Disastrous

 Look, I had better things to do than watch Cheeto Benito slur and mumble his way through some half-assed update on his Iran War. As Josh Marshall noted, it was a terrible speech that spooked ALL the markets. Krugman makes roughly the same point.

Perhaps Trump is stung in his small, craven id by the concept of TACO - Trump Always Chickens Out - and feels compelled to not wind this war down quickly.

Then again, the problem is that, strategically, Iran is winning. They are demonstrating that they can absorb far more pressure than we can. Trump never sold this war to the public, so he can't really turn around and ask for ground troops or people to buckle up for $5.00 a gallon gas. We are still going to GET $5.00 a gallon, but he can't admit that. Iran is being leveled tactically, but they are pretty much OK with that, because things were already pretty shitty and they don't have to answer to their public.

Trump cannot walk away easily from this, though I suspect he will try. It's unclear whether we are actually going to deploy the combat troops we are sending to the region. Frankly, the only defensible use of them might be to invade Yemen and degrade the Houthis to deprive Iran of one of their few remaining proxies that has any combat effectiveness. However, sending US soldiers to die killing Yemenis while Iran jacks up fuel prices is a political non-starter.

The contours of the end of this conflict currently looks like this. Trump will feel compelled to "do something" in terms of "boots on the ground." His "doing something" will be stupid and "lethal" just not in the way Hegseth wants it to be. In the end, he will climb down from this cliff, but he will leave the Iranian regime in control of the Straits of Hormuz, where they will charge tolls for transit. 

In the end, Tehran will have a revenue source that they don't have now, because this fucking idiot thought getting involved in a war on the Middle East would be easy.

Pundit Fallacy

 Yglesias says that Democratic strategists that say that Democrats need to find a straight white guy to nominate in 2028 are being dumb. His argument is that women get elected to Congress just fine. In fact, what he runs into is a data problem. There are hundreds of legislative elections every two years, so you get a robust set of examples/

With the presidency, we have basically two examples. In 2016, the least qualified person to ever be a major party nominee took on arguably the most qualified candidate ever (who wasn't running for re-election). The reality TV star who mocked Gold Star families, bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women and clearly had no idea what to do about health care managed to beat a former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State. Eight years later - having botched Covid, launched an insurrection and been convicted of 34 felonies - he again beat a well qualified woman.

Maybe Trump's brand of toxic masculinity really does appeal in ways that JD Vance (I don't think he will be the nominee) can't pull off. Maybe whomever comes after Trump won't be able to motivate latent misogyny in the same way.

But this shit is typical of the Yglesias Fallacy. He once argued for the Pundit's Fallacy, that every pundit thinks that if a candidate just adopts the same positions the pundit holds, then they will win. The Yglesias Fallacy is that the median voter really understands policy at all. That they don't just vote the vibes, but sit there and ponder over white papers.

Partisans have ideological positions; that's why they are partisans. The voters that decide elections are feckless rubes without a complicated thought to pollute their beautiful spotless minds. When it comes to female candidates, "There's just something about her...:"

Unitary Power

 Richardson' daily catalog of the atrocities is particularly redolent of flop sweat coming from Trump. There were a host of court decisions against him, including his precious ballroom project. He issued an Executive Order on mail-in voting that is just blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. He's floundering on Iran and the resulting economic pain it's causing.

All of this is to say that Trump's tight grip on power seems to be slipping. The ultimate sign will be large fissures between the White House and Congressional Republicans. I would guess that this would only happen after primaries are over and incumbents feel secure enough to distance themselves from him in order to stave off defeat in the general election.

April Fool's Day has lost its luster in a world with so much lying, but maybe some small semblance of reality will bring this nattering buffoon back to earth.

Shrill

 Krugman paints the worst case scenario in continued oil disruption. The current price of a barrel of oil - as he explains - is largely speculative. The oil that left the Gulf at the start of the war is only now getting to East Asia. In other words, the actual reduction in the supply of oil really hasn't hit yet. The price increases we are seeing are based the mostly reasonable assumptions about what the price of oil will look like if the war continues. 

There are two looming problems.

The first is that even if Trump could extract himself from this problem of his own making, the supply of oil would remain reduced for months, as damaged Gulf facilities come back online. Additionally, that transportation lag means that the weeks it takes for Gulf oil to get to Asia means that the current void in shipping will last weeks. 

