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. 

Failure

 As the Times editorial board nicely summarizes, the current situation in the war against Iran is a strategic defeat. Simon Rosenberg congregates the news from the past day or so. I'll give my version:

- We start a war of choice without adequately considering what Iran could do in response, once faced with a truly existential threat. 
- Trump substituted wishful thinking for actual foresight. When Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz - which everyone with a brain knew they would - he was scrambling to avoid an economic meltdown.
- He tried to bluff his way to victory by threatening genocide - real, actual genocide - that even some supporters found appalling. 
- He climbed down off those genocidal threats with this amorphous "ceasefire" that looked very much like an Iranian victory.
- Faced with backlash from Israel and the Arab Gulf states, Trump had to renegotiate the terms of peace with Iran.
- He sent his two useful idiots, Jared Kushner and Howard Lutnick, and JD Vance, who has been leaking his disapproval of the war. Making Vance own the peace talks is a form of Trumpist ritual humiliation.
- While the peace talks were predictably collapsing, Trump and the Secretary of State were at a fucking UFC match in Miami. 
- Trump has responded by threatening to "blockade" the Strait, but no one knows what that really means or what he intends to accomplish.
- The project of torching our alliances and insulting our fellow democracies - combined with destroying global economic stability - has nations considering abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency. 

It's just an absolute clown show, but a clown show where random members of the audience are killed and tickets are $500,000. 

Did The Word Finally And Conclusively Turn?

 The week began - yes, it was just this week - with Trump's hallucinogenic appearance next to the Easter Bunny on the White House balcony. Mussolini as imagined by Luis Bunuel. This was roughly the same time he threatened one of the oldest civilizations in the world with cultural extinction. The extremity of his statements seems to have appalled so many people, that Richardson suggests that maybe this could be a moment when people finally wash their hands of him. 

Yes, a lot of the MAGA Civil War talk is overblown. Trump retains remarkable control over his base. However, there does seem to be some understanding that Trump's behavior is well and truly unhinged. 

As things stand now, we have suffered a strategic defeat against Iran. The Straits are still closed, and we will have to pay Iran to reopen them in some way. Iran and the world know that the capacity to close the Straits is retained by Tehran. 

Meanwhile, it's really looking like stagflation is our current economic predicament. 

Last year, I asserted that the AI Bubble was the only thing buoying the economy in the era of Trump's economic chaos. That bubble is dependent on cheap energy and computer chips. Both of those are influenced by the closing of the Straits.

If that bubble bursts - and ideally bubbles DO burst sooner rather than later - then the country will have been driven completely into the ditch by Trump's malevolent incompetence. That might...MIGHT...get him below the 27% floor in his approval rating. 

Oh, yeah. Melania decided to declare that she had no idea who Jeffrey Epstein was. As if you thought that was going away.

Hey, just two and a half more years!

Does The Truth Matter?

 The current situation in the Persian Gulf is objectively very bad for the world. It represents a strategic defeat for the United States. Trump and Hegseth and the professional liars in their employ will assert instead a "great victory."  Oil prices will likely continue to fluctuate as global markets have to process the wild ping-ponging movement of oil out of the Gulf and the slow return of that oil to global markets.

The political question of high gas prices is a tricky question. There are likely some benefits to bringing down gas prices, and they don't really respond to actual supply, it seems, but rather the prospect of future supplies. Tankers take weeks to get from the Gulf to refineries then weeks more to get to the pump. Yet the price at the pump seems to change daily dependent on which lies Trump is spouting at any given moment.

The question of whether this ceasefire will actually lead to peace is one that Trump can't spin. If we start shooting again, that's not something he can lie about. If we capitulate, Trump will simply lie and say we won, and if gas prices fall, then the average dipshit voter might very well believe him. If energy prices stay high, and the impact of our defeat over control of the Straits grows in the public consciousness - the way the collapse in Afghanistan did - then Trump's collapse will continue to his floor of 27%. 

If he reaches that, Democrats win the Senate. Perhaps comfortably.

Oh, and Melania decided to bring up Epstein again, so that looms over everything, too. 

The Stall

 Krugman looks at the somewhat contradictory jobs numbers. Basically, job growth is slow but unemployment is low. How can that be? Well, it's because we are throttling off immigration. We are likely at or approaching negative net migration - more people leaving the country than entering.

The developed world is seeing a similar problem of a graying, shrinking demographic. We live longer and have fewer children, so whether it's Japan or Germany or the US, the replacement rate is a struggle to achieve. The US has avoided this problem by growing its population through both legal and illegal immigration. That has kept the workforce expanding. Illegal immigration helps the most, in some ways, because undocumented workers actually pay into Social Security, but they don't withdraw from it.

Trumpists will cover this looming problem up by claiming ridiculous projections for productivity and overall economic growth. Something, something AI. There is - as with all Republican policies - an extraordinary amount of wishcasting. 

