The Wrong 80 Year Old

 Dolly Parton's death rather unexpectedly floored me. I was not a huge fan of her music, but enjoyed it. Rather I was a massive fan of Parton the human being. As many have noted, Parton was perhaps the last universally loved American. She was authentic and authentically kind. Her charity work is legendary and her sense of humor sublime. She was the best of us.

That obviously stands in rank contrast with the man who is trying to tear down the country in, as Krugman suggests, a rage against a people that have moved against him. Trump's depredations are increasing precisely because he can read the polls. His threat to tear down the Kennedy Center, because the Courts won't let him put his name on it is a prime example of his narcissistic rage in action.

This is also the "logic" of a domestic abuser: if he can't have you, no one can. He would destroy the country rather than let it pass into someone's hands. Trump's tidal wave of bullshit swept him back into the Oval Office, but he never had a plan or even really a motivation to actually improve people's lives. He never has. He ran for president to stay out of jail and millions of Americans were stupid enough to believe him over the legion of people who told them - straight out - who he was. 

There are two big, huge, massive differences between Hitler and Trump. The first, obviously, is age. Hitler's death was...sudden. Trump, however, is old and looking older every day. The second difference is that Hitler was popular. His early actions and even his actions in the first half of the war were designed to shield the German people from his worst policies. He pulled Germany out of an economic spiral - he did not start one. Right now, Trump is manifestly unpopular with the American people and becoming more so. He's lost the Iran war, which people didn't want him to fight in the first place. 

He's not Hitler, he's Mussolini but with a more powerful country at his feet. 

We are a lesser country and a lesser world with Dolly Parton gone. Her goodness and decency, her ability to laugh at herself, her grace and even her tackiness were all so wonderful and the world is dimmer without her around. Do better next time, Reaper.

Is Trump Experiencing Dementia?

 Maggie Haberman - who has been a weird sort of insider reporter in Trumpistan - thinks that Trump is as sharp as he's ever been. Now, my position is that Trump has always been pretty stupid, especially if we are talking about higher, abstract cognitive functions. He has a base ability to bully and cajole and "sell" himself, but he is not a deep thinker. He has also spent his entire life at war with the world, and that stems from his lack of overarching intelligence. He was the not-too-bright failson of a self-made asshole from Queens, and he simultaneously craved the attention of the Manhattan set and resented them for not accepting him, except as a punchline.

As Rofer points out in the linked piece, saying that Trump is not suffering from dementia does not imply that he is operating in a productive cognitive state. Trump's business was an extremely small outfit of co-conspirators. During his first term, he was surrounded by the "adults in the room" - people who understood how government worked and what American principles generally were. 

Now, Trump is surrounded by sycophants who lavish North Korean-style praise on him. He is increasingly in a bubble, where bad news isn't really penetrating his inner bubble. The result is the Iran fiasco, the inflation, the various legal setbacks, and the complete inability to pass legislation despite having control of both houses of Congress. 

Haberman's point that Trump does not exhibit "dementia" is probably only slightly accurate. Having watched people fall into dementia, it's not a light switch. You slowly degrade in ways that can be very hard to pick up by people who are around you all the time. Still, there's a chance that we have someone who was not very smart to begin with, is experiencing normal aging and is walled off from information that might wound his fragile ego. 

This doesn't account for the falling asleep in meetings, the unexplained medical visits and his incessant bragging about passing a dementia test. As someone who felt that Biden was suffering not from dementia but from an acceleration of his speech impediment, I suppose I should extend the same benefit of the doubt to Trump.

I just don't feel like it. 

It Doesn't Have To Be Like This

 As Trump slides further into senescence and mental incompetency, his once feared ability to hang a demeaning nickname on opponents feels tired and listless. Jon OssJackOff? WTF? His speech is narrowing into a handful of elementary school level diction and playground insults. The trailer park aesthetics that he has brought to the South Lawn and the Reflecting Pool are just a visual manifestation of the garish, childish nature of the mewling man-baby in the People's House.

Meanwhile, yesterday gave us another vision, a reminder of public rhetoric that soared rather than demeaned, that tried to draw us together rather than tear us apart. 

