Platner

 When Graham Platner first appeared on the scene, I got it. I got the vibe. He had the sort of rough charisma that seemed like it would appeal to Mainiacs.

The sheer number of red flags that have popped up has obviously given a lot of people real qualms about this guy. It is very difficult to support a guy who casually carried a Nazi tattoo for years or said some of the dumbassed things he's said. 

However...

Defeating Susan Collins is an imperative. Platner is leading in the polls, but previous challengers to Collins have been leading at this point. 

What worries me is that there are a LOT of people online who are furious at Platner and his accumulated misdeeds. Many are rightfully worried about a repeat of John Fetterman, a guy who got into office based on vibes. 

Still, it pains me to see good people taking sides on this. As soon as you take a firm side, you cannot move off it easily. This is true of MAGA and the Bernie Bros. You dig in; you refuse to compromise; you approach this as a zero sum endeavor.

You absolutely do not have to support him. If you want to defeat Collins, just ignore him (unless you live in Maine). Stop creating an identity around intramural conflict, because you're going to have to move on at some point.

The Lies That Bind

 Martin Longman looks at the tactical bind that the GOP is in this November. The basic issue is this: MAGA is centered in "low information" voters. These are people who do not think in especially ideological terms, but rather respond to various cues about the world in a less systematic way. Trump, in this telling, is simply one of dozens of global leaders who have risen to power because the "system" sucks and they want someone to upset the apple cart. It's broadly populist in its contempt for governing expertise and compromise, because they just want to burn the whole thing down.

Trump is currently burning the whole thing down.

Turns out, though, that burning the whole thing down is actually really damaging to a lot things that MAGA likes. Additionally, MAGA is now invested in the arsonist. They simply don't vote in the same numbers in special elections certainly, but also the midterms. Democrats did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterms, despite Biden's low approval ratings, because Trump's GOP really are only TRUMP'S GOP. Without him on the ballot, Republicans could suffer in the turnout war.

The problem - as Longman and others have identified - is that Trump is incredibly unpopular. What's more, he's really unpopular on the issues that people care the most about. Then you add in him saying shit like he doesn't care about the economy or the midterms (his way of preemptively deflecting the stench of coming defeat) and why would anyone come out and vote for the GOP. 

Susie Wiles is talking about a convention in August or September to rally the MAGA faithful. The problem is that he's becoming increasingly toxic. If you are the Democrats, you WANT to run against Trump, against gas prices, against corruption. By all means, re-center Trump in the popular imagination. Democratic partisans are going to crawl through broken glass and lemon juice to vote this November. Blacks are pissed at the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Hispanics are pissed at the wanton cruelty of ICE. Suburbanites are repelled by the corruption and incompetence. The idea that they can rally these infrequent voters who often back Trump seems false on the face of it.

Unless they are hardcore MAGA, they wanted the price of stuff to come down. Inflation is not only had right now, but it looks to get worse over the course of the next six months. Oil prices won't come down for a year or more even if the war ended tomorrow. Fertilizer prices are going to create chaos on the Farm Belt and the grocery store.

Wiles may feel like her only avenue is to "let Trump be Trump" but that seems foolish.

The Magaification Is Complete

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

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

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

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

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

Busy Day

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

So, yeah. Busy day.

Another Failure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abandoning Oneself

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

That seems higher than it should be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Autopsy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misconduct

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

It's A Cult

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

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

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

Cracks

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

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

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

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

Boomerang

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump, Family Man

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

Another Way To Fight Back

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

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

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

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

More Adventures In Orbanism

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

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

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

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

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

An Evangelical Christianity Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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