Has It Started?

 Krugman drops off a quick note that it looks like the Crypto Crash may be upon us. Bitcoin, the Cadillac of Crypto, has dropped from a high of about 125,000 a month ago to about 91,000 today. Ethereum peaked at around 4800 in August and is around 3000 today, three weeks ago is was around 3800.  

David Frum points to the real peril that stable coins might pose to our broader financial institutions. The speculative frenzy surrounding some cryptos - to say nothing of the incoherent madness of meme coins - was supposed to be tempered by the stable coins. Because stable coins are redeemable in real currency, this could lead to runs on financial institutions.

Part of me is regretting not putting my money where my mind mouth is and shorting crypto. Part of me wants to jump in now and make some bucks off the venality of others. There is, however, a risk when you bet against a fraudulent system. 

We are building a house for retirement, so we have a lot of cash on hand which should be safe in a crash. We are also near that retirement and a crash...won't be great! I suppose to bright side is that Trump has bound himself to crypto in such a way that when the crash comes and if it truly devastates the economy, that will combine with Epstein to drive the nails into the coffin of his authoritarian plans.

The Human Connection

 This piece is about an AI engine designed to help you "cheat" at conversations. The author found it really distracting and did not, in fact, help her with her conversation.

Meanwhile, Yglesias writes a long post about how he likes his - seemingly profound - neurodivergence. That piece definitely shores up my impressions about a certain vacantness in his analysis. He says he makes him more objective, but the AI engine kind of has the same problem that it short circuits real human connection. There is nothing wrong with being neurodivergent and aphantasia is a striking example of a specific form of being different. That does allow him to offer his spicy hot takes that keep him in business, but it also leaves something soulful missing from his work.

AI, of course, has no soul.

So, yeah, anyway, we're all doomed.

Unitary Theory Of Power

 Josh Marshall has what he calls a "Unitary Theory of Power" that states that all power is unitary. A President is not powerful on one area and weak in another. This is why you see presidents' approval ratings fall across the board when they suffer a failure in one area. If Trump loses on the tariffs or the House vote on the Epstein files goes bigly against him, then he is weakened everywhere else.

The flop sweat emanating from the White House is because they very much understand this dynamic. The central idea of Project 2025 was to overwhelm opposition to Trump's authoritarianism with speed before the unpopularity of that project could be coalesced into a united front. "Move fast, break things" only works if you have sufficient mass behind the destructive force.

Marshall points to things like the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco as example of that veneer of omnipotence being stripped away. He also says that an increase in leaks (and I would argue the willingness of corporate media to report on what those leaks say) demonstrates that people are losing their fear of Trump's ability to retaliate.

Trump's verbal declaration to countenance the discharge petition is an example of this. Trump cannot lose. He certainly cannot lose when Republicans are the ones voting. He would rather give the appearance of being fine with the release so as not to lose the coming vote. Once it passes the House (and presumably the Senate) then perhaps he will find a way to delay or selective release some things. He isn't saying "Release the Epstein Files"; he's saying "I can't afford to publicly lose this vote."

The thin reed I'm hanging my current hopes on is the special election in Tennessee 7th CD. This district has no business flipping, but it is within that 10 point partisan margin that could surprise people. That might also be the reason why more and more Red States are not gerrymandering, because you could wind up with a dummymander where they turn reliably Republican districts into swing districts in a wave election. 

Every loss in any arena is a loss everywhere for Trump.

A Democratic Populism

 Do Democrats need to embrace the sort of populist politics that elevated Donald Trump? Maybe, maybe not. But if they do, there is one really, really easy way to do so: Billionaires.

The GOP alliance with great wealth is well known and goes back to the years after the Civil War. There have been wealthy Americans who embraced progressive politics, but the vast majority of the very well off have historically trended towards the party of low taxes and less regulation.

The politics of it today are even more stark. People apparently really are pissed off about the destruction of the East Wing and the Gatsby Party that Trump threw. They really are pissed off about the evisceration of public services. And they really are pissed off about the Epstein Files.

Rumors online is that the dreaded "Democratic consultants" were urging Democrats to focus on "affordability" over Epstein, because people really are upset about the cost of living. The thing is, Epstein is about a cabal of ultra wealthy scumbags - of whom Trump is the avatar - getting their way while everyone else suffers. Millionaires and billionaires raping girls, while the Guatemalan roofer or the Salvadoran line cook gets beaten and abused on the streets of Chicago (which drives up construction and dining costs).

