) However, without the consent of the governed, government is illegitimate. Hopefully in November, the Blue Wave is high enough to swamp any barriers put in its place. 

Unequal To The Moment

 Jesus Christ, Elite Lawyer Brain is going to be the end of democracy in this country.

DOJ-In-Exile

 Josh Marshall has been arguing that we need a Department of Justice-In-Exile. The idea is that there is obviously a massive amount of law breaking going on, and the Trump DOJ is simply not going to look into it - unless it's a Democrat. In fact, Democrats likely don't even have to break the law to warrant investigation and prosecution. If we are going to fumigate the Executive Branch and DOJ, we will need a repository of evidence so that we may hold people accountable. The signal failure of the Biden Presidency was not throwing Trump in jail on January 21st, 2021.

Now, the obvious problem is that Trump can and will pardon people. Some of the DOJ-In-Exile will perhaps be about sending that evidence to state prosecutors. If Trump pardons, say, Tom Homan, then perhaps Illinois could bring him up on charges under Illinois law. 

There's a separate issue that Marshall sometimes refers to, but needs to be repeated. Democrats need to be ready to go on various prosecutions on corruption and fraud outside of the Executive Branch or at least adjacent to it.

Want an example? Elon Musk sure looks like he's committing fraud so that he can become the world's first trillionaire. Given the howling void at the center of this creature in the place where his soul would normally be, his headlong pursuit of "winning" the race to become a trillionaire is naturally the sort of fraud that someone who feels that they are bigger than the law would commit. There's very little chance that Musk will get a pardon from Trump, but he might. He would have to feel that he needed one, and he may be too narcissistic to understand that. 

Anti-trust enforcement is a requirement for the next Democratic Administration. Yes, Republicans will caterwaul about "lawfare" after committing actual prosecutorial overreach. You just have to ignore that and bull right through. Biden and especially Merrick Garland were not capable of understanding that. It will require a new mindset from new leaders.

The Capo Regime

 Last night, a bunch of principled Republicans in Indiana who stood against Trump's mid-cycle gerrymandering plan went down to defeat in their primaries. As Morris points out, this is at the heart of Republican cowardice in the face of Trump. In fact, a lot of his most vocal critics in the GOP, like Don Bacon or Marjorie Taylor Greene are either planning on retiring or already have. You simply can't get crosswise from Trump and expect to retain your seat. We will see if Massie can hold on to his seat in Kentucky.

This is the fundamental problem with gerrymandering. If you think that the main obstacle to you holding on to your seat is from a primary challenger, because your district is R+10, then you cannot allow any daylight between yourself and party leadership. When your party is lead by a degenerate criminal like Donald Trump, that...well let's just say that causes problems.

The hope at this point is for an Orban-style rebuke of Trump and Republicans this fall. In this case, they will have dummymandered their way into losing seats that were previously safe. If the Blue Wave is large enough, it will not only deliver the House, but it will do so at huge margins, because Republicans took a bunch if R+15 districts and diluted them to create another R+9 district. 

Back to Trump, his fundamental managerial style is borrowed from the mafia. If you cross him, you die. Whatever your feelings about loyalty, this isn't that; it's fear. As Trump becomes more and more unpopular, lashing yourself to him will not, I hope, work out for the GOP.

Getting Worse

 Trump's war against Iran is getting worse. Trump, true to his nature, is trying to tweet his way through it. My favorite was him posting a picture of himself holding a bunch of Uno cards, saying he "held all the cards," but of course, if you have all the cards in Uno, you're losing.

Trump's leverage points on Iran do exist, but one fundamental problem is that eventually, Trump needs Iran to negotiate a peace. How do you negotiate with someone as unreliable as Trump? How can Iran trust anything this guy says? So, even if there were a deal that both sides could agree on, why would Iran trust him to follow through?

Eventually, I think, it's going to require more strikes on Iran. Quite a few more. Iran will then do as they did yesterday and strike Gulf oil facilities. Perhaps the only possible solution involves China acting as mediator - in fact, if China really is striving for global leader, what an opportunity this provides. They can fill the role that the US has filled for decades as good faith interlocutor between warring parties. 