What worries me is that we are headed for a reckoning on the national debt. Trump has added something like a quarter of all of America's debt. In this, he is just a bog standard Republican, albeit more so than most. America has been able to carry a huge debt for a number of structural reasons, and Trump is destroying most of them, including international goodwill towards the dollar. If the economy falls into a recession caused by economic instability from his whacko policies, a bursting AI bubble and the energy crisis his war has created, America could go from a stalled job market to a collapsing one. 

Democrats are always having to clean up Republican messes. If we dip into a recession, we might have to do so with a politicized Federal Reserve and a budget situation from hell. Trump will want to give away massive checks with his name on them. Democrats - who in this scenario easily win the House and likely the Senate - will have to put strict conditions on the money, and they are usually averse to participating in the immiseration of Americans.

The Iran War isn't over. The oil is not flowing, and even if it was it would take months to get back to normal. The labor market has stalled. The economy is sustained only by an AI bubble that is dependent on cheap energy, which we no longer have. 

If the crash is going to come, it needs to come soon, so we can take Republicans out of the equation in Congress and begin the slow process of repairing the structural damage of this awful man and his legions. 

Oh, Look

 The Straits are closed. 

Who could have predicted that the terms of the ceasefire were sham to let Trump climb down from his genocidal threats.

Where To From Here?

 Having slept on last night's news, I do think I was right. Trump's rhetorical escalation was the same as all his other verbal confabulations. If you believe he was going to nuke Iran, I presume you also believe that big, strong men with tears in their eyes routinely approach him, or that former presidents have privately praised him for starting this war with Iran.

Trump has zero credibility at this point, and Iran's current situation proves this. They called his bluff, he backed down and now negotiators have to unravel Iran's insane demands. Israel, I would guess, will have no part of Iran's demands to leave their proxies alone. Saudi Arabia won't stand for a toll on the Straits of Hormuz. The civilized world - which may or may not include the US at this point - cannot allow Iran to retain its nuclear program.

So the "ceasefire" allowed him a quick "victory" that was really a retreat. He has not, however, extricated himself from his mess. There's just no way the other regional powers can let this peace plan stand. If Trump relies on his usual cast of clowns - Jared Kushner and Howard Lutnick - to try and negotiate with Iran...yikes.  Kushner is a fully owned and operated subsidiary of the Gulf Emirs at this point, so maybe he will hold a firm line.

This has all been very stupid, very pointless and very destructive. 

TACO Time

 Trump backed down/was never serious. I think that was always the gambit, but he's such a fucking lunatic, you hesitate to make any firm predictions. The "two week ceasefire" feels like face saving bullshit from every party involved. I'm reluctant to believe that this is the end of Trump's Iranian Misadventure. Maybe they just collapse into status quo ante, but who knows? 

The leaking has started about the process that led us here, and Maggie Haberman has the deets here. My hope is that Trump really has soured on the war and that would make Hegseth the fall guy.  Good.

The war - if it is truly over and I think that's a 50-50 proposition - has been a strategic calamity for the US. We might achieve some measure of status quo ante if that looks like 
- The Revolutionary Guard are still firmly in control in Tehran.
- The Straits of Hormuz are open.
- Iran's military capacity has been deeply degraded - aside from its drones.
- Maybe there's some deal with the nuclear program?

None of that represents a "win" for the United States compared to the situation in mid-February.

Iran took a pummeling. Whoop-de-doo. They were not a serious threat to Israel, but they have established just how serious a threat they are to the Gulf States and the global commerce that flows through there. The degradation of their conventional forces doesn't really move the needle of power in the Middle East. They can shut down the Straits. They demonstrated that they CAN and they demonstrated what that means for the global economy.

Here's the true salient fact. Oil prices will remain high for some time. The Gulf will not suddenly be open and prices will fall and we will be back to $2.75 gasoline. The OTHER products from the Gulf are also unlikely to resume shipping quickly, including fertilizer and aluminum. These will be Covid-like supply chain disruptions that will continue to be felt for months. 

The war has made Trump even more unpopular. His unhinged public performances have MAGA-types calling for the 25th Amendment (sorry, not happening). He has absolutely torched his "brand" of "we need to run government like a business." His genocidal rhetoric was simply a performance, and he thankfully lacks the bloodlust to actually follow through. He's a coward, after all.

Now I'm reading that Iranian social media is saying that America has agreed to a complete and total capitulation, including withdrawing its forces from the region, lifting all sanctions and allowing Iran to control the Straits. That would be a complete and total humiliation for the US and its Gulf Allies. 

This is why the two week ceasefire is likely bullshit and Iran and the US will simply regroup, some oil will make it out and we will be at this again soon. This is the same yo-yo nonsense we saw with his trade wars now applied to shooting wars. There is no way that what Iran is proposing can be acceptable to anyone outside of Iran.

The ceasefire was a TACO from his genocidal statements earlier that managed to freak out even his supporters. He was not going to nuke Iran and he had to take the temporary climb-down, but the Iranian terms are absolutely a non-starter.

Anyway, Kamala Harris had a weird laugh, I guess. I kinda liked it.