A Unified Theory Of Trump

 Tim Kreider wrote this exceptional piece on Donald Trump. I really, really recommend reading it, because it captures the whole media failure of the past decade. 

He starts by talking about the movie Psycho that starts as a crime thriller, and everyone - especially the investigator Arbogast - thinks they are in a crime story. In fact, they are in a horror/monster movie, and that tension is what makes Psycho one of the greatest films of all time.

Anyway.

Kreider's point is that journalists think that they are covering a politician, when in fact, they are covering an idiotic monster. This is the crux of it:

If you’re writing an op-ed or political analysis, or appearing as a guest on a podcast or discussion panel, you feel a professional obligation to try to come up with a novel insight, a “hot take”—ideally, something smarter than whatever all the other smart writers and speakers are saying that day. Something other than the obvious. The problem is, the object of so much of that labored ideation, Donald Trump, is obvious. He is not a complex figure of Nixonian contradictions. There are no depths to plumb; his biographers are going to have to pad out their books with a lot of background information and photo sections. He does not engage in subtle Machiavellian maneuvering; the only moves he knows are the playground rudiments: brag. Deny. Bully. Bribe. There’s nothing there for a smart person to figure out; they’re writing think pieces about a guy who doesn’t. His operating principles, the only rules you need to remember to understand absolutely everything he does, are simple:

1) He is a very stupid person who has never read or learned or ever been really interested in anything that didn't directly benefit him and (not unrelated)

2) He genuinely doesn't give a shit about anything other than himself - not his voters or his party or his allies in Congress or his "friends"/business associates or his own family. I have no doubt he would sell his daughter to a Saudi prince if he could negotiate a good price.

He also does not have what you would call a hidden agenda. His goals are as crude and basic as a flatworm's. He wants:

A) to make as much money as possible any way he can
B) to have everyone pay attention to him all the time
And - increasingly a priority the past few years -
C) to stay out of prison

(His conspicuous cognitive decline complicates all of the above, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental principles at work.)

The fallacy’s derivation notwithstanding, I’m not arguing that Donald Trump is psychotic; he’s not that interesting. He has the conscience of a toddler and the ethics of a tick but he isn’t mentally ill. He’s just a soft, spoiled, weak, mean rich kid who no one’s ever said no to and no one’s ever loved. He inhabits a sterile inner landscape of panicky, fragile vanity and unappeasable, suppurating resentment.

Josh Marshall once talked about Trump's Razor. The idea was based on Occam's Razor that - all evidence being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. With Trump's Razor, the stupidest and most venal explanation is usually the accurate one. 

"Why doesn't Trump try and address Democratic attacks on affordability?" 
Because he's a big dumb donkey.

"Why does he keep screwing up the situation with Iran?"
Because he's a big dumb donkey.

"Why does he harp on his vanity projects in DC as opposed to kitchen table issues?"
Big. Dumb. Donkey.

Weider continues (the format seems to work here):

“Sanewashing” is what critics call the journalistic tendency to try to describe and explain Trump in the language of conventional politics, presuming that it’s a media conspiracy to normalize his pathology and gaslight us all into thinking we’re overreacting. There may be some truth to this, but I think the explanation is more complicated; people who have spent their careers covering politics simply don’t have a vocabulary for what’s happening now; they’re like noir detectives in a slasher film. There’s no real precedent for someone who wields more power than any other individual in human history simply having no idea what he’s doing, or behaving with such naked, shameless self-interest. They can’t not report on what the President said or did that day; but it’s too terrifying, unimaginable, to acknowledge that the guy with access to the nuclear codes knows much less about geopolitics than your fourth-grader, or that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is way lower on his to-do list than building that bigass arch. Two days ago, after Trump dismissed the Iranian leadership, whom he’d earlier called “smart, strong people” as “scum,” I got to listen to a White House correspondent halfheartedly float the notion that the abrupt contradiction might’ve been a bargaining tactic, struggling to avoid the conclusion that nothing the President of the United States says really means anything much at all.

If we ever have a clear understanding of this era, we have to grapple with the fact that Trump is a reasonably stupid person who has one skill - selling "Donald Trump" - and we have tens of millions of Americans who are also dumb enough to believe in what he's selling. That latter point is not one Weider makes, but I think is important. If you're a political junkie, how do you reconcile your years of study and passion with the realization that millions of your fellow countrymen - this bedrock of democracy - are fucking just as stupid as Trump is?

Read the whole thing.

Wierd

 Yesterday it wouldn't let me post.

I may have to migrate to Substack to write this shit that no one reads.

Class In America

Yglesias, the other day, raised the issue of how hard it is to define "class" in America. This is not a new challenge and it remains in many ways the single greatest obstacle that those self-styled socialists have in trying to win friends and influence people.

When Marx wrote back in the middle of the 19th century, he predicted that his communist revolution would most likely happen in America - a country he never set foot in. His reasoning was that the revolution had to occur in a place that had a highly developed industrial economy that relied on wage labor - the proletariat - coming to the realization that they were being exploited by capital - the bourgeoisie. Once they realized that, they would rise up in their numbers and overthrow the existing system of exploitation and replace it with a utopia where the fruits on industrial production would be shared equally.

So that never happened.

Where "communist" revolutions happened were in fact economically backwards societies like Russia, China and Cuba where you had the old feudal-style relationship between land owner and peasant. This was not at all what Marx predicted and predictably, those countries struggled to distribute the fruits of industrial production because they lacked industrial production. C'est la guerre.

This did lead to a bunch of feverish arguments all the way into the 20th century of why class-based politics never took hold in the US. Britain and other countries had Labour parties and Socialist Parties that routinely won elections. The Socialist Party in the US maxxed out with a 4th place finish in 1912. Despite real anger among many working class people, there simply never developed a fully "class conscious" proletariat in the United States.

Fast forward to the post-industrial US of today, the elements of class based politics is even tougher to create. Yglesias' jumping off point is the Graham Platner debacle in Maine, because Platner's definition of "working class" is so expansive, it's meaningless. Platner himself "qualifies" because he doesn't have a Bachelor's Degree, because he dropped out of college. He also went to Hotchkiss, which is not exactly working class. His attraction was that he seemed working class at first blush. He had a bushy beard; he was a veteran; he was an "oyster farmer." 

For that group of political consultants that elevated him to relevance, this was an antidote to "HR liberalism" that policed your pronouns and did land acknowledgements. (It was very much a gendered critique of current Democratic politics.) Platner looked credibly working class, so he must BE working class, and this will return working class voters to the Democratic Party.

Except wherever you look, including the current face off between the DSA Left and the Standard Liberal in the Michigan Senate primary, you see candidates like Platner or Abdul El-Sayed running much stronger amongst college educated voters than the "working class" voters that they purport to advocate for. In the NY House primaries, the DSA candidate defeated the head of the Hispanic Caucus by relying on voters in the Columbia University part of the district, not the Hispanic working class part of the district.

In other words, the biggest supporters of class-based leftwing politics are college educated voters who are not usually lumped into the "working class" basket. THOSE voters are not interested in "defund the police" or "Free Palestine". What's more, they typically don't really think government is going to work for them anyway, so what's the point in voting for someone who promises them "Medicare for All" when you don't expect Medicare to be there when you retire anyway?

Rather than grapple with this dynamic, WAAAAAY too many on that Left of Left of Center space are simply throwing out vibes candidates like Platner - who turned out to be a train wreck. You have a similar situation in Ohio's 7th CD, with a Republican who is credibly accused of violence against women facing another "working class" non-college graduate with some history of troublemaking in his past, too.

There is ONE version of class-based politics that I think does land, but I'm not sure who coined it: The Epstein Class. If you want to take down Trump and the GOP, that's a brilliant rhetorical flourish, because it links Trump's heavily implied crimes with Epstein's documented crimes with the heavily implied crimes of a bunch of rich creeps who hung out a private island and may or may not have raped a bunch of children. And except for Epstein, none of these super rich perverts has faced a whiff of legal consequences in this country. 

