Broken Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, Are We At War With Iran Again?

 Or is Trump just manipulating markets again? 

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

Going Down With The Ship

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

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

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

Since 2017.

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

Broken People

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

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

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

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

Rules For Thee, But Not For Me

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

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

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

Decency

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deeply Weird

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

Today, however, he crossed a fucking line. 

It's the perfect example of thinking without feeling.

GOP v MAGA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucy, The Football And A Credulous Media

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

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

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

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

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

Margins

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

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

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

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

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

The Red Line

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

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

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

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

I've Been Saying...

 Krugman makes the point I've been making for months: focus on the corruption.

Yes, Americans hold a dim view of the morality of their elected officials - the alleged crimes of Swallwell and Gonzalez add to this perception (though it's worth noting that Swallwell went from allegation to suspending his campaign to resigning from Congress in about 72 hours). However, they also really don't like corruption, and corruption IS the point of authoritarianism. It is the lack of accountability to the public that motivates autocrats to retain power. 

Trump is a shitty businessman, but a shrewd manipulator of graft. He didn't want to cede power on January 6th because of his colossal narcissism,  but also because it was easier to make money off being in power. Right now, there are clearly large sums being made around insider trading on prediction "markets" and outright graft through his crypto. If he were to lose power, he would be vulnerable to prosecution.

The results in Hungary are a positive development in the war against international illiberalism. We should keep an eye on how Magyar prosecutes Orban's crimes, too. What we DO know is that corruption played a massive role in motivating the Hungarian people to vote in such numbers that Orban couldn't steal the election.

Similarly, Democrats can leverage people's outrage over things as mundane as the tearing down the East Wing, to as sordid as Epstein, to as lethal as his war in Iran to paint Trump as a corrupt oligarch out to make your tank of gas unaffordable, while coddling his friends in Saudi Arabia. 

Corruption is the rug that really ties the room together, man. 

Good

 Congress finally demonstrated a miniscule amount of moral fiber and engineered the ejection of Eric Swallwell, Democrat of California, and Tony Gonzalez, Republican of Texas. Both men have been accused of fairly horrific sexual crimes. There are two other members - one Democrat and one Republican, both from Florida - who are in similar ethical crosshairs. Yes, the fact that this did not alter the balance in the House mattered. If Cory Mills and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormack were to leave, too, that would represent some semblance of the old order in American politics, whereby people who do unethical shit no longer get to represent the public.

Of all the myriad ways that Trump has warped American politics, one of the worst has been his normalization of simply ignoring these ethical constraints. His blasphemous picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick would be a normal career ending act. For Trump, nothing seems to stick in the same way it has for other politicians. 

Swallwell and Gonzalez leaving Congress is objectively good, because it reintroduces the idea that there are consequences for bad actions. 

Now if we can only apply that to the highest office in the land. 

Insanity

 Donald Trump has decided to wage rhetorical war on the Pope. 

He then posted a picture of himself as Christ. 

This is almost textbook behavior as the Antichrist. I'm sure many of his evangelical followers will swallow this whole, but some are struggling to. Obviously, quite a few Catholics are going to be upset with this. 

The combination of his failed Iran war, skyrocketing prices that simply aren't going to come back down and the failure of Orban to gerrymander his way to authoritarianism has to have him spooked. Like a cornered rat, he's snarling and snapping at everything.

Success

 Viktor Orban has been ousted as Prime Minister of Hungary. 

Orban has been the anti-democratic mole inside the European Union for years. His cultural revanchist populism became a cause celebre in the United States. CPAC moved their meetings there. 

In an absolutely hysterical faceplant, JD Vance - himself a fake populist authoritarian - was sent to shore up support for Orban and negotiate peace with Iran. He has failed utterly at both of his tasks. It would not surprise me if he was sent on these suicide missions largely because he's got the charisma of athlete's foot and the loyalty of a pit viper. 

Peter Magyar (who one wag described as having the name of a Harry Potter character who was visiting from Hungary) is not some left wing hippie. He's a right wing within the context of Europe. 

However, he ran on two fundamental issues: Russia and corruption. The history between Russia and Hungary is...not good! Orban's role as Putin's lapdog within NATO and the EU has been a roadblock to full support for Ukraine's war of survival. Russia worked hard - as did Trump because of course - to bolster Orban, but that likely worked against him. Even with most media outlets on Orban's side, he's going to lose by very large margins.

The small tip of the cap I will give to this awful creature is that - unlike Trump - he has conceded defeat.

For people like Vance and the illiberal cohort of people including Peter Thiel, Rod Dreher and Tucker Carlson, Orban was the model for what they wanted to do for the US. A country where rigging the system allowed them to stay in power regardless of the will of the people. I think we all knew that Fidesz was very unpopular and would lose a fair election, but that they might have so stacked the electoral system and coopted the media that the popular will would not be expressed. And if it was expressed, Orban would not accept it.

There is the famous quote from MLK (a man Orban would have hated): The arch of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 

I take hope from Hungary, of all places, that democracy will win in the end. That Trump's egregious and manifest incompetence will overwhelm the efforts of Fox News and gerrymandering to maintain his own version of Orban's illiberal vision.