The Crash Out

 Richardson tries to drink from the firehose of bullshit coming from the White House, but narrows herself to two stories and subtly links them: Iran refusing to bend to Trump's demands and his crashing out on social media.

Trump has had two superpowers in his career as a businessman: He is absolutely shameless and he can drive a narrative through brute repetition. On the latter point, Trump was one of the first people to become famous for being famous. Under the idea of "there's no such thing as bad press" he relentlessly promoted himself through the NY tabloid ecosystem. Trump was successful, because you read about him in the Post, so he must be successful. Of course, reality controls the president in ways that it doesn't control a con artist real estate "developer."

His shamelessness manifested in suing vendors and contractors to renege on payments, his abuse of bankruptcy laws and his loach personal behavior. It politics, his ability to ignore what used to be the expectations of moral behavior from our elected officials allows him to constantly bull his way through what would have led any normal political figure to resign in shame.

In the Richardson missive, she points out that Iran wants nothing to do with a negotiated settlement that isn't a clear strategic win for them. This includes continued control over the Straits of Hormuz and billions in reconstruction funds. Trump really is powerless to stop them from making these demands and Iran is perfectly willing to let its people suffer in order to outlast Trump. 

All of this is causing him to self-sooth by releasing ridiculous AI art of him as a peer of George Fucking Washington, a man whose signal defining trait was strength of character and morality. As his position vis a vis Iran gets weaker, his narcissism requires him to post more and more nonsense about how awesome he is. I suppose there's a decent chance that this shit is just generated by staffers to placate him and this smooth-brained man-baby can't help but push it out on to an unsuspecting world. 

Trump's biggest previous crash out was election denial and January 6th. He's dumber and less constrained now, so I have no idea where this will end up, but I doubt it will be a place any sane person wants to be. 

Talarico

 I generally find Yglesias' takes on politics to be blinkered. He really does seem to think that swing voters care about policy. I think evidence has demonstrated over time that that really isn't true. Swing voters are vibe voters, and even if those vibes are downstream from policy, they really aren't digging into those policy specifics. Trump ran on "bringing prices down on Day One" and tariffs. That's incoherent, but didn't matter.

I do think, though, that Yglesias is right in this column about Talarico. In many ways, the Texas situation is the inverse of the Maine race. In Maine, you have a Democratic challenger who has more red flags than a May Day parade, whereas Talarico just gives off endlessly sincere and thoughtful energy. Meanwhile, Ken Paxton would immediately become the worst Senator in America if elected. He's endlessly corrupt and malevolent. 

The hope is that about 1,400,000 Republicans voted in the runoff and Paxton got 886,000 votes. In 2024, Ted Cruz got almost 6 million votes in the general election, whereas Colin Allred got a hair over 5 million. Can Talarico draw enough independents who voted for Cruz to get closer to 5,500,000? And will Paxton lose - either because they are voting for Talarico or not voting at all - enough votes to drop below that 5.5 million number? 

Yglesias notes that Talarico is taking somewhat heterodox positions on things like oil and gas that will play well in Texas, but might upset Democrats in California. While there remains a certain segment of the censorious Left that might challenge Talarico on this - including perhaps bitter-enders from Crockett's campaign - I do think most Democrats understand that Talarico can't take the same positions that a candidate running in Oregon might.

Where this gets interesting is that Platner is taking roughly all the right positions, and for the moment he seems to be winning, even with massive amounts of personal baggage. Paxton is not, I think, an electoral overperformer the way Susan Collins is, but then again Texas is not Maine. Platner is VERY unpopular with online Democrats, precisely because his baggage is very real and very troubling about the sort of person he truly is. He does not have a long track record of public service to evaluate him on, so you have to look at character and personality. The personality seems suited to the moment, but the character looks toxic as hell.

Would the Censorious Left be better off simply ignoring Platner's baggage in the way that they seem to be ignoring Talarico's policy stances? Technically, Platner is not the nominee yet, so they can make the case for Mills to jump back on and there is a third candidate on the ballot. I see people vehemently hating on Platner, largely because they hate the people - the Pod Bros and the Bernie Bros - who foisted him on us. 

Personally, where I draw the brightest line is simply if the person is a Republican or not. Talarico can carve out space that fits Texas, even if it doesn't gibe with the overall Democratic policy suite. Platner can prove that he's growing into the role, as long as he gets rid of Susan Collins. 

Democrats have to "hold serve" everywhere - Michigan looks dodgy - and then pick up enough seats to not only take the majority, but neutralize Fetterman. That means North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Ohio and maybe some surprises like Iowa, South Carolina, Montana or Nebraska. 

That means swallowing candidates that don't fit your personal preferences, and you have to be OK with that.

TrumpBucks

 Donald Trump wants to put his scowling mug on a new $250 bill. 

Two things:

First, it's illegal to put a living person on the money. That Trump is even trying is a monument to his narcissism and insecurity. He's already fired one person for refusing to break the law, which - again - very in keeping with his second term. Loyalty to Trump's bloated, pustule of an ego is more important than following the law or professional standards.

Second, can you think of anything more tone deaf in an age when voters have complained about inflation than putting your face on a bill that literally represents the decline in value of the dollar? I remember going to Italy before the Euro and it cost 1000 lira to buy a soda, back when a soda was a dollar. We are sort of approaching the psychology of chained inflation and Trump plastering his ugly face on the physical manifestation of that inflation is just...

Thanks, Americans who refused to vote for the qualified woman - twice - and gave us this idiotic monster.

The Summer Of His Discontent

 Richardson lays out what a shitty week Don Trumpeone just had. The Senators whose jobs he took away are pissed, the Courts are removing the presumption of good faith by government lawyers, and his efforts to aggrandize himself are falling flat. 

Perhaps nothing so perfectly captures this moment as his quagmire in Iran. He can't surrender even though he's been beaten strategically, because Trump's whole schtick is that he's a "winner." He could no more admit defeat in Iran than in the 2020 election. He has exactly zero good options here and the clock is ticking on enough Congressional Republicans to spit the bit and invoke the War Powers Act. 

Meanwhile, gas prices aren't budging, and with gas reserves being drawn down, we are potentially about to hit another spike in prices. Regardless, ending the war tomorrow would not restore either the reserves nor the pre-war prices. It will take months to get prices down to pre-war levels, a timeline that likely extends beyond the midterms. 

His floundering abroad and his sabotage of Senate Republicans may finally have enough members start to push back against his monarchical pretensions. People are legitimately pissed about the ballroom, the arch, the reflecting pool, the gilded tackiness, the plans for a $250 bill with his ugly mug on it, his indifference to people's economic distress, his tariffs, the rising cost of fertilizers, high interest rates from deficit spending and inflation...you get the idea.

These craven lickspittles in the GOP thought that if they embraced Trump just enough that would save them. Instead, insufficient fealty leads to the fates of Tom Tillis, Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn. Too much fealty could drag down unpopular faux Trumpists like Lindsay Graham.

I'm fascinated by what will happen around July 4th. It should be a moment of national celebration. Even the Bicentennial, laden as it was with inflation and the stench of Watergate, felt like a reprieve from our malaise. I have to wonder if this 250th anniversary will feel more like an expression of revolutionary rage than the nostalgia that Trump craves. 

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.