However, when you think about the "Epstein Class" you aren't differentiating between wage labor and salaried employees or between people who hold college degrees and those who don't. You're talking about a corrupt system whereby the very rich escape the consequences of their lawlessness. But if you simply attack the whole system as being corrupted beyond redemption, does that include the system that underwrites your mortgage? That raises taxes to educate your child? We are seeing the effects of dismantling the regulatory state in the explosive diarrhea moment. Isn't THAT system worth preserving?

If you're a DSA-type, you have to see the whole system as corrupt and needing to be replaced by a vanguard of non-politicians who arise from a working class that you likely never really were part of and who have no real credible plan to achieve their change via policy. Focusing instead on the specific corruption of Trumpism is less satisfying (especially because for many in the DSA, the real enemy isn't Trump but "establishment Dems").

Americans have never really seen themselves as part of a distinct class. Even in the Gilded Age and the New Gilded Age, when socio-economic mobility is deeply constrained, Americans have typically not seen themselves as "working class" and that term is now even more meaningless. As a teacher, am I working class? I have a graduate degree and a salary, so probably not. But you aren't going to create a mass class politics excluding people like me. In fact "people like me" are your most likely to embrace the DSA critique of America. 

I'll conclude by noting the most successful DSA politician in the country, Mamdani, has succeeded by being really good at providing public services and for embracing the joy of community. He's a really, really good administrator and a really, really good communicator. His popularity is not based on seizing the means of production, and where his earlier professions of DSA sort of politics like Defund the Police have caused him problems, he has simply jettisoned them. AOC also has a similar pragmatism to her politics. 

What we are seeing is that a pragmatic left is capable of real success, but waiting for Marx's moment of class consciousness is a non-starter.

Fever In The Heartland

 The other day, I finished Timothy Egan's book A Fever in the Heartland about the rise and fall of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Interestingly, I can remember a student paper from many years ago that tackled this same subject. In the '20s, the Klan was reinvented from a specifically Southern terror group aimed at unraveling Reconstruction to a national group simmering in the resentments of small town Protestant outrage over a changing America. They lashed out beyond their traditional hatred of Black political and economic autonomy, but also immigrants, cities, modernity and religions they felt were un-American.

Sound familiar?

Coming out of World War I and the Influenza pandemic of 1920 and centered in the struggling farm economy of the '20s, the resentment towards the new urban power was broadly held - especially in states without a center of gravity in the new industrial urban landscape. Places like Indiana, but also Colorado and Oregon, were natural centers of the new Invisible Empire.

Egan's book centers on D.C. Stephenson, a charismatic con artist and drifter, estranged from his family and harboring a deep need for sexual dominance. As he built up a massive empire, he took his cut from membership dues and bilked the rubes for their dollars. He was also a serial rapist.

Again, sound familar?

In the end, Stephenson - despite controlling the Klan that controlled Indiana - was put on trial for the rape and murder of a young woman. Even as the jury deliberated on his guilt the Klan slate of candidates won victories in the November election. However, shortly after the election, Stephenson was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He expected a pardon from his creature in the governor's mansion, and when it didn't come, he exposed all the corruption that he had participated in with the elected officials who abandoned him. This caused a collapse in the Klan in the North. It would briefly resurrect itself again in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, but it would never again reach the heights it had in the 1920s.

Reading the book, it was impossible not to see the parallels to our own age. For instance, the widespread prevalence of sexual predators in the MAGA-sphere precisely mirrors the sexual violence in the Klan, which extended beyond Stephenson. The nurturing of resentments to create a climate of hatred is the classic "Populist" playbook, and it was not unique to the '20s Klan, but I think the more interesting question is not "Is the Klan's spiritual successor MAGA?" because it clearly is. The question is: If we finally get a full airing of Trump's sexual crimes - especially as it relates to Epstein - will that be enough to break the grip of this particular fever?

And So It Ends...

Today the Men's World Cup ends. 

I has sad.

This has been the pinnacle of sport. Unlike the ADHD schedule of the Olympics, where you bounce from sport to sport, here you have multiple games of the same sport, played at the highest level. What's more, this Cup has been joyous. It has been dramatic (and controversial). It has featured the greatest player to ever play the game doing things at 39 that defy age and belief. It has seen tiny Cape Verde push the two finalists to the brink. It has seen fans scream and laugh and cry. Yesterday's 3rd place match - typically a desultory, listless affair between teams upset they aren't in the Final - was the most insane, entertaining game you could hope for. 

At a time when we feel more divided and angry at each other than ever, due to the unique attributes of Trump and the schisms that the social media algorithms exploit, this World Cup has been a beacon of joy and wonder. 

I am sad it's ending. I am grateful I was able to watch so much of it. 

Fascism

 During Trump's first term, I tried very hard to avoid using the term "fascist" to describe his presidency. I felt that he was a patrimonial authoritarian, and to a certain degree, I still hold that belief. Trump believes that the state should exist as an extension of his will and as a means to his personal enrichment. The state should reflect glory and power onto him. I also felt that many of the creatures around him are, in fact, fascist.

At this point - as Richardson so capably catalogs - any plausible argument that Trump is not a fascist has evaporated. The change might be because he's been marinating the increasingly crazed world of people like Stephen Miller and the echo chamber of Fox News. Trump has always denigrated his enemies, but now he's dehumanizing them, and that is the first step on a very, very dark journey. 

His unhinged speech last night and the eager willingness of Markwayne Mullin to threaten to illegal imprison state election officials gives us a pretty clear picture of where things are headed. Republicans must be getting slaughtered in their internal polling, because they aren't even making a case to win elections fair and square. I think they hoped that their gerrymandering would prevent a Blue Wave, but that plan seems to be unravelling on them.

I honestly don't know how successful they can be in finally destroying American democratic governance, but I do know that if Democrats don't win control of at least one, but preferably both chambers of Congress, we are mightily fucked. 

Living Within A Narcissistic Wound

 I didn't watch Obama's speeches; I sure as hell wasn't going to watch President Sundown scream and slur his way through a tired list of grievances. It is of course dangerous that in order to be nominated for any position, including Director of National Intelligence, you have to be willing to coddle the fragile ego of the world's oldest man-baby.

We have to consider the following:

- Trump was a spoiled little shit, who likely struggled with undiagnosed learning disabilities. We know he really doesn't read anything, and he was shipped off to New York Military Academy, which was effectively a reform school.
- Trump spent a LOT of time trying and failing to live up to his more intelligent brother in the eyes of his distant and harsh parents.
- Trump subsequently spent decades in real estate and marketing. He went bankrupt numerous times. He became tabloid fodder and the particular target of Spy magazine back when it was a thing.
- Trump was able to resuscitate his exhausted status via reality TV. This created a false image of the sort of business acumen that he never really possessed.
- Trump then rode misogyny into a fluke 2016 electoral win that endeared him to millions and created a cult of personality around him. 
- Trump - who has struggled his whole life with the gap between his image of himself and his actual accomplishments - now has a coterie of minions and a legion of cultish fans. His omnivorous id is now consuming every scrap of praise and gnawing on every criticism and slight. 

Anyway, we are screwed as long as the Worst Person in American History is effectively in charge of all three branches of the US government.

Working

 After a great deal of deliberation, I rented a tractor-backhoe to do some heavy landscaping on the property we are building our retirement home. Felt I could save some money. (The tractor did what tractors do: it broke down halfway through the first of the two days I rented it.)

What was striking was that I planned the rental around a brief heat wave in order not to die. Instead, I had to worry about whether I could breathe the air, as Canada is once again on fire and the sky is choked with smoke.