So those $4.75 gas prices aren't coming down any time soon. If there's any potential upside to this is that Trump is now creating the economic conditions to promote renewables. Even as he tries to destroy renewables within the US, he is going to speed march the rest of the world away from petroleum. 

The worrisome thing for me is going to be food prices. Between fertilizers and diesel fuel, farming is about to go through some really tough times. That's going to hit everyone hard. 

Richardson began her post with:

According to a new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans believe President Donald J. Trump does not have the mental sharpness necessary to lead the country. Fifty-five percent think he does not have the physical health to serve as president. Fifty-four percent say they don’t think Trump is a strong leader. Sixty-seven percent think Trump doesn’t carefully consider important decisions.

Events are moving too fast for this addled old man surrounded by sycophants who have to coddle his fragile ego rather than providing him with honest information and assessments. He's a fundamentally stupid man who is suffering from age related cognitive decline (he keeps bragging about passing dementia tests) and whose information environment makes it worse.

So, yeah, things are going to get worse before they get...worse.

A Looming Reckoning

 Martin Longman notes the brewing civil war within the Idaho GOP. Idaho is in the running for the most conservative state in the Union (which is a shame, because it's a gorgeous place). The issue that's tearing at the party is the issue of immigration and farm labor. Most agricultural businesses require low wage and often undocumented labor. They simply can't meet their margins without it. 

The "common sense" solution is some form of temporary guest worker program and a path to citizenship for others. The "work hard and pay their taxes but don't have documentation" group. However, the MAGA portion of the GOP is so damned xenophobia and racist that they want Stephen Miller's mass deportation program, whereas others - whether they know it or not - want the Biden plan negotiated in the Senate but blown up by Trump. Increased border security, expedited asylum hearings, and maybe some guest worker visas.

All of this points to a looming catastrophe. The farm economy is about to implode, as fertilizers are simply unavailable or too expensive, diesel is through the roof and they have no one to work the fields.

Every single one of these hardships is a direct result of decisions that Donald Trump made.

Personally, I would love to see a Farm-Labor Party come into existence in the Great Plains to run instead of the Democratic Party who are - often unfairly - seen as too beholden to strange culture war issues, Trump's weird exclamation of "transgender for all" whatever that means.

Even so, the way things are going, I'd keep an eye on places like Iowa, Montana, Kansas and Nebraska. The Democrats - and in some places independents - have recruited some good candidates, Alaska especially.

If it's a wave and farmers are hurting...anything is possible.

Racist In Chief

 Richardson's Recap began with cataloguing Trump's insane Tweet-stream over the course of an hour on Saturday. Included were these chestnuts:

Then, at 11:13, Trump posted an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”

...

Then, at 11:40, he posted an image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept[ember] 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, “TRUMP!”

We can talk all we want about Trump's devastating impact on policy. Richardson notes his apparent plans to draw down American troops in Germany, because the German Chancellor pointed out - correctly - that America has no strategic vision for the war in Iran. That's really bad!

However, any discussion of Trump's impact on America - and an impact that will sadly, I believe, outlast him - is how he has dragged all sorts of slurs and nastiness out into the open again. Social media has been flooded with the war "retard" as a slur, which is really pretty appalling. It's not just MAGA that uses the word, either. 

The racism that Trump mainlines into public discourse would have ended a career 20 years ago. As he spiral into narcissistic wounds from his collapsing support as he awful policies become real, he leans more and more into the transgressive nature of his poisonous discourse. This thrashing about is going to get worse and he will get worse until we get the inevitable moment when Mike Johnson will explain that he hasn't seen the quote where Trump used the N-word five times in a single sentence.

I remain convinced that Trump remains an avatar for about a quarter of the American people and the rest of his support is just partisanship. That quarter of the American people can go fuck themselves.

Keeping Your Eye On The Ball

 The Platner thing is a perfect intramural clusterfuck - at least among the terminally online. It involves preening Bernie Bros on the one side and the women and minorities on the other, lots of hurt feelings and no clear offramps.

However...