Zohran Mamdani is a legitimate political talent, and his speech at the Knicks celebration was not only expertly crafted, but delivered with an optimistic brio that was incredibly infectious. Meanwhile, the dedication of the Obama Presidential Library reminded us of what it was like to hope and come together. That many attendees wore tan suits to remind us of how petty and mean-spirited the criticisms were of Obama - criticisms rooted the refusal to believe a Black man could be president, including Trump's birther movement - and how far we've fallen in terms of the standards to which we hold the Chief Magistrate of the land.

Mamdani is sadly unable to pursue the White House, but there are others who can try and point us to a better, more wholesome future than the degraded troll squatting in the Oval Office. Biden was a good "prime minister" working his thin majorities to pass important legislation, but he was simply not the man to rally people to a great cause. 

We can find that person again and be that country again.

The Upside Down

 Among the more infuriating thing about living in Trumpistan is that basic reality is upside down. Yeah, sure, there's the lying, but I'm not even talking about Trump's incessant falsehoods. Trump largely benefits from "vibes" in terms of his being a "businessman" and "dealmaker" when his track record is quite the opposite.

No greater example of this upside down dynamic exists than "Trump is a tough guy." To recap:

- Trump avoided Vietnam by getting the family doctor to write up his bone spurs.
- Trump wears a LOT of makeup.
- Trump is fastidious about his hair.
- Trump refused to go to a veteran's service in France, because it was raining, and it might make his hair look bad.
- Trump rolls over on his back and piddles on his belly anytime he's around a dictator.
- He has a child's conception of what strength is.
- He, like all bullies, is a physical coward.

Yesterday, Meet the Press aired part of an interview with Trump. Only part, because Trump got pissy and red in the face and then walked off the set when called out on his lies. Not even "called out", Kristen Welker pressed him to provide evidence for his farrago of falsehoods. He of course has no evidence for electoral fraud or FBI complicity on 1/6 or any of the bullshit he spews forth all over the national discourse. Welker, unlike the usual sycophants he surrounds himself with, continued to press the man-baby on the lack of evidence. He lost his shit.

If you ever wondered what a decompressing narcissist looks like in real time, watch the clip. He gets rid in the face. He blusters. He hurls more lies. He hurls insults. He uses spurious ad hominem attacks to try and change the subject. He storms off in a pissy little huff. He even lays hands on Welker in a way that was likely meant to intimidate her, but it honestly looked like he was unsteady on his feet as he rose to pout his way off camera. 

Trump moral unfitness for office has been explained away by his cultists by saying, "Sure, he's a bit rough around the edges, but that's because he is a tough as nails businessman."

Bull.

Shit.

The Crash Out

 Richardson tries to drink from the firehose of bullshit coming from the White House, but narrows herself to two stories and subtly links them: Iran refusing to bend to Trump's demands and his crashing out on social media.

Trump has had two superpowers in his career as a businessman: He is absolutely shameless and he can drive a narrative through brute repetition. On the latter point, Trump was one of the first people to become famous for being famous. Under the idea of "there's no such thing as bad press" he relentlessly promoted himself through the NY tabloid ecosystem. Trump was successful, because you read about him in the Post, so he must be successful. Of course, reality controls the president in ways that it doesn't control a con artist real estate "developer."

His shamelessness manifested in suing vendors and contractors to renege on payments, his abuse of bankruptcy laws and his loach personal behavior. It politics, his ability to ignore what used to be the expectations of moral behavior from our elected officials allows him to constantly bull his way through what would have led any normal political figure to resign in shame.

In the Richardson missive, she points out that Iran wants nothing to do with a negotiated settlement that isn't a clear strategic win for them. This includes continued control over the Straits of Hormuz and billions in reconstruction funds. Trump really is powerless to stop them from making these demands and Iran is perfectly willing to let its people suffer in order to outlast Trump. 

All of this is causing him to self-sooth by releasing ridiculous AI art of him as a peer of George Fucking Washington, a man whose signal defining trait was strength of character and morality. As his position vis a vis Iran gets weaker, his narcissism requires him to post more and more nonsense about how awesome he is. I suppose there's a decent chance that this shit is just generated by staffers to placate him and this smooth-brained man-baby can't help but push it out on to an unsuspecting world. 