The good news is that I'm sure I can bet on whether the World Cup final in New Jersey will be played under air quality that is basically the same as being inside a chimney. 

Pillaging

 This summer, I am writing a student reader - an abbreviated textbook replacement - to compensate for a new schedule with fewer class meetings and therefore fewer homework readings. Who cares about learning, when you can follow the trendy herd in school scheduling?

Anyway, I'm condensing six textbook readings on the Gilded Age into three readings (see "who cares about learning" above). As I do so, I find myself including things like posse comitatus or the Wong Kim Ark case that likely wouldn't be in an accelerated text, because they have such relevance today with Trump's plan.

This morning, I was reminded by a better historian than I that one of the primary assaults on the Post-Progressive State that Trump and Project 2025 have launched is on the idea of preserving public lands. The National Park system is something that my wife and I have inordinate fondness for. I doubt we will get to every single park - American Samoa and the Alaska parks around the Arctic Circle are a wee bit remote - but we are going to give it our best effort. In a few weeks, we are headed to Colorado to finally see Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Yeah, sure, sure, we are going to see our kids, but also Black Canyon of the Gunnison. 

Trump's decision to allow mineral exploitation of public lands and his efforts to shrink protected lands is something that isn't a headline in the avalanche of Trump's malfeasance and corrupt governance, though I would wager that bribes changed hands to make this happen. Some of this is corruption; some of this is kowtowing to businesses over the public weal; some of this is ideological hostility to a government that actually does things that people like; some of this is just "pwn the libtards."

What it is, is not good or popular. 

In the midst of our first Gilded Age, there were still enough public spirited people to create the National Park ideal. There were still enough farsighted people to see that preserving nature was both morally and economically proper. Republicans want to return us to the cavalcade of corruption and self-dealing of the first Gilded Age, but that age ended, and Dog willing this one will, too. 

Institutional Serial Killer

 According to Richardson's research, ICE is responsible for killing 10 people on the streets of America. In ICE run detention centers - outside of the public eye - another 21 people have died this year.

The tactical decision to throw the outright Nazi, Greg Bovino, out the door has reduced the rhetorical temperature and some of the more egregious public displays of force in American cities. This has not meant a change in culture within Trump's Brown Shirts. They can't help but feel that they are immune to public accountability, as the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still shielded from the consequences of their actions.

The killing yesterday of Juan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine is a sadly typical extrajudicial killing for ICE. They targeted the wrong person based on appearance - a Kavanaugh Stop - and then got trigger happy. Guerrero was shot in the head in front of his 3 year old daughter. Guerrero is legally able to work in the US, but for the Nazis like Stephen Miller, it is not his legal status but his skin color that makes him a target. His crime was not crossing a line on a map without paperwork, but being brown skinned.

It is worth noting that this happened in Maine. Susan Collins will not have the luxury of facing a rapist with a Nazi tattoo. Maine Democrats will select a replacement soon, but Collins will have to go before the voters of Maine and explain her support for an organization that has killed 31 people in about six months. 

According to the Gestapo's own statistics, there have been 9 killings (including manslaughter) by undocumented aliens so far this year. From 2023-25, the number ranged from 23 to 29. That means ICE is responsible for more deaths than the so-called "dangerous aliens" that they have purportedly mobilized against. At this pace, they will extinguish the lives of about 60 human beings, which is an par with the worst surge of violence committed by undocumented people during the crisis of 2021-2.

ICE is often compared to a criminal gang, but I also think they are like an institutional serial killer. They operate across geographic distance to dilute their crimes, they prey on a certain ethnic group, they escape accountability for far too long.

We are governed by psychopaths. 

The Cost Of Incompetence

 I've argued repeatedly that an underrated peril of Trump and the general Republican Party being able to control government is the long slow (and now accelerating) erosion of governing competence. Martin Longman makes the case that Lindsay Graham - despite his myriad flaws and failings - was one of the final pillars of the GOP that had at least some vague desire to keep the lights on.

Now cometh the pestilence. Typical GOP stupidity looks at basic health and food safety measures as communism or something, so we gut the agencies responsible for preventing screwworm or hamstring the ability of the relevant agencies to track foodborne illness. Trump has always governed like a Facebook rant from your crazy uncle but now he's doing shit like opening up drilling and mining in endangered habitats, which is just venomous, but also likely really stupid.  Same goes with the various cuts to public health measures: Who exactly is asking for this shit?

You can be "pro-business" and still assume that government regulation is possible and necessary. One of the ideas about regulation that the Progressive Movement argued for was that it would create a level playing field where everyone would follow the same rules. Now there are no rules and no reason not for some businesses to engage in a mass rush to the bottom.

So, if you're keeping track, under Trump we have had three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We have had the Pale Horse of death under Covid; the Red Horse of war in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere, and now the Black Horse of famine is saddling up. 

The White Horse, is the Anti-Christ, a charismatic figure who will corrupt the world, so maybe we've had all Four. 

Lindsey Graham

 I suppose the admonition not to speak ill of the dead deserves following. However, I do think that Graham's death will and should be focused on how a man who was a devoted acolyte of John McCain and who knew instinctively what a piece of shit Donald Trump is could become so incredibly compromised in his support of a man who seemed to stand in opposition to the previous years of public service.

Whatever Graham's actual accomplishments were - and I don't imagine the list is long - he is now reduced to his servile devotion to that horrible creature who hijacked his party and his political career.

For all the other Republicans in Washington who know better, consider that Graham's legacy is not public service and devotion to "conservative values" but a craven submission to Donald Trump.

Slaughtered

 Richardson notes one of the myriad scandals that flies under the radar in the never ending onslaught on professional governance wrought not just by Trump but by Republicans. The Slaughter decision seems to give the President the ability to fire the heads of independent commissions created by Congress. This was an egregiously terrible decision in the way so many decisions - Citizens United, Rufo, Shelby, Trump - have been. It's a wholesale attack on the capacity of the government to produce neutral public goods and competent administration. For the Federalist hacks on the SCOTUS, poor government performance is a feature, not a bug. The worse the government performs, the more it justifies the anti-government, pro-business positions that are what truly motivated the Federalist Six. This makes a 2008 style crash far more likely.

So far, the lower courts are protecting the independence of our elections, but this is why the outcome in November is so critical. Two more years of unfettered Trumpist attacks on the fabric of civil governance and there might not be a government left to save. 

The good news is that the pissy little drama queen watched the Housing Bill become law at midnight last night without his signature. The subsequent problem is that some elements of the bill will have to be put into effect by his cronies and grifters, blunting the ability of the law to actually help ease the housing crunch.

Josh Marshall is correct when he has been arguing that Court reform has to be at the top of the list of any incoming Democratic trifecta.

There Is No Base

 Josh Marshall makes an interesting argument that the Democratic Party does not actually have a "base."  Plausible groups that make up a substantial part of the party are Black voters - especially Black women - women in general, college-educated liberals and the Left.

Of course, the Left isn't really a PART of the Democratic Party. Their shriveled avatar is Bernie Sanders, who isn't even a Democrat. They prefer to slam Democrats more than Republicans. They tend to be overwhelmingly young men who are processing their own psychodramas through their own form of identity politics. The final boss of this form of leftist politics is Graham Platner. If you want a succinct synopsis of this argument, check out Jamelle Bouie's video at this post, and you can skip to the 4 minute mark.

Marshall also notes that the two most important voting blocs - Blacks and college educated liberals - are VERY different culturally. Blacks are among the most regular church goers and white liberals are the least. 

Marshall also notes that the while the Republican Party has factions, they are overwhelmingly white, conservative Christians. That gives one group a stranglehold on the party, and conservatism - as a psychological expression - is already hierarchical, so Republicans can fall in line pretty easily, once its evangelical base makes its preferences known.