We need to keep our eye on what's important here. Josh Marshall has been writing (here and here and here) on the corruptness of the Supreme Court and why reforming the Court and clipping its wings has to be an imperative of whenever we return to democratic rule and Democratic governance. It's the one thing that has me truly despondent about the near and long term future. In fact, we have the Court we have, at least in part because of the schisms of 2016, which might very well have pushed Trump over the finish line in the Blue Wall. Maybe a unified party win those three states, and we have no Gorsuch, no Comey Barrett and likely no Kavanaugh. 

The evisceration of the Voting Rights Act is an obvious example of the Judiciary rewriting the laws and overturning precedent to suit their ideological whims. However, we can't forget Dobbs. The decision to overturn Roe v Wade has led to restrictions across the country on women's access not just to abortion but all sorts of reproductive care.

Now, we have a Republican Circuit Court (the Fifth, naturally) banning the shipment of mifepristone across state lines. This is a classic case of the Dog That Caught The Car for Republicans. Bans on abortion drugs are pretty damned unpopular outside Trump's evangelical base. People might blanche at surgical abortions, due to decades of anti-abortion propaganda. Taking a people that expels the zygote is less offensive to some fence sitters on the issue. Why is a morning after pill worse than a morning before pill?

Republicans don't want to upset anyone any more than they have to in an electoral environment that is likely to be harsh already. If the FDA rules that mifepristone is unsafe (it isn't), then we have more people pissed at the degradation and politicization of medicine and science. If they rule that it's safe (it is), then the evangelicals walk out. They want to punt this until after the midterms, but the drug companies are pushing for an immediate ruling, not just for political reasons, but because this will legitimately sow chaos across telemedicine and the overall medical landscape. At a time when Trump's Big Ugly Bill gutted healthcare and rural health care in particular, destroying telehealth would be a disaster.

How many times to Susan Collins vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee that helped author Dobbs? Five times - she didn't vote for Clarence Thomas, though, but only because she wasn't in the Senate. While she didn't vote for the OBBB that cut rural health care, she voted to advance it to the floor, in a classic example of strategic voting that has served her well over her career. 

Platner, for all his baggage, does not carry THAT baggage. 

Platner

 When I first saw video of Graham Platner, the now presumptive nominee to take on Susan Collins in Maine,  I thought he had something. Vibes, I guess. I do believe - very strongly - the Democrats have a vibes problem, and nominating a certain type of guy wins voters that nominating even an extraordinarily qualified woman like Hillary Clinton does not. Sucks to say out loud, but that's what my gut tells me.

Platner, however, proved to be something of an oppo researcher's dream. Incredibly bad statements in his past, a Nazi tattoo, casual misogyny (though again, in the past). Schumer saw this, too, and convinced term limited governor, Janet Mills, to jump into the race. 

She dropped out yesterday citing a lack of funds.

Platner has been gracious, his very online supporters have not. And this is the problem. As Platner's problematic past was exposed, people began to take sides. The Bernie Left loved his faux working class aesthetic (Platner grew up quite comfortable, including an unsuccessful stint at the Hotchkiss school). Those who preferred not to support someone with his past inflammatory statements or, you know, a Totenkopf tattoo saw in Platner the second coming of John Fetterman. Here was someone posing as a working class dude who was big and burly, but really was kind of playing at it. 

Both sides began to dig in. Once that happens, you lose focus on the real goal of all this, which is to finally oust Susan Collins - the only Republican elected Federal official in New England. Mills was a flinty old school Mainer who called out Trump in the Oval Office, famously saying, "I'll see you in court." Platner is several decades younger, at a time when Democrats are exhausted with older politicians. 

Where I land is here: I have some serious doubts about Graham Platner especially within the context of Fetterman's betrayal, but I have zero doubts about Susan Collins. She's objectively horrible, while pretending to be eminently reasonable. The facade of moderation covering a reliable MAGA vote.