Trump's biggest previous crash out was election denial and January 6th. He's dumber and less constrained now, so I have no idea where this will end up, but I doubt it will be a place any sane person wants to be. 

TrumpBucks

 Donald Trump wants to put his scowling mug on a new $250 bill. 

Two things:

First, it's illegal to put a living person on the money. That Trump is even trying is a monument to his narcissism and insecurity. He's already fired one person for refusing to break the law, which - again - very in keeping with his second term. Loyalty to Trump's bloated, pustule of an ego is more important than following the law or professional standards.

Second, can you think of anything more tone deaf in an age when voters have complained about inflation than putting your face on a bill that literally represents the decline in value of the dollar? I remember going to Italy before the Euro and it cost 1000 lira to buy a soda, back when a soda was a dollar. We are sort of approaching the psychology of chained inflation and Trump plastering his ugly face on the physical manifestation of that inflation is just...

Thanks, Americans who refused to vote for the qualified woman - twice - and gave us this idiotic monster.

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.

Does Trump Meet The Qualifications For Psychosis?

 It's not exactly a specious question. He seems so incredibly detached from reality.

However, Trump's manifest and repeated lying is a personality trait. He simply cannot tell a truth that might reflect poorly on himself. The Iran war is pretty much already won, but Europe needs to send help immediately to reopen the Straits of Hormuz, which are open anyway. Tell me how that is the utterings of a sane person. Then again, he has always simply lied about everything. Prices are down! He won in a landslide! The world respects us!

At what point does his repeated inability to tell the truth reach the level of psychosis? Particularly since he has absolutely no one around him who will tell him the truth.

There has been reams written about the sanewashing that the media does for Trump. They treat his utterances as somehow true or they frame them in a way that might make sense. Trump can say something that sure seems false, but it is accorded the weight that we normally give presidential statements. Then, inevitably, the truth is different than what Trump said, but the media has already moved on. Then he says something else that, again, is treated as true.

Trump's ramblings - if not filtered through this media screen - would seem to be so detached from actual reality that it would call into question whether Trump understands what is actually real. You know. Psychosis.

We've typically understood Trump as being a liar, a profoundly ignorant even stupid man and a man clearly slipping into cognitive decline, perhaps full on dementia. I have to wonder if all those dementia tests that he passed - but that his doctors feel the need to repeatedly administer - are perhaps something that needs to be a screen for actual psychosis.

We have reached the point where we don't know if the President of the United States is capable of interacting with reality.

The Coming Lunacy

 Tonight. Hair Furor will deliver what is sure to be a bizarro rant, where he cycles through the accumulated grievances of his rally screeds. Ostensibly the Constitutionally mandated State of the Union address, I would wager it will feel more like one of his Truth Social rants. 

Richardson runs down what a catastrophic few days this have been for Trump. As he weakens, his old threats seem less daunting. Foreign powers are increasingly turning away from the US; the tariff lunacy injects even more uncertainty into the US and global economy; Trump's popularity is close to the lowest that it's ever been (around January 6th). Malignant narcissist that he is, these accumulating wounds eat at him and make an unhinged performance tonight even more likely.

For what few "adults" are left in the room: do they pump him up with amphetamines to give him the energy he needs or sedate him so that he doesn't come off as a crazed lunatic? These are the questions American government officials are asking themselves.

Wagging That Dog

 Trump is going to address the nation tonight. Sometimes he hypes these event and then it's a huge nothingburger, but there is at least some evidence that involves our escalation against Venezuela. Why are we apparently on the verge of going to war with Venezuela? Maduro is objectively awful, but that's not a casus belli. The drug issue is bullshit, and also it's not a casus belli. 

One possible explanation include the fact that Trump has ceded basically all of his policy making to the various creatures in his orbit - think Miller and deportations - and Marco Rubio really wants to do some regime change in Venezuela. For Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba, Maduro is just another Latin American Marxist that needs to be deposed. The question then is: why not Cuba itself? I mean, if you're going to start (another) illegal war, why not strike at the motherlode?