Trump was able to become the unlikely leader of this faction because he channeled their grievances, not because he was Christian (Jesus wept, he is not) or because of policy, but because he hated all the right people. Once in charge, his positions became the evangelical's positions, because they tend not to be wildly independent in their thinking to begin with. Oh, sure, "I wish he didn't tweet so much" but c'mon. They abandoned their decision making to him once he mocked those they wished to be mocked.

Ideally, the factionalism of the Democratic Party would make it more robust with internal debates that force groups to defend their positions and policies. However, the Terminally Online nature of, well, everything means that factional disputes harden and become permanent wedges. There are people who have made the specific naming of Israeli actions in Gaza "genocide" not just a deeply felt policy position, but their whole personality. If you are a Democrat who is insufficiently in tune with this, you are simply part of a "corrupt" system.

Republicans, meanwhile, just eat Trump's shit and ask for more.

Still - and this is REALLY important - Democrats won more votes than Republicans in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022. Then 2024 happened, which was kind of the fracturing along these lines combined with anger over nominal prices and Covid policy. 

Republicans combine structural advantages based on the House of Representatives and thus the Electoral College that work hand in hand with the servile fealty of their evangelical base. Democrats spend far too much of their ammunition on the circular firing squads. 

Mainiacs

 I'm not sure I have much to add about the Platner disaster. I think the broad contours are roughly that

- Platner had a superficial charisma that drew in a bunch of pencil necked consultants and cosplay socialists.
- Maine Democrats were gun shy about taking on Collins for reasons that I guess have to do with her electoral overachieving, but really just speak to a certain weakness among elected Democrats that is driving anti-establishment politics on the left.
- That left the choice between Platner and the aging Mills. That choice was made easier by Mills' apparent lack of fire to fundraise and campaign.
- Unsurprisingly, the very green Platner turned out to have a May Day Parade's worth of red flags. I saw a post talking about why are only the worst people running for office. Generally speaking, though, civic minded people run for office, starting with local offices and working their way up. Some recidivist drop-out has never stood before voters and never been put through the ringer and the organic vetting process that comes with running for multiple offices.
- Republicans in the Age of Trump will excuse all the flaws of someone like Platner, if the candidate has an "R" by their name, because they've done it for their Orange Jesus.
- Things Republicans will excuse include Nazi style aesthetics; sexual assault; pig ignorance. Platner should have run as a Republican.
- Platner should have dropped out after the Nazi tattoo and the early raft of sexually predatory allegations. I'm guessing he didn't, because he literally cannot understand why his behavior - "Hey, I was drunk" - constitutes sexual assault. 
- I hope that every leftist podcaster, every online Bernie Bro, every cosplay edge lord who had anything to do with this guy is perma-shunned from Democratic politics. 

In the end, I'm glad his political career seems to be over. (Again, would it shock me if he became a Republican, a la Tulsi Gabbard, another Bernie protege? No, it would not.) Hopefully, there is some Maine Democrat who can bring the energy and independence to beat Collins in what should be a wave year.

The Post-US World

 Richardson does her usual brilliant round up of the day's atrocities, which is usually most damning when it just quotes Trump verbatim. In this case, there is the embarrassing performance of Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara.

Krugman provides a bit more analysis. Trump went in and started doing his usual blustering bullshit, including resurrecting his Greenland nonsense. What was significant is that it seems that NATO heads of government mostly just ignored the senile old fool. As Krugman argues, this is because what Trump has done is expose every possible weakness in America's place in the world.

We are measurably weaker than we were on January 19th, 2025.

His tariffs have not worked to do anything but weaken our economy by driving up prices. Europe is de-Americanizing its economy, working to decouple from their crazy cousins in Washington. The debacle in Iran - now starting up again - has demonstrated his fecklessness and the failure of defense planners to recognize the new contours of 21st century warfare. He has abandoned the commitment to defend democracy in Ukraine. His constant antagonism has led countries to begin to move away from a dependence on US financial institutions. 

Richardson points to a quote from Robert Kagan:

In January, Robert Kagan warned that Trump’s destruction of the order that has underpinned global security for the past 80 years was creating the most dangerous world since World War II. With the end of open access to global resources, markets, and strategic bases and without reliable friends or allies, the U.S. will need more military spending than ever.

“Americans are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future,” Kagan warned. They are accustomed to the “basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world” and have come to think it is “the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely. They can’t imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them.”

Everything will be up for grabs, Kagan wrote, with myriad “flash points for potential conflict.” “If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive,” Kagan wrote, “wait until they start paying for what comes next.”

"There is a lot of ruin in a nation." We will find out just how much.

Talking Past Each Other

 Yglesias takes issue with Josh Marshall's take on why leftists are winning primaries in safely blue districts. On the one hand, he does make the solid point that Democrats need to run moderates in swing districts. I don't think Marshall would argue any differently. Marshall - and I actually exchanged emails with him on this - is talking more about system vs anti-system politics. 

Two things I would disagree with Yglesias on is first of all the true "pundit's fallacy." He coined that term to describe the fallacy that pundits engage in when they assume that if a candidate just takes their favored policy positions, then they will win. I think the true pundit's fallacy is that voters - especially persuadable voters - really make sophisticated judgments based on policy at all. The American people were so upset about nominal higher prices that they elected a guy whose signature policy - tariffs - was going to be inflationary. 

The second thing I think is false is that the winning of safe blue seats is somehow draining resources to fight Trump. Sure, at the margins, every dollar spent in a primary battle is a dollar that could have been spent in the general election. I don't think that means that holding THOSE seats is going to be a problem, and I doubt that the person giving to Brad Lander was going to give to Mary Peltola anyway.

Where I agree with him is that I think the Left has largely abandoned reason in its politics. Yesterday I briefly engaged in a Twitter exchange (that I finally wised up and walked away from) where I responded to someone saying the Gaza was a litmus test for candidates. My question was "Why, in 2026, is Gaza not just important, but some people's whole personalities?" I can understand being upset by Israel's conduct in Gaza, deeply upset. I can't understand why this has become someone's entire personality, both politically and even socially.

I think we should cut off military aid to Israel. I think we should stop protecting their bad behavior with our veto power in the UN. I think Biden was slow to arrive at the realization that Israel had gone off the rails, but I also think Biden did a lot more to rein in Israel than Trump ever did. I've also noticed that once you go offline, the campus protests and sit-ins have all pretty much ended now that Trump - who is WAY closer to Netanyahu than any Democrat - is president. Weird.

What I don't believe is that Israeli policy in Gaza is a first order issue in the 2026 midterms. One of the crazier - but I think very emblematic - assertions in the Twitter thread was someone saying that the US was directly responsible for the depredations visited upon Gaza. We did that. We bombed them. Not even, we sold weapons that Israel used, but that we were the ones ultimately responsible for the IDF's actions in Gaza. 

Yeah, no. 

Israel is a wholly sovereign country with a very powerful military. They are perfectly capable of setting their own policy and conducting their own operations. To assume that the US is responsible for that is a form of egocentrism bordering on narcissism. It asserts that there are no other actors in the world but us. That means that MY vote for city council is entirely going to determine what Netanyahu does in Gaza.

Attacking Israel has become part of anti-systems politics. We've been overtly allied with Israel since the 1960s at least. To stand against that is stand against the status quo, which is what seems to be motivating a lot of primary voters - in both parties. Trump is anti-systems politics, too. 

UPDATE: Marshall responds.

What Would A Democratic Trump Look Like?

 He would look like Graham Platner.

Like Trump, he would be a child of privilege who pretends to be something he's not. In Trump's case, he inherited millions, lost much of it and pretended to be a savvy businessman, when really he's just the heir to someone else's hard work. In Platner's case, he pretends to be a salt of the earth oyster farmer, when really he's just the kid of two rich parents who support him in adulthood.

Like Trump, he seems to be a rapist.