Richardson lays the wood this morning with a comparison of Matt Gaetz and the Andrew Mellon. Gaetz likely paid a 17 year girl for sex so she could pay for braces; Mellon funneled wealth upwards until it created the conditions for the Great Depression. In both cases, wealth and power insulated them from the consequences of their actions. Mellon appropriated millions, Gaetz committed statutory rape, because elites don't face the same consequences as you and me.

A system that engorges the bank accounts of those already rich, while depriving millions of access to health care is one that is ripe for a left wing populism. Focus on the Malefactors of Great Wealth and you can target both affordability AND Trump's deprivations with Epstein. They are the same damned thing.

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.

I Dunno

 Seems like this Epstein stuff is pretty bad.

Still, the idea that this - finally - will end Trump's presidency seems to misunderstand the nature of the GOP in 2025.

Lies Won't Get Him Out Of This

 Krugman runs through a great false equivalency in press coverage of Biden and Trump's respective economic messages. Biden people cherry picked or massaged certain economic indicators that were 100% true, but didn't FEEL true or didn't jibe with people's lived experience. Biden was also a poor spokesman for himself. The result was Trump winning the election. While on a strictly policy front Biden did well, people didn't experience the improving economy in their actual day to day lives. This is why likely the only Democrat who could have won in 2024 was a governor.

Trump, on the other hand, is just doing what he always does, which is lie like a rug. The sheer volume of lies is nothing new; Trump lies as he breaths: constantly. However, when he gets up there and blathers on about gasoline being $2 a gallon, there is literally no one who believes this is actually true. His incredible disconnection from reality is one of the biggest reasons that his approval ratings are tanking. When you combine it with demolishing the East Wing and his Gatsby party, you really have someone who is completely detached from the lived reality of most Americans. 

Look, this was always true, but now it's unavoidable. 

It Still Sucks, But...

 Capitulating on the shutdown is painful, because it means that the pain of the shutdown accomplished very little in policy terms. About the best thing we can hope for is that when the Senate compromise passes, the House will have to take it up and Grijalva will be sworn in and the Epstein stuff will get released.

Richardson characterizes this as a pool table with balls careening this way and that. One of those balls is dispirited Democrats, but another is tossing the vote for ACA subsidies - written by Democrats - into the Senate for a vote. The one year extension would collapse around the midterms, so ideally, that will be the bill written by Democrats, if they can't get a permanent extension. If Republican Senators vote it down or it dies in the House, then Republicans up and down the ballot next November will be on the hook for ripping health insurance from millions of Americans. 

As it is, I just got a notice that I will see a massive spike in my contributions to my employer-based insurance. This is the "bad old days" of pre-ACA insurance dynamics. Republicans will own that. 

Krugman thinks that they just can't help themselves when it comes to depriving people of public goods. I wonder. I mean, yes, they don't believe that the government should spend millionaires' tax dollars on working people's health insurance, but you usually don't see parties strip away established programs. When they do, as Bush tried in 2005, they suffer for it. In fact, Bush's attack on Social Security likely led the way to a 60 seat Democratic majority over the next two cycles that enabled Obama to pass the ACA.

I think there's another dynamic at play, though. Trump HAS to be seen as strong and winning. Part of it is his brittle little ego, but another part is the self-fulfilling logic of authoritarian politics. The leader is strong, because the leader is strong. If Democrats force a compromise on Republicans - EVEN ONE THAT COULD BE POLITICALLY BENEFICIAL TO THEM - Trump would see this as a "loss", which is why he refused to negotiate.

It's true, as Krugman points out, that Republicans have no policy chops and no policy shop on health care, beyond stripping it away. This is the famous "concept of a plan" that should have sunk Trump's candidacy. Marshall sees this as an emerging new Democratic caucus that "gets it" when it comes to fighting not just Trump but Trumpism and the entire autocratic GOP.

Looking at the Traitorous Eight, Fetterman will likely lose his primary. Kaine, too, though the he has time to recoup his lost standing. Durbin and Shaheen are not running for re-election. Shaheen's own daughter - running for a House seat - has blasted the deal. Enjoy Thanksgiving! If Stefany Shaheen loses her primary, you can chalk that up to voter anger over her mother's capitulation. King is likely safe and I have no read on the Nevada landscape. 

While Schumer blasted the deal, I think anger with him is justified, as he cannot whip his own caucus and having exactly the eight votes needed to reopen the government suggests that he gave clearance to guys like Durbin and Kaine. As I said, unequal to the moment.

This isn't over yet, and obviously there is both the (possible) vote on ACA extensions in the Senate and another looming deadline after the holidays. 