The second is that Trump appears to be doubling down on this insanity by sending just enough troops to make it worse without resolving anything. If he launches an attack on Kharg Island, the disruption in oil supplies will continue well into 2027. 

Once that happens, we could be looking at chained inflation. That was the condition in the 1970s, whereby the price of, well, every output was set in anticipation of where the price of inputs would be. During this latest inflationary period around Covid, everyone assumed that conditions would return to normal, so they didn't want to raise prices too much and drive away customers. If you learn that prices will remain high for months or possibly years, then you raise prices by a lot in June in anticipation of the higher prices in November. 

The problem is that this creates the upwards spiral of inflation that can only be cured by recessionary monetary policy. 

Great job, Donnie. 

Green Shoots

 Krugman notes the unsettling affection that Trump and the creatures around him have for Viktor Orban, Hungary's authoritarian leader. Orban and Putin represent a certain form of autocrat that tends to rely on racial nostalgia to legitimize the destruction of democratic norms. In Orban's case, it was the migrant crisis of a decade ago, where the trauma of the Arab Spring and the civic violence that arose around it spurred a mass exodus of migrants into Europe. In Putin's case, it's nostalgia for the Soviet Union and its ability to dominate the ethnic minorities within its border, minorities that now have their own countries.

In Trump's case, it's nostalgia for an imagined America where white men could dominate everything and "those people" knew their place. There's always fiction in nostalgia, and Trump's version is especially fictitious. Still, the very fact (and it is a fact) that America's president is openly siding with these authoritarian regimes against the democratic regimes of our erstwhile allies is deeply, deeply wrong on a strategic, moral and historical level. 

Trump's rolling disaster of a war in Iran has him silent while Russia provides Iran with targeting data to strike American military assets. He has let Russian tankers supply Cuba, because he simply cannot break with Putin, it seems. Trump routinely insults our allies and neighbors, but have you ever heard him insult Putin? Or even Xi? Is this just a deep seated affinity or does Russia, in fact, have the Epstein Goods on Trump?

Hungary will be a clear test of the long term success of Orbanist politics. He has thoroughly corrupted a young democracy, but if they can vote him out, then the odds of success here in America for a November Blue Wave would seem to be higher. Our institutions are older and more decentralized. Ideally, a Democratic House or hopefully a fully Democratic Congress will be able to investigate Trump's ties to autocrats, whether in Moscow, Budapest or Riyadh. 

Cursed

 Krugman makes a clickbaity argument that the US might be suffering from the resource curse. The resource curse take two forms. The one I'm most familiar with is that poorer, developing countries that have abundant mineral wealth are usually autocratic. The reason is the inverse of the old revolutionary slogan, "No taxation with representation." In a resource state, there is no need for taxation so there is no representation. Additionally, control of the government means control of the resource (usually oil), and that means losing control of the government means losing access to all that wealth. 

Krugman does not seem to be argument that for the US, and I would agree, we aren't in that state. Yesterday's No Kings rallies may have had 8,000,000 attendees. I would say that they one I attended was not necessarily better attended than the one in the fall, but that supportive honking by passersby was higher. Protesting is...weird. It does however stand in for civic engagement. 

The reason why the US is not likely to rely on resources to become a petrostate is twofold. The first is that despite being the world's largest oil producer, oil is still a relative small part of our overall economy. If you want to get rich in America, you go to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, not to Washington, DC to extract rents from the oil industry. 

The second reason is that America already has a well-established democracy. Yes, Trump is waging wholescale war on our democratic institutions and norms, but just like his war against Iran, his tactical wins do not mean strategic victory. Part of the "logic" of authoritarianism and the heart of Project 2025 is that you can simply overwhelm the opposition through "strength" and speed of action. Trump has achieved speed of action - again, in both his assaults on America's democratic institutions and Iran's military infrastructure. However, he cannot understand that the opposition gets its say, too. 

American history is not a triumphal march of progress. It is a long and painful conflict between our ideals and our baser instincts. It is messy. Right now, it seems like everything is unravelling. However, as I said a few months ago, as a political scientist, I would argue that you should be afraid. As a historian, I would argue that you should be patient.

No Kings

 I am off to - I think - the third protest I've ever been to. The second one was No Kings this fall. I am not a protest guy, I am not a crowds guy, but this shit is so fucked up and bullshit that it's prompting me to overcome my previous scruples.

Meanwhile, CPAC was sparsely attended and riven by factions. Factionalism is rare on the right, but common within revolutionary movements, which sums up the basic friction between Trumpism and institutional conservatism.