Like Trump, he projects an aura that certain people get fooled by. Trump's aura of the no-nonsense businessman; Platner's aura of the working class socialist. 

Like Trump, there's an omnivorous narcissism at work. Both men figured that they could run for office and not have all their many flaws exposed to the world. Both men seemed oblivious to their own failings, though hopefully only the Republicans are willing to ignore those failings.

Like Trump, he was protected from the consequences of his actions. Trump was sent to the New York Military Academy because he was a behavioral problem in school (many kids with learning disabilities would act out before we knew what learning disabilities were). Platner was sent off to Hotchkiss where he flamed out. In both cases, the ultimate reckoning, the consequences for fucking up, were smoothed over for them. 

There is a surface appeal to both men. Trump spent his whole life cosplaying as a hardnosed business savant. Platner looks the part of the former grunt who becomes a blue collar success. That appeal does not survive closer examination. In Trump's case, he has sailed through his many, many scandals. Platner seemed to be doing the same.

I hope that he drops out now. Hell, I hope he enters therapy, because he has some serious issues. As things stand, we have lost the Maine Senate seat, because a certain clique of Very Online Democratic Influencers saw the surface appeal of Platner and then overlooked the growing forest of red flags. Much like two years ago, we have a last minute chance to replace a flawed candidate, but that process will not  necessarily sit well with voters. The only chance of finally ousting Collins will be if the Democratic Party can do what the Republican Party didn't and shun this very "problematic" man until he retires from the scene. 

A Shame

 Martin Longman writes about his lifelong love of soccer and how shameful the last 48 hours have been for US Soccer. The first four games of the World Cup were really joyful, as those of us who love the USMNT saw them play with creativity, verve and passion. This was the "Beautiful Game" in a red, white and blue jersey.

The red card for Flo Balogun was a terrible decision. However, as soon as Trump horned in on the issue, it became something different. He is universally reviled around the world and the only president who would embrace the culture of corruption that surrounds FIFA. When he worked to overturn the suspension, that outraged not just Belgium, but the whole football world. America went from a gracious host nation and a wonderful spirited side to the Ugly American bullies who don't play by the same rules as everyone else.

The first half especially of last night's game was an embarrassing display of timidity and nerves. This was not the same team that we had seen in the previous games. To be fair, it was not the same Belgium team that seemed to struggle to start games and waited until the second half to try and put away teams. They came out firing; we came out misfiring. 

In just the same way that the only game the Knicks lost during the NBA Finals was when that bloated narcissist interjected him into the story, so, too, did the USMNT deflate when he squatted his fat ass on their heads. 

They were most likely to lose against Belgium, who are a very good team. It was the WAY they lost that leaves ashes in your mouth, and I have to think that Trump's meddling completely fucked up the vibes. 

Everything He Touches...

 Donald Trump ruined the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He insisted on making the whole damned thing about himself and his fragile ego, so he created that tacky, partisan laughably inept spectacle on the Mall. He hijacked the normal, bipartisan group created to celebrate the event and made it an ode to his corruption and narcissism.

And he wasn't done.

He apparently made a mafioso type phone call to fellow mobster Gianni Infantino to get FIFA to overturn the red card suspension of Flo Balogun, the US' leading goal scorer in the World Cup. This World Cup has been a miracle of goodwill and unbelievable games. Last night's England-Mexico match was mind blowing, but maybe not as mind blowing as the Cabo Verde- Argentina match. And then Norway beats Brazil. It's just been awesome. 

Martin Longman argues that Mauricio Pochettino should bench Balogun to honor the spirit of fair play. I understand the sentiment, though it seems a little odd at this level, as opposed to youth or scholastic sports. What's more, FIFA is corrupt as hell, so this is hardly out of the ordinary for them. 

Here's a few OTHER aspects of FIFA not exactly standing with moral clarity and fair play:

- Morocco's captain will stand trial for rape soon. He's still playing and Morocco are possible finalists.
- Ghana has a player facing rape charges, too. He's played until they were knocked out.
- FIFA has suspended other red cards during the World Cup, including one for Christiano Ronaldo. 

If I were Pochettino, I might not start Balogun but leave open the possibility of bringing him on in the second half if needed. On the other hand, Pochettino, Balogun and the USMNT have not done anything wrong. 

Trump and Infantino did. Maybe. 

This Cup finals has been glorious. Rights as it reached a crescendo of wonder and awe - Cape Verde, Norway, England at Azteca - Trump sticks his porcine snout in and tarnishes it. 

Republicans Can't Govern

 Martin Longman looks at Trump's demand that his lickspittles in Congress pass a third reconciliation bill. He notes that one issue is that the last bill defunded Planned Parenthood, but that ban has just expired. There aren't the votes in an election year that is already shaping up as a bad one for Republicans to take on a bunch of unpopular votes. 

Longman notes

This is something people on the left are familiar with. The base is angry that the Republican leadership didn’t do something they didn’t have the votes to accomplish and feels demoralized because its representatives won’t fight with every tool in the box, even if those tools won’t work.

That's a pretty cogent analysis of the state of politics in America. For years, I've noted that Republicans can't govern, they can only rule. They cannot govern, because governing involves legislating, and their caucus is fucking insane. I certainly hope that some of the loopier DSA candidates who are going to enter the House this fall won't fall into the same batshit dynamic of demanding that their every whim is made into law and if it isn't, it must be corruption. 

Still, this isn't a bothsides moment. Biden was not as historically great a president as some have decided to make him out to be in their anger at the processes and his own decline depriving them of a victory in 2024. Still, Biden was exceptionally effective at getting legislation passed. There were enough Republicans in Congress still willing to legislate that important bills made it through. The tragic counterexample was when they had a really decent bipartisan immigration bill, and Trump killed it. 

That's the ballgame, when it comes to the current GOP and their inability to govern. They are now - even more than then - the Party of Trump and legislating, a process that involves compromise, good faith and trust, is anathema to him and the creatures that surround him.

This system of compromise and working together was why the Framers established checks and balance, separation of powers. No one person, no one faction was intended to rule this country. We would have to come together to govern it. To self-govern it. 

One of the many ways that Republicans have lost the plot.

200 v 250

 Krugman reminiscences about being in Lisbon in 1976 for the Bicentennial. I have my own faded memories about that celebration: the Tall Ships in NY harbor, the simple pleasure of being a kid at a time of picnics and fireworks. It seems odd to celebrate the document that asserted that true sovereignty lies with the people and not a monarch when a large portion of the this country seems to want to install a monarchy centered on an absolute dumpster fire of a human being. The Fourth is a time of sentimental idealism and nostalgia, yet we seem trapped in a dystopian moment of corruption, authoritarianism and just rank stupidity.

Yet, Krugman notes that the Bicentennial celebration was optimistic, in spite of the rather dreadful tenor of the times. We had just lost Vietnam, inflation plagued the land, we had rolling energy crises, crime was legitimately out of control, and we had just emerged from the Watergate scandal.

Krugman argues - and I'd agree - that in fact the Watergate resolution, with Nixon resigning in disgrace, abandoned by his party, was a large part of why were proud to be American. We had confronted the lawlessness of the most powerful man in America and called him to account. We had rebuked the concentration of power in the hands of a secretive cabal of criminality acting from the halls of the People's House. 

So, I get why today feels like a broken holiday, and why it is hard to celebrate a country that allows Donald Trump more latitude than it did Richard Nixon, despite Trump's crimes being immeasurably large in quantity and scope. 

When the Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2nd 250 years ago, that same day British troops landed on Staten Island. On August 22nd, they landed on Long Island and nearly enveloped Washington's army before it made a providential escape. Defeat on Long Island led to an abandonment of New York City - an abandonment that would last until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Washington was beaten again at White Plains in October and he limped into Pennsylvania with only the tattered remnants of his initial force. 

