After the emotionally crushing defeat, I was fine with people who wanted to retreat from the fight a bit for a while. It was soul-crushing to think about what Trump 2.0 might mean; it remains soul crushing. It made sense to just turn off the news until mid-January. Getting worked up about Matt Gaetz wasn't - as it turned out - necessary. I think the vultures are circling Pete Hegseth and he will be replaced soon - apparently by Ron DeSantis.
Freaking out about RFK, Jr's brain worm making health policy is absolutely legitimate, but we can't fight every battle. We have to know when and where to fight, and I think we know which terrain is favorable.
We already have a few of the Wingnut Caucus talking about slashing entitlements. Democrats need to "go ham" on this. Stop talking about the appropriateness of Dr. Oz and start talking about what he might do to Medicare and Medicaid.
Democrats are not a natural opposition party, in that Democrats go to Washington to do things rather than to obstruct things. So you have Jared Moskowitz joining the DOGE conference, which I suppose isn't the worst thing in the world, as long as he's prepared to storm out at the appropriate moment. You join these things now and then loudly break with them, saying that what they are planning is cruel. The reason to "be bipartisan" in December is so you can loudly break with it in February and March.
Lots of folks noted that Trump's re-election was more like 2004 than 2016, in that 2016 felt like a fluke, whereas 2004 was a clear choice. Bush began talking about his "mandate" and then proceeded to promptly a thoroughly shit the bed by trying to privatize Social Security and dragging the culture wars into the Congress by focusing on Terri Schiavo's end of life care. Trump has few deep ideological commitments, and Rep. McCormack notes that even as he wants to slash entitlements, Trump is likely less than enthusiastic. In fact, the Wingnut Caucus pushing unpopular issue and Trump knee-capping them to become more popular is very on brand for him.
Trump's perverse ability to escape consequences for his poor and unpopular decisions is the belief that he doesn't really believe anything he says, depending on what the issue is. This is most true about abortion rights, where most people think - probably accurately - that he's pro-choice, and then they ignore that he picks a bunch of theocrats for the bench.
A central failure of the media during the campaign - and there were many - was in not focusing more on Project 2025. Trump said he didn't care about it, and maybe he doesn't, but it seems fairly likely to be a blueprint for at least the first year of his administration. If so, people will be surprised to discover that Trump is an actual Republican pursuing actual Republican goals.
For the Democrats, they need to scream bloody and consistent murder when he does.
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