Another possible explanation is that Hegseth just has his war hard-on so bad that he wants any excuse to "increase lethality" and look like a tough guy in the mirror. The combination of Maduro's leftist politics, the presence of at least some drugs and the general waddling deeper into belligerent waters puts Hegseth's curdled idea of toughness and Rubio's neo-con arrogance into common cause.

The final reason is simply the old "Wag the Dog" scenario from an old movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro about starting a war to deflect the press' attention from scandal. 

Friday is the deadline for releasing the Epstein Files.

If that wasn't enough, we have a weakening economy, the Susie Wiles disaster and the general collapse in Trump's aura of invincibility. His rancid tweet after the Reiner murders has enraged all but his most loyal sycophants. He appears increasingly old, addled and unhinged. Perhaps the thinking is that they need to escalate this crisis that they made to pressure Maduro to abdicate into a full blown war simply to change the subject from Trump's eroding power.

Or maybe he goes on TV tonight to tell us how great his new ballroom is and how Americans should stop complaining about his economic performance.

UPDATE: Apparently he's going to be boasting about what a great job he's doing, two weeks before millions lose their health insurance. I do hope he continues to try and square the circle of "The economy is great, but it's all Joe Biden's fault."

Banana Pants Crazy

 I would like to believe that if every American had to spend 15 minutes a day reading a random transcript of Trump's remarks, we have the 25th Amendment invoked before Christmas. Richardson talks about Trump's Affordability Tour stop in the Poconos. and she includes both excerpts from his remarks and one of his Truth Social screeds.

It is worth remembering that an ailing Joe Biden had a terrible debate performance and dropped out of the race, because it was manifestly clear that he could sustain running for office. Any given Trump performance is about that level of "bad" but we know he will serve out his term, barring the actuarial table asserting itself. There are signs that some Republicans are beginning to separate themselves from him, but most will not, in fact, cannot. The saga of Indiana's Republican state senators getting death threats because they are behaving like actual conservatives and not authoritarian drones is a good example of where this is headed.

As I've mentioned before, the primary virtue of democracy is its ability to self-correct. The elections that we have seen are an example of that, and I imagine the midterms will follow suit. However, the real immediate danger that Trump poses is that his authoritarian grip on the GOP does not allow his own party to self-correct. For every Rand Paul striking out on his own, there are a dozen more like Lindsay Graham warping himself into some craven creature sniveling and whimpering at Trump's feet like an abused dog.

Trump has always been a stupid person, but that is now amplified by his age related decline and the constant river of sycophancy that rushes through the Oval Office. He's crazy stupid and things are going to get worse before they get better.

WTF Was That?

 Donald Trump can't decide if his new best friend is Mohammed bin Salman or Zohran Mamdani. With MBS, it's a pretty straightforward case of two kleptocrats recognizing each other. Mamdani...?

What's more let's look at two images.

When was the last time you saw Trump smile like that? Ever?

Maybe he just loves Middle Eastern guy? Guys he thinks are terrorists and should be banned from entering the country?

Or maybe he's medicated out of his fucking gourd right now.

The Dog That DID Bark

 Senator John Barrasso was tasked with defending the continued hiding of the Epstein Files. His argument was not about the merits of transparency - there are none - or protecting the victims - they want them released. His argument was that this was just a Democratic ploy to make Trump a lame duck. Now -technically - Trump IS a lame duck. He is barred from running for reelection in 2028. He has hinted that he might try and violate the 22nd Amendment, and it's always an open question whether this corrupted Court would let him get away with it. I've always felt that they wouldn't, because there is just no reading of the text that they could torture into a partisan decision.

What Barrasso is hinting at, to me, is the idea that once Trump sinks below a certain level of unpopularity, once he's (again) a massive anchor on the Republican Party, then and only then will they completely turn against him. The threat of a third term is about staying powerful and relevant. All lame ducks struggle to control the agenda of their last two years in office. Reagan slipped into dementia and the Iran Contra Scandal; Clinton had Lewinsky; Bush saw Iraq collapse, New Orleans drown and Social Security galvanize opposition.