However, Republicans are trapped by Trump's insistence that there be zero negotiations and that instead they just scrap the filibuster. Maybe it was smart to bring back SNAP and air travel for the holidays. Personally, I do think we are going to have to pass through hell in order to escape it.

Unequal To The Moment

 The Republican strategy for the shutdown was clear from the first week: make Americans miserable. The efficacy of this strategy was borne out last Tuesday, as voters rewarded Democrats with victory after victory. Republicans responded by ramping up the pain on the American public. The specter of snarled air travel for Thanksgiving loomed alongside the growing hunger for many Americans. 

It was, in fact, very painful.  I get that.

However, the Traitorous Eight who capitulated last night - and it was very much a capitulation - have made sure that the suffering that did happen was for nothing. What seems to have gripped their (mostly old) brains is the idea that the Senate Club will insure that the deal will be honored and vulnerable Republicans will have to take a vote on ACA subsidies at some point in the future.

This misunderstands the politics of 2025. First, let's assume that Thune actually does call a vote on ACA subsidies. Maybe it does pass, but I have my doubts. Does anyone think Mike Johnson will even allow that Senate bill to come to a vote in the House?

What's more, this moment is a fight with emerging dictatorship. If you can't see that, I have no idea what blinders you are wearing. Autocrats are bullies, by definition. Bullies thrive on weakness. What the Traitorous Eight have demonstrated to Trump and his ghouls is that bullying, starving and immiserating the American people is a sound strategy. This capitulation largely empowers Trump at precisely the moment that Democrats were handed a victory in the off year elections.

It's a fascinating rogue's roll of hacks, too. There are Very Sensible Centrists in King, Shaheen and Hassan, then you have both Senators from Nevada for some reason. You have Senator Shrek who's become the new Sinema -  a worthless toady of the worst impulses. Tim Kaine I guess wanted to protect his constituents who are Federal workers, but still...Finally there is Dick Durbin who took whatever reputation he may have clung to and lit it on fire and pissed on the ashes. He should resign and let Pritzer select his replacement.

Needless to say, in the overheated moment, people are blaming the entire Democratic Party for this and that's both unfair, unfortunate and unsurprising. Durbin's participation suggests at least some tacit approval from Schumer, even he personally voted against it. They needed eight votes and got eight votes, and it's not clear that Schumer really whipped against it.

A great example of where this is heading is that Mike Lee, Rick Scott and Ron Johnson - three of the absolute worst in that awful chamber - were not going to vote for the measure until Trump told them to. Not EVERY Republican  Senator is completely supine to Trump - Rand Paul is a no on the CR - but enough are that even if Democrats get a vote to extend the ACA subsidies and EVEN IF IT PASSES, it's folly to expect Trump to follow it, if he feels it manifests weakness.

I think it was Josh Marshall who coined the term Senate Brain to describe a certain mindset held by Senators that theirs was a cozy club of like minded public servants who only had a few partisan differences, but the institution was all that mattered in the end. Certainly in the background of this fight was Trump's threat to end the filibuster, which would have been a positive development in the long term health of democracy in this country, even if it would have ended the shutdown without getting ACA back.

Josh Marshall suggests that this isn't the end of the world. Of course it isn't, and he does have a point that the CR only goes through January; that this has focused attention on the ACA subsidies and who is killing them. What he also notes is that we need a new Democratic Party in the Congress. We can't be the fucking doormats that we have been in the past. Some - like Chris Murphy - get that. These mealy mouthed losers - and that is the name for those who lose - don't get that. If this pushes us further down the road to a Senate caucus without people like Dick Durbin or Shrek, then so much the better. 

I'm a Big Tent Guy, and I think heterodoxy is important. Healthcare, though, is not one part of the Democratic Party's beliefs; it's the central tentpole. That's why Republicans want to kill it. If you can't understand what you're fighting for or what the stakes are, you have no purpose being in Congress in 2025.

Is There A Deal Being Discussed?

 There are contradictory reports of a deal to end the shutdown. One has a pretty comprehensive cave from Democrats - basically, we will give you a brief CR in return for the promise of a future vote. The other seems to be better - a one year extension of ACA subsidies and one of those tiresome "Gangs" that they put together to solve an issue. I think the last Gang was to solve the amnesty issue in immigration and Trump promptly threw Lankford under the bus after he negotiated a pretty good deal.