The House Republicans have rejected the bill to reopen DHS except for ICE. Senate Republicans caved because the TSA situation was getting out of hand and perhaps some of them secretly wanted to rein ICE in a bit, too. The House catering to Trump's diktats over not funding TSA means that it could not be any clearer who is behind the chaos in America's airports.

We will see how many people take to the streets to protest Trump's corruption, war mongering, incompetence and authoritarianism. I'm guessing that the numbers will be large (providing people can afford gas to get there). If it's as big as the fall protests - or even larger - then I think it's pretty clear where the energy rests going into the midterms. I think the key to a Blue Tsunami is a combination of extremely motivated anti-Trump voters and dispirited Trump voters who stay home. 

So if you can go today, go.

Could Trump Accidentally Do Some Good?

 Trump's war is a slow rolling disaster at this point. However, there might be some positives.

The first, obviously, is that if this trajectory continues, Democrats win the House and the Senate.

The second is that rising energy costs will nudge more and more people to renewables. It will be interesting to see if the GOP Congress decides to make things easier on consumers by rolling back the regulatory and fiscal attacks on renewable energy. I know I certainly would like a return to solar tax credits.

The third is that maybe this war explodes the AI bubble. Now this is "good" in a narrow set of ways. Bubbles have to burst, it is in their nature. Best to get that over with. Second, anything that slows down AI and gives us time to adapt to it is good. Third, crashing AI companies means fewer data centers and, again, lower energy costs. Data centers are being built out beyond requirements, and stopping that would be helpful before it gets out of hand.

Of course, we could very well be looking at a 2008 scenario. The AI boom is pretty much the only thing keeping America out of a recession, and once that bubble bursts, we should expect things to get very panful. It could lead to a full blown financial crisis, as many financial firms are knee deep in AI debt.

Luckily, we have a crack team of crisis managers in charge of the federal government, so I'm sure we will sail right through. 

Democrats Win One

 Republicans have caved on the TSA standalone funding. I saw someone online predictably say that this was less a Democratic win than a Republican loss, because Democrats can never win. Bullshit. Democrats laid out a clear line, they held to it and Trump, then Senate Republicans caved. That's a clear "W."

This doesn't really stop the depredation of ICE, but it does begin the process of isolating ICE's budget within the debate over DHS.

Iran Isn't Going To Back Down

 Krugman has a cryptic post about a security briefing that left him depressed. My guess is that Trump's latest movements bringing Marines and the 82 Airborne "online" has people more or less assuming that we will commit ground troops at some point. We know that Trump's war and his deployment of ICE to airports is not popular, but with the latter, how much of that is simply disgust with Trump personally? What could Trump do that would make 55% of the country approve of his actions (besides resigning and fleeing the country).?

Trump seems to realize that he's shitting the bed in Iran or at least that the oil markets are giving him feedback that he knows will be painful for him politically. What's also clear is that Iran understands this, too. Trump can ask for a ceasefire or a peace plan, but Iran has no incentive right now to give him anything. In fact, Iran has denied any talks with the US and has only engaged - it seems - with other regional powers. We have reports that Saudi Arabia wants to keep the war going and is basically on the same page with Israel in that regards, but other Gulf states may want an off ramp and might be willing to negotiate separate deals with Iran.

Right now, Iran's chokehold is on the Straits of Hormuz. That is going to be painful for months maybe years even after it opens. It's not a faucet that you simply turn on and off. At some point, I would expect some sort of terrorist attack on a military or political target in the US. Iran basically has nothing left to lose. Even if they are wiped out tactically, strategically they have some very powerful cards and are playing them. 

The US military under Trump has been a series of tactical triumphs without any coherent strategic goals, beyond "make things go boom" and "exploit the chaos to make money." Iran's strategic goals would include any pain that they can inflict on the US plus keeping their regime basically intact. If they do so, their prestige would rise in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein got his ass kicked in 1991, but because he survived, he actually improved his reputation. That's where Iran is right now and there is no amount of shitposting that Trump can do to alter that fact.  

The Polls That Matter

Special elections are just that: special. Still, the Democrats have been crushing special elections since Trump took office, and last night they flipped two seats in Florida's legislature. One of the districts includes Mar A Lago. Trump, of course, voted by mail, which he's trying to kill with the SAVE Act. 