The absolute imperative in 2026 is "Vote Blue, No Matter Who." That now includes Graham Platner and all his baggage. As for his embrace by the Bernie Bros and their inevitable crowing over his victory, I think this says less about Center Left vs Far Left, but rather about Young vs Old and the declining salience of rhetorical baggage in the Era of Trump. We can hope that there are no Swallwell sized revelations out there, because winning Maine is an absolute must if Dems are going to get a working majority in the Senate (especially with Fetterman being a supposed Democrat).

Platner has said the right things, even if his online mob has not. Hopefully, he continues to do so and tells that mob to win gracefully, or else we might lose catastrophically in November. 

A Most Unamerican Speech; A Most American Speech

 Donald Trump, yesterday, droned the words that Stephen Miller wrote for him about America being a racial project. He basically asserted that America was a nation-state for white, Anglo-Saxons. There's a version of this speech - delivered with the King Charles standing next to him - that might have made sense. 

In fact, Charles later gave that speech to Congress.

Where Trump spoke of some sort of racial and genetic connection - "Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage." - Charles spoke of American ideals, including the value of bringing diverse voices together in a national project. If there was a connection between Britain and America, it was in the preservation of liberty through checks on Executive power, as was written into the Magna Carta and the Constitution. (In fact, the Magna Carta is somewhat more prominent a document in America than Britain.) Where Trump intoned the idea that America was a project of white Anglo-Saxons, Charles said "the essence of our two Nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, or none."

The King of England continued: “Our common ideals were not only crucial for liberty and equality, they are also the foundation of our shared prosperity. The Rule of Law: the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice. These features created the conditions for centuries of unmatched economic growth in our two countries.”

It was telling that when he affirmed support for Ukraine, he received a standing ovation. This, while Trump and Netanyahu move closer to Putin.

Trump's virulent social media team released a picture of Charles and Trump that read "TWO KINGS." While this is a direct troll of the No Kings protest movement, it is also the agenda to destroy checks and balances and create a form of personal rule that would be indistinguishable from a monarchy.

TL;DR: The King of England - the descendant of King George - gave a more American speech than the "president" of the United States.

The Hungarian Model

 For years, conservatives have looked at Viktor Orban's competitive authoritarianism as a model for what they wish to accomplish in the US. They want a white, ethno-state with an enriched elite that buttresses a patrimonial strongman who will prevent them from having to press 1 for English.

The rout of Orban's Fidesz party a few weeks back, however, is now the model for the pro-democracy forces in America. Yesterday, the "Supreme" Court - in yet another lawless, ahistorical nullification of American law - decided to effectively end the Voting Rights Act. Florida moved quickly to change its maps in seeming violation of its state constitution. I would expect Tennessee to follow suit. (All of this is downstream from Rucho, which ruled that partisan gerrymanders were legal, which might be up there with Dred Scott as the worst SCOTUS decisions of all time.)

In order to squeeze more Republican seats out of already gerrymandered states, Texas and Florida have risked "dummymanders." These are gerrymanders that dilute the strength of "red" districts to create more "purple" ones, and in return are susceptible to being overwhelmed in a wave election. If you take an R+15, a D+7 and a D+15 set of districts and create a D+25, an R+8 and R+7 set, you risk losing that original R+15 district in a wave year.

That's what happened to Fidesz and Orban. They has so squeezed the gerrymander and rigged the map that when a true mass mobilization occurred, it carried away those +10 districts.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Democrats winning the House this fall is likely the moment where we will know if America remains a democracy. Trump is almost certain to be less popular in November than he is now. Gas prices are not going to come down. He, himself, is insulated within his fantasy ballroom and his coterie of sycophants. 

I'm not especially concerned with the generic ballot right now, because I think people don't like the Democrats but absolutely HATE Trump, and that shows up in soft support for the Democratic Party that will not dissuade people from either swinging back to Democrats or simply staying home if they are Republicans.

Still, it could require a D+10 wave to overwhelm the efforts of the Supreme Court to end American democracy.