A one year extension of the subsidies is a win for Democrats. Full stop. First, you have had people stare numbly at the coming catastrophic increases in their ACA bill, then you can claim to have reversed it.  Hurrah! Even better, the extension will lapse right before the midterm election. So, the GOP can either make the reversal permanent or make it a massive electoral issue in 2026.

Right now, the Republicans are feeling the wrath of voter anger from the shutdown and rightly so. However, we are now staring down the face of widespread hunger and the complete implosion of air travel for the Thanksgiving holiday. That's a recipe for a "curse on both your houses." 

The one year extension is good on the merits - people keep their insurance - and it's good politics, as it tosses a very good issue for Democrats into the heart of the midterms. It's also a clear "win" for Democrats and a loss for Republicans - which is why Thune and Trump are currently saying no. 

That's OK, let them say no! The Democrats have a reasonable compromise on the table. Let the GOP veto it. 

A+ Messaging

 For all the Conventional Wisdom about how bad the Democrats are at political messaging, the fact is that Democrats have handled this shutdown really well. Now, we have a reasonable compromise from Chuck Schumer to end the shutdown in return for a one year extension of the tax cuts. The logic is that voters have seen what those increases look like. Democrats will have saved them from that increase for one year, tossing the issue into next fall's midterm elections.

What we have now is Trump and the GOP making the following argument. "We are going to starve children and old people; we are going to snarl air traffic; we are going to deny soldiers pay...unless you allow us to take health insurance from millions of Americans."

Brilliant. Please proceed.

Affordability and Abundance

 Derek Thompson argues that last Tuesday gave the Democrats a winning theme - if not quite a winning platform. By focusing on "Affordability" they can focus voters' ire about rising prices, the same ire that turned Democrats out of power last November. A year is eternity and Thompson does acknowledge that there are a few problems, but I'd expand on them.

First, the primary driver of rising costs in 2022 was the post-Covid supply chain issue. That was an exogenous event that had little policy roots. In 2025, the primary cause of inflation is a combination of tariffs and deportations. By raising the prices of imported goods and raw materials and also restricting the labor supply, Trump seems bound and determined to create a stagflationary spiral. The problem for Democrats should they win in 2026 is to actually reverse many of those problems, and that will be very hard to do with Trump in the White House. You probably will be able to reverse the tariffs, but the workforce issue will not improve as long as Stephen Miller has an office in the West Wing.

Secondly and relatedly, even where you can and could act today or in 2026, it takes a long time to turn an economy around. In 2021, inflation was at 4,7%. High but OK. In 2022, it was 8%. No bueno. In 2023, it was at 4.1%, which would suggest it was calming down and in 2024, sure enough, it was at 2.9%. That rate would have been fine, if it wasn't for the fact that prices had been rising for three years. That almost 3% increase was happening to an already elevated number. The policies pursued by the Federal Reserve and Biden Administration were good and working, and if the election had happened a year later, I bet the result might have been different. 

Still, if your Sherrill or Spanberger or even Mamdani, you are very unlikely to effect wholesale reductions in prices. Whereas Trump has pursued inflationary policies because he's a fucking idiot, you could try and reduce some regulations and that would be a really good policy outcome, but it might not rein in prices for two reasons. First, making it easier to build housing should be a priority in every Blue polity, but that will take 2-4 years to actually show up as places for people to live. Second, Trump's policies will supersede what you are doing. If you make it easier to generate electricity in your state, that won't help if unregulated data centers gobble it all up. If you reform housing codes, it won't matter if Trump deported all the Latin American tradesmen. 

Of course, who cares. If Democrats can win control of both house of Congress next November running against Trump's terrible economic policies, then democracy might be saved. Voters will still blame his party in 2028. Hopefully, the AI/Crypto bubble bursts and data centers wither on the vine, freeing up electrical generation for consumers. Maybe we finally get a comprehensive and humane guest worker program and more legal immigration in 2029. 

Paul Campos refers to our era as the Age of Unhappiness, which I think is accurate. That has political repercussions, but we need to recall how well Democrats did in 2022 relative to expectations. If Trump continues to immiserate the population, then any breath of fresh air in 2028 could reshape political coalitions.

Joe Biden's age was not a question of infirmity, so much as it rendered him incapable of making his case to the American voter. Making a case for abundance as a formula for affordability is something that doesn't require a politician to have the charisma of a Mamdani.

This Man Is A Sociopath

 

Trump stands aloof as someone faints behind him. 

One advantage Trump has had is that - as Troll in Chief - he's pretty good at "driving the narrative" via visuals. Between his Gatsby Ball, demolishing the East Wing and now this...Yeah, not so much, Donny.