So, while today is the celebration and remembrance of that remarkable document that promised equality and self-government in the face of tyranny, I would point to another document, written in the aftermath of Washington's ignominious retreat from New York. Thomas Paine wrote in The Crisis:

 THESE are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: It is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated....

My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief break into my house, burn and destroy my property, and kill or threaten to kill me or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer [permit] it? What signifies it to me whether he who does it is a King or a common man, my countryman or not my countryman? Whether it be done by an individual villain or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being who at the last day [final judgment] shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.

Happy 4th.

The Soul Of The Party

 Yglesias leads off his mailbag with a rumination on what the ascendancy of Democratic Socialists means for the Democratic Party. Martin Longman also writes about those writing about this issue. 

In Longman's piece he notes that Jon Chait is freaking out and Krugman isn't. Basically, Chait sees Socialism; Krugman sees Social Democracy. 

To me it's more that we have a lot of Democrats who are tired of the same old tired politics. They also feel betrayed by what they see as Biden and the party's hiding of his decline. So, they are looking for people who aren't the same old same old. It's not a good time to be a long serving Democratic incumbent in a safe district. 

I do think that on the policy issues, most people are generally aligned. We want more health care coverage; we want the rule of law to cover the powerful; we want America not to be a corrupt oligarchy; we want to stand with democracies; we want to stop supporting the Israeli military. 

A lot of it is vibes. It's always vibes. 

Corruption And Affordability

 Donald Trump was never as rich as he pretended to be on TV and the tabloids. Racked by debt and constantly bankrupting companies like casinos, football, steaks and booze, Trump lived big by borrowing and exploiting his name recognition. When Mark Burnett came to him with The Apprentice, Trump was spiraling financially.

That is no longer true. 

Trump's exploitation of meme coins and crypto reads like a terrible joke, but the reality is that these essentially fraudulent vehicles are perfect for both corruption in general and bilking the rubes that worship you. Remember the Trump Phone?

Trump has benefitted from an ill-informed cynicism on the part of millions of Americans that all politicians are deeply corrupt. There is certainly corruption that predates Trump, the difference is that we used to prosecute people for it. We used to expect that criminality on the part of our elected officials would lead to consequences.

The brash, tacky extravagance of Trump's garish tastelessness is getting through to average Americans. The East Wing, the Reflecting Pool, the Trump Arch, the laughable 250th celebrations. People get it.

Can Democrats tie Trump's gilded extravagances to the fact that prices are rising and the job market is stagnant and housing is unaffordable? You have Trump literally saying he doesn't care about Americans' finances. He says "affordability" is a "made up word." 

Americans always lean into their preconceptions about the two parties. They've always known that Republicans are more favorable to the very rich. Sometimes they're OK with that, believing that Republicans will get them rich, too. (Spoiler alert: no)

The corruption is bad. The inflationary policies are bad. Americans need to be made to understand that they are the same issue and that Trump is the root of all of it.

Capture The Flag

 Yglesias writes about how tawdry it is to have the 250th anniversary of independence tarnished by a man who has no conception of what actually made America great. Take Trump's assault on birth rite citizenship. That's not a policy debate about contours of immigration policy, it's an attack on a fundamentally American Idea: America is not a single people, it's an aspirational idea.

Trump has defiled so many basic ideas - about democracy, self-government, the rule of law, America's role in a dangerous world, that "all men are created equal" - that it's totally understandable to feel robbed of the opportunity to celebrate this great and flawed nation.

I guess I disagree. I think the celebration of the Declaration of Independence is more vital this year than if Harris had won and Trump was languishing in a prison cell. 

Of all the many ways that Trump has disgraced his office and our country, none are as profound than his assault on democracy itself. Before becoming President in 2017, Trump had never taken the oath of office - either as a soldier or public official - the first person ever to assume the office without first serving the country in some other way. In fact, Trump never even had to answer to a Board of Directors for most of his career. The idea of checks and balances is as foreign to him as the Nepalese language is. The recent string of Supreme Court cases have served to largely inoculate Trump from Congressional oversight or criminal consequences. 

What's more, Trump's cultists are not the sort of people who think in abstract, ideological terms. Democracy or the rule of law in the abstract are not as important as a "businessman who gets things done." When Trump promised to "be a dictator on Day One" that was a selling point for MAGA.

It is at this historical moment that we need to revivify the language and purpose of the Declaration. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed" isn't as famous as "all men are created equal" but it's equally powerful and important as a hallmark of American political identity. 

I get why you might not feel like waving the flag this 4th of July. What you cannot do is cede the flag to a man whose every utterance is either an attack on America's founding principles or a verbal attack on America itself. How many times does Trump talk about how awful America is? He cannot go a day without denigrating some aspect of this country in ways that no other American president would even dream of doing. 

Do not let this creature destroy your love of what actually makes America great: the ability of the people to control their political destiny; the ability to create a "more perfect union" rather than accept the current limitations; the very real opportunity that this land and people have offered millions of immigrants to build a new and better life. 

If you let the shortcoming of this country define it for you - as quite a few leftist commentators tend to do - then you are basically doing the same thing Trump does: "We're no angels."

This country is far, far from perfect - no country is. But what is good about it is worth fighting for.

The Lawless Court

 Yesterday's SCOTUS decision in the Slaughter case is another example of the Corrupt Six on the Court just absolutely Calvinballing the Constitution. It overrules a century's worth of precedent and concentrates power in the hands of Trump that shouldn't be given to an angel, much less the most corrupt, authoritarian demagogue ever to pollute the office.

It goes without saying that if we get a Democratic President in 2029, the Court will not extend the same powers to that person for reasons. 

UPDATE: OK, so the Court "preserved" the clear reading of the XIVth Amendment on birthright citizenship, but only 6-3. It should have been 9-0. Again, one of the weirder aspect of this illegitimate Court is that it is the Bush appointees (both Thomas and Alito were appointed by different Bushes) that are the most egregious peddlers of ad hoc legal bullshit.

The Court also continues to gut any campaign finance laws. Among the many things Democrats will need to contend with is the flood of money that warps our politics, especially with the rise of a new class of billionaires typified by Elon Musk.

A Frictionless World Is A Solipsitic World

MIT did a study last year on the use of AI. Unsurprisingly, they found that students who used AI a lot demonstrated very little growth as students, including the use of EEG imaging to determine brain activity. Students who used Google saw some growth, and students who used neither saw the most. Even more striking, the AI using students were helpless when asked to write without AI.

David Brooks expands on this, writing about how people who enjoy mental struggle will really benefit from AI, because they enjoy the process of thinking. For this group, AI becomes another tool, whereas for people who really hate strenuous thinking, AI will degrade their thinking more. Even his middle group, who he calls the Reluctant Optimizers, will eventually be dumbed down by AI. The example of this can be seen with previous technologies. Does anyone really remember phone numbers anymore? Can you find yourself somewhere without GPS? 

This, I believe, feeds into my argument from a few days ago. For the past 30 years, tech companies have worked assiduously to remove "friction" from technology use. If you can think back to the early days of personal computing, a handful of people used computers for things like coding or spreadsheets. Most of us used it for word processing. Then the internet comes along, and your computer is now a mailbox and crude search engine. Here come Google and they come to dominate searches. As computing power speeds up, streaming video emerges, beginning with the microfilms of Vine. 

We've now reached a saturation point where any friction feels like a tragedy. I spent the last few weeks with a Smart TV that was several years old. This effectively makes it a dumb TV, and we spent minutes - WHOLE MINUTES - rebooting, reloading and otherwise dealing with a glitchy streaming system. It was frustrating. What it was NOT was driving to a video store to see what they had in stock. We watched what we wanted, when we wanted (minus a few minutes where we had to de-glitch the TV).

I would argue that this psychological space is proving to be somewhat incompatible with liberal democracy. 