Decline Without A Fall

 The farcical charges against James Comey are the latest attempt by the Trump GOP to create a climate of fear and intimidation amongst their "enemies." As Josh Marshall and Heather Cox Richardson point out, these actions - and so many others - need to be understood not as expressions of Trump's strength, but as weakness. Trump is losing bigly. His approval ratings are cratering, and as they sink further, more of his base start to question whether they made the right choice. His policies are, of course, terrible. The Iran War and the tariffs are stoking inflation, and when you add in deportations and the general chaos of his rule, you get slowing growth. 

I never really thought that Trump's wholesale assault on American freedoms was going to resonate with the sort of swing voters who voted for him in 2024 because of nominal prices. They are pretty linear in how they think of politics, and abstractions like "freedom" were never going to move them, or they would have been moved in 2024. That's not to say that they can't see the absurdity of him focusing on his ballroom when people are losing their health insurance and the cost of gas is high and going to get higher.

We are six months from the midterms. Farm bankruptcies are skyrocketing. Interest rates are more likely to go up than down. The chaos will only intensify. Democrats' lead on the generic ballot is not as big as Trump's negative approval ratings. That typically changes as we approach a midterm election. What's more, this is where candidate quality matters. Mary Peltola and Sherrod Brown have already won their states before. People should trust them more than "Generic Democrat." 

Expect the crashing out by Trump to continue.

No, Seriously. F*** Your Ballroom

 Krugman notes that the REAL oil crunch hasn't arrived yet. Prices are bouncing all over the place based on Trump's erratic statements and the yo yo-ing of plans and statements by the US and Iran. Countries and companies are drawing down reserves to compensate for the reduced flow of oil. Presumably production is ramping up, too. Even if there was a real peace deal agreed to today, it would take many months to get oil production to return to pre-war levels.

Krugman concludes with this observation:

Translation: So far, despite much higher oil prices, demand for oil has fallen by only a fraction of the loss of supply. Instead, the world economy is running by taking oil out of storage. Since there’s only so much oil in the tanks, this can’t go on. So if the Strait doesn’t reopen, prices will have to soar high enough — and inflict sufficient economic damage — to destroy another 11 or more million barrels a day of demand. That’s a lot.

But Trump is talking about his ballroom.

This may seem weird, but it makes sense if you view it psychologically. Trump is clearly dissociating. His fragile sense of self-worth depends on constantly believing that he’s a winner while others are losers. Now he’s faced with the reality that he, more or less single-handedly, led America to humiliating strategic defeat.

So, viewed through the lens of his narcissistic wound, the immediate pivot from the assassination attempt to talking about how he HAS TO HAVE A BALLROOM is really about narcissistic supply. 

F*** Your Ballroom

 The single most idiotic thing to come out of the  half-baked assassination attempt on Trump's life were the immediate - and I mean immediate - calls to drop all opposition to Trump's ballroom.

First of all, security worked exactly as it should. The security perimeter held and no one was killed, including the would be shooter. There is at least some rumors swirling  that the Secret Service agent who was shot in the vest was shot by another agent. 

Second, the WHCD is not a presidential event. This is the first time that Trump has gone, in fact, because he's a WATB whose skin is so thin a gnat could pierce it.

Finally, what they are proposing (it's not really a serious proposal) is that presidents no longer interact with the public. Like the Japanese emperor, he should hide away in the imperial compound like a distant god. 

Basically, Trump will turn any random event into a way to sate his impoverished ego.

Broken Politics

 The...whatever it was that happened at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last night...is yet another simply bizarre moment that have become common place since Trump came down the escalator. Yes, I'm "victim blaming." Trump has been targeted previously by people who fit more in the school shooter or John Hinckley/Charles Guiteau category of assassin. Disturbed men who found meaning in killing someone famous or simply wanting to "die famous" themselves. We don't know anything about the motives of the man in custody, but he went to Cal Tech, wasn't a registered Democrat, but gave money to Harris' campaign. He was apparently staying at the hotel, which suggests a degree of planning. Yet the actual attack was hardly a well-thought out plan.

Lots of online voices have suggested that this - like the Butler attempt - were "false flag" actions designed to bolster Trump's sagging popularity. As Paul Campos argues, that's highly improbable. Some of this is post hoc ergo propter hoc, in that the Butler attempt really did give him a boost, and might have tilted the election in his favor. As I said at the time, his defiant fist as he was being rushed off stage was the only time I could see him behaving in a way that would suggest an actual virtue. From the effect, the cause is assumed that the shooting was staged.

Trump never goes to the WHCD because he hates the press. He decides to go, and there's a shooting attempt. This naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories. I would argue that his plan was to pick a nasty fight and give a vitriolic speech as a way to divert attentions from his cratering approval. Picking fights with the press is red meat and it always plays well with MAGA. That makes more sense than some sort of staged attempt on his life.

I think we have to consider two things. The first is that this is an administration that invited a reporter into a war planning chat. It's a president who launched a war against Iran without considering what Iran might do in response. It's an economics team who seems to think foreign countries pay tariffs, especially those damned penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands. The idea that these clowns could pull off three false flag attacks and the meticulous attention to secrecy and planning that this would require strains belief.

The second is that Trump is a chaos agent. That's a large part of his selling point to the disgruntled people who adore him. They don't care if he can build a better society, they just want the old one torn down. That sort of personality will inspire violence. He will inspire to people to kill him. He will also inspire his followers to assassinate Minnesota legislators, to beat Paul Pelosi nearly to death with a hammer and to stage an insurrection to overthrow the government of the United States. 

Violence - political violence - is a sign that our politics are completely broken. It doesn't mean irrevocably broken, but currently very much broken. Again, we don't know if the shooter was thinking clearly, but he could very well be in the Luigi Mangione camp of a radicalized person who simply snaps and resorts to violence. We know death threats against public officials are on the rise, and we know that Trump uses dehumanizing language to speak about anyone who stands against him. Stochastic violence leads to actual violence, including violence directed against himself.

One more reason this is unlikely to be a false flag, besides the difficulty and danger in pulling it off. This story will largely disappear by Wednesday.  Quick, who was the guy who laid in ambush for Trump at his golf course? What was his name? Hell, I'm only vaguely sure of the name of the Butler shooter. Crooks, I think?

The dysfunction of our political life -  a dysfunction that Trump took and dialed up to a hundred - has led us to this point, where violence is more and more common, and will remain that way until we finally put the era of this malevolent orange creature behind us.

Hey, Are We At War With Iran Again?

 Or is Trump just manipulating markets again? 

Maybe the problem is sending these real estate failsons to negotiate an end to the war?

Going Down With The Ship

 Morris has the tale of Trump's truly abysmal approval ratings. He's underwater among almost every demographic except "people who voted for him 2024" and "men over 65." Even "white, non-college" is basically 50-50. Even his voters - and I think over time, people will not admit to voting for him - are at only 84% approval. Even the motivated reasoning of justifying your choice isn't enough.

My general feeling as an historian is that - as Adam Smith said - there's a lot of ruin in a nation. We will come out of this period weakened, fractured, degraded, but over time, we can recover - as long as we put it behind us.

However, our school has been hit roughly every year with an instance of hate speech. It's anonymous, it's racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist. In other words, it's like so much of the vile corners of our internet culture. But more significantly, it has happened every year since 2017. 

Since 2017.

Look, the racism, sexism and homophobia were always there. I'm not naive. What this villain has done is brought that language, that hatred, that bigotry out of the shadows and made it acceptable. I would point to his video that depicted the Obamas as monkeys, as just one of a million examples that - in a moral nation - would be the end of this guy.

Broken People

 Trump is a "broken person." He is fundamentally a bad person because something in him broke, making him the malignant narcissist we see today. We can certainly bemoan the emotionally manipulative parenting or the malign influence of wealth that made him this way, but there is simply something broken in the man.

What's crazy is how other broken people have flocked to him and staffed his administration. I mean, Pete Hegseth? Hegseth, though, was a Cabinet appointment. He appealed to Trump via Fox News. He "looked" like someone who was a "war fighter" whatever that means.

Now, we have someone like Julia Varvaro, who is apparently in the soft edges of prostitution. She became Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, despite having few qualifications. Now she's accused of soliciting money in return for her company.

"How does Trump attract these people?" isn't the right question. The right question is why we elected the sort of cretin that attracts these people. 

Rules For Thee, But Not For Me

 Virginia voters narrowly passed the new gerrymandered maps that benefit Democrats. Objectively speaking, gerrymandering is bad for democratic governance. It should not be allowed.

However, Republicans have made a consistent practice of not only gerrymandering their states, but doing some in between the normal redistricting. Texas has done it twice. Nevertheless, the whining and caterwauling from Republicans is deafening. "How dare those dastardly Democrats do the same thing we've been doing?!" As someone noted, Trump has perfected the art of starting wars without considering the fact that your opponent has moves to make as well. Trump's narcissism prevents him from seeing the other side of a conflict as having equal agency.

Democrats should introduce legislation to ban the practice. Hell, make it a constitutional amendment just to make sure. They should keep introducing it and making Republicans vote against it until it passes. American democracy would be better off without gerrymandering, but it might not exist if Democrats don't fight fire with fire in the short run.

Decency

 Martin Longman has a sort of "Inside Baseball" post about the economics of writing in the internet. Basically, he was one of the OG Bloggers back in the day and built a solid readership. I read him religiously, and he does his best to bring rigor and insight into his analysis. 

One thing he rarely, if ever, does is troll.

His point is that trolls make money. Trolls gather attention. Trolls can monetize that attention in ways that being thoughtful and decent cannot. Twitter has gone down the shitter (though I still find it easier to use than BlueSky), in large part because you get this rampaging race to the bottom. Nakedly racist, misogynistic and bigoted content draws attention - positive and negative - in ways that ten tweet analysis does not.

It is tempting - but I think wrong - to blame this on "the algorithm." The algorithm is simply predicting what you want to see based on what you engaged with. In other words, the problem is...us. We are training the algorithm to outrage us, and as things become more outrageous, we lose a little bit more of the milk of human kindness. 

It's similar to Trump. He's awful, truly awful, but there are people who vote for him BECAUSE he's truly awful, and the most dispiriting part of all this is that our neighbors are not only OK with that, but seem to crave it. 

I am hopeful that the Democratic nominee in 2028 is the one who embraces basic human decency as their calling card. Newsom is great in this moment going toe to toe with Trump's troll army, but I want to rally around someone like Obama or even Biden who makes me feel proud of my country again. I want to believe that we are not that cruel and awful. 

Deeply Weird

 I've been reading Yglesias for a while now. I read him because I don't always agree with him and I don't want to silo myself away from contrary takes. When he said he had been a philosophy major, I thought, "Well, that makes sense. He seems more in love with abstractions than people." When he said he had a strange neurological quirk that made it hard for him to picture things in his mind, I thought, "Well, that makes sense. He seems more in love with abstractions than people."

Today, however, he crossed a fucking line. 

It's the perfect example of thinking without feeling.

GOP v MAGA

 Morris flags a YouGov/Economist poll that estimates that the Republican electorate is about 50-50 between MAGA and "normal" GOP. What's more, non-MAGA Republicans are finally breaking with Trump over Iran and prices. I'll quote Morris:

Trump’s 2024 coalition was built on four pieces. The core is the roughly 30–35% of Americans who are MAGA on any given policy. But the base alone doesn’t win elections. Trump won by adding three other groups: non-MAGA Republicans who are negatively polarized against Democrats and would never vote for them; swing voters who soured on Kamala Harris for ideological or personal reasons; and voters who were simply fed up with the economy and wanted the other party in charge.

Looking at the polling, Trump has lost a little ground with his base and with the reluctant Republicans. But he’s losing real ground with the Harris-skeptics and the economy voters — and he’s losing it on the issue those groups say matters most.

I think that the narrative is too focused on the last two groups. Yes, Democrats need to win back the Harris-skeptical (misogyny, anyone) and the "but muh eggs r espensive" voters. 

My gut, though, says that the Blue Wave that we need in November has to also benefit from both MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans just staying home out of despondency. 

This, by the way, is why I hate people dunking on people on social media who are saying, "Trump lied to me, I'm ashamed I voted for him." I get it, I do. But the key to saving democracy is getting those people to just stay home and not drag themselves to the polls to vote AGAINST those mean old Democrats who keep pointing out that they were stupid for supporting Trump. 

Just let them sulk and maybe stay home. In close races - and control of the Senate will be defined by close races - 10-15% of MAGA or non-MAGA Republicans just sitting it out is the difference between Sherrod Brown and Mary Peltola winning or losing. 

Lucy, The Football And A Credulous Media

 "Lucy and the football" is a meme about people falling for the same lie over and over again. It was used a lot to describe some Democrats during Dubya Bush's administration who kept falling for hollow assurances that turned out to be false.

Today, it is the media that play the role of Charlie Brown, endlessly kicking at the ball that Trump pulls away at the last minute. They never seem to learn that Trump is simply the least credible source in the Executive Branch. He calls up some reporter (or they call him and he answers) and says something that isn't true, like we have a deal to open the Straits of Hormuz, they report it, markets move in response, people on Polymarket make a killing and then it turns out, no, the Straits are not open. 

This is so bizarre, because the whole gestalt of the media is to be cynical and hard edged in pursuit of the truth. Yet, again and again they parrot these statement that are so obviously going to turn out to be false, simply from the experience of a year, or a month, or a week, or a day, or an hour before. 

There is simply no reason to believe anything Donald Trump says about the war in Iran. It's unclear whether he's delusional, wishcasting or manipulating markets for a quick buck - of all of the above. 

It is professional malpractice at this point to transcribe his statements on anything, but especially the war, without independent confirmation.

Margins

 The House of Representatives has a new member. New Jersey 11th had lost their member when Mikie Sherrill was elected governor. Unsurprisingly, the district not only remained Democratic, but shifted a bit more towards the Democrats. This was a Harris 53-45 and Sherrill 57-42 district that went for Analila Mejia 60-40.

This means the current House now stands at 217 Republicans, 214 Democrats and 1 former Republican now describing himself as an Independent, but caucusing with Republicans. There are three vacancies. Republican Doug LaMalfa died in January; his seat is overwhelmingly Republican - he won with close to 66% of the vote. Eric Swallwell and Tony Gonzalez both resigned over sexual assault allegations, which is an even partisan split. 

There was a vote in the House on a war resolution to continue to support the Iran War. It passed by one vote, with Jared Golden - the most conservative Dem House member and one who is retiring - and Thomas Massie crossing the aisle. That means that several Republicans basically abstained from voting. These tight margins are important, but insufficient. 

Trump's losing it. This has to be apparent to GOP House members. Mike Johnson famously has never heard of this Donald Trump fellow's Twitter feed. He pleads an unbelievable ignorance again and again, but they all know. 

The margins in the House mean that we are now in a situation where two Republicans - I'm looking at Massie and Don Bacon - can redeem American democracy. In the Senate, Thom Tillis has said he will block any appointments, if Trump doesn't back off attacking Jerome Powell. That same sort of vigor needs to appear among a few members of the House GOP. 

The Red Line

 Republicans are apparently aware of how diminished, even insane, Trump is. His callousness, his vulgarity, his wanton cruelty - these are not unknown to the Washington GOP. His senility and the creatures who surround him - the mental midgets who engineered the Iran War, for instance - have likely given them some pause.

Anyway, Trump has shifted his belligerence back to Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve. In some ways, this is just his typical wounded-animal-thrashing-about style. However, for the Senate GOP, this is shaping up to be a huge test of their ability to put country over party. Many of them have made their deals with the devil - think Lindsay Graham - to stay on the Malevolent Orange Slob's good side. Sabotaging the Fed would be catastrophic to the US and global economy. 

Quite of a few of the people I read were bemoaning the collapse in American support for renewable energy. The world will still move ahead with renewables, because they make sense. Globally, we will continue to scale upwards. Once Trump is gone, we can try and catch up. 

If Trump ends the Fed's independence, that's the sort of catastrophe that will reverberate for a decade of decline and ruin. Are there enough sane, rational people left the Senate GOP to stop him?