Republicans have to be exhausted defending this guy. On Monday, you're defending his tariffs because they will be good for the economy and on Wednesday, he's saying he will repeal some of them to bring down the price of food. They can see the writing on the wall, but as long as Trump is "powerful" they have to kowtow to him. If the stuff in the Epstein Files is half as bad as it appears to be, that day hastens when the GOP stops defending him. When he truly becomes an addled old king wandering his Court screaming at paintings.

What A Year The Past Few Days Have Been

 A running list of scandals from the past few days:

- Trump appears in Epstein's emails something like 1,400 times.
- Epstein calls Trump a degenerate. Epstein. Calls someone else. A degenerate.
- Trump then instructs his AG to investigate Democrats in the Epstein files a few months after saying that there was nothing in there to investigate.
- Trump says he will reduce tariffs on certain foods to reduce inflation...thereby proving that tariffs are inflationary.
- We've apparently funneled MORE money to Argentina than originally reported.
- Trump is authorizing a $50,000,000 payout to traitorous scumbag Michael Flynn.
- Trump continues to throw pardons around at some legitimately horrible people. In normal times, the repeated criminality of the January Sixers in particular would be Willie Horton on steroids.
- Kristi Noem is shoveling Federal funds at a shady ad firm to make ads extolling DHS. There is almost certainly a kickback going on here, either to her or Corey Lewandowski.
- The two clowns leading the FBI did not have to pass background checks.
- Talented Weirdo, Olivia Nuzzi, states that RFK, Jr. is still doing a ton of drugs.
- Marjorie Taylor Green is showing more fight against Donald Trump than John Fetterman.
- We are moving more military resources towards Venezuela without Congressional approval.
- We are replacing the Bureau of Labor Statistics with DoorDash, apparently.
- Trump keeps having MRIs, but he doesn't know why.

Seriously. This is what we've learned in just the last 72 hours. Of course, in some ways, we all knew this. Trump is an adjudicated sex offender who has boasted of sexually harassing and assaulting women for decades. We know he was quite close to Epstein. We know he threw over previous wives for "younger" women, and we know he openly lusted after his own fucking daughter.

We know that he was a corrupt businessman his entire fucking life. We know that he's a brittle narcissist who is lashing out at anyone he can to deflect from the manifest emptiness and ugliness inside what is where his soul should be.

Of course, I guess (I hope) millions of Americans decided that they didn't know this. That when Democrats pointed this out, they dismissed it as politics as usual.

If they decide that they know it now, will it finally make a difference? If even more smoking guns come out linking Trump and Epstein, will that do it? Finally? Can we bid rid of this cretinous creature?

The Death Of The GOP

 It's one of those days when both Richardson and Krugman seem to align, though it maybe doesn't look that way at first glance. Krugman looks at the state of the Heritage Foundation, noting that it was always a hack, far right shop, but the recent controversy over Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson has stripped away the plausible veneer. Richardson looks at the accumulating sense that the Trump Administration is just so far out of touch with the American public. The performative cruelty, the Epstein shit, the weakening economy, and while she didn't mention the various aesthetic outrages like the demolishing of the East Wing...these all create an overwhelming impression of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Back in the before times, you have that tentpole quote from Lindsey Graham saying in 2016 that if the GOP nominated Trump "We would get killed and we would deserve it." Then, of course, Trump drew to an inside straight in 2016 and won again in 2024, despite having more baggage than Delta Airlines. This has created an understanding among Republicans that Trump cannot be defied - not only because of his unexpected electoral success, but because of his petty and vindictive nature. Thou Shalt Not Cross Trump.

The problem is not merely that Trump is a flawed president along normal metrics like "understands policies" or "builds consensus" or "speaks to the concerns of average Americans." He's also an aspiring autocrat who is either empowering the fascist cruelty of people like Stephen Miller or actively directing it. Even more concerning for Republicans: He's a doddering old man whose policies are actively damaging to America.

Since 2016, the GOP has steadily remade itself in the image of Donald Trump. This can't be sustainable, because Trump's hold on the public is really a hold on the 27%. As his poor policies and temperamental flaws are shown again and again and again...it becomes harder to justify supporting him...yet the entire raison d'etre of the GOP is genuflect before Trump.