The very structures of the Constitution are designed to be frustrating to power. Among the many outrages that Trump has visited upon the country is his wholesale contempt for the basic structure of the Constitution and the need to treat the other branches as co-equal partners in governing. The President absolutely should not govern by decree; that is deeply contemptuous of the American governing system. It was designed to be frustrating specifically to frustrate imperial aspirants. 

Trump's fundamental pitch to his non-cultists is that he can "run America like a business" (despite his manifest incompetence at running his own businesses). The import of Project 2025 was the force change on a system that created endless friction in the path of change.

What I see happening, though, with young "activists" is that they seem completely incapable of understanding that you simply don't get "what you want" from our system of government. You can - occasionally - get what you need, but the idea that your personal preferences will translate into policy is not just the naivete of youth, it is the defining gestalt of the internet age.

While many people have warned of AI's impact on the job market and the environment, I share Brooks'  and Krugman's concerns about what AI will do to our minds and by extension our culture.

This weekend, Scott Weiner was heckled at a trans event for not being sufficiently deferential to the desires of the Palestinian "lobby". Weiner has been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ communities, yet he was physically confronted and screamed at by people that more than one online commentator described as "mentally deranged." 

Maybe.

Or maybe we've become culturally deranged in our solipsism. We see the world as a toddler does, as lacking purpose and agency beyond the insatiable appetites of a toddler. I want what I want NOW. I will not build a coalition; I will not settle for half measures; I will not bend to time or compromise.

I want my utopia delivered to my door by Tuesday noon. 

Slip Sliding Away

 I realize everything I am about to write reeks of privilege, and that makes it some form of cringe or maybe colonialism? I lose track. Anyways. 

My great-uncle served at Otis AFB on Cape Cod during WWII. He must have fallen in love with the area, as he subsequently bought a house on Nantucket in 1960 for about $10,000. I went there about every other summer as a child. After graduating high school, I worked there for a summer, cleaning streets for the DPW.  

In 1994, I discovered that the woman who would become my wife also had a family home there. I don't know if we would have dated if we didn't share a ferry ride home one Thanksgiving. We were married on the island, and our boys were baptized in the same church. 

Moving to New England meant that the island became central to our summers. We were absolutely blessed to be able to share our summers and our boys’ summers with our families. 

After my parents died, my sister and I tried to keep the house by renting it. The house was in the heart of the town and dated back to around 1800. The upkeep, carrying costs and sporadic repairs and improvements meant we couldn’t use it during the summer months. 

Last summer we sold it. 

When we did, I promised my wife we would be able to keep her family’s house, but the island kept changing. The place I went to as a kid was weird and crusty. It still retained aspects of an old New England fishing town. It was very hard to get to with only 2 ½ hour ferries or twin engine planes able to cross the water. 

Then they expanded the airport and launched high speed ferries. The airport is the second busiest in Massachusetts during the summer. Jets began to land from NYC. 

It all changed. Local shops that served year round residents became boutiques. Traffic became snarled. Quiet out of the way beaches became choked with lax bros and influencers. 

My wife’s sister insisted on selling their home. It closes later this summer. 

We will likely come back to Nantucket. As guests, not summer residents. We’ve sold my father’s farm. My body does not work the way it used to. So much of my life feels like the past slipping away.

Yesterday would’ve been my father’s birthday. We went to a place he loved to eat, in what might be my last night on the island. Probably not. But maybe. Afterwards, we walked down to the docks to see the mega-yachts, passed a swanky restaurant rented out for a private party. Apparently, I wore my melancholy on my face.

I look more and more like my father every day, and I can feel myself losing him, too, every day.

Precarity

 Paul Campos writes about a Times story on how $130,000 for a family of four really isn't enough money to live comfortably. The Times story looks at several areas where the above average family is struggling to make ends meet. When it comes to groceries, the toughest area to make ends meet is...meat. Beef prices are indeed really high right now, having risen 33% over the past two years.

What's striking is how much of this is policy based. The screwworm infestation is a result of Trump and Musk's gutting of various programs. There's a drought - thanks global warming. There's Trump's tariffs. The piece doesn't mention it, but deportations are likely to hurt meatpackers. 

Housing remains a real chokepoint for spending, and Trump is pitching a hissy fit over Congress' inability to pass his voter suppression act - the SAVE act - so he's not going to sign the recent bipartisan bill to help bring housing costs down (or at least help arrest their growth). It might become law without his signature, which is a really perfect example of Trumpism: deny the importance of legislation in governance. He killed the immigration reform bill from 2024. He passed his one piece of legislation and now wants to govern without consulting Congress.

This is the issue that bedeviled Biden, and his administration actually tried to address it. Trump called affordability a "made up Dumocrat word" so it's going to be hard to pivot for Republicans. Then there is the visual indictment of him trying to create some sort of Roman spectacle in DC. 

Having fucking idiots in charge of economic policy is really hard.

What's interesting, and neither Campos nor the Times addressed this, is that we've had this dynamic before in the 1970s. The difference is that we had far less wealth inequality in the '70s. So we not only have rising prices, but we have an elite that is just completely out of touch with the experience of even upper middle class Americans. If Elon Musk is making decisions about policy, you have a badly distorted policy environment.

If we begin to save American democracy this fall, we will be in a situation where Democrats will have to clean this mess up. Again. The problem is that one key pillar of solving this mess will be addressing the exploding national debt and the solvency of Social Security. There are limits to the ability of raising taxes on the rich that will be hard to resolve.

Anyway, Republicans suck, in case you were wondering. 

Civic Education

 In his mailbag, Yglesias talks about "stealth democracy."

Stealth democracy is a theory that people have this idea that all that is required to solve a problem is for people of goodwill to sit down and hash out their disagreements like colleagues do. They see "corruption" as any action by a government that does not really benefit them. Sure, they can see things like Trump's desecration of the White House and DC in general as being "corrupt" for THAT reason, when the real reason is that he is accruing money to himself and his family and acting outside the cover of law. 

This misconception about "corruption" is really interesting. 

The elections in NYC are the flavor of the minute, and the factionalism expressed there is not an advantage for the Democratic Party in November. Adults - or at least people who really understand our politics and history - understand that you need a Big Tent to win elections, and what resonates in the congressional district around Columbia University does not resonate 25 miles to the north. Still, elements of the Left - and I do not really include Mamdani here - think that if a Democrat representing suburban Yonkers has a difference of opinion on, say, Israel, that isn't a difference of opinion. It's "corruption." They are corrupted by AIPAC.

(I need to take a moment and express my exasperation with the primacy of the Israeli-Palestine issue in Leftist politics at the moment. I fully support the idea that Israel has and continues to commit war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank; I do not think it is genocide, but I understand the arguments that it is. I fully support conditioning American military aid to Israel on the ousting of Netanyahu from power and Israel re-committing to a two-state solution. What I do NOT agree with, is that this is the most important issue facing this country. It is not in the top-10. Ultimately, much of the Israel-Palestine discourse feels performative, and that's just exhausting and not a path to winning control of Congress this fall. <end rant>"

Back to the issue at hand. So much of our politics - from MAGA to the DSA - seems fixated on a version of politics that is simply false. Yes, there is corruption, and Trump is so far and away our most corrupt president, that second place isn't even in the same league. You'd have to run through about 20 Trump scandals before landing on a previous scandal of similar depth. Most of those did not involve the direct participation of the president himself. Only Watergate rises to that level, maybe Iran-Contra. 

So, Trump is legit corrupt. When members of Congress disagree with each other, THAT IS NOT CORRUPTION. 

We've reached this perilous moment, because our parties are more ideological than perhaps they have ever been, and Trump adds breathless stupidity to the mix. The left of the Republican Party does not overlap with the right of the Democratic Party in any meaningful way. When they actually DO accomplish something, like Chris Murphy and James Lankford coming together to fix the immigration system, it gets blown up by Trump. The same thing could be happening with the bipartisan housing bill, but I think that has the votes to override Trump's veto. 

You've had this sort of venomous partisan discord since the '90s, but at least some of it was performative. That's the old "Senate Club" idea, where they yell at each other on CNN and then go have dinner together. Trump, because he has no saving graces or subtlety of thought, has turned that into a politics of grievance that has truly broken Congress and perhaps American democracy. Election denialism is really an offshoot of this. Democrats cannot legitimately win an election is not a position Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay would have entertained.

All of this is to say, we have to find a way out of this moment. 

People do not seem to understand the basics of how democratic governance and politics actually work. Hey, sometimes you lose an election! That's not corruption! Sometimes a good bill dies for bad reasons. That's not corruption! Sometimes there really aren't easy solutions to problems! That's not corruption! 

I've argued that we live in a consumer culture where we really don't have to compromise. You never have to go to Blockbuster only to find out the movie you wanted is checked out and then you have to compromise on whether to watch the rom-com or the action-buddy movie. You just click and stream. 

We've made much of our society frictionless and that simply isn't how politics works. Our whole system is based on friction! That's the point of the separation of powers. 

Instead, both the median voter AND the voters at the extremes simply decry the whole thing as "corrupt" because they can't get what they want all the time. 

That allows a demagogic troll to eviscerate our national institutions, just in time for the 250th anniversary of republican self-government. 

UPDATE: Slightly different take on the same issue of "corruption" from Martin Longman.

UPDATE II: Yet another take on the rise of "dirtbagism."

Anti-System Politics

 Richardson has a throw away line in the middle of her recap, where she suggests that the unexpected victories of DSA candidates in NYC has Republicans worried. Conventional wisdom, as typified by Yglesias, suggests moderating the Democratic party's stances in order to win enough races to save democracy in America. The extremist rhetoric of people like Chevalier muddy that message, and there are real concerns that Michigan and Maine's Senate races could be thrown away by unsuitable candidates.

As David Nir and Jeff Singer point out, there is a broad anti-incumbent mood out there. Some of this on the Democratic side is being upset with an older generation of politicians. I don't think this is entirely about "fight", but rather lingering issues with Biden's age and even Trump's. It's about Democratic House members who have died in office in a razor close House, depriving Jeffries of votes. Sure, there's some of Biden's old "we can work together" ethos being repudiated, but really they are just old, and don't seem equal to the moment. 

Also, whether Trump, Milei, Magyar or any other number of politicians, we are looking at a broadly anti-incumbent climate. While I am deeply disturbed by Graham Platner's idiocy and impulse control issues, he DOES represent that anti-politics politician. Maybe that's enough to carry him to victory over one of the strongest electoral overperformers in the Senate. OTOH, Roy Cooper seems to be coasting to a Senate victory in North Carolina, and Sherrod Brown seems to be leading in Ohio. 

In the end, the 2026 elections will be a referendum on a very unpopular president. I don't think that things are going to improve for Trump, especially since he can't seem to extricate himself from his Iran catastrophe. Nominal prices remain high, inflation isn't likely to abate, he's corrupt as hell and people see that. 

It may very well be that Trump's massive unpopularity carries the day, but the stake are high, and I think we can all worry. I certainly thought that 2024 would go differently, so I can't take anything for granted.

DSA On The March

 A slate of candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries in NYC last night. As per usual, these results will be flogged to death by everyone who is too invested in internecine conflicts and Republicans looking to scare the rubes.

First, Mamdani is a remarkable political talent. Effusively charismatic and with a keen insight into how to be a visible symbol of effective governance. The scare-mongering that Republicans have tried to inject into coverage of his tenure hasn't worked, because the guy just seems jolly.

That isn't true of each of the candidates he endorsed, especially Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is almost a caricature of leftist politics. She has a history of saying inflammatory things on social media, including "Fuck Kamala Harris" which was a standard position for those on the farther reaches of the Israel-Palestine issue. 

If there was a theme from these elections, it was a dissatisfaction with the Old Guard of NY politics and a rejection of anything even remotely pro-Israel. Chevalier beat incumbent Adriano Espaillat, the Chair of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus. Chevalier won the wealthier areas of the district around Columbia University, whereas Espaillat won the the Bronx. This is the paradox of DSA support: Much of it comes from upper middle class college educated liberals, not the working class voters it purports to serve.

Presumably, these candidates will win their indigo blue districts. The question is whether Republicans will be able to tie someone like Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer trying to flip the conservative NY 21, with the statements of the leftist candidates from the City. If we have learned one thing, it is that Fox News viewers will believe any rancid bullshit placed on their plates. These are people who still believe Democrats are the ones hiding the Epstein Files.

Midterms are referenda on incumbent parties. People are pissed and supporting someone like Chevalier is a good way to express that anger. It may not be the best way to flip marginal seats, but Republicans already believe that Democrats want to require gender reassignment surgery in elementary school, so what will be the movement at the margins?

More interesting, I suppose, is what impact these DSA candidates will have if they win and Democrats win the House, but by a reasonably narrow margin (I think they win a 20-25 seat majority, but gerrymandering could impact that). Will they behave like AOC, another impressive political talent, or like Rashida Tlaib, who doesn't seem to understand that you have to work within the party, even if you sometimes disagree with it. 

Republicans have been calling Democrats communists since the New Deal. At some point that attack falls apart from overuse. However, Democrats do keep nominating people like Platner and Chevalier who seem to be engineered for opposition attack ads. Hopefully a Blue Wave carries everyone along, because, well, we HAVE to have a Democratic Congress by January. 

Peace Likely Won't Help Trump

 The surrender to Iran has largely been understood as Trump desperately needing to turn things around before the midterms. He needs the oil to flow again and bring prices down. As Krugman explains, though, that's unlikely to happen for a lot of reasons. Among them are the fact that even if the war was really over - and the ceasefire keeps collapsing because Trump keeps threatening Iran - it would take weeks and months to restore the flow of oil, urea and other goods through the Strait. We would also have to replenish reserve stockpiles that we have been drawing down to reduce the impact of the loss of the Gulf oil on world markets. Finally, there are baked in inflationary effects from this war that we really haven't seen yet, but almost certainly will.

So, Trump seems to be flailing around. You have weathervanes like Tucker Carlson blowing away from Trump. Leaving aside whatever pathologies are surrounding Trump psychologically and neurologically, he is facing collapsing poll numbers and rumblings among his base that portend even more ominous signs. The MOU is simply another sign of this flailing. His desperation for a favorable peace deal is more palpable than the load in his Depends, and Iran knows it.

There are a host of things going wrong, all of which create a gestalt of incompetence and corruption. While I think a lot of what Yglesias writes about politics is suspect, he's right about persuadable voters. This is really just another way to describe the Ariana Grande Voter Theory, and we have to acknowledge that partisanship has left American democracy at the whims of people who do not understand American democracy. 

This should redound to Democrats' favor in November, because things aren't great now and are going to stay bad. Trump can't help but make some of these things worse - the Reflecting Pool is a good example of how he simply cannot admit a mistake - and so the question for the midterms is pretty simple.

Democrats will turn out. They are motivated. Even if many of them have qualms about the party, they are going to show up. They will hold their noses and vote for people like Graham Platner. The questions are about what will happen to Republican turnout? And where will the feckless middle land? If a lot of Republicans just sit out the midterms, that's important. If angry Ariana Grande voters show up to vote for Democrats, that's important. 

We need both Houses to really correct things. I don't think surrendering to Iran is going to help Trump prevent that.

UPDATE: We are in the midst of a market correction. That seems an especially likely outcome over time. The stock market seems disconnected from the world at large. 

When we have market crashes, typically we get some foreshadowing in the spring and the real collapse in the fall. Is this foreshadowing or just a small correction?