There are examples of interviews and posts of people decrying their vote for Trump. Anecdotes, though, are not data. The elections we have seen with Democrats overperforming by around 10-15 points, suggest that those anecdotes represent something real. Reuters has his polling collapsing even further and there's clearly some flop sweat in the GOP today.

Ideally what we see in November is that Democrats are prepared to crawl over broken glass and swim through lemon juice to vote whereas many MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans just stay home, dispirited by the shitshow their orange god has unleashed on America and the world.

I really think there will be competitive Senate races in Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and even Kansas. There is going to be a Senate seat that flips Blue that will have people surprised. Not because MAGA is abandoning Trump personally, but because they have soured on politics althogether. 

Not Brilliant

 The Times runs down how RFK has gutted public health.

Brilliant

 Read this on Iran. 

It's all just insane.

Corruption: Once More With Feeling

 It has been my position that the single most consistent line of attack against Trump should be his corruption. Everything that he does can likely be tied back to some interest - usually including himself - that profits from his actions. Recently, he decided to pay a French company $1,000,000,000 to cede their lease to a wind farm off the East Coast. Why? Why would the US government deprive a private company the opportunity to build a wind farm? There is the usual Republican friendliness to petrochemical companies, but this seems so obviously self-defeating. When it all comes out, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that there is money changing hands under the table.

In Iran, we now have pretty compelling circumstantial evidence that Trump and the people around him are conducting insider trading around futures markets. Krugman is being little - it has to be said - shrill in calling this treason, but it sure as hell seems like a crime. I don't think he engaged in this very unpopular war simply to make a buck, but once begun and especially since it started going poorly, he has done what he always does, which is to find a way to personally benefit from the destruction that he and his policies caused.

Perhaps the reason why the oil shock from Trump's War has been somewhat muted is because markets aren't necessarily following the TACO rule so much as not wanting to invest in an obviously rigged market. Trump has now said we are negotiating with Iran. Iran says this is bullshit. There is some evidence that Trump's new timeline of five days is just to get Marines in theater, but not attack until markets close on Friday. 

I remain guardedly optimistic that Trump's corruption and incompetence will undo him. Fraud doesn't work in the long run, and the man is the walking personification of fraud. When his hold on power is wrested away from him, the creatures that have gorged themselves at this trough of corruption and self-dealing might be surprised that he did not pardon them on the way out. 

The challenge for whomever restores American democracy will be to hold those who have violated the public trust accountable, despite the inevitable caterwauling about "lawfare" from Fox and Fiends. Trump was prosecuted because he's broken the law. This has given Republicans cover for when Trump demands spurious investigations into his opponents, based on political malice. There needs to be a Truth and Reconciliation committee, only without the reconciliation. 

Someone said that the 48th president of the United States (unless it's Vance because of the actuarial table) will spend an entire term cleaning up Trump's mess. That process has to start by driving the money changers from the temple. 

The Fictive Nexus

 Trump's war with Iran is only his second most important war. The war with the truth is one that he has been waging for his entire life. As a malignant narcissist, Trump cannot be wrong. He is always right, always winning. The realities of the Iran War are intruding upon that cocoon of lies. Today, Trump said that he was close to a negotiated deal with Iran; Iran said, "Bullshit." 

The question some have asked is whether Trump's lies about the war are 
A) Part of an effort to manipulate markets.
B) A fundamental disconnect with reality.
C) Just who he is: a liar.

Reality really does get the last say. Trump, however, has created a public career where his lying has not been nearly the disqualifying character flaw that we would have hoped it would be. Trump's congenital contempt for the truth has somehow not become the defining trait when the new media reports on his utterances. When Trump says anything at this point, it should be treated as false until otherwise verified. The continuing, persistent treatment of Trump as if he were a normal human being - much less a normal president - is the height of the sanewashing that routinely occurs.

This is why Trump could only have risen to prominence in the Republican Party. The reason is because of Fox News. Fox has primed a generation or two of "conservatives" to respond in a Pavlovian way to the red meat and lies of Republican politicians. We have certified morons like Senator Tommy Tuberville decrying Sharia law in the US...which isn't a thing. But if you've marinated in Fox for decades, it might be. 

One of the theories behind John Fetterman's complete abandonment of Democratic partisanship is that after his stroke, he's become closer to his Fox News addicted brother. That would absolutely track. 

Trump is a uniquely awful human being - among the worst public figures this or any other country has produced. 

He could not have become president without Fox News.