The potential does exist for the Epstein stuff to finally cause a rupture that cannot be healed.

Obviously, the Republican Party isn't going to "die." It will transmogrify into some other beast. Ideally, we get schisms and chaos, like what just happened at Heritage. Ideally, many of Trump's fervent supporters just stay home for the next two or three electoral cycles. Still, the crisis that Graham predicted is coming. The fact that he has so enthusiastically embraced Trump, too, is what makes it so delicious.

UPDATE: "Populism" was always a scam.

Welcome To The Pantheon

 Nancy Pelosi was certainly the best and most effective Speaker of my adult lifetime. Especially in the 19th century, but even in the 20th, the Speaker was probably the second most powerful person in Washington. The nature of the House requires keeping the kittens herded together, and this became even more true as ideological partisanship increased during the last 40 years. Pelosi proved herself far superior to the Republican men who couldn't count votes, couldn't extend flexibility to their vulnerable members. Pelosi more than any other Speaker, at least since Tip O'Neill, knew how to count votes. She was Old School like that. "Czar" Reed never called a vote that he didn't know he could win. Same with Pelosi. Even as the House has slipped in power, Pelosi fought back to try and preserve it's historic role. (Also kudos for stepping down from the Speakership and for knowing the time was right to retire.)

Compare her to Mike Johnson:

Nancy Pelosi is 5'5", but she towers over the men who tried and failed to replace her.

About Those Tests

 Trump has been bragging about how he's acing his "IQ Test" at Walter Reed.

It's a dementia test.

It's not "hard".

Autocratic Sycophancy

 Krugman continues to lay out a theme he started talking about yesterday: Trump's break with reality. The crux of the argument:

Does Trump actually believe that (the protests were small)? I suspect that he does. In the grip of delusion, a powerful person will dismiss and destroy anything that challenges their self-aggrandizing alternate reality. This explains why there is no one in Trump’s inner circle who dares to tell him that his poll numbers are, indeed, very bad; or that it’s a bad look to commute George Santos’ prison sentence for fraud and identity theft. When people try to tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, he gets angry.

I would even take this a step further. The reason why democracies succeed in the long run is that you cannot remain in an autocratic bubble when you have to face the voters. You have to adjust and explain your actions. Trump feels no such compunction. He continues to do things that are self-evidently damaging to the United States because he thinks that eventually - or even right now - he will be proven right. It's one thing to believe that tariffs will make us richer by 2028, but Trump may very well believe that they are making is richer today. Who, exactly, is going to tell him differently?

I still believe that the great mass of Americans do not want to slide into Trump's form of authoritarianism. I am up in the air as to whether we have the tools to prevent it, but I think we generally prize our democracy. If Trump retreats further into his narcissistic delusions and he has no one around him to correct those delusions, I would guess that this will further erode him standing even with some of the people who voted for him.

As Maine Goes...

 The Senate campaign in Maine for the 2026 year is a critical one. Maine is a Blue state - though somewhat moderate for New England, in the sense that there are very liberal places and some very conservative places, but the Blue wins out.  Except in the Senate, where Susan Collins has somehow held on to her office, despite being rhetorically out of touch with the national GOP. Collins, like Lisa Murkowski, knows better than to support Trump fully, but also knows the criticisms of him have to be muted.

Collins is up for reelection next fall, and it represents arguably the best chance to flip a Red seat Blue. North Carolina is another opportunity, because Democrats were able to recruit Roy Cooper, the popular former governor. Cooper is 68, but that's practically a spring chicken by Senate standards. Six years of Roy Cooper is an objectively good thing. 

The "Roy Cooper" of Maine would seem to be Janet Mills, the combative governor who famously told Trump, "I'll see you in court." 

Mills is 77. That's five years older than Collins. 

Meanwhile, there's Graham Platner. 

Platner is a 41 year old oyster fisherman and veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He took some classes at GWU, while bartending at the Tune Inn. If you know the Tune Inn, and you know he volunteered for the Marine Corps, and now he works as an oyster fisherman...I think you get a sense of who this guy is. He's a manly man! Bernie Sanders loves him and he loves Bernie!

Platner is the left wing populist that online leftists in a Brooklyn loft wished they were. He's a legitimate working class guy, whose attacks on oligarchy are heartfelt and personal. He was treated for PTSD from the war and hates the idea of needless military adventurism. 

Here's the thing, though. Fetterman.

Now Fetterman's "heel turn" may have been caused by his stroke. His saying that he would support a Nobel Fucking Peace Prize for Trump at the same time Trump is militarizing the National Guard to occupy American cities is sort of a baseline violation of everything we need from Senate Democrats. The thing is, Fetterman's whole schtick was being the big, oafish-looking guy in a hoodie. Senator Shrek. 

I think Platner's populism is a little more genuine, but I'm not 100% convinced that genuine populism is a good thing. Bernie Sanders knows when to shut up and vote for an imperfect bill, would Platner? If the guy is so wedded to an "us versus them" version of populism, how is he going to interact with Chris Murphy, when they are very far apart on guns? Can he compartmentalize, the way skilled politicians can? Maybe. 

In the end, it will be up to the Democratic primary voters, whether they want the elderly career politician who has shown she can win a statewide race or the uber-outsider who might better capture the anti-establishment fervor so many Americans feel right now. In some ways, I think Platner might be the better candidate, but I also feel like he's exactly the sort of candidate where some social media post  from 2009 surfaces where he drops a racial slur. Of course, there was something similar with Fetterman, and that didn't stop him.

I suppose on one level all that matters is replacing Collins, and if Platner offers the better chance to do that, then we can live with him being a little weird.

Clowns

 The unprecedented gathering of America's top military officers in one place to listen to Fox News Personality Pete Hegseth engendered legitimate fears about either an impending stupid war or some sort of military coup or purge. Aspiring authoritarians - and Hegseth and Trump are cut from that same cloth - need loyalty in the national security apparatus, and the worry was that this would be the first step in creating those conditions.

Didn't quite turn out that way.

As Richardson notes, Trump in particular was lost when speaking to a room full of people who do not respond the way his rally goers or even protestors respond. While Hegseth's vile and stupid remarks are worthy of their own post, the focus really needs to be on Trump. Hegseth is a clown. All those generals and admirals know This Guy. He's the reservist who thinks he's Rambo. Pretty sure Hegseth does not have his Combat Infantry Badge. Generals and Admirals are pretty smart people; most if not all have graduate degrees. Their job is to study actual war, not war movies - which is apparently what Hegseth does.

Trump, however, is the Commander in Chief. Hegseth's primary danger is the sort of incompetence that we saw with the Signal Chat fiasco last spring. Trump's danger is to the constitutional order that every soldier takes an oath to defend. It feels close to inevitable that at some point, they will be asked to forswear that oath in favor of one for Trump.

I think yesterday actually worked against that. Trump had prepared remarks that were likely written or molded by Stephen Miller: the typical American Carnage and the need to destroy domestic enemies. In case you need access to Richardson's post and don't have it, let me cut and paste some of Trump's remarks:

“They looked at (Biden) falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”

What the actual fuck?

The thing is, he looks and sounds like shit, especially since he disappeared for a few days around Labor Day. So, let's say you might be a senior military leader who is torn between his oath to defend the Constitution and the chain of command. Do you really want to bet it all on this idiot who is decaying in front of your eyes? Similar to his rambling weird speech to the United Nations, these aren't rallies; these are very smart, observant people. Forced to stay in their seats for this verbal diarrhea do you really think they came out of that ridiculous, unnecessary confab thinking; "This guy's got it on lockdown"?

As we head into a government shutdown, the whole thing rests on the fragile ego of a demented old fool. Sadly, I think the best hope we have is that he is, in fact, a demented old fool. This is why the cretinous fascists like Miller are rushing to destroy what they can of America. The clock seems to be ticking. 

UPDATE: Tom Nichols makes roughly the same point.

UPDATE 2: This is a telling line from Hegseth: “It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” Hegseth said. “I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat-arms physical standards as men.” Sure, yeah, the sexism. But the focus on superficial appearance is befitting an administration that just wants to look good on Fox rather than